"But I'm not willing to fall back on
some philosophy that worked over 30 years ago with the full awareness that
the world has changed considerably. Political action should change
accordingly."
I would absolutely agree that we always need to be adapting our praxis to the
conditions around us. (Hopefully, if even minimally effective, those two end
up mutually shaping each other anyway, although in a highly disempowered
situation the alienation or gap between the two may be all too obvious!!)
I hope I have not in any way belittled those who choose the path of
nonviolence. Many of my anarchist friends who went to Seattle were
nonviolent, and indeed, I was with them as they were undergoing nonviolence
training.
I think I just want to draw attention to whether our actions, violent or
nonviolent, are reinforcing the powers of the status quo. Famous nonviolence
philosophers have emphasized the role of institutional violence, as you put
it. If we defend such institutions aggressively against those engaged in
direct action because we've somehow identified them with "vandals" (a word
with an interesting history, given it originally designated warrior bands of
Germanic tribesmyn who were waging war against a Roman empire they saw
directly destructive to their free communities), what are we in fact doing?
You're absolutely right that any appeal to ideology is bankrupt. The world is
much too complex for us to not constantly be retheorizing and experimenting
in practice, what Felix Guattari calls "metamodelization".
(un)leash
