#N17: The problems and discontents with non-violent action in the United States

In theUnited Statesthe default position of protestors in the Occupy Wall Street movement has been one of non-violence. This position is not viable and is the micro-chip of implosion for the movement. Non-violence is less about actual violence on the streets on this particular day or protest, and more about potential and political impotence. If knowledge and power are viewed as co-foundational tenets of revolutionary potential, then a brief excursus into each is necessary in the current horizon of political action.

Knowledge and power have been terms co-opted from their inception into language. The relationship between knowledge and power is filtered through the process of articulation. Articulation toward knowledge as the kernel of power is the first division between the political subject and himself. This division can be understood as the original contradiction of the political body, individual and social.

This contradiction is the foundation of the political self that is inescapable. Violence and intersection with the idea of violence is an idea that plagues the burgeoning American Left. As I write this, there are thousands of occupiers in lowerManhattanflooding the streets. Several sitters occupy the intersection ofNassauand Pine, and there are reports of police brutality, even before the tentative opening bell. Hegemonic authority rests in the police not because of their legitimacy, but in their potential in violence.

The police, in New York as much as anywhere else in theUnited States, are part of a fragmented body of violent potential. The police, and hence authoritative power, cannot be adequately matched or have its power wrested from it until the political body of dissent comes to grips with the nature and knowledge of violence.

“Reclaiming democracy” and the anti-foundational myth of the American people:

It is five minutes past nine and the Occupy Wall Street protestors have kept Wall Street from opening. This movement is indicative of the supreme skill and ability of the movement to come into symbolic contact with economic power. As traders are turned away from the floor and police mount an assemblage of barricades along the old narrow streets, it is unclear who is being held away from what. In a protest that seems to have all of the ear-markings of a nascent riot, who authorized the caveat of “peaceful protest”? As it turned out, the opening bell still rung and trading continued. Pedestrian traffic closed, and we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean to be political in a world where direct action is contingent on the pacifism of power?

The pacifism of power is a concept of underestimation on the part of the hegemon (the “1%” as the Occupy movement has popularized, but I will say the actants of capital and its derivative forces i.e. the police). On the live feed there are comments on the sidebar saying “come on protestors, look at people in other countries: start throwing rocks already.” In response there was comment that said “we don’t want a riot.”

This is the question of the movement: why not talk about violence, why not make the 99% the 92%, why are we so resistant to rioting? In the recent eviction of ZucottiParkon November 15^th, the mayor and the police demonstrated their body was couched in overt control over the occupation. It is difficult to conceive how we might determine ourselves as directly confronting the bodies of power when we are determined by police barricades and court rulings. Only after the movement comes to grips with the nature and importance of mobilization can it comprehend the logic of the “other side.” In short, dancing has gone on long enough; distinctions must be made between friends and enemies. We’re either within the bounds of current American power structure or we reject them. If we reject them then we are not subject to its ruling, and we radically reclaim the narrative of the American people for the people rather than submitting to a retroactively mythical conception of it.

Throwing guns over our shoulders is not at all what violence means in this context. Coming to grips with American force means coming to grips with the actual state of affairs instead of tossing around a lot of pre-determined rhetoric about “the people” and “our rights”. If we want to see our rights then we must realize that they have been systematically revised and condensed as political development has

In spite of ourselves, we are still American. As we sing the National Anthem in the streets of lowerManhattan, an electronic current flows before us in a rush that we the people cannot catch up with in time. We tell ourselves and each other that we are making history, and what an American thing to do. To take an historical example: during the constitution of the American political body in the 1760’s through unanimous consent to claim independence, the American people were conceived as manifest in sprite of concrete concerns. The American people were “actually” American even thgouh they were externally British citizens… it was the purported duty and right to claim oneself as an American by defying the external powers. In this way, the Occupy Wall Street protestors have tapped into a legacy of pre-figurative determination in much the same way although only in symbolic measures thus far.

As noon approaches, there is an increasing tension between advocates for riot and those who wish to remain peaceful. AsZucottiParkis opened, protestors have removed barricades and faced violent reactions from the police who have reportedly lunged and hit members of the press. Brookfield Security has reportedly left the vicinity, and about half of the people are chanting “No riot here, take off your riot gear,” although the police are not in fact wearing riot gear, only helmets.ZucottiParkis closed off on the north side and they continue to be torn down. What will the fate of a non-violent protest be? How can we look at the 99% the same? There are people who will “riot” and there are people who will not.

Ignorance of violent submission

The distinction between rioting and protesting is a liberal notion, and the use of the word liberal is not meant to be pejorative but perhaps in the future we will come to think of “peaceful protests” as a foolish concept and an impossible position. On the fliers for #N17 posted last night the tagline said “Resist austerity. Rebuild our economy. Reclaim democracy.” This slogan was taken down in lieu of “Resist Austerity. Reclaim the Economy. Recreate our Democracy.” Perhaps we are learning that to peacefully demonstrate does not require a terminal obedience to an authority who is not so determined to keep things bruise-free.

Perhaps we won’t always submit ourselves to slavery in the name of freedom dripping from the faucet.

a deeply troubling dialogue: reactionary tendencies on the left

The context of this conversation is in direct relation to the Occupy Wall Street Protest. The original comment on the state of affairs concerning #occupywallstreet, and this deeply troubling dialogue… (names have been removed). It is important to note that all participants in this dialogue are self-confessed Leftists. All have attended either activist-based events that certainly lend them legitimacy to even the most dogmatic and dilettantish activist.

This dialogue raises a lot of serious questions about reactionary, identity-politic-based opinions about the racial and class composition of the Left. In my opinion, it also highlights the vast disconnect between flowery ideas of “revolution” (even when those ideas are purportedly violent) and a genuinely horizontal mode of dialogue, debate, and conduct. This conversation highlights the disabling dependence on 1. racial hierarchies 2. symbolic violence without a referent, and 3. primacy of individual narratives of autonomy.

We must strive to overcome these in the future.

‎Speaker X:

“Simply because the target of a demonstration is supposedly an entire political class or because those involved in the act of protest orient themselves against acquiescing to the illegitimacy of a political process or regime does not excuse a failure or hesitancy to make explicit demands and name explicit targets. Anarchism, horizontality, anti-authoritarian political commitments, and demands for equality, autonomy, accountability, and radical democracy are not excuses for a failure of precision and the priority of theater or spectacle over concrete demands.”

Responder Y:  Please do not speak disparagingly about our movements. I spent a significant amount of time at the protest during the first week. What I found most inspiring is how many of the people who showed up actually stayed there during the nights….despite the weather, sleeping conditions, etc….and then the next day and then the next day. When the kids cried hunger, people around the world donated $2,800 worth of food within the first hour. It is easy to throw criticism, but an even bigger crime to hate on people that acknowledge the long path to socialism….and actually willing to experiment with possibilities. There is very little space for any real revolution in America, but that the political foci is not being capitalized on by the Left is not the fault of the protesters down on wall street….we should all be ashamed of our own tendency to stand outside any revolutionary momentum in this country and throw dung on the young people who know very little about organizing, but are still willing to carry our collective burden on their naiive shoulders.

Responder Z: not every chain of people who dance and play music is revolutionary. and not every critique of the Left comes from opponents. if you want to talk revolution, talk seriously about horizontal organizations that combat government and economic hierarchies. talk about specific stepping stones for that long road to socialism. otherwise, it’s just another symbol, it’s just an inverted attack on world trade that no one can read and no one can support, not even leftists who care enough to cut past the rhetoric. collective burden? let’s talk about taxes on the poor, budgetary cuts and the polarization of 1/5 of New York’s population below the poverty line while two of the world’s richest men live in that city. let’s get real about revolution. we’ve got enough banners to last us a while.

Moderator: Y, I feel the same way for those who do not show up to events which some among the socialist/anarchist left may deem as “partial struggles” or “reformist”. Yet I don’t consider the Wall Street action, as organized by the Anonymous/Adbusters, to be in quite the same field whatsoever.

Speaker X:  First, my criticisms were specifically related to the Occupy Wall St. protest as a whole, some of the media coverage and first-hand accounts regarding the actual make-up of the protestors (that is, who is protesting, what they advocate, or why they are protesting, etc.), as well as the recent editorial by David Graeber published in The Guardian newspaper about the protests in which he excuses and seems to support their hesitancy to make unified concrete demands on the grounds of their plurality and their position of not wanting to legitimate the political processes, groups, class, regimes, etc. that they oppose.

Second, my criticisms should only be disparaging to those who spuriously suspect the fragility of committed opposition. While I recognize the common fragility of affinity groups constituted on pluralist grounds, I cannot unconditionally support a fragile pluralism. However, I believe that an opposition movement committed to a long path of political and social change should not and will not be disparaged by self-reflective comments. If you find my criticisms disparaging or are concerned about what you perceive as my speaking ill of “our movements,” that speaks more to emotional sentiment and self-righteous indignation than to a legitimate engagement of political criticism.

Third, resort to cheap platitudes, emotional expression, and subjective experience in an effort to tear down what are clearly straw men (I never doubted the commitment of protestors, never picked up the dung you speak of, never questioned the willingness of people to contribute in whatever way they could, nor did I actually condemn the protest or its tactics) indicates an unwillingness to engage in real dialogue, which I have always seen to be a crucial aspect of horizontalist politics and the struggle for real democracy.

Finally, shame is a powerful tool that is cheapened when used inappropriately and illegitimately. If you are going to shame someone on the grounds of their lack of involvement or their standing ” on the outside of any revolutionary momentum in this country” I suggest you make sure you know a little more about who you shame.

Responder Y:  We’re missing the point. This is not about poverty or who is right/wrong. Go to Wall Street. Check out who is actually occupying Wall Street…..it’s the fucking pigs! These kids are just making a simple point….we have to build spaces where peaceful dissent is recognized beyond the terms set by the state. This country is a police state….and any conversation about change can only begin with dismantling the prison-industrial complex. Let’s admit it, the only riots in this country worth talking about take place in prisons. so, what do we have left. A bunch of White Lefty intellectuals that debate and critique any experiment…..and claim the “holier than thou” mantle. There is something happening around Wall Street that we can all learn from….for a new generation of WHITE activists. What are these lessons? Fuck all the rhetoric. Teach me how to kill a pig.

Moderator: Y, you’re making a lot of assumptions and not really addressing any of the points X and Z have made. Yes, we know “revolution is hard to make” and the hardest is at the point of production, which is where in fact the capital-wage labor relation does reproduce itself. That’s truly a revolutionary act. As another comrade of mine has brought up elsewhere,Tahrir Square was able to form precisely because it was underscored with striking workers who shut down factories and occupied them. Replicating or “importing” this tactic doesn’t hold much water when the working class in this country has not yet done.

Responder Y: The frustration is misplaced. We do not need any more critiques from the White Left. Praxis or just shut the fuck up. Tired of the rhetoric. The revolution is dead. Long live the revolution. Fuckin’ pork-chop pundits. No assumptions here, comrade….just informed observations about the American Left….over the past 14 years. We’ll discuss in detail….facebook rarely does justice to this nonsense….thank u for the “dialogue”.

Moderator: ‎”Pork-chop pundits?” Man, you got some serious hang-ups with criticism, comrade. Worse than that, you racialize everything that comes as criticism, which is strange considering that most of those people sleeping inZucottiPark are white. Yes, that is the American Left…and not the working class.

In the shadows between eyelids, there may be another thousand worlds of cities. Cities of memory for the writer and for he who can see immense, rich things that wind and twist around each other into diaphanous spires. They are filled with an expansive rush of sky and laced into form with slender grace. Then, there are minds who wander effortlessly to the outer helm of the winter walk, to the undercut of an ancient ruddy bridge, packed with soft blue slate and clay. Whose every exposure to the void, the terrifying and cold apartment complexes, only strengthen the deep and rolling snow clouds that muffle all the screaming. Soothing thunder strikes the bedrock of the universe. I am just stuck on the bus with kids and gummy worms. I am falling away from myself…Foot steps fall over one another in supple carelessness and these worlds, these dreams and outer pathways spin around a tiny silver sphere. Each valence is a pathway, a rotation around a silver bell; the tingling hum of metals bent and whistling to each other pulses underneath the eyelids, and then shakes the fingers. But my eyes are always open, and the pulse of time—my days and months and webs of time—are gone before I have them. Adventure in the mind is suicide. I remain with my eyes open, slipping in a dirty city, offering a crooked celebration to moments counting down to work time, to my false lives, my hated hours, living as a slave to them. No master of my dreams, no sunburned afternoon in August rest, no day gone by well and truly, but as planned. And even the brother in my dreams, or my loved one, or those friends who I have lost in the thousandth winter of my short life, look on as if pained, doing little to unbend their sympathetic grimace. Doing little in their cages.

The soporific inducements of standardized testing

Betcher impressed, huh? SOP_or_iffic: causing sleepiness. This blog post comes at the beginning of what promises to be a long day and after what was a very short night’s sleep. The GRE’s are a little under two weeks away. This is the second time that I have taken them, although the format has changed.

Having graduated, and finding myself compelled to make some cash, somehow, the pattern of my life has been a little mind numbing. I can’t say that I shouldn’t have tried harder. I should have, and will, of course. There comes a point at which the ringing in one’s ears and the flaming heart to do what is right is damped by the pressing and nonsensical concerns of the everyday. A few months ago in the spring, I wrote a post about the revolutionary quality of scrubbing one’s floors. It reads to me, like an interested piece of propaganda. Of course I was in the position to talk about revolutionary qualities of life when I was so comfortably maintained by federal and state education grants.

Of course, I do maintain that the ethical structures we carve out and enact in accordance with or against history are extremely important; I just think it all gets very tiring. I started reading Raoul Vaneigem’s “The Revolution of Everyday Life,” a few days ago. (I have been starting and dropping too many things at once, but that’s for another inquiry…) I saw the first strands of my own coherent thoughts in the preface and the introduction, even in the first chapter. But I remain disenchanted. I sit bleary-eyed and dismayed at the childishness of the style and of its demands. I remain hardened against the meretriciousness of fragmented sentences that wish to express the crushing reality of mundane things, whose punch feels more like a drug-induced coma.

“People will be together only in a common wretchedness as long as each isolated being refuses to understand that a gesture of liberation, however weak and clumsy it may be,  always bears an authentic communication, an adequate personal message,” (40 TREL).

This is the kind of statements that rouses dilettantes from their beds and ushers revolutionaries to their graves because it is based on a paradoxical ethical tenet. From the position of the gesturer, the adequate personal message has yet to have been digested or consecrated both in ethical and in historical terms. There is a seemingly unclosed patch of time and space for which the melancholy actor must maintain a sense of hope, or even faith. Faith in terms of revolutionary act for the good of “people” generally, and the revolutionary in particular cannot be made aware of the reality or “truth” of action or gesture from within-himself. So, I’m thinking that RV does what a lot of writers (like myself) are tempted to do: he dons himself with the superiority of knowing both event and ethic without situating himself within it. He is the creator of worlds and the third person intelligence who signifies meaning. As far as I can tell, this one phrase is too much like god-making and not enough of subject-for-himself.

This reminds me of a friend who showed up at the tail end of a sit-in and started judging what the sitters in should do and say, and then started addressing all of the protestors outside as “YOU” as if we were all one united group. That’s fine, perhaps a little bit of unity couldn’t hurt, but he elevated himself outside the context, outside the boring, slogging, and slow process of learning how to rebel. He wished to take on the role of sage master, of the wise philosopher, but that position is not tenable precisely because it denies the quotidian element of philosophy.

So what does all this mean? I don’t know what it all means, but to me, if has to do with the call for a real alternative. Real is always a bad word, and my professor who surely have underlined or circled the word on my paper, asking me to define or even oppose the concept. But that is precisely what the task is, and for me, a lot of situationist writing misses the mark (perhaps it’s just a generational thing, and it was truly legit 50 years ago…). To me, the real is lacking and it must be recovered. The revolutionary must be somewhere between washing my floors and finding a coherent way to talk to my fellow tutors, waitresses, or booksellers about healthcare, about the IDEA of communism, or the idea of anything. Because so far, we have been deadened into a world of familiar shapes and patterns, but we have forgotten that we too are 3D.