Essay One

The Sublime Art of Making Reparations

Kintsugi, Psychoanalysis, and the Sublimation of Disturbing Realities

Part VI.

The art of making reparations is not hostile to fantasies in general; it is only hostile to wishful and defensive fantasies that cover up disturbing realities. Fantasies that (re-)integrate and (re-)frame disturbing realities, instead of covering them up, are called sublimating fantasies, and the art of making reparations appreciates and enables sublimating fantasies.

Sublimating fantasies are the gold powdered lacquer used to glue together the fragments of the shattered teacup: they do far more than simply expose the disturbing realities that wishful fantasies and defensive fantasies cover up. Sublimating fantasies draw our attention to disturbances, yes, but they also draw our attention to the fragility of that which has been disturbed. Going further still, sublimating fantasies draw our attention to the fact that we can and should take care to artfully repair the precious teacup that has been disturbed and broken, for there are wonders to be had in doing so. That being said, however, it is important to stress that sublimating fantasies do not prevent future disturbances and breakages. The tea cup that has been shattered can always be shattered again and again, by unforeseeable accident, by negligence, or by design.

Those of you who know me personally will have guessed where I am heading with all of this. For those who haven’t guessed it, I shall put all my cards on the table: the precious teacup that has been shattered by the advance of patriarchal capitalism is the precious teacup of primitive matriarchal communism, the supplement at the origin of human culture. Ay, and the sublime art of making reparations that I am proposing here is the art of (re-)creating primitive matriarchal communism anew. Again, however, you must understand that the art of making reparations never returns anything to back its primitive state. The art of making reparations is not patching, conservative, static; rather, it is creative, dynamic, open. To (re-)create primitive matriarchal communism anew is to transform it, and the result of the art of making reparations would be something queer that both defers to primitive matriarchal communism and differs from it. It is, of course, true that every repair tends to a more primitive structure that precedes it but, as Christopher Alexander writes, “[artful] repair not only patches [primitive structures] — it also modifies [them], transforms [them], sets [them] on the road to becoming something else, entirely new.”

The art of making reparations is not what white nationalists imagine it to be: it is not the tit-for-tat revenge of primitive matriarchal communists against “advanced” patriarchal capitalists. Neither is the art of making reparations what liberal globalists imagine it to be: it is not compensation paid by those who have gained more under “advanced” patriarchal capitalism to those who would have gained more under primitive matriarchal communism. The art of making reparations for the “advancement” of patriarchal capitalism would transform existing forms of cultural artifice so as to (re-)create primitive matriarchal communism anew, restoring the potentials of primitive matriarchal communism. Tit-for-tat revenge and compensatory pay-offs will never (re-)create primitive matriarchal communism anew because they are not transformations of customs and institutions. Ay, the art of making reparations is, above all else, the art of transforming customs and institutions: it deconstructs those customs and institutions that conceal the disturbing realities of “advanced” patriarchal capitalism and it reconstructs these customs and institutions in order to restore the potentials of primitive matriarchal communism. 

Sublimating fantasies of a return to primitive matriarchal communism are the fantasies that enable us to restore the potentials of primitive matriarchal communism. White men sneer at fantasies of returning to primitive matriarchal communism. They are sneering at me now as they read this. Projecting their own bad conscience onto others, white men make such fantasies out to be wishful and/or defensive fantasies, like their own fantasies of primal fathers dominating their harems and hordes. Certainly, some fantasies of primitive matriarchal communism are wishful and some are defensive, but that does allow us to dismiss all such fantasies tout court. White men who indulge patriarchal capitalist fantasies but are quick to dismiss fantasies of primitive matriarchal communism are, of course, apologists for patriarchal capitalism. These white men are deathly afraid of encountering sublimating fantasies of primitive matriarchal communism that would expose and draw attention to disturbing realities that they are desperate to keep covered up.

Sublimating fantasies of primitive matriarchal communism would reveal that there is nothing divine, nothing natural, and nothing accidental about patriarchy, capitalism, genocide, and slavery: these are cultural artifices proposed, perpetrated, and perpetuated by violent and rapacious men who take pleasure in dominating women.  At the same time, however, sublimating fantasies of primitive matriarchal communism also reveal that there is nothing divine, nothing natural, and nothing accidental about primitive matriarchal communism: primitive matriarchal communism is only the cultural artifice of peoples who take pleasure in creating and nurturing life.