Emancipatory Simulations
People confused by the shape of their world would be served well by remembering that it makes no sense. Simulation, the dominant mode of producing the real, no longer bears any relationship to anything as a ground. It no longer operates by force, but by recursive absurdity. We are constrained not by coercion, but by befuddling circular choices which leave us with no way out of the silly self-referential play of a system which exists purely based on its belief in itself. The real has been overwhelmed by the simulacra, and only its incensed and non-sensical practice and reproducing form remains. No reason. No purpose. No basis in any possible reality. Only circulation and reproduction spiraling out of control.
Reform is no longer possible. Only a radical new beginning can threaten it. It is the meta-modern mindset which knows the simulacra, but is able to re-invest it with the strength of the Real, which is leading us. By knowing that our reality is the product of ourselves, of Simulation, instead of pretending that Power exists outside this play, we are able to invest the product of our play with the seriousness and reality which will dissolve the absurd remains of a lying objectivity. Our simulacra can emancipate us, because we can use it to escape the bonds of an old and useless frame of mind.
Knowledge that reality is fake and real at once, the inescapable reality of simulation, gives us a new creative power to live in the world of our own production. Perhaps.
The Construction of a Welfare Nation, or: Alas! Where have all the Socialist parties gone!?
I have seen a variety of complaints about Occupy Wall Street going around which basically give it shit for some variation of ‘not having a clear agenda’. And I have to say that I cannot disagree strenuously enough with this view. But I will still try:
The way I see it, the issue areas which the Occupation has chosen to focus on are actually very coherent, it’s simply that these people are looking at the organization in the wrong way. There is a false optic of the Occupation as a traditional “Pressure Group”: that it represents interests in the public and is trying to get a political party to endorse and then enact those interests (think Tea Party hijacking the republican party). This might work well for the Right populist movement, since the entire political system at this stage of most Liberal Democracies is so far right (‘Neo-Liberal’) that, they can easily find an ear for whatever they want done. The Left is not so lucky in our world anymore. (c.f. Alas! Where have all the Socialist parties gone!?)
The welfare state of old is today dwindling, walking down the path of privatization. In many ways the State itself is no longer the locus of the People’s interests (or Agency), but rather of Business & Government’s interests. Increasingly marginalized as Protest, and eventually submitted to the Ruler’s Logic, modern forms of dissent and resistance which try to reform the state have essentially lost meaning. Today’s Left requires a totally new means of mobilizing to actually express their political ideals. Fittingly, the difference between Protest and Social Movement has become reductionist in the case of OWS. Entering into the third continuous week of activity, it has clearly moved past the point of traditional “protests”, and is instead exactly what it calls itself: it is an Occupation. It is today a full blown social movement, constituted by its own structures of Governance.
Its supposedly ‘broad agenda’ is actually a set of issues all linked by very simple common values. Concepts of Justice (economic, social, environmental, etc) as being all inter-relatable, combined with the simplest (and thus most radical) ideals of democracy. It is these very simple common values, so divisible into a dizzying array of individual issue area, which create this inter-linked, but seemingly heterogeneous, constellation of issues which really allows the OWS protests to be such a draw for so many passionate people. Because all these causes are united by common values, disparate movements and groups can find links of solidarity which allow them to create a successful collective action. I think this is why OWS has seen such a continuing, and growing, success.
I honestly think that OWS is a part of a larger movement happening worldwide, that it is a part of the coalescence of a new Left which is able to take up the work done by so many other generations. Historically, we have had to fight for the least aspect of Human consciousness and compassion in our societies. It has been the tireless organizing of countless people which has made the modern world even a tolerable place, and which has worked to reform the State along more humane lines. Today it is up to us to take over after the work made to procure even the basic Welfare State and to move it into a past-materialist concept of collective identity.
Occupy Wall Street is a piece of that movement, a real and new artifact of this coalescing new Left. We are witnessing the construction of what is perhaps the first Welfare Nation. They are not a traditional pressure group, with well-defined demands to make of existing State apparatus. They are out there decrying the State apparatus itself, deciding to give up on ‘reform through channels’ and to appeal directly to the People for a totally new system. One which they are taking it onto themselves to begin the process of sketching out.
OWS has demands, but it also has Ideals. Itself it is the expression and enactment of those ideals, not to reform some rules, but in an attempt to change the very nature of the game. It is an example of a real and viable form of self-governance happening right now, today. It is a real community holding itself alive Outside the state. Even if this occupation fails, and it easily could, the imaginations of our generation have already been set on fire. The Left has a new rallying point, and it is Occupy Everything.
C’mon. Too good.
(Source: jxcca)
Truly disturbing images of police brutality.Women protesters penned in and maced collectively at Wall Street protests.
(via itslef)
The true symbolic acts, the ultimate violence against the system, are the acts which incite that violence from the system itself. The best means of forcing the system to respond with its own death, are to pursue your own in your resistance. The symbolic act must fall outside the ability of the System to respond to it, to Account for it. Such that it is forced to respond instead with the violence which stems from fear. Once it begins attacking and repressing, in the real, those who are challenging it only symbolically, then the tide begins to shift, and each attack by the system brings its own death inevitably closer.Protesting or occupying Wall St on Saturday is a terrible idea to begin with. The scoundrels you are protesting are in their apartments on the Upper East Side or at their vacation homes in the Hamptons at this time of year. If you want to actually…
On the one hand, this New Yorker should rethink the strategic power of symbolic acts:
“Never attack the system in terms of relations of force. The is the (revolutionary) imagination the system itself forces upon you — the system which survives only by constantly drawing those attacking it into fighting on the ground of reality, which is always its own. But shift the struggle into the symbolic sphere, where the rule is that of challenge, reversion and outbidding. So that death can be met only by equal or greater death. Defy the system by a gift to which it cannot respond except by its own death and its own collapse.” - Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism
Yet, on the other…
The problematic also bears a postcolonial aspect. Because we, as citizens, as consumers, as protestors, are not just produced (i.e, subjectivated, in the Foucauldian sense), but manufactured, by and for capital. And what is manufactured is always already colonized. Any longer, the difference between capitalist and colonizer, consumer and colonized, is nil. The problem of capitalism is the problem of a colonialism that has permeated and colonized our lives and beings at the most fundamental and basic levels.
“It is the colonist who fabricated and continues to fabricate the colonized subject.” - Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Hence, the question of attacking Wall St. is not merely a question of anti-capitalists attacking capitalism and its capitalist agents. The question is one of a new kind of colonized attacking the imperialist structure of a new kind of colonialism and its colonialist agents: not just a material colonialism, but, one might say, a phenomenological colonialism, an ontological colonialism, even perhaps a metaphysical colonialism. Therefore, the attack on Wall St. should be considered in terms of an attempt at decolonization, however impotent, since
“At a descriptive level […] any decolonization is a success.” - Ibid.
And, one must keep in mind…
“Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is clearly an agenda for total disorder.” - Ibid
And,
“You do not disorganize a society, however primitive [or ‘advanced’] it may be, with such an agenda if you are not determined from the very start to smash every obstacle encountered.” - Ibid.
In short, then, symbolic weapons are some of the most powerful technologies available for attacking capitalism and engendering the process of decolonization, and perhaps the poster should not dispense with them so quickly. However, the poster is also right that a prim and proper protest, the kind of protesting manufactured in the imaginary by the system itself, manufactured for the sake of its intellectuality and tractability, for its inevitably disciplined disposition, will not suffice to change anything. The depth of symbolism required must go deeper, and bear a more resounding impact. In short, to use Malcolm X’s echoing of Fanon, it must be a symbolism that imparts meaning “by any means necessary.” I am not advocating outright violence, just as neither Malcolm X nor Fanon were; I am not saying “Let us bring out the black bloc” or “let slip the dogs of war” (even though it is, in fact, a war) so hastily. Such an advocacy would not only be inevitably misunderstood, but would engender very real and grave consequences, ones that brashness should neither incite nor maintain. But one needs to keep in mind that the system, pushed far enough, will not hesitate to use such tactics in order to suppress resistance, to maintain its oppressive hold. And, more importantly, one needs remember that there are many forms of symbolism that can effect a kind of violence more powerful than any amount of bloodshed ever could. The task at hand is to remember them, redevelop them, reclaim them, or simply conceive of new ones, and then apply them, with total dedication and readiness to face the grave consequences of the kind of social upheaval that they will inevitably precipitate, and that can offer us possibly our only hope for any kind of future that is any future at all.
(Source: dishabillic, via itslef)
That is so very WTF. Hard to even hold in one’s brain all at once…(Source unknown)
Sentient City Survival Kit - Quick Start Guide (by mark shepard)
I don’t even.
VEILS
What if there is nothing But veils? Should one disturb their whole perception to discover the deep nothing at the heart of everything? Perhaps. But one is left rebuilding what was destroyed afterwards, realizing that only illusion exists.“You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed
Through veils. How else can it be seen?
How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veilThat you are, you who want to grasp the heart
Of things, hungry to know where meaning
Lies.”— Suji Kwock Kim, “Monologue for an Onion”
If you rip away the veils, would you not find disappointment anyway? Perhaps one should find some veils whose colours and textures seem preferable, to defer that disappointment. Add and remove patterns as preferred. Cover them, layer them with other veils and see what happens.
(via jxcca)
Painting I saw at restaurant in Jakarta. (Taken with instagram)
An initial analysis of the BOG’s response to the EGRC report, as seen in their Amendments to Concordia’s By-Laws
Look, as I’m sure you can all guess already from the title: This is gonna be an Exciting post!!!!! Seriously though. I spent my time analyzing how well the Board of Governor’s proposed amendments to Concordia’s by-laws match up to the recommendations made by the External Governance Report Committee, so I thought I might as well post it. Obviously not a topic of general interest, but something which interests me. So everything is under the break, and I recommend you not look into it! Cause it. is. Dry!
Woohoo!
