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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
Fecha:11/11/2014 18:22 (GMT-03:00)
A: soft_skinned_space
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
<mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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
<mailto: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
<mailto: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
<mailto: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
<mailto: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
<mailto:jvmcken...@wisc.edu>> wrote:
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