Re: <nettime> dark days

["Rene Gabri" <renegabri@16beavergroup.org>]

We were just in Terrassa, a town near Barcelona , where we witnessed a PAH
assembly of 200 or so people who are organizing together in a large network
against evictions which has formed in spain over the last few years and has
been emboldened by the May 15 movement. There are mostly everyday people
radicalized, distrustful of constituted representational forms of politics
and engaging in direct action to force banks to forgive loans, the state to
find affordable housing for them, and to resist evictions. They are
learning how to collectively resist the banks and the law of state and
police collectively. The complexity of these platforms and the entanglement
and contradictions which they bring to the surface are immense, of course.
Municipalities, police, firemen, regions, parties, politicians, state, eu,
unions, activist networks, banks, all entangled and in the middle of
contradiction.

And these forms of organization which are in some sense
"non-representational" are quite actively inventing and changing the
landscape of struggle as we speak. The kind of backseat approach of
critiquing these different 'movements' which i see among our friends is in
imho missing the boat. So many people for example in new york, found a way
to talk themselves out of occupy, missing the point that occupy was not
some entity (despite what some of the self-appointed self-identifying
individuals may say or think) but a wave or flow of contradictory and yet
concurrent  struggles against the similar phenomena and consequences of
neoliberal policies. If we have criticism, we need to allow that to invent
within or beside these processes, not only from our living rooms (although
one can always also do great things out of the living room). I have my
doubts as anyone else on this list everyday about which steps we can take
forward or sideways or archeologically, but this is a time of political
experimentation which requires more imagination, profanation (even of our
entrenced leftist legacies) and less nostalgia. Dmitry, you are right in
saying that some form of organization is being called for, but the what and
how is a process which will emerge through the material struggles and
developments and our involvement. All these networks which have formed over
these years, in all the efforts of thinking and reclaiming a common(s), now
is a time to put those networks into play in ways which go outside the
usual paths which have helped us find eachother (which have often been in
the realm of culture, education, new media experiments - in other words -
work - even if we aspired to politicize these things). Now is a time to put
into play these knowledges, tools, and know-how into these processes,
however imperfect, however limited, however frustrating, however
contradictory, however impure, however, comunque, ... 

It seems more evident than ever: we cannot do it simply in our existing
spheres of doing, even if they have been 'self-styled' paths or modes. The
reclaiming of a common(s) first and foremost requires leaving our zones of
comfort and cultivating through 'our common ignorance'. 

re: essentialist notions of "human nature" from an earlier comment. I
cannot believe that anyone can still entertain such positions which not
only underlie the neoliberal capitalist logic of 'each person for
themselves nature' or the most racist reductive essentialisms which can say
a b is essentially x, a green a y, a red an f, etc... enough with that.
even 'leftist' idealization of everyone essentially good and sharing nature
must be thrown out. The concept of nature, yet alone the nature of things
is itself been and being radically rethought and deconstructed, for good
reason. We are discovering our entanglements and that the entanglements
precede our our-ness. Maybe we can speak of paradigms, diagrams, agencies,
dispositifs, machines, signatures, but natures?

re: the dark days, agree that the most promising and the most dark go hand
in hand, the liberal wish for moderate and soft change will simply reclaim
a common(s) as neoliberalism's plan b. we must guard against that as we
struggle for and through it.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dmitry Vilensky <dmvilen@gmail.com>
Sender: nettime-l-bounces@mail.kein.org
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:03:45 
To: <nettime-l@mail.kein.org>
Subject: Re: <nettime> dark days

Hi all,

I definitely stays for the complex dialectic between oppression and
liberation forces and also demanding another temporality of change - looks
like that we could be in a very beginning of total class recomposition with
unpredictable results but what really bother me and put my mindset into
more pessimistic point of view is a general lack of new forms of militant
organisation' structure which could formalize a power for the change -
sorry to say but I can hardly believe that euphoria on the side of popular
movements with non-representational principle of organisation could work in
a the situation of a real war which we face today - we need to invest a lot
of efforts into the building of the structures which again could
dialecticaly embrace the power of delegation and direct participation - and
we know from the histrory the name of this organs - the Soviets or councils
their new politics should be reconsidered a new adjusted to all changes
which we experience in a field of technology, populism and nature of
struggle for commons
 <...>



#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org