Ian Alan Paul on Wed, 1 Feb 2017 23:19:06 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> 10 Preliminary Theses on Resistance |
Hello Brian, I understand the criticism very well (it's one that's been made quite often by various groups, especially during the 2011 wave of struggles, as I'm sure you're well aware), but I also think that we have for a good while now been without clear or obvious ways forward and to act as if it were otherwise is counterproductive. I'm in principal not opposed to the establishment/formation of new kinds of territory, new kinds of order, new kinds of society, but at the same time I think we can't pretend that anyone knows precicely how to get there, nor should they. I obviously have my own perspective on potential routes to follow, but as I said at the end of this short text I would hesitate to claim that any promises or guarantees are attached to these approaches. You say we need to "propagate a new common sense" and produce that which can "be translated pragmatically into productive action," and I would respond by saying that if it we already knew what pragmatic or commonsensical steps we could take to get rid of capitalism we would certainly have already took them. Whatever specificities define your tendency, I think it's unquestionable that what we need are more kinds of experimentation in every direction to see what takes hold, more de- *and* reterritorialization in a thousand different contexts. In solidarity, ~i P.s. - I don't think my theses are necessarily opposed to the formation of "counter power," but rather perhaps what we imagine "counter power" being may be very different in form. On Wed, Feb 1, 2017, 15:56 Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com> wrote: On 01/31/2017 09:38 AM, Ian Alan Paul wrote: > To not know > precisely where we are headed is to remain open to the possibility of > arriving where we couldn�t possibly have planned to, and in refusing > the present we also invite what cannot presently exist within it. The refusal to confront a complex society produces no results. The discourse above was repeated hundreds of times in 1999-2011 and then again in in 2011-2012. It demonstrated no grip on the real course of events. What can stop the coming fascism is not the romantic exaltation of revolution. Rather we have to create and propagate a new common sense that can traverse multiple classes, generations, religions, language groups, professional sectors, philosophical schools and religious faiths. The political-economic appeal to defend inherited privileges has to be replaced with a new and yet workable formula of societal development, which can be translated pragmatically into productive action. A little virtuoso rhetoric is not going to do the trick. <...> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: