Che Guevara T-Shirts and Other Performativity
The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this. -- Ernesto “Che” Guevara, “Socialism and Man in Cuba”, Marcha, March 12, 1965.
Revise your everyday essential t shirt collection with the Che Guevara Men's T Shirt from Character. This soft cotton t-shirt comes in a regular fit with a crew neck design, short sleeves, all over block colour and a large Che Guevara chest print for an iconic look. – “Official Character Che Guevara T Shirt Mens” (sic.), Sports Direct. RRP £14.99.
Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, David Attenborough, and Boris Johnson walk into a bar. The bartender tells them to leave because they’re from three different households and David forgot his facemask, and the bar can’t serve alcohol at the moment anyway. The joke doesn’t land.
If you don’t know who Che Guevara is by name, you almost certainly know his face. Emblazoned on t-shirts around the globe, the pop-art print of the revolutionary’s face has become a staple of capitalism and fast fashion (although you can download artist Jim Fitzpatrick’s original poster print of Che for free from his website as he seeks to reclaim Che for leftist causes, not profit).
Take, for instance, Sports Direct’s Che Guevara t-shirts. These are mass-produced products, created using exploited overseas labour and harmful materials, sold for profit by a company with profits of almost £265 million in 2018-2019, whose CEO has a net worth of £1.976 billion.
But as long as I wear it because of its message of left-wing revolution and rebellion, the uncomfortable reality of fast-fashion’s exploitation, climate destruction and profiteering doesn’t really matter. Right?
This is the philosophical idea of disavowal. If we don’t intend something to be bad (even though we kind of know it is if we think about it critically), it means that we can keep doing the thing without being a bad person.
I am guilty of disavowal. So are you, probably.
Disavowal is what allows billionaires to have reputations as Nice Enough Blokes because they talk about changing the world for good and have a charity foundation that Helps The Poor, all whilst sustaining and profiting off an inherently exploitative system that relies on poverty.
Disavowal is what lets someone believe they’re Not Racist because they read the right books and follow the right people online, even though they *did* cross the street when they saw a Black man coming the other way. They don’t intend to seem racist – they’ve done loads of listening and learning since June – so they disavow themselves of guilt for their behaviour.
Sally Weintrobe, a psychoanalyst, explains disavowal as “a state where we’re aware of something very important but ‘find ways to remain undisturbed’ by the implications of it.” Fast-fashion is a great example of disavowal in action, particularly when it comes to climate change.
Climate change disavowal is complex. There’s an element of Noah’s Ark about it – we know the flood waters will be rising, but we’ll be okay because we’ll be on the boat with our friends and family. You know, the ones who matter. Doubt is also a big factor. Climate change isn’t like Russian Roulette where you know there’s one bullet in six chambers. We can accept that the climate is changing (frankly if you don’t, you’re either deliberately or unfortunately ignorant), but projections are just projections. Predictions are just predictions. Scientists (correctly) don’t like making conclusive statements (that’s not how science works), but people on the whole like certainty. We want to know whether we’re looking at warmer wetter summers or total decimation of entire countries. With climate change, we don’t know whether there are three bullets in the chambers, or even five or six. It’s less of a gamble if we don’t know the odds, and easier to push the worst-case scenario to the back of our mind.
Multiple studies have concluded that climate change was a significant factor causing the war in Syria. Drought caused migration to urban centres. Overcrowding, water shortages and government corruption fuelled revolution. Revolution led to war. The ongoing civil war in Syria saw more than 2,800 people risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean in the first eight months of 2020. But the media’s reporting of “hordes” of migrants “illegally invading” our shores gives us a perfect opportunity to disavow ourselves of the knowledge that the refugees fleeing Syria were displaced as a result of Western political interference and climate change inaction, and instead conclude that the Syrian civil war was a result of people there and corrupt leadership alone. The uncomfortable reality that the effects of climate change are already causing war and civil unrest can be pushed aside. Our hands, the media tells us, are clean.
In fact, the media is deeply complicit in fuelling climate change doubt and disavowal. In the interest of balance, panel discussions about the impact of climate change still invite climate change deniers, despite the fact that 97% of scientists believe that global warming is happening, and human activity is accelerating it dangerously. By having a climate change denier as one-fifth or a quarter of representative views, the media spreads doubt and makes it easier to push the uncomfortable truth to the back of our minds. When politicians and companies set headline-grabbing targets (that won’t do anything on their own), the media applauds them, celebrates “radical plans to tackle climate change”, and handily ignores the fact that targets on their own will do bugger all to make change. The doubt is deliberate. The headlines are calculated. Disavowal is encouraged. Our hands are clean.
T.S. Eliot wrote, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” Che Guevara wrote “it is not always possible to make the people in general see (corruption)”. From my little flat in the ninth month of UK lockdown, both of these ring painfully true. If 2020 was the year that we sat at home and started learning, let 2021 be the year we stop paying lip-service to change and start taking radical action to make it happen. Our hands are not clean.
Further Reading:
John Wendle, “The Ominous Story of Syria’s Climate Refugees”, Scientific American (2016). https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ominous-story-of-syria-climate-refugees/ (behind a paywall!)
Abigail Thorn, “Elon Musk”, Philosophy Tube (2018). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnlhmaM-dM&ab_channel=PhilosophyTube
Rosie Yarde, “Fast Fashion Has Skewed Our Perception of Value and Cost”, The Everyday Magazine (2020). https://theeverydaymagazine.co.uk/opinion/fast-fashion-has-skewed-our-perception-of-value-and-cost
Sally Weintrobe, Engaging with Climate Change (2012). via http://www.sallyweintrobe.com
———, “On Climate Change Denial”, International Psychoanalytical Association Blog https://www.ipa.world/IPA/en/News/News_articles_reviews/On_Climate_Change_Denial.aspx
