Rock! Paper! Scissors!
What's in a Name?: Introducing Rock! Paper! Scissors!
By: Nekeisha Alayna Alexis
After a simple creative process that involved suggesting all the ideas we could think of (Soapbox Sermons? Rad Rag? The UnBeliever?), Jesus Radicals co-organizers settled on Rock! Paper! Scissors! as the title of our new web journal. How the name of a decision-making hand game has become the heading for this project needs some explanation. What does this win-or-lose act of play have to do with A toolbox for anarchist + Christian thought? What does it say about our plans to shift from our current, past-its-prime blog format to a periodic collection of ideas, focused on particular topics and brought together by various editors?
While the game positions its three elements — the closed fist (rock), the flat, face-down palm (paper) and the sideways, “v” sign (scissors) — as being in competition with one another, with rock defeating scissors and paper defeating rock, we envision each of these symbols as being in harmony, politically speaking. Justice. Change. The unmaking of old patterns. The building of different worlds. These ambitions require rock and fist, written word and open palms, the cutting apart and sideways patterns of peace. We bring to each tactic the distinct perspectives of countercultural, liberationist, intersectionality-minded Christ-followers who remain intrigued and inspired by the wisdom, resistance, and possibilities of anarchism. I offer the thoughts below to provide a fuller picture of the path we hope this journal will take.
Paper calls to mind the words and readings that were and remain so influential in re-shaping how we engage the world and helped so many of us hold together Christianity and anarchism in the first place. We hope what we publish in this web journal — be it book reviews or essays; poetry or songs; audio or video or photos — will help expand our imaginations. We hope your contributions in conversation with our guest editors will help discern how God is and might be moving in various corners of our beautiful and breaking world, what the Body is to be about, what the shape of our small roles might look like, and how the kin/g/dom of rightness and justice might be on earth as it is in heaven.
So what is in the name Rock! Paper! Scissors! tools for anarchist + Christian thought? A lot it seems. Come out, come out wherever you are — authors, illustrators, poets, essayists, Christians, anarchists, cojourners — and play!
While the game positions its three elements — the closed fist (rock), the flat, face-down palm (paper) and the sideways, “v” sign (scissors) — as being in competition with one another, with rock defeating scissors and paper defeating rock, we envision each of these symbols as being in harmony, politically speaking. Justice. Change. The unmaking of old patterns. The building of different worlds. These ambitions require rock and fist, written word and open palms, the cutting apart and sideways patterns of peace. We bring to each tactic the distinct perspectives of countercultural, liberationist, intersectionality-minded Christ-followers who remain intrigued and inspired by the wisdom, resistance, and possibilities of anarchism. I offer the thoughts below to provide a fuller picture of the path we hope this journal will take.
- Rock! I am of the mind that every great movement against oppression requires, in some form or another, the need to smash things. Walls must come down. Destructive machines must halt. Locks on cages must break. Fetters must tear apart. It isn’t a matter of whether such damage happens, because happen it will. But it is also essential to carefully discern when and how and if such smashing should — and should not — occur. What are the strongholds that need a closed fist, figuratively and literally? How do we decide this in each context and who must be the deciders? Such smashing must be intentional and strategic, like overturning tables in a temple, harming neither human nor other animal. What kind of self-work, humility, and accountability must be cultivated for such undertakings?
- Paper! Although rock can be powerful in some instances, the open, facedown palm that supersedes it is a helpful reminder that its effectiveness is also limited. Sometimes smashing things is more useful for stroking our egos than it is for birthing transformation. Sometimes it just leaves big messes that people with fewer social advantages have to clean up. Hence there remains a need for a multiplicity of tactics for the variety of circumstances that are, in these new days of old shit coming at us faster than we can Tweet. The written and spoken word is one of those profound complementary instruments at our disposal. At the very least, it helps communicate what the smashing is all about.
Paper calls to mind the words and readings that were and remain so influential in re-shaping how we engage the world and helped so many of us hold together Christianity and anarchism in the first place. We hope what we publish in this web journal — be it book reviews or essays; poetry or songs; audio or video or photos — will help expand our imaginations. We hope your contributions in conversation with our guest editors will help discern how God is and might be moving in various corners of our beautiful and breaking world, what the Body is to be about, what the shape of our small roles might look like, and how the kin/g/dom of rightness and justice might be on earth as it is in heaven.
- Scissors! Although scissors are the weakest of the tools in the hand game, in the framework of this journal, they undergird the others. Whether we carry rock or paper or both, what is crucial is the ability to think incisively about the times we are in and who we are to be individually and collectively. How we analyze a situation — whether we see it as personal and/or systemic; whether think about identities within the matrix of power; whether we have hope that God is indeed making a new world that we are called to participate in building — these and other issues matter for how we approach any topic or situation. How we think about the problems and the possibilities before us determines what we will and won’t do about them.
So what is in the name Rock! Paper! Scissors! tools for anarchist + Christian thought? A lot it seems. Come out, come out wherever you are — authors, illustrators, poets, essayists, Christians, anarchists, cojourners — and play!
Nekeisha Alayna Alexis is co-founder and co-organizer of Jesus Radicals. She is also an occasional writer and speaker with wide-ranging interests related to human and other animal liberation, and our intersecting oppressions. Explore her random and rambling mindstate at criticalanimal.tumblr.com and everydayoppression.tumblr.com