Biopolitix is a notebook for recording insights about the biological sources of our political reality. It includes several timelines that follow the teleology of the imaginary concept of the autochthon, the self (auto) generated from the earth (chthon). I was originally attracted to this concept because of my environmentalism and later because I learned that it was, as an archetypal and ideal identity, the key motif of the narrative of civilizations. The autochthon presents the union of cultural identity and real estate, and that union is the ultimate evidence the culture has irrefutable and eternal claim to the real estate it claims.
That the autochthon remains obscure (for who ever uses the word) is due to our colonial history. Biblical cultures are bent against the earth-born character, preferring an identity that is associated with invisible spirit; and, since this is a jotting, the Christian "born again" provides our proof. For about 1700 years, the Christian West projected this fantasy of existential hierarchy, that people of spirit were justified in demolishing/dispossessing people of the earth, upon all parts of the planet. And so, Native peoples who were by every honest reckoning autochthons were wiped out by the civilized, because they were uncivilized. (The genociders were civilized, and through genocide brought civilization to the uncivilized.)
The very definition of modern Western civilization was, for this reason, its basis in the Bible, and not in the earth: ie, "Holy Roman Empire" etc etc. Our present environmental apocalypse is the result. Our industrial basis of survival occurs through the constant destruction of the long body, the shared life/genetic weave that extends through all species and backwards in time about 3 billion years. In only 200 years, Western civilization has destroyed its own source, primarily because of its adherence to the supernatural metaphysics of the Bible.
So it is telling, in a very grim way, that now that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, the supporters of Israel are invoking the character of the autochthon to justify their crime against humanity, and claim to real estate. This is a part of a statement (linked) produced to castigate an Oscar winning film maker: "The use of words like “occupation” to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years, and has been recognized as a state by the United Nations, distorts history."
The problem here is, of course, that the statement elides what is presented in the Torah: the Israelites were not indigenous. The Canaanites were indigenous, and the Israelites committed genocide against them and then appropriated the real estate. This is exactly what today's Israelites are doing to Palestinians. (Aside: this, the inability of civilizations to revise their generative narratives, precipitates what Nietzsche called "eternal recurrence"; above, the invoking of "dates back thousands of years" is an example of this.)
When I was a young environmentalist, I yearned to be one with the earth: an autochthon. Later, amidst the study of ecology—with the help of the Sand County Almanac, I realized that it is impossible for us not to be one with the earth. We are fully biological beings, and our inability to comprehend what that means is a result of our civilization, our cage of Bibliotry that prevents us from expanding/dancing into our actual existential state of being biocitizens.
When pro-genocide actors use blood and soil arguments, they say their claim "dates back thousands of years"—and lie. This lie is, itself, the epistemological basis of Western Civilization (which used it to justify its settler colonialist imperialism). And because it is a lie, this world is disintegrating; its foundation is imaginary.
The font and foundation of existence is bios. Bios will not vanish. The cultural lies and civilizations constructed on them will vanish, and are vanishing.
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