!Books about enclaves
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agk's diary
29 November 2021 @ 00:28
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started on Pinebook Pro
while Evy works and baby tries to crawl;
finished when I'm the only one awake.
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Sterling (1985). Green days in Brunei (short story).
Solderpunk recommended this (thank you!). Fast
and sweet, it describes life in what'd now be
called a solarpunk enclave. 1970s industrial
robots are being restored to assemble low-tech
oceangoing vessels.
Outside the enclave, the world is ordinary, a
good 1985 prediction of the 2020s. The story is
driven by character and a technical challenge.
It explores the social organization, politics,
economy, and culture of a small society some of
us on gopher and gemini would build or visit.
Sacco (2000). Safe area Goražde: The war in eastern
Bosnia 1992-95.
I first read this in 2000. The break-up of Yugo-
slavia and Bosnian war were central geopolitical
events of my childhood. This remains the best
comix journalism I've read. Sacco visited the
rural eastern Bosnian enclave often after UN's
"blue road" restored limited access. It was
cut off from the world by Serbian Chetnik seige
for three years, and could have ended like
nearby Srebrenica in mass graves.
Sacco introduces us to characters: "Silly girls"
who want Levis 501 Originals, a grad student
turned teacher/soldier/interpreter, and wonder-
fully human others. He doesn't lay on pity, nor
avoid politics or hyperviolence. He grounds life
in everyday challenges: fixing the roof, gener-
ating electricity from Drina river with scav-
enged alternators in "mini-centrales," getting
food and firewood into town, and surviving bore-
dom as much as death or fear. The pictures are
drawn with great love and care.
Lowrey (2015). Lost boi.
A transmasc, intergenerational leather family
squat a warehouse to give young leatherbois a
place to run away to and play forever. It isn't
erotica (I totally thought it would be), but a
novel about adventure, love, and making a home
in ruins like Peter Pan and his boys did. If
you've run with queer squatter punks, feminist
sexworkers, or gay leathermen, it might feel
*real* familiar.
Tobocman (1999). War in the neighborhood.
Comix about the the '80s squatter scene in New
York City's Lower East Side. Each chapter is a
story about peoples' struggles to work together
to make their squatter enclave possible and live-
able. The author was there; it shows. The charac-
ters confront history, build a (counter)culture,
do low-tech reconstruction of brownstones,
struggle, and face city and developer repression.
I read this when I was a young squatter. A friend
of the author loaned me a copy. It gave me
courage and awareness of "the cop in my head"
(how I relate to people). It inspired me to try
tough things to hold off police a little longer
and make a good home. That first squat (and the
people who were part of it) was my favorite
home, the place I felt most free.
My romance with pubnix here on sdf, free software/
culture, gopher, and low-power social junkyard tinker-
ing has commonalities with these stories' places. We
carve out maroon redoubts---small, carefully maint-
ained *other* places (in Foucault's parlance, hetero-
topias) amid threats of carnage and ruin. We want (and
make) places we hope will be a little more free,
convivial, ethical, and pleasurable, where we fit,
survive, and can productively engage in making and
maintaining of our world.
I'm reading:
* Aho, Kernighan, Weinberger (1988). The AWK prog-
ramming language (pg 12).
* MacIntyre (1981, 2007). After virtue: A study in
moral theory (pg 55).
At winter break I hope to get back to reading Will-
iams' (1965) novel Stoner aloud with Cassie.
