THE FIVE FINGERS OF SOCIAL DESIRE
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family or for those endowed with ‘remarkable’ altruistic abilities. A cooperative,
associative desire within the social or political realms is regarded as the
exception rather than the rule.
However, as anarchism and feminism demonstrate, we have the potential
to express associative desire within both (he public and private spheres by
cultivating social relationships ranging from friendship and lovership to family,
community, and political ties. Associative desire represents the potential which
brings people to form culture and community, to participate in activities as
diverse as joining clubs, attending parties, and engaging in politics. For better
or for worse, most people have a desire to be in the presence of others, both
in the intimate setting of friends and family and in the anonymity of the
bustling city or market place. And in addition to constituting the basic desire
for sociability, associative desire represents the creative striving toward greater
levels of mutuality and cooperation: within the matrix of a cooperative
community, people may create art, technologies, labor, relationships, and forms
of self-government, centering such practices around the desire for mutualism
and inter-dependence. Associative desire is the tendency to create social
richness, to create non-hierarchical societies with mediated decision-making
systems, complementary divisions of labor, and distributive economies.
In turn, associative desire moves individuals to cultivate structures which
nurture the ability to express social desire. Associative desire is most easily
expressed in contexts that are cooperative, non-hierarchical, and participatory.
As social anarchism demonstrates, hierarchy and competition nurture social
alienation, creating a climate of intimidation, mistrust, and animosity. In
contrast, free from hierarchy and competition, people are better able to give
each other the recognition, empathy, and attention that render life meaningful.
Social
anarchist
cooperation
and
represent
feminist
the
structures
associative
which
foster
dimension
of
mutual
the
aid
and
sodo-erotic.
Cooperative structures such as rotating leadership, collective ownership and
labor, and direct partidpatory democracy represent but a few structural
examples of the assodative dimension of the sodo-erotic within sodety.
DiffERENTiATiVE DESiRE: KiNowiNq
SeIF,
KisowiNq
TIhe WorIcI
However, to fully actualize its liberatory potential, associative desire must be
complemented by another form of desire, differentiative desire . Differentiative
desire, the third finger of desire, is the desire to differentiate oneself within the
context of a sodal group. Yet it also represents the desire to ‘differentiate the
world’—to make sense of the world through artistic or intellectual creative
expression. Thus, while the first dimension of differentiative desire begins with
the assertion “7 want to know myself," the second dimension begins with the
assertion, “7 want to know the woiid, ”