bcbm
13th April 2010, 11:05
Translated from La Jornada (http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/02/22/index.php?section=opinion&article=016a2pol) - by Gustavo Esteva
Acts of aggression against the people are multiplying: Chiapas, Cananea, Juarez. It is an intolerable state of things that emerges as a clear expression of political incompetence, state corruption, and the reactionary compulsion from which we suffer—all of which are intensifying along with the moral degradation of the political classes. But perhaps it is also the manifestation of a strategy that looks to end the ongoing insurrection.
The Invisible Committee, an imaginary French collective, published L’insurrection qui vient a couple years ago (Google provides poor English and Spanish translations). Upon reading this fascinating book and examining the "necessary truths" that it establishes, I cannot help feeling that the “coming” insurrection has already arrived. Maybe not in Paris, but without a question in Oaxaca, in Chiapas, in Mexico. We are in it.
It doesn’t announce itself with fanfare. It doesn’t consist of marches, sit-ins or occupations of public space, or proclamations. It avoids mobilizations that rely on leaders and slogans. It doesn’t resort to arms, although it can support itself with armed self-defense. It is found everywhere and nowhere; from any position, wherever it may be, the people struggle with dignity and courage to maintain their ways of life. There are those who do it strictly for survival. Others appeal to old ideals. But they all radically challenge the state of things, the dominant system, the political and economic regime that has produced the current catastrophe. They are concerned with nothing less than generating new social and political relations, beyond economic exploitation and political or police control. This rebellion of the discontented is also the insurrection of subjugated knowledge and repressed imagination, which recognize that the moment of truth has arrived.
We will have to talk about it, learn to see it, uncover it. The book The Coming Insurrection contributes to this task. "Its editors are not its authors," the Invisible Committee clarifies. "'They were content merely to introduce a little order into the common-places of our time, collecting some of the murmurings around barroom tables and behind closed bedroom doors. They've done nothing more than lay down a few necessary truths, whose universal repression fills psychiatric hospitals with patients and eyes with pain. They've made themselves scribes of the situation. It's the privileged future of radical circumstances that a rigorous application of logic leads to revolution. It's not enough to say what is before our eyes and not to shrink from conclusions.'" And this is, in reality, the most difficult part. To fully recognize the serious state of things and to confront it with a firm step.
The book begins with a provocation that describes very accurately what is happening among us:
"From whatever angle you approach it, the present offers no way out. This is not the least of its virtues. From those who seek hope above all, it tears away every firm ground. Those who claim to have solutions are contradicted almost immediately. Everyone agrees that things can only get worse. ‘The future has no future’ is the wisdom of our age, that for all its appearance of perfect normalcy, has reached the level of the consciousness of the first punks… The impasse of the present, everywhere in evidence, is everywhere denied."
We need to learn to see, with less misty eyes, what the common people are doing in the face of daily difficulties, in the face of the increasingly dark horizon. We need to recognize the characteristics of this insurrection that has so far remained invisible. But even before this, we need to assess the meaning of what is happening. Chiapas and Cananea have a common sign: they are open provocations that try to induce certain behavior. They are intended to intimidate to the point of paralysis, or better yet to encourage out of control and aggressive reactions. Such a reaction might be used to justify the police’s violent attempts to crush the insurrection, which could lead sooner or later to a civil war.
That would be the strategy. To provoke the people into some form of spontaneous and chaotic violence. To make the people, fed up with provocations and the dead ends into which they have consistently been lead, explode without order or coordination. They would be looking for pretexts to deepen the current state of authoritarianism, pushing it the point that it becomes capable of preventing the insurrection from expanding, developing, and fulfilling its destiny: to liquidate without violence the dominant regime.
Undermining this perverse strategy, preventing its success, is the key to survival today, not only for the ongoing insurrection but also for social life, which has entered a serious process of decomposition. In order to do so, what we need more than anything else is clear vision and lucid imagination.
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/11055
Acts of aggression against the people are multiplying: Chiapas, Cananea, Juarez. It is an intolerable state of things that emerges as a clear expression of political incompetence, state corruption, and the reactionary compulsion from which we suffer—all of which are intensifying along with the moral degradation of the political classes. But perhaps it is also the manifestation of a strategy that looks to end the ongoing insurrection.
The Invisible Committee, an imaginary French collective, published L’insurrection qui vient a couple years ago (Google provides poor English and Spanish translations). Upon reading this fascinating book and examining the "necessary truths" that it establishes, I cannot help feeling that the “coming” insurrection has already arrived. Maybe not in Paris, but without a question in Oaxaca, in Chiapas, in Mexico. We are in it.
It doesn’t announce itself with fanfare. It doesn’t consist of marches, sit-ins or occupations of public space, or proclamations. It avoids mobilizations that rely on leaders and slogans. It doesn’t resort to arms, although it can support itself with armed self-defense. It is found everywhere and nowhere; from any position, wherever it may be, the people struggle with dignity and courage to maintain their ways of life. There are those who do it strictly for survival. Others appeal to old ideals. But they all radically challenge the state of things, the dominant system, the political and economic regime that has produced the current catastrophe. They are concerned with nothing less than generating new social and political relations, beyond economic exploitation and political or police control. This rebellion of the discontented is also the insurrection of subjugated knowledge and repressed imagination, which recognize that the moment of truth has arrived.
We will have to talk about it, learn to see it, uncover it. The book The Coming Insurrection contributes to this task. "Its editors are not its authors," the Invisible Committee clarifies. "'They were content merely to introduce a little order into the common-places of our time, collecting some of the murmurings around barroom tables and behind closed bedroom doors. They've done nothing more than lay down a few necessary truths, whose universal repression fills psychiatric hospitals with patients and eyes with pain. They've made themselves scribes of the situation. It's the privileged future of radical circumstances that a rigorous application of logic leads to revolution. It's not enough to say what is before our eyes and not to shrink from conclusions.'" And this is, in reality, the most difficult part. To fully recognize the serious state of things and to confront it with a firm step.
The book begins with a provocation that describes very accurately what is happening among us:
"From whatever angle you approach it, the present offers no way out. This is not the least of its virtues. From those who seek hope above all, it tears away every firm ground. Those who claim to have solutions are contradicted almost immediately. Everyone agrees that things can only get worse. ‘The future has no future’ is the wisdom of our age, that for all its appearance of perfect normalcy, has reached the level of the consciousness of the first punks… The impasse of the present, everywhere in evidence, is everywhere denied."
We need to learn to see, with less misty eyes, what the common people are doing in the face of daily difficulties, in the face of the increasingly dark horizon. We need to recognize the characteristics of this insurrection that has so far remained invisible. But even before this, we need to assess the meaning of what is happening. Chiapas and Cananea have a common sign: they are open provocations that try to induce certain behavior. They are intended to intimidate to the point of paralysis, or better yet to encourage out of control and aggressive reactions. Such a reaction might be used to justify the police’s violent attempts to crush the insurrection, which could lead sooner or later to a civil war.
That would be the strategy. To provoke the people into some form of spontaneous and chaotic violence. To make the people, fed up with provocations and the dead ends into which they have consistently been lead, explode without order or coordination. They would be looking for pretexts to deepen the current state of authoritarianism, pushing it the point that it becomes capable of preventing the insurrection from expanding, developing, and fulfilling its destiny: to liquidate without violence the dominant regime.
Undermining this perverse strategy, preventing its success, is the key to survival today, not only for the ongoing insurrection but also for social life, which has entered a serious process of decomposition. In order to do so, what we need more than anything else is clear vision and lucid imagination.
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/11055