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I read Hakim Bey (William Lambert Wilson) at the beginning of the net when
Autonomedia started and we all believed the myth "information want to be free".
He was a big inspiration for me as well and I think his theory of the TAZ,
temporary autonomous zones, is an interesting contribution to a new geography
based more on the imaginary than on political borders.
Ana
Enviado desde Samsung Mobile
-------- Mensaje original --------
De: Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
Fecha:11/11/2014 18:22 (GMT-03:00)
A: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] sample from today
Ana, well not always. Remember Conrad's The Secret Agent? But anarchist had
less power than institutional power to wreak destruction and, as far as I
know, none of them was a suicide bomber, the tool that gives the modern
terrorist the ability to influence minds far beyond their numbers.
Interestingly, Hakim Bey regards himself an anarchist and now lives some place,
I think, upstate New York in "retirement." His books on Sufism, its subversive
position within Islam, had a great influence on my work.
I always wandered the adoption of "Hakim Bey" as a nom de guerre since Hakim
Bey is the name of the uniformed Turkish police officer, played by Orson Wells,
in the film A Cask for Demetrius.
Ciao,
Murat
On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 1:04 PM, Ana Valdés <agora...@gmail.com> wrote:
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I had a discussion with Murray Bookchin once, he visited us, the anarchist
collective I lived with at that time, in Stockholm. We translated into Swedish
his book about Ecology. He was a true individualist anarchist, he was very
suspicious about us, about how we manage to live together work together and
spend free time together :)
He defended the right to wear weapon and to defend himself against anyone
wanting to harm him. For us his these about citizen militie and armed
vigilantes to watch the autogestionated societies was unthinkable.
You are totally right, the anarchists nihilists from the end of the 19th
century and beginning to the 20th century were considered today's terrorists :)
But their agenda was less bloody ;(
Ana
On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 3:26 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Ana, in the United States, the Libertarians have an idealized version of 19th
century America, a De Toquevillean paradise, where "freedom" prevailed. In my
view, all these are different, but very related, expressions of alienation.
What is the cause of these splintered explosions of violence? At the heart, it
seems to me, is the fall of the Soviet Union. In the preceding bipolar world,
where there was an overarching threat of a world war/nuclear explosion, these
alienations (always there) were suppressed, very often with the tacit consent
of the governed. After the fall, the overarching, unimaginable, maximal threat
gone, the tacit contract of the cold war is gone. Previously suppressed (or
unheard) voices begin to speak with potentially, often violent, centrifugal
force. Ironically, a lot of the violence, which the majority of us experience
virtually, is primarily the result of increased freedom; second, the
exponential advance in digital technology that makes these expressions--often
of alienating violence we choose to call terror(ism)--visible to us. One should
remember "terrorist" is a word (an ism) coined by politicians starting in the
1970's.
I wonder how "terrorist" is different from "anarchist" which was the word of
choice a hundred years ago. Do they, in subtle ways, mean different things?
Perhaps, "anarchist" (along with had, in 19th century, a philosophical
structure underpinning it. Some political thinkers/actors openly embraced it
(read The Parisian Arcades or The Possessed). Whereas, in our day, no one, no
group embraces the term terrorist; but tries to rationalize it, often calling
the opposing party the real terrorist. In that sense, terrorism is a violence
with no human face, no intellectual rational; it is a convenient term for those
actors of "rationalized violence" (states or would-be states) to distinguish
themselves from it.
We all in this thread have been asking how an individual, particularly as an
artist or a thinker or an actor, can react in the face of the pervasive
omni-visible, often virtual but potentially actual violence. In my view, the
best an individual can do is to analyze and develop a consciousness of the
machinations of this violence, the methods, the techniques it uses to impose
itself on the rest of us.
Ciao,
Murat
On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Ana Valdés <agora...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Thank you Murat! I feel that the apocalyptical utopies from Boko Haram and ISIS
trying to shape their own worldorder are signs of our time. ISIS is invoking
the Caliphate, the go back to Al Andalous, a kind of golden age where Paradise
loomed with it's fruits and rewards. Boko Haram want, regarding to their
narrative, go back to the Africa from before colonization, a continent where
mighty empires lived in harmony with the Earth.
The fact they impose their new order with terror and harshness is a kind of
symbolical and pagane cosmogony, they want take distance from "our" gods, for
them education in Western terms is an abomination, the suicide bomber who
killed himself yesterday killing 50 students is a true representant of their
philosophy or beliefs. For us is education normalization, progress,
development, enlightenment, for them is education a deadly sin.
Ana
On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 12:46 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Ana, the "kind of new structure without visible heads[, a] new kind of feudal
contract... inhabited by people without voices" is actually exactly what the
largest modern states are striving for, China, the United States, Russia: to
give enough food and trinkets and spectacles and popular wars to the population
so that, at least passively, they support you, always the implicit threat of
violence ("punishment" or withdrawal of goods) against those who want "to have
a voice." This is a kind of "benevolent feudalism," la familia of an idealized
Godfather-like Mafia. In the United States, the financial institutions and a
small number of corporations are our invisible citizens, who supposedly, as
"job creators," are feeding the rest of us and can keep us at least passively
happy..
One should not forget the place of digital technology which, it is becoming
progressively clearer, is the tool that enables the concentration of power and
wealth (therefore, the production of supportive mythologies) in the hands of
fewer and fewer people.
Ciao,
Murat
On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 12:01 AM, Ana Valdés <agora...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Thank you Gabriela for your interesting description of the non-violent answer
to the state violence installed in Mexico. I was in Yucatan when I did my field
work in social anthropology and met many zapatistas and indingeous working in
the caracoles, the free zones kept by the zapatistas at that time.
It was same years before I was in Gaza and it strucked me Gaza and Mexico and
Italy shared a common denominator: a weak state left the citizens vulnerable
and frustrated and the field was overtaken for organizations who cared for the
everyday life. It explained how the drug cartels when the Colombian Pablo
Escobar was alive cared for the citizens in the small towns and got a lot of
support from the people.
In Mexico it was the zapatistas who built up a feeling of community and started
to autogestionate or selfgovern the territories abandonned by the state.
In Gaza was Hamas who took care of the police and the daycare.
Hakim Bey explains it with his TAZ, Temporary Autonomous Zone, where he uses
the examples of the camorra in Italy and the zapatistas as well to explain
territories separating themselves from the central state, far from them, a kind
of new structure without visible heads. A new kind of feudal contract. The "Non
Places" in Marc Augés terms, in the middle of nowhere, inhabitated by the
people without voices.
Ana
On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 1:51 AM, Gabriela Vargas-Cetina
<gabyvarg...@prodigy.net.mx> wrote:
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Dear all,
Thank you for this month's discussion and thank you for bringing in what is
happening in Mexico to this very difficult but very needed conversation. Here
in Mexico the news have been emotionally draining for most everyone, and now
that our President has left to go to China for diplomatic talks, many Mexicans
are asking for his resignation. The newspapers have been commenting here in
Yucatan how people even from the wealthier strata of regional society are going
to the marches and protests over the murder of the students. I guess we are
all trying to perform out our grieving in some way, collectively, so as to feel
safer and feel we do have control over our spaces and lives. A very important
thing that is happening is that most everyone is chanting repeatedly "no more
violence" and "no to violence": Apparently the burning of the door of the
National Palace was done by a soldier from the Mexican army in order to
justify the intervention of the police against the crowd of protesters; at
least that is what even the major newspapers say.
I would like to suggest here that the performance of violence and violent
performances are now giving way to the performance of non-violence, but this is
arguably a different kind of performed violence. The installations using empy
chairs, cards, mementos and photos of the students, public performances of
those marching throwing themselves to the ground and remaining motionless for
many minutes, the holding of signs on cardboard or cloth, and the chants
hostile to the government are all part of so-called non-violent demostrations,
but they are in fact violent, and they are meant to shake our government
officials and public peace keepers to the bones. I am not sure these tacticts
are working, since neither our politicians nor the rest of the world seem to
pay any attention or be in the least disturbed, but they are bringing about a
new, publically-constructed collective understanding of non-violent protest.
And it is also a way to re-construct some feeling of being safe.
I find it interesting that the collective performance of non-violence is
meant as a violent act, and that it is expected to stop the physical violence
of the killings and forced disappearances that sadly mark everyday life today
in much of Mexico. To my mind, it is a reinvention of passive aggression, this
time in collective forms. But all in all, perhaps it is a good step in a good
direction.
Thanks again for this discussion.
Gabriela Vargas-Cetina
Merida, Yucatan, Mexico
--
http://antropuntodevista.blogspot.mx
On 11/10/14, 4:19 PM, Ana Valdés wrote:
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Maybe Mexico is too near the US to be worth some alert in Google? :(
Ana
On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 7:51 PM, Diana Taylor <diana.taylo...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Yes of course you did-- I was referring to the Google news feed
reported by Alan. I thought THAT was interesting in its omission. Apologies if
you thought I was referring to your posts Ana!
Diana
Diana Taylor
University Professor
Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish, NYU
Director, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics
On Nov 10, 2014, at 3:51 PM, Ana Valdés <agora...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Some quick answers: Jon, check the archives of -empyre and you can read Alicia
Migdal's quotations of Agamben and its Homo Sacer.
And Diana, two days ago I posted to the list the links with live strem to the
protests in Mexico when the news of the killed 43 students reached us. And
Alicia and me discussed it in the list.
Ana
On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Jon McKenzie <jvmcken...@wisc.edu> wrote:
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typographic t/error: "the neutral observer of vita contemplativa"
On Nov 10, 2014, at 9:59 AM, Jon McKenzie <jvmcken...@wisc.edu> wrote:_______________________________________________
empyre forum
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