The Breakup Theory Episode 23 - Dean Spade on How We Act When Things Get Really Hard
A conversation between Shuli and Dean Spade, about his recent book Love in a Fucked Up World
Today I’m sharing a conversation I had with one of my favorites, Dean Spade, about his recent book Love in a Fucked Up World out with Algonquin Books. Dean has been an inspiration for a long time with his commitments to abolition, anti-Zionism, and trans liberation, among other things. His previous book, Mutual Aid, came at a perfect moment when people were getting together in response to COVID-19 and the George Floyd Uprising. This new book has also appeared right when we need it, when we feel worn down and scared, and need to find better ways to connect with each other. His thinking here lines up very closely with the things that concern me, namely thinking beyond politics and anarchism as relationships, building bottom up. Dean starts from the idea that all of our movements and struggle are based on our relationships, and if we can’t get those right, how can we expect to work together to end this world and build another. Love in a Fucked Up World finally gives us a self-help book for queer anarchists: it contains so much insight matched with practical suggestions to help guide you through your own stories and the ones you project on others that get in the way of real connection. It really moved me in moments and gelled certain ways to understand myself in relation to others.
Our conversation goes into nitty gritty relationship issues and zooms out to the ways these affect our collective work. We talk about how anarchists and leftists deprioritize and avoid doing this internal and interpersonal work, only to find that all of the problems appear in every place you go. It is so important to talk explicitly about our social needs and how our collective work fits into them. We can’t separate politics and love. Meetings are social spaces and our search for political direction is completely enmeshed in our search for intimate connection.
But I’ll let Dean tell you more about this—he wrote the book on it.
The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, which brings together important shows with news, analysis, reportbacks, and culture. Check it out at https://www.channelzeronetwork.com
