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8. In the aftermath of Occupy Wall Street, and especially in the current
political situation on the streets, I have begun to rethink my sense of the
role of violence in opposing injustice. In Ferguson (and now most recently in
Berkeley and elsewhere) violence has been provoked mainly by our para-military
police. In Ferguson, of course, the police made sure that the premediation of
violence in the run-up to the decision, and the implications that such violence
was endemic to the black community, served to reinforce the racist beliefs of
the white community in Missouri and across the US. In other words the state
security apparatus and corporate media have premediated and promoted violence
and the racist stereotypes of (especially) young black men as violent menaces
to society deserving of police brutality. Although originary violence belongs
to the state and the media, through clever strategies of premediation, not only
in the media but through the establishment and maintenance of pre-existent
formal structures of policing, courts, and prisons that premediate and thereby
generate criminalized black bodies, the state and corporate media make it seem
as if this juridical system of discipline and punishment responds to already
existing violence rather than generating it.
9. To fight the injustice of this structural juridical premediation, I now
believe, requires not only the premediation of social justice but the
premediation of violence. As I have increasingly come to argue, we must think
of media and mediation beyond the realms of communication and representation.
Protests and demonstrations must themselves be understood as forms of mediation
which, as I suggested about Occupy Wall Street, not only are mediated by print,
televisual, and networked media but are themselves mediating acts. Where Occupy
Wall Street succeeded by premediating the actual occupation of Wall Street, it
finally failed to grow and spread because it failed to premediate a more
widespread and powerful future. Nonetheless, it offered a way to think about
marches, protests, and demonstrations as themselves forms of mediation.
10. I want to suggest that the current widespread actions against racist state
violence should also think about using premediation to continue the momentum
and strengthen the movement. In recent weeks most actions have been announced
online, but have occurred with little notice and mainly in reaction against
recent past injustices. Instead, I would suggest that rather than continue in a
position mainly of responding to unjust acts of state violence, the movement
might use premediation to imagine large, widespread future protests that could
eventually provoke enough fear and anxiety among state and corporate leaders
that changes in the racist system of policing, convicting, and imprisoning
black men will have to be made. I am surprised that there is not already a
campaign premediating mass protests on MLK day, which is just over a month
away. A widespread social media campaign about, for example, a major march on
Washington and coordinated protests across the country would generate an
unprecedented amount of anxiety among corporate, state, and media leaders. This
might be followed by a southern campaign over the winter and then some
significant targeted dates across the country in the spring and summer. If some
of these actions happened to involve violence against property and disruptions
of business as usual, then the level of anticipatory fear and anxiety would
only be intensified. Of course, so would violent suppression of such actions
by the para-military police or national guard.
11. I am by no means suggesting anything like pitched battle. The resources of
the state are massively disproportionate compared to even the most highly
successful mass protests one could realistically imagine. Nor am I claiming any
special wisdom that others with much more experience in these matters don't
possess. But what I am suggesting is that violence should not be taken off the
table. Indeed some small and strategic acts of violence against property, or
disruption of roads, networked service, and so forth, coupled with the
premediation of more widespread future actions, could be a form through which
premediation could be used for purposes of resistance through the very tactics
of drumming up fear and anxiety that the state and corporate media have used in
Iraq, the War Against Terror, Ferguson, and countless other events to paralyze
the public and justify the use of state violence. Exactly how this might
happen, and whether it could even work, is certainly beyond my expertise and
best left to others more directly involved in these actions and with
significantly more experience in organizing mass public actions. But since Tim
wanted to know how premediation might be turned into a force of resistance, I
thought I would at least take a crack at offering an answer.
Richard Grusin
rgru...@gmail.com
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