Analysis Of American Revolutionary By Grace Bogg

The film American Revolutionary offers viewers a glimpse into the work and life of Grace Lee Boggs, an activist, philosopher, and as the title clearly states, revolutionary.  Throughout the documentary, Grace Lee Boggs details how their experiences and roles in various social movements, such as the civil rights movement, have transformed both their mind, as well as their whole self.  Boggs began their journey as an activist as a firm believer in Marxist theory, and overtime their experiences as an activist helped their challenge traditional ways of thinking and gave their a nuanced understanding of what it means to be a “revolutionary”.  Boggs emphasizes that revolution requires us to move forward from protesting and marching against existing

injustice, toward a vision of a new society, with new institutions and structures, that thus create new kinds of human beings. In this essay, I use Bogg’s idea of what constitutes a “revolutionary movement” and expanding on Bogg’s ideas, I argue that the practice of revolution is transformative, and more over a form of biopower, in that it is the creation of a new form of life, and that revolutionary struggle can be categorized as conflict between biopower utilized by the dominant class.  Further, I argue that the creation of new life by revolutionary movement can only be made though utopian demands, which challenge and stimulate one’s political imagination.
In the documentary, Grace Lee Boggs states that the ultimate challenge of making a revolutionary movement is ensuring that the vision of the movement should be the creation of a new kind of human being, stressing the importance of changing both the system, as well as changing ourselves though the act of changing the system (Lee, 2015).

In Hardt’s Affective Labor, they argue that biopower is the “power of creation of life”, and that the creation of affective communities through affective labor is in itself a “form-of-life” (Hardt, 1999).  Under the goal of creating a new type of human, revolutionary movements are engagements of biopower, which in turn push back against forms of biopower from the ruling class. In discussing their participation in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955/1956 and other events of the Civil Rights movement, Boggs discusses how the movement was not simply trying to become equal to whiteness, and instead were trying to change the dominant system, while changing themselves in the process.  Through their activism, was engaging in a form of affective labor that in turn had the transformative power to continually shape them into someone who encapsulated their utopian vision of a new society. Further, Bogg’s work and activism is aligned with the view of abolition put forth in Stanley’s Captive Genders, in which Stanley argues that abolition supersedes existing structures and institutions, under the vision of replacing them with structures that cultivate

“wholeness, self-determination, and transformation” (Stanley, 2011).  Stanley goes on to define abolition as “the practice of transformation” in the present and future (Stanley, 2011). Throughout the film, Boggs described the power of conversation, going so far as to present the practice of conversation as essential to revolutionary movements, as they help to cultivate the strong relationships between individuals that lead to the development of affectionate communities. Further, the film highlights the practice of gardening as a physical manifestation of transformation through affective labor. The experiences and affective labor that made up Bogg’s journey as an activist thus illuminate the transformative impact of the practice of revolution.
Additionally, in the film, Grace Lee Boggs discusses the topic of non-violent rebellion, explaining to the audience their understanding that non-violence “respects the human capacity to grow” (Lee, 2015).

I highlight this scene to argue that in order for an idea or a movement to be “revolutionary”, it requires a utopian vision that demands the reimagination of both individuals and political systems. In Week’s The Problem With Work, they put define utopian demands as those of which that are able to “cognitively reorient” us beyond dominant, existing social structures and engage our political imaginations toward futurity (Weeks, 2011). Utopian demands thus challenge movements to engage elements of the past, present, and utopian future, and further, utopian demands serve to cultivate a sense of “cognitive and affective investment” (Weeks, 2011). Thus, utopian demands serve to challenge activists and organizers to not only work toward fighting against the dominant oppressive systems of the present, but to moreover point them in the direction toward what Muñoz describes as a “queer future” (Muñoz, 2009). In Queerness as a Horizon, Muñoz highlights the concept of “queer time”, which is “ecstatic and horizontal”- a means of achieving increased “openness to the world”, and moreover presents the idea of a “queer future” as one that is “all about desire” (Muñoz, 2009). Muñoz exposes the reality of cloud of anti-utopianism that looms over social movements, which serves to guide

movements toward achieving surface-level goals (i.e. marriage equality) and consequently prevents social movements from truly dismantling oppressive systems. Underlying a utopian vision is the the desire for equity and inclusion, and utopian demands ultimately reflect this desire. These utopian demands provide the direction in which a revolution will grow, and moreover they provide the groundwork for which affective labor takes place. Operating under the desire for a utopian future simultaneously ensures that our immediate “relations with the social” are also continuous transformed. In conclusion, individuals are transformed through the affective labor that comprises the practice and performance of “revolution”. The practice of revolution is a form of biopower, as revolution has demonstrated to be cultivation of new life and new forms of social systems. Guided by the direction of utopian demands, revolutionary practices ultimately guide the progression of a movement toward a the establishment of collective, queer futurity.