On 03/28/2012 12:48 PM, Ala Plastica wrote:
Brian, Muy bueno e inspirador el texto CARTOGRAPHY WITH YOUR FEET.
Gracias por compartirlo.
Alejandro
Encantado que te gustó. El texto iba tan perfectamente con lo que tu
dijiste, me pareció como un eco desde lejos.
Sin embargo, hay todavía una pregunta sobre la relación entre la
resistencia y las fuerzas progresistas de la política constituida, ¿no?
Hace muuuucho tiempo, en Paris en mitad de las noventa, la traducción
francesa del libro de Miguel Benasayag y Diego Sztulwark, "Política y
situación, de la potencia al contrapoder", me hizo un efecto bastante
impactante. Ellos decían que había que distinguir entre situaciones de
resistencia y situaciones de gestión. Esto no quería decir que uno no
podía, y incluso, no debía pasar de una a otra, de la resistencia a un
tentativo de gestión más justa (o sea, un tentativo de "urban policy").
Solamente, lo importante era no confundir las dos, y jamás pensar que
uno puede actuar de la misma manera en una situación de gestión como en
una situación de resistencia. Trabajar con esta diferencia parece ser la
base de toda política pragmática. Saber mantener la diferencia, incluso
en las palabras que uno emplea, parece ser la única manera de evitar la
retórica engañadora. Y más aún, de mantener abierta la grieta entre
demanda popular y respuesta administrativa, de donde sale la fuerza viva
de las pocas y raras relaciones democráticas que haya en el mundo social
contemporáneo.
***
OK, translation time -->
I just couldn't help sending that text because it went so perfectly with
Alejandro's.
That said, isn't there still a question about the relation between
resistance and the progressive forces of official politics? A long long
time ago, in Paris in the mid-90s, the French translation of the book by
Miguel Banasayag and Diego Sztulwark, "Política y situación, de la
potencia al contrapoder", had a great effect on me. They said you have
to distinguish between a situation of resistance and a situation of
management. This did not meant that one couldn't, or shouldn't, go from
one to the other, from resistance to an attempt at a more just form of
management (or what we're calling "policy" in this discussion). But the
important thing was not to confuse the two, and never to act, when you
are in a situation of management, in the same way as you would act in a
situation of resistance. Working with this difference seems to be the
basis of any pragmatic politics. Knowing how to maintain the
distinction, even in the words that one uses, seems to be the only way
to avoid a manipulative rhetoric. And even more, it's the only way to
keep open the crack between grassroots demand and adminstrative
response, from which emerge those few and very rare democratic social
relations that we can occasionally experience in the contemporary world.
all the best, Brian
----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Holmes"
<bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com>
To: <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Resilient Latin America: Reconnecting Urban
Policyand the Collective's Imagination
On 03/28/2012 04:52 AM, Ala Plastica wrote:
In contrast to this idea of natural understanding, an intervention in
the environment is often conceived as an occupation based on the idea of
transport corridors. In this way, zones are divided according to
economic interests and the imagery is guided by commercial means of
communication and financial institutions with only a few spaces of
brilliant modernity. This can be defined as an ego-system, a system that
generates social and environmental toxicity affecting life quality and
health conditions seriously.
This is exactly what we wanted to poke fun at when we started talking
about the Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor! It's what my friend Angela
Melitopoulos calls "corridorical thinking." But this notion of
"ego-systems" is more clear, it goes straight to the heart of the issue.
The world is now full of huge, top-down infrastructures, carried out
through state planning processes, just to support the illusion of "ego"
cut off / freed from the others. Mind you, I am not sure that all the
projects Teddy talks about really fall into this category, I think it's
important to look closely when people (even politicians) really try
something different...
Unfortunately, what is not included in this matrix is the point of view
of desirable social human relationships that links the economic and
social system with the place vocation. To a great extent, the
development of "ego-systems" occurs in societies due to the break of the
flow of social doing -the ability to do things. When this social flow of
doing fractures that power of doing turns into the opposite, the
power-over who conceives but does not execute, while the others execute
but do not conceive.
This whole text is beautiful, and what's more, spot on. Thanks for this,
Alejandro. Did you write it? In what context does it fit?
In echo I am going to paste in a text which our group (the Compass) used
as a kind of invitation or "convocatorio" for people going to the US
Social Forum in Detroit in 2010. We wanted to meet people and hear their
stories, to enlarge the process of co-creation. The echo is very strong,
you'll see:
CARTOGRAPHY WITH YOUR FEET
Driven by the pressures of corporate competition, Midwestern capital
elites envision a network of high-speed trains linking the scattered
cities of flyover land into a dense urban grid. Oblivious to
territories, histories, and peoples, you whisk your way from center to
center like a roulette ball spinning through the global casino. What
gets lost in these dreams of power are the connections between the city
and the country, the earth and the sky, the past and the future.
What kinds of worlds are installed on the ground by the neoliberal
planning processes developed in the technocratic universities? Why do
these projects fail even before they begin? How to start building a
cultural and intellectual commons that can seep into the fabric of
everyday existence? The Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor is a call for
longer, slower, deeper connections between the territories where we
live. It’s a cartography of shared experience, built up by those who
nourish lasting ties between critical groups, political projects,
radical communities and experiments in alternative living. Why not help
build the commons by overflowing your usual daily routines? Why not make
the journey to the US Social Forum into a chance to discover the worlds
we can create right here in our own region?
This workshop draws from the inspiration of Grace Lee Boggs and the
travels of the Compass Group on our Continental Drift through the
Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor. The idea is to propose an act of
collective discovery and creation, to be carried out by anyone who’s
heading to the Social Forum. Multiple caravans each chart their
particular pathways and organize their own activist campaigns, artistic
exchanges, skill-sharing sessions, solidarity dinners or whatever else
they desire on the roads to Detroit, then converge at the Allied Media
conference and the US Social Forum to share stories, images, and
artifacts from their detours through the Midwestern labyrinth.
Meanwhile, those with different priorities can invent their own forms of
travel and exchange, explore diverging temporalities, set up “stationary
drifts” in the neighborhoods they inhabit and continue the projects
they’re pursuing, while the moving worlds pass through them.
By taking the time for a conscious experience of the territories we are
continually traversing, we can build up what Stephen Shukaitis calls an
“imaginal machine”: a many-headed hydra telling tales of solidarity and
struggle, daily life, and outlandish dreams in the places that power
forgets, leaving their inhabitants free to remember living histories and
work toward better tomorrows. The Compass Group will present images,
narratives, and documents from our Continental Drift in 2008, then open
up the concept to input and debate. With the help of anyone who’s
interested, we hope to lay the basis for a collaborative process of
self-organization and convergence at the Social Forum in Detroit and to
sow the seeds of future meetings and projects.
***
For anyone who wants an idea of what actually did happen in Detroit, here:
http://occupyeverything.org/2010/us-social-forum-detroit-2010
best, Brian
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
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http://www.subtle.net/empyre
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
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http://www.subtle.net/empyre
