Patrice Riemens on Fri, 14 Sep 2001 21:55:16 +0200 (CEST)


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<nettime> Yann Moulier Boutang: Apocalyp[se Genoa/New York



Apocalyps Genoa/New York
by Yann Moulier Boutang, Paris
(Q&D translation from the French original)


The ongoing debate about (the aftermath of) Genoa gets now remarkably
overdetermined by the New York Apocalypse (henceforth : NYC 911, tr), the
destruction of the World Trade Center.

I had earlier stated on this list ('Multitudes', a French Quarterly
Review, tr) on the subject of Genoa, that the concept of a militarisation
of the Empire's power as was perceived in Genoa is singularly unsubtle.  
Unless one would like to develop the very paranoid idea that the United
States, as mandatories of the Imperial Power, would stage up terrorism on
a world scale in order to legitimise military repression and an
anti-terrorism style of controlling the emerging (global) movement, one
must consider that another structure is operating, and this in view of
this war (being simulated for real, ie of hyper-terrorism against the
hyper power). But what is this structure?

My idea runs as follows:

The resurgence of a world wide movement in 1999 in Seattle completely
disrupted the neo-liberal scenario of a lineary assimilation of the Second
and Third Worlds after the disapearance of real existing socialism as a
global alternative to globalisation.

The anti corporate globalisation movement then developed at a very great
speed, within a complete absence of ideological or conceptual alternative,
I would even say in the absence of a 'true body', that is of something
that can be brought down by hitting an essential organ.

The 'No' opposed to (corporate) globalisation shares with the
environmental movement an actual (operative) alternative project, but it
is not articulated within a (party)  political or institutional force ( -
in France, and other countries in Europe - one sees however the rise of
the 'Greens')

Out of this arises a tricky situation, akin to the one which had already
occured in Italy and (other parts of Western) Europe towards the end of
the seventies.

I say tricky - or dangerous - because whereas the movement is able to
disrupt the 'shifting of gears' that the new capitalism tries to impose on
society, it is not able by itself to achieve its own 'gear-shift' towards
augmenting its proper constituting power.

Now, since the last two 'summits', the forward push of the movement has
continued to gain both in scope and in ability to hit hard at the
strategic goals of cognitive capitalism - especially with regards to its
opposition to the new enclosures - but the violence of the power (of the
empire) calls it an 'attractor'.

With 'attractor' I mean reducing of the concept of imperial power to
rechurning the thesis of American imperialist superpower, and reducing
also the measure of the movement's radicality or power to its ability to
react to the global capitalist might.

These are precisely the phases at which terrorist overdetermination occurs
almost by necessity.

Everytime the movement expresses the potential power of the multitudes -
and the virtual (sphere) is the mirror of this (possible) future - a
blackmail occurs forcing it towards immediate expression of power, and
pushes back into limbo the actualisation of the power of multiplicity.

NYC 911 registers in a catastrophic mode the huge contrarian push against
the imperial power (this as in Hollywood films, which now are happening
live/ for real, as opposed, in a mind-boggling way, to the Gulf War, which
according to Baudrillard-the-Prophet, never took place at all). But this
recording happens in a totally perverted way, in the sense that
Palestinian suddenly become Talibans, and the opposition to (corporate)
globalisation, which hates the World Trade Centre and the Pentagons - as
symbols of the market and of the sword - finds itself forcibly enjoined to
associate itself with this realisation of destruction.

The most serious (impending) catastrophe does not only impiges on the
consequences that will come out of terrorism upgraded to the
(nation)state-Empire level in terms of 'military' supression of contrarian
movements. (More seriously,) the movement risks being crushed between
submitting to an anti-terrorist consensus (with expressions of repent, of
disavowing previous affiliations, etc), and tumbling into an absolute
rebellion, of devilish and subsequently devilished nature. In concrete
terms, (this would entail) a huge diminishing and narrowing of all what
the movement had regained after the winter years.

More particularly, the catastrophe is linked to this projection at the
highest level, this massive trap, about which one no longer can simply
state - as in Genoa - that only the police is engineering provocation.

NZC 911 is a forceful overdetermination of Genoa, it is a (take over!) bid
on all possible Black Blocks. What weight does then a proposal for a Tobin
Tax carry in the face of an opportunity to physically anihilate the HQ and
symbol of globalising capital and its armed arm the world's policeman? In
both case the metaphor is a wrong one. These are much more than mere
symbols, yet at the same time they are not the true centres of power of
world capitalism, since that has no divisions, is burried somewhere under
Nebraska, and most of all is abstract and intangible.

The true provocation hence - in comparison to which the police violence
and the shenanigans of the Italian State in Genoa are mere amuses - is
this over-determination.

This is a much more dangerous enemy. Behaving like a virus, it threatens
to clone (infiltrate? tr) the anti (corporate) globalisation movement.(And
before soon, we will have demos against the Kabul bombings.)

And thus, as we are facing this first major even in the XXIst century, we
can no longer satisfy ourselves with rehashing old complaints about
provocation and manipulations.

What politics will serve the multitudes on this world stage that is half
cartoon and half reality, with special effects and a super-production that
would make the Roman Empire proud, and with plenty of real dead bodies?



----------------

Yann Moulier Boutang <yann.m.boutang@wanadoo.fr> is philosopher,
sociologist, professor in economics, and editor of the French quarterly
Multitudes. This is a contribution to its internal mailing-list.

Reposted with permission of the author.
Q&D translation by yours truly.






  

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