saint max
15th May 2006, 06:41
This is from a recent piece I'm working on, for a pamphlet tent entitled "Waking up is an Act of Vengeance." It's a particular dive into the negative facets of anarchy and revolt, told from a changing personal narative to theoretical prose. It's in no way close to finished. Also, check out pistolsdrawn.org if these ideas tickle your fancy.
please critique and give praise where it's due.
Before my mother and father were divorced, my grandparents created a trust fund for my sisters and I. This of course, is gone now. Apparently blood is only skin deep. For all intensive purposes, I should have been middle-class. I should have gone to some liberal arts college, excelled in some immaterial skill I possess and been middle management or had some other career. Certainly, I can put on a suit and cut my hair (as it were), but I can't afford college, and frankly I don't really want a career. Or any of the life I can't afford. Nonetheless, Instead of the picket fence-suburban experience white anarchist gendered-male-bodied people are characterized with, I had a strange schizophrenic upbringing. In and out of poverty, and white-trashness for most of my adolescence and a collision with the reality of post-industrialism and service in my young-adulthood and present experience.
My class-experience means:
1. confusion about who I am, who you are, and why things are easier for other people
2. desires for wealth, property and fancy shit
3. desires to hurt and destroy those who have more than me
4. envy
But these are no longer the times for class-war. Don't get me wrong, the class-system, albeit new digs and a makeover, is alive and well. Ten percent of the world still owns ninety percent of it's resources(...as it were.) However, class can no longer be articulated in terms of material conditions nor can oppression be reduced to an economics. If we say class-war, we mean class-antagonisms. We mean the only essential consequence of oppression: negation. If we say justice, we mean vengeance. If we say freedom, we mean transgression.
Moving from I to we. Speaking from the US working-class, postmortem
We speak of freedom in words of the insane. It's the only language we have left. Neither God, nor Science, nor History has served us. And those who found their hustle never fail to strike another blow to our innocence. We cannot blame them--it's the world of hypocrisy and consensual slavery. And this world is composed solely by unique madness, because we are haunted by memories of sanity and beautiful lies.
Our knowledge of the past--the commitment of our ancestors, allows us only to make mockeries of it. When we speak of revolution, we are speaking through a character of ourselves. The irony is dialectical.
Today we are historically displaced. Located somewhere between Camus' Metaphysical Rebel and Negri's Multitude. The post-industrial nightmare of late Capital is disarticulated by theorists of political economy hoping we will permit and participate in the universal lie. They locate us and lie to us because we are too ignorant to lie to our selves.
Our organic mobilizations challenge the lie but can be easily recuperated into the project. If we bite, we are promised mediocradise. A place in history books--if not the authors ourselves. But our madness is more powerful and more our own than it's been in the past. Our madness is unique and honest. So when we see our selves in mirrors, nothing beautiful stares back at us. When we remember our historical trajectory, we are no longer mystified by reconstitution; what occurred when our most boring dreams were actualized.
We have become anarchists, not for ideology, nor disillusionment with our co-option, but against ideology--against our own image. We did not merely follow the wrong leader or theory, we followed ourselves--our own greater good. We saw ourselves as histories protagonist and sought to play out our role. Dialectics, History, Progress, workers-control, were all beautiful lies. So today to be the anarchist, we cannot come to consensus. We cannot tell you what we are, only what we are not. To revolt, The Servicer in post-industrialism can only be this anarchist, or not be at all.
Back to i.
The service-class is real, although it is another abstraction. Like the working-class before, or Humanity, or Nature. To service is another narrative, another point of reference to the suffocating--The World (of oppression and civilization.) It is another Otherization, Objectification; yet another rape but nothing to be proud of. The only way for me, a servicer in late Capital to interact with The World--to have agency¾is to revolt and negate it. But this negation must not prefigure a positive program of what's to come. At least not yet. To steal from an anonymous Italian, "to experience freedom, one must know freedom and to know one must experiment [...] We need the necessary space and time to experiment with freedom." Today, I don't know freedom, nor do most. There is no particular geographic location I can visit to find freedom. Freedom is covered universally; It must be discovered or seized. Not just the freedom but the space and time to experiment. This is both an external and an internal project of universal deconstruction and disintegration.
The desire to replace the suffocation--the oppression, is a desire born of from it. How can I trust my self to create a world absolved of rape when I am a potential rapist? If capitalism was abolished tomorrow without my agency, without my experimentation, how would I know how to act without it? I have never lived without rent, work and convenient access to commodities or trash--not just my own participation, but the existence and luxury of a safety net to fall back on if I got too hungry or tired. How can I trust my self or anyone else to create anything new and liberatory? I only know the existent systems; I only know oppression. How could I be an architect of a free world?
We, anarchists.
If we are not seeking to be responsible for replacing The World, what does that say for revolution? The lessons from '68 and it's aftermath have been integrated into both the radical politics and the market. Often times both are demanding we "be realistic and do the impossible;" whether it in the form of another ritualistic mass protest or in the form of a Volkswagen ad. The rational consequence of modern revolutions, as problematized by the post-structualists¾for instance Spain 36' concluding with Franco, Stalin and Hitler --is made more apparent with the collapse of a metanarative or the grand-plan. The postmodern and post-industrial condition, allows the anarchist precisely this out-of-bounce with history. That is to say, standing on Marx's corpse. The broadening ecological crisis--the consequences of industrialism, posit a genuinely new problem to anarchists. That of "survival?" Irreconcilable with revolution, ecological crisis, demands we either save what we can or release our clutch--lose control. With the collapse of the grand-plan and ecology, revolution becomes not merely undesirable, but obsolete.
To be the anarchist today, we desire revolt, but not revolution. We desire a world of and in revolt, but not a world afterwards --the consequences. The most appropriate weapon in this struggle is a suicide-bomb. But we are not so moralistic. Can anarchy be anti-humanist? That is to say, if not a suicide-pact, then how do we reconcile survival? How can we wash our hands of the world in which we fight for clean water? Or the warlords or crypto-fascists to come? We can't.
"I was frightened to find my self in the void, I my self a void. I felt like I was suffocating, considering and feeling that everything is void. Solid void."
--Giacomo Leopardi
If we can reconcile the existent meaninglessness with the future meaninglessness, we can start to walk and learn. Ask questions with deeds only. This must say little of the horrors we will inevitably unleash. And perhaps there is a little charlatan within me that sings of beautiful lies--utopia to come. He soon will die, or be scarred.
Starting in a prison, we become prisoners. We recognize the prison. We are ashamed of our pervious ignorance, enraged at whom (or what) ever imprisoned us and we lash out against the prison guard for being a symbol of our repression, sometimes even reaching the walls themselves. We see outside through the bars and imagine what better conditions could exist outside the prison. There is nothing to suggest there is not another detention center awaiting us outside the gates. Or that what we envision through the bars is not a castle in the sky. For us, being in a prison or not has no meaning without being a prisoner. Our meaning, the only one we can liberate, is located precisely in our becoming something not-a-prisoner. If there is another prison awaiting us outside this particular pogrom, then we must find ours only in our "no." The walls must still come down, but what awaits means nothing, until it exists. For now it is only a day dream. In fact, for now the only meaningful day dream is razing our Auschwitz to the ground.
I talk often with my potential co-conspirators about this. Some are very uncomfortable about it's implications. Afraid of the dark, maybe. Or better yet, content with being a prisoner in minimum security. Nonetheless, I have to be pragmatic about the conditions in which my struggle negotiates it's position with theirs and have found my self disconnected from some people because of it. Anarchists in minimum security are fickle and revolt is polyamorous. In the current conditions mentioned above we have few choices. Those who wish to make the world a better place will in turn, probably become the next prison guards. I seek to be honest about my negate-ive intent. It is, considering history, the only way I can act without fear of reproducing The World. Perhaps a sterile-bomb is the next most appropriate weapon.
please critique and give praise where it's due.
Before my mother and father were divorced, my grandparents created a trust fund for my sisters and I. This of course, is gone now. Apparently blood is only skin deep. For all intensive purposes, I should have been middle-class. I should have gone to some liberal arts college, excelled in some immaterial skill I possess and been middle management or had some other career. Certainly, I can put on a suit and cut my hair (as it were), but I can't afford college, and frankly I don't really want a career. Or any of the life I can't afford. Nonetheless, Instead of the picket fence-suburban experience white anarchist gendered-male-bodied people are characterized with, I had a strange schizophrenic upbringing. In and out of poverty, and white-trashness for most of my adolescence and a collision with the reality of post-industrialism and service in my young-adulthood and present experience.
My class-experience means:
1. confusion about who I am, who you are, and why things are easier for other people
2. desires for wealth, property and fancy shit
3. desires to hurt and destroy those who have more than me
4. envy
But these are no longer the times for class-war. Don't get me wrong, the class-system, albeit new digs and a makeover, is alive and well. Ten percent of the world still owns ninety percent of it's resources(...as it were.) However, class can no longer be articulated in terms of material conditions nor can oppression be reduced to an economics. If we say class-war, we mean class-antagonisms. We mean the only essential consequence of oppression: negation. If we say justice, we mean vengeance. If we say freedom, we mean transgression.
Moving from I to we. Speaking from the US working-class, postmortem
We speak of freedom in words of the insane. It's the only language we have left. Neither God, nor Science, nor History has served us. And those who found their hustle never fail to strike another blow to our innocence. We cannot blame them--it's the world of hypocrisy and consensual slavery. And this world is composed solely by unique madness, because we are haunted by memories of sanity and beautiful lies.
Our knowledge of the past--the commitment of our ancestors, allows us only to make mockeries of it. When we speak of revolution, we are speaking through a character of ourselves. The irony is dialectical.
Today we are historically displaced. Located somewhere between Camus' Metaphysical Rebel and Negri's Multitude. The post-industrial nightmare of late Capital is disarticulated by theorists of political economy hoping we will permit and participate in the universal lie. They locate us and lie to us because we are too ignorant to lie to our selves.
Our organic mobilizations challenge the lie but can be easily recuperated into the project. If we bite, we are promised mediocradise. A place in history books--if not the authors ourselves. But our madness is more powerful and more our own than it's been in the past. Our madness is unique and honest. So when we see our selves in mirrors, nothing beautiful stares back at us. When we remember our historical trajectory, we are no longer mystified by reconstitution; what occurred when our most boring dreams were actualized.
We have become anarchists, not for ideology, nor disillusionment with our co-option, but against ideology--against our own image. We did not merely follow the wrong leader or theory, we followed ourselves--our own greater good. We saw ourselves as histories protagonist and sought to play out our role. Dialectics, History, Progress, workers-control, were all beautiful lies. So today to be the anarchist, we cannot come to consensus. We cannot tell you what we are, only what we are not. To revolt, The Servicer in post-industrialism can only be this anarchist, or not be at all.
Back to i.
The service-class is real, although it is another abstraction. Like the working-class before, or Humanity, or Nature. To service is another narrative, another point of reference to the suffocating--The World (of oppression and civilization.) It is another Otherization, Objectification; yet another rape but nothing to be proud of. The only way for me, a servicer in late Capital to interact with The World--to have agency¾is to revolt and negate it. But this negation must not prefigure a positive program of what's to come. At least not yet. To steal from an anonymous Italian, "to experience freedom, one must know freedom and to know one must experiment [...] We need the necessary space and time to experiment with freedom." Today, I don't know freedom, nor do most. There is no particular geographic location I can visit to find freedom. Freedom is covered universally; It must be discovered or seized. Not just the freedom but the space and time to experiment. This is both an external and an internal project of universal deconstruction and disintegration.
The desire to replace the suffocation--the oppression, is a desire born of from it. How can I trust my self to create a world absolved of rape when I am a potential rapist? If capitalism was abolished tomorrow without my agency, without my experimentation, how would I know how to act without it? I have never lived without rent, work and convenient access to commodities or trash--not just my own participation, but the existence and luxury of a safety net to fall back on if I got too hungry or tired. How can I trust my self or anyone else to create anything new and liberatory? I only know the existent systems; I only know oppression. How could I be an architect of a free world?
We, anarchists.
If we are not seeking to be responsible for replacing The World, what does that say for revolution? The lessons from '68 and it's aftermath have been integrated into both the radical politics and the market. Often times both are demanding we "be realistic and do the impossible;" whether it in the form of another ritualistic mass protest or in the form of a Volkswagen ad. The rational consequence of modern revolutions, as problematized by the post-structualists¾for instance Spain 36' concluding with Franco, Stalin and Hitler --is made more apparent with the collapse of a metanarative or the grand-plan. The postmodern and post-industrial condition, allows the anarchist precisely this out-of-bounce with history. That is to say, standing on Marx's corpse. The broadening ecological crisis--the consequences of industrialism, posit a genuinely new problem to anarchists. That of "survival?" Irreconcilable with revolution, ecological crisis, demands we either save what we can or release our clutch--lose control. With the collapse of the grand-plan and ecology, revolution becomes not merely undesirable, but obsolete.
To be the anarchist today, we desire revolt, but not revolution. We desire a world of and in revolt, but not a world afterwards --the consequences. The most appropriate weapon in this struggle is a suicide-bomb. But we are not so moralistic. Can anarchy be anti-humanist? That is to say, if not a suicide-pact, then how do we reconcile survival? How can we wash our hands of the world in which we fight for clean water? Or the warlords or crypto-fascists to come? We can't.
"I was frightened to find my self in the void, I my self a void. I felt like I was suffocating, considering and feeling that everything is void. Solid void."
--Giacomo Leopardi
If we can reconcile the existent meaninglessness with the future meaninglessness, we can start to walk and learn. Ask questions with deeds only. This must say little of the horrors we will inevitably unleash. And perhaps there is a little charlatan within me that sings of beautiful lies--utopia to come. He soon will die, or be scarred.
Starting in a prison, we become prisoners. We recognize the prison. We are ashamed of our pervious ignorance, enraged at whom (or what) ever imprisoned us and we lash out against the prison guard for being a symbol of our repression, sometimes even reaching the walls themselves. We see outside through the bars and imagine what better conditions could exist outside the prison. There is nothing to suggest there is not another detention center awaiting us outside the gates. Or that what we envision through the bars is not a castle in the sky. For us, being in a prison or not has no meaning without being a prisoner. Our meaning, the only one we can liberate, is located precisely in our becoming something not-a-prisoner. If there is another prison awaiting us outside this particular pogrom, then we must find ours only in our "no." The walls must still come down, but what awaits means nothing, until it exists. For now it is only a day dream. In fact, for now the only meaningful day dream is razing our Auschwitz to the ground.
I talk often with my potential co-conspirators about this. Some are very uncomfortable about it's implications. Afraid of the dark, maybe. Or better yet, content with being a prisoner in minimum security. Nonetheless, I have to be pragmatic about the conditions in which my struggle negotiates it's position with theirs and have found my self disconnected from some people because of it. Anarchists in minimum security are fickle and revolt is polyamorous. In the current conditions mentioned above we have few choices. Those who wish to make the world a better place will in turn, probably become the next prison guards. I seek to be honest about my negate-ive intent. It is, considering history, the only way I can act without fear of reproducing The World. Perhaps a sterile-bomb is the next most appropriate weapon.