Daddy Yankee as critic of anti-capitalist abstraction
Theorists of the “anti-globalization” movement are often called into check over their penchant for abstract and simplistic valorization of extraordinarily complicated phenomena (e.g. celebrations of “exodus” and the “nomad,” phenomena which mean something very different when tethered to economic necessity).
Daddy Yankee, it seems, is the latest ideological gadfly:
“I’m not from a neighborhood adrift (barrio a la deriva) with no destination.”
I choose to read this in opposition to the idea of the a la deriva more generally, as in the studies of female precarity under the name Precarias a la Deriva.
Indeed, much of his Barrio Fino—especially the intro and outro—are devoted to concretizing his barrio. I think this all falls under the gut feeling I’ve had for a while that, as problematic as authenticity can be, it remains an indispensible concept for radical thought.
Can you expand on the last two paragraphs please? I don’t get the distinction between the two senses of being adrift that you’re making, such that I don’t get what the character of your opposition is to that the of PAD. I also don’t know what you mean by authenticity and would love to hear more. As I am not one to let lack of understanding keep me from opening my mouth -
My sense of the PAD is that their use ‘a la deriva’ has multiple meanings. One is a use of the situ derive as a group in motion together as part of a process of producing knowledge and, though neither the PAD nor the SI address this, of undergoing some experience together which is conducive to group cohesion/bonding. But the PAD criticize the SI derive as (petty?) bourgeois and male privileged, instead the PAD derives aren’t drifts at all but consciously constructed movements across the circuits which the commodity labor power travels in its particular feminine and precaritized instantiation. Which means that the being adrift is ambivalent - not an attempt to render oneself as in some sense really adrift, a la the SI, because in another sense materially adrift already: subject to the various processes which the Precarias face as precarias. Their project(s) with the Eskalera Karakola are also, I think, interpretable as precisely projects against being adrift, projects of anchoring so to speak via collective action. In particular collective action which is linked to a relatively fixed place in space, the Eskalera Karakola. In that sense, then, the PAD seem to me like they’re in keeping with what I think you’re saying about DY.
cheers,
Nate
Comment by Nate — October 5, 2006 @ 11:48 am