Nachie
31st March 2007, 23:25
The idea for "Practice Preceeds Form" (note the misspelling of "precedes") was first proposed almost two years ago, and is now a new 21-page RAAN zine. The idea was to use the terminology of Zen Buddhism and quotes from talks by Zen masters as a way of helping to explain the methods of RAAN. It's a pretty crazy idea, and the zine is kind of silly, but there have already been some positive reactions to it.
From the introduction to Practice Preceeds Form:
"Practice Preceeds Form" might be something we would expect to hear from a Tai Chi instructor. For us however, it is a wake up call to the modern revolutionary movement. As we complete this 'zine, countless individuals all around the country are meeting to plan ways in which to become more effective at destroying the exploitation that characterizes our current society. More often than not, these meetings will not take on a creative or combative nature, and will fail to escape the stifling ghetto of previous radical movements, whether they declared themselves to be "communist", "anarchist" or otherwise.
Part of the problem, we might say, is that more often than not these attempts will continue to use the historic "communist" or "anarchist" movements as their points of reference, denying themselves the ability to bring a living, breathing expression of struggle into being their own subjective experiences and actions in the here and now.
For the past five years, a fledgling culture of uncompromising antagonism with this civilization has developed around the methods and experiences of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN), which is more recently referred to as the "RAANista Tendency". The point of these experiments has been expressly to create unity in revolutionary theory through a rigorous tendency of action, one which can see itself directly in its own activity, and adapt accordingly.
The breadth and complexity of this effort is significant.
It is rather common, in fact, for the methodology of the RAANista Tendency to be completely misunderstood, or perhaps even deemed to be nonsensical. Our several years of evolving practice lead us to express a differing opinion.
Our goal here is not to provide a fuller understanding of RAAN specifically, as this has been covered in our other publications. Instead what follows are several out-of-context quotations from the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind", a collection of talks by Zen master Shunryu Suzuki. In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek style, we are hoping that these articulations of Zen practice will help to elucidate our own communist praxis. These words are unburdened by a political/ideological paradigm, and so are sometimes more effective at expressing concepts that may have appeared abstract or intagible when presented to the political mind.
This zine is not a vulgar application of "Eastern mysticism" to RAAN; the quotes we have chosen somehow reflect perfectly the way in which our network has grown, and so we choose them via raw astonishment and identification rather than a need to defend or preserve their spiritual aspects. We are interested solely in how the Zen paradigm of naturalness might reflect the organic revolt of exploited bodies, as well as the constitution and recreation of networks such as RAAN.
For the sake of clarity, we have edited certain portions of the text by removing words like "Buddhism". The reader should understand all references to Zen as being analogous to RAAN, and "zazen" or "Buddha Nature" as RAANista practice. Our hypothesis is simple: RAAN is constructing a new relationship between radicals and their networks.
I think that this is a really funny effort/zine/project and deserves to be discussed not just by RAANistas, but by those trying to organize the movement in general, who I think would benefit most from its esoteric message.
tear it down,
nothing left!
RAANismo o muerte,
fun or death!
PM me your address if you'd like to get a copy in the mail.
From the introduction to Practice Preceeds Form:
"Practice Preceeds Form" might be something we would expect to hear from a Tai Chi instructor. For us however, it is a wake up call to the modern revolutionary movement. As we complete this 'zine, countless individuals all around the country are meeting to plan ways in which to become more effective at destroying the exploitation that characterizes our current society. More often than not, these meetings will not take on a creative or combative nature, and will fail to escape the stifling ghetto of previous radical movements, whether they declared themselves to be "communist", "anarchist" or otherwise.
Part of the problem, we might say, is that more often than not these attempts will continue to use the historic "communist" or "anarchist" movements as their points of reference, denying themselves the ability to bring a living, breathing expression of struggle into being their own subjective experiences and actions in the here and now.
For the past five years, a fledgling culture of uncompromising antagonism with this civilization has developed around the methods and experiences of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN), which is more recently referred to as the "RAANista Tendency". The point of these experiments has been expressly to create unity in revolutionary theory through a rigorous tendency of action, one which can see itself directly in its own activity, and adapt accordingly.
The breadth and complexity of this effort is significant.
It is rather common, in fact, for the methodology of the RAANista Tendency to be completely misunderstood, or perhaps even deemed to be nonsensical. Our several years of evolving practice lead us to express a differing opinion.
Our goal here is not to provide a fuller understanding of RAAN specifically, as this has been covered in our other publications. Instead what follows are several out-of-context quotations from the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind", a collection of talks by Zen master Shunryu Suzuki. In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek style, we are hoping that these articulations of Zen practice will help to elucidate our own communist praxis. These words are unburdened by a political/ideological paradigm, and so are sometimes more effective at expressing concepts that may have appeared abstract or intagible when presented to the political mind.
This zine is not a vulgar application of "Eastern mysticism" to RAAN; the quotes we have chosen somehow reflect perfectly the way in which our network has grown, and so we choose them via raw astonishment and identification rather than a need to defend or preserve their spiritual aspects. We are interested solely in how the Zen paradigm of naturalness might reflect the organic revolt of exploited bodies, as well as the constitution and recreation of networks such as RAAN.
For the sake of clarity, we have edited certain portions of the text by removing words like "Buddhism". The reader should understand all references to Zen as being analogous to RAAN, and "zazen" or "Buddha Nature" as RAANista practice. Our hypothesis is simple: RAAN is constructing a new relationship between radicals and their networks.
I think that this is a really funny effort/zine/project and deserves to be discussed not just by RAANistas, but by those trying to organize the movement in general, who I think would benefit most from its esoteric message.
tear it down,
nothing left!
RAANismo o muerte,
fun or death!
PM me your address if you'd like to get a copy in the mail.