Moonflower Farm Occasional Dispatches 4: On Property
In
In everyday speech we use the words “my” and “mine” a lot. What do we mean when we say, “my wine glass,” as in, “I think you are drinking from my wine glass?” What do we mean when we say, “my husband?” “my country?” “my house?” “my teeth?”
By
By “my wine glass” we mean, “the wine glass I have recently been drinking from.”
By “my husband” we mean “a person with whom I have entered into a complex legal agreement (called ‘marriage’).”
By “my country” we mean “the very large area in which I was born” — or possibly, “the very large area of which I am a legal citizen.” This last abstraction we can explore more later.
By “my house” we mean “the house I currently live in.”
By “my teeth” we mean “the teeth that are part of me.”
Do
Do these uses of possessive pronouns indicate legal ownership? Sometimes. A wine glass can be owned, though this is not how the possessive is used casually. It would be rude and weird for the host to reply, “Well actually this is my wine glass — they all are.”
People cannot be owned, under the legal system that currently obtains. Until very recently, however, and still in many places, “my wife,” did indicate a kind of ownership. Even here and now, echoes of this legal regime remain. “My husband” and “my wife” are two different kinds of possession. Setting that freighted history aside, while these terms functionally indicate participation in a legal agreement, in common parlance the most important meaning is one not usually spelled out in such agreements: Sexual exclusivity. Depending on intonation, “my husband” is very likely to mean “a man with whom you may not have sex, and with whom I may.” This is regarded as “sexual possession” — the “ownership” of the right to sex with a person. And, to reiterate — while it is nowhere spelled out in the vast majority of marriage contracts, nor included in the vast majority of wedding vows, it is de facto the single most important implication of the relationship. What a mess!
Countries cannot be owned. Here we rub up against an odd aspect of possessive language: It can, though does not always, imply a sense of belonging to, rather than possessing. Of being contained by (“my tribe”) rather than containing (“my teeth”). When someone says “my country” they are indicating an immutable fact about themselves; similarly with “my parents.” Very different from “my hat!”
Homes can be owned, though the possessive doesn’t necessarily indicate that. What exactly this “ownership” consists in we can explore shortly.
Teeth can be owned, as a legal matter — but oddly enough only if they are removed from the body.
Well
Well then, what is “ownership?”
In the case of portable objects, such as wine glasses (or other peoples’ teeth), it means that you have a legal document which proves your right to use or sell the object. This could be a deed, title, certificate of ownership or it could be a receipt showing that you exchanged money for it. In practice, it mostly means that you believe you have the right to use or sell the object and that you can convince other people of that. When you go down to the pawn shop, what matters is that the wine glass is in your hand; they are not going to ask to see your certificate of ownership.
Husbands and wives, as we observed, cannot be owned. I will note that, despite the marriage contract being silent on “sexual possession,” courts will mostly regard the contract as being voided by evidence of “extramarital sex,” which is sex with someone outside the contract. Indeed something very strange is going on here. An alien anthropologist might decide that it amounts to “ownership,” at least of some of a spouse’s faculties.
Countries cannot be owned, however “citizenship” is a complex legal fiction endowing a citizen with certain rights and curtailing others. As with marriage this relationship is murky and seems to fall short of ownership; in the limit case though we might say that my country owns me, and not the other way around.
Houses are a very interesting case, which clarifies the nature of “ownership” in general. Let us examine several different people who all use the phrase “my house”:
First, a squatter. This person has no legal right to stay in “their” house. However they do so anyway. At any moment they may be forced to leave. Any person who is troubled by their occupancy of said house may, at any time, call the cops, who will evict them, with violence if necessary.
Next, a renter. This person has a legal right to stay in “their” house, but they must pay another person in advance each month, and obey a large number of other rules; failing this, they are subject to police violence as above. The person whom they must pay is the landlord; this person also refers to the house as “my house.” However they mean something altogether different by the phrase. In general, the landlord is the only person whom the renter need fear calling the violence of the state down upon their heads; no one else is privy to the relationship.
Next, a homeowner. In the vast majority of cases, this person has a legal right to occupy “their” house, as long as they pay a company in advance each month, and obey a relatively small number of other rules. The eviction process, should they fail to pay, is much more drawn out than for a renter; only after much cajoling and threatening will police violence be used. In other words, the legal relationships of renters and homeowners with “their” houses are formally identical, different only in details and degrees.
A vanishingly small proportion of homeowners have no mortgage. These people have a very reasonable expectation that they will be allowed to stay in their homes. They cannot be made to leave, unless they attract the violence of the state in some other way.
Two
Two of these cases are considered “ownership”; two are not. All four people speak of “my house.” Granular investigation like this shows us several things.
First, that what most people mean by “my house” is, “the house I occupy and where I store “my possessions” (the objects I am able to convince other people I have the right to use); a house which I will have to leave in a matter of months if I run out of money or break certain arbitrary rules.
Second, that violence is distributed and ubiquitous in our society. The threat of violence is constant. “Ownership” is, under the capitalist state, a defense against that threat.
It is not the landlord who will come for you if you don’t pay your rent, nor the mortgage holder. If so, it would come down to a contest of strength, or of firepower. But state power is a kind of sword of Damocles hanging over every head, and it is there, first and foremost, to protect the interests of landowners.
The
The idealized vision of a state would have that it protects from violence; it “guarantees property rights” and the “rule of law.” But the reality is somewhat different: The state generalizes the threat of violence; it produces a situation in which near-infinite force may be brought to bear against anyone at any time.
This leads us to a third observation: The overwhelming majority of people live under constant threat of homelessness. It is ridiculous, of course, to imagine that the living earth, our home and mother, can be carved up into parcels and become property of humans. But the legal fiction of ownership obscures the basic fact that, under the capitalist state, almost no one — neither squatters, nor renters, nor owners of mortgaged homes — has any realistic expectation that they will be allowed to stay where they are.
Each of these classes lives in marginally lower precarity, but each of them also has significantly more at stake. A squatter has invested only sweat equity, and likely owns only what can be carried; a homeowner will likely have spent tens of thousands of dollars on building and property which, once foreclosed on, are forfeit. Thus, each of these groups is under increasing pressure to conform. A small increase in security incurs a tremendous cost in narrowed options; a renter can simply pack up and move, a homeowner cannot risk the loss of status.
A population of squatters is dangerous to the state and landowning class, a population of homeowners is too invested in the status quo to consider challenging it.
In our example, it is only a tiny minority of the old or eccentric, who own their homes outright, who have any realistic expectation that they may be allowed to stay put. The psychospiritual impacts of this state of affairs are massive. It is well-nigh impossible, under technocapitalism, to form a relationship with a place, for the simple fact there is never a time when the threat of eviction is absent.
Here
Here we might briefly meditate on the words “house” and “home.” As we have observed elsewhere, legally home is where you shit. But in common parlance, home is the place where living happens. To be without a home would be to die, for living must have a location.
Under technocapitalism, an anomolously large proportion of living happens in other places actually; almost everyone spends a majority of their waking hours at a place called a “job,” which we don’t have time to go into now. One or more meals a day are often taken at restaurants. Technocapitalism aspires to a condition in which home is for sleeping and storage — and actually the compulsion to consume has reached such a pitch that many people cannot afford homes large enough to contain all their possessions — hence the profitable industry of “self-storage rentals.”
Still, psychologically, home is more than a sleep chamber and storage unit. It is a place of refuge, a place where you can exercise some minimal control over the environment — wall color, music; a place where, at any moment, you could go; and a place where no one else can go without your permission.
“Homeless” people actually do continue to live. They eat, sleep, shit and fuck; they have possessions, and store them. They find places to to take refuge. However, they do all these things under immediate and constant threat of being violently evicted.
Homelessness is the limit case of technocapitalist precarity.
Returning
Returning to our considerations of the word “my” in normal speech: We observed that “my” can indicate an object we have recently been using, and intend to continue using; an object to which we have title or which we can otherwise convince others we have the right to use; a person we have some relation to and intend to continue; a place we inhabit and hope to continue; a physical part of us; an unchangeable fact of our personal history.
In some of these cases, it would clarify things to speak, rather than possession, of relationship. Instead of “my wine glass,” we might say “the wine glass with which I am in relationship.” Instead of “my hat,” “the hat with which I am having a relationship.” “My boyfriend” could become “the male-socialized front pole with whom I am in relationship.” And “my property” would more correctly be “the parcel of land with which I am having a relationship.”
To actually say this would be ridiculously awkward of course; I do personally make the internal translation on the fly to clarify my understanding.
It is further interesting to ponder just what these various relationships are. I am drinking from this wine glass, sure; but there is more to it than that. It and I are coexperiencing, cocreating, doing a dance together. It may last a few minutes, it may last a lifetime. I am wearing this hat, but what does that mean? It is part of my body, and I am part of its body. Ah, the possessive crops up again! Perhaps better to say we are embodying together. Dear me, now really no one is going to know what we are talking about any more.
This masc-behaving human being — well I have had sex with him repeatedly and expect to do so repeatedly in the future. But further, I trust him, he makes me laugh, we know each other’s secrets (and by “each other’s” here I guess I mean — not that we own these secrets! — but perhaps that they are facts about ourselves we do not share widely). He is not me, but he is not not me either; we are not one and not two.
“My”
“My” teeth, “my” parents, “my” country, “my” name: Here the relationship is harder to articulate. For these things are part of me, or I am part of them, or both at once. But the above meditations on relationship can shine a little moonlight on the situation.
For indeed, just as with the boyfriend, I could exist without my teeth, and they without me, but … together we make up, more than the sum of the parts let us say. Separated from my teeth I am less than half the man I was, nor do they have much of a future without me. And while, indeed, I could not exist without “my” parents, nor would “my” children be here without me, I think what the possessive is doing here is something different, something more equivalent to the “my” in “my name”: What I mean to say, when naming “my” parents, is, these people are a fact about me.
These teeth, these hands, this hair or lack thereof; these parents, these children; this birthplace, this word in a passport, this name; these are all contributions to this phenomenon we will agree to call “me” for want of any better terminology. While, toothless, hairless, we might still refer to “me,” it is in the same sense that we still refer to “me” when the parents have passed away, when the birthplace has been destroyed by flood, when the country has been colonized, when the name has been changed.
This phenomenon of “me” is path-dependent; it has, or better is, a history.
And
And finally, “real property.” This piece of land and I are deeply embroiled and ever becoming more deeply so. My eyesight, my awareness, fill it up; I smell its smells every day; I wake up and fall asleep here. My shit and piss are part of the soil, contribute to the growth of the plants here; I have eaten plants that grew from that soil, and their nutrients are now incorporated into — my body? — no, this body, let us say for now.
This piece of land is making me, and I am making it. We could exist without each other — but we would not be the same without each other. We would not be what we are without each other’s input, for good or ill. And indeed, the criteria for determining “good” or “ill” here are lacking. We are simply making each other happen.
But look deeper! When I say, “my property,” “this place with which I am in relationship,” it denotes more than lines on a map! It is geological characteristics, myriad soil organisms, hydrological regimes that change seasonally; countless mycelia, grasses, forbs, ferns, shrubs, trees; innumerable insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds of all sizes, predators and prey; patterns of flow (of air, water, fire, topsoil) which, by erosion, over millennia create the conditions of their own flowing. (And by “their own” flowing, I mean: That flow by which they may be known.) And all these things, and many more, are engaged and codetermined and entangled in detailed and infinitely complex webs of communal association. And ultimately, you see, it is the webs and flows that make the place.
And I, by virtue of living here, am a node upon that net, am a conduit for those flows — and I become more and more richly connected to all the other members of the community that is this place with each breath I draw here. What I am is more and more completely determined by all these relationships and — perhaps more importantly — I become a building block — my entire being becomes a contribution to the creation of the phenomenon that is this place.
As
As we observed above, under statist technocapitalism, the difference between “ownership” and “rental” of property is slight; and maybe, if the paragraphs immediately preceding this were not too overblown and poetic, we can catch a glimpse of the ontological implications of this. It is no small thing to be of a place, for a place to be of oneself. It is, I would say, part and parcel of identity.
And yet, and yet — in the social, economic and political conditions under which we find ourselves, it is well-nigh impossible.
Almost all of us are being allowed to occupy the place we do on sufferance, as it were. Our right to stay might be revoked at any time, for a variety of reasons — most significantly, were we to fail to hand over sufficient slices of the devil’s pie some month.
We cannot trust the place we are to continue to cradle us. We cannot trust the interdependent community of which we are a part to continue to flow through, involve, and subsume us. Nor can that community trust us to continue to do our part in the dance that is its very nature.
This means that our being, and its being, and in the end these are two names for the same thing, must always be tenuous, provisional; not because of the natural evolution that is migration or nomadism, but because of arbitrary rules imposed by the imperative that money accrue. The flow of money, somehow, interrupts and distorts all other flows.
And
And by “their own” flowing, I mean: That flow by which they may be known.
Finished 30 June 2021
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