Futures and Pasts

Remember when I said I might not post as much? I lied. Its something to do in this horrible weather. This horrible weather inflicting itself upon the city, practically shutting it down, causing the local news to somehow increase its coverage to a wall-to-wall, rapture like apotheosis. This horrible weather, which is meant to continue. As I type this, the snow is starting to fall again. It will only increase the fatuous hysteria.

If you thought the local news obnoxious fixation on the banal was tedious before; the now constant repetitive spectacle of weather updates, traffic reports, school closings and reports from correspondents- who look so fresh-faced they must be interns- picking up fresh snow while discussing how much accumulation there was in a parking lot in a some horrible suburban town, will obliterate your patience.

This exercise in mass hysteria,  has sidelined even the insubstantial real news coverage the local news might usually bother with, relegating it to filing the space in between the latest breaking storm coverage. (they only announced the governor had released a budget with significant cuts in services, but eschewed specifics, because that would get in the way of traffic.)

Now it will only get worse. Fuck the local news. Fuck this horrible weather.

Posting might be lighter then usual in the next few weeks. I am in an undisclosed holiday location and the internet connection I am stealing sucks. It takes forever to load wordpress and I don’t have the patience. Instead I will compile future posts out of the Lukacs and Freud I am reading as well the other shenanigans i get up to. Until then enjoy footage of Greece at mrzine http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/greece191208.html.

Posting might be lighter then usual in the next few weeks. I am in an undisclosed holiday location and the internet connection I am stealing sucks. It takes forever to load wordpress and I don’t have the patience. Instead I will compile future posts out of the Lukacs and Freud I am reading as well the other shenanigans i get up to. Until then enjoy footage of Greece at mrzine http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/greece191208.html.

Why are the Greek anarchists called “self-styled anarchists?” in the mainstream press coverage of the ongoing protests? Have they failed to meet the standards of some designated government committee or NGO in charge of anointing who is or isn’t an anarchist? I mean what’s the deal?

But in all seriousness folks, I can only think of a few reasons why the mainstream press- by which i mean The Guardian, BBC and AP- have taken this line;

(1) They are lazy sycophantic echo-chambers of conventional wisdom. (this is the press after all) They haven’t done their jobs and they haven’t investigated what the “self-styled anarchists” mean when they use the word anarchist. Instead of a political movement with a history and ideals, they think anarchism is some sort of trite love of chaos and destruction. So instead of a political ideology, it is the opposite of conventional wisdom, and is absurd. Therefore, describing yourself as an anarchist is “self-styled” because it is impossible to be anarchist. In reality, anarchy is an empty justification for  destruction.

(2) The mainstream press are condescending and hate the fucking kids. Here, in contrast to (1), the kids are posers because they arent real anarchists. They are “self-styled,” then, because the press assumes they will not become professional revolutionaries who dedicate their lives to anarchist struggle. They view the students and youth as flash in the pan radicals who will grow up and give up their silly ideas:

In both cases the mainstream press seems to have found a gap between political rhetoric and reality. They seem to have demonstrated that it is impossible to be an anarchist because all attempts to meet their criteria fail. The youth are “self-styled anarchists,” then, because they fail to meet the reality created by the mainstream presses assumptions. But, the mainstream press is being inconsistent. Shouldn’t this logic be applied to all politics? If so, after discarding the mainstream presses conventional and condescending assumptions and replacing them with an objective basis, in looking at the actual gap between political rhetoric and reality- wouldn’t we find it was entirely accurate to describe Bush, Berlusconi and other politicians as “self-styled democrats”?

Rumsfeld obviously hadn’t read Fanon:

The truth is that there is no colonial power today which is capable of adopting the only form of contest which has a chance of suceeding, namely, the prolonged establishment of large forces of occupation. (Wretched of the Earth. pg. 58)

“Intellectual alienation is a creation of middle-class society. What i call middle-class society is any society that becomes rigidified in predetermined forms, forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery. I call middle-class a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt. And I think that a man who takes a stand against this death is in a sense revolutionary.” Frantz Fanon Black Skins, White Masks.

From what I know, which is not much, there is little work that compares Fanon with his European contemporaries. This is surprising because he shares much in common with Hegelian Marxism and Critical Theory.

In a very broad sense, I would argue that Fanon and Hegelian Marxism/ Critical Theory utillize Marx and Freud to criticize the dehumanizing effects of culture on humans, where culture turns humans into things through a fetishized process not captured by reified consciousness. I will explore this further in my dissertation or in articles

What could biopolitics do with the adage, children should be seen and not heard?

Agamben’s rhetoric and prose suits the grandiosity of metal and hip-hop, but with a dose of  self negation. He should release an album as homo sacer. He could brag that he is biopower, the anthropological machine– making gaps between the animal and the human. He could also talk about how he can be killed and not sacrificed. Phrases such as the state of exception, the orginary ban, and his endless use of biblical imagery would also make great songs. He could also rewrite Angel of Death via the witness in Remnants: “auschwitz the meaning of biopower/the way that were all gonna dieeeeeee”

I’ve lived in England off and on for something like 4 1/2 years. So, I already went through the process of adapting to and comparing American and English cultures, ettiquette, language etc. Its an interesting and enriching process, and Adswithoutproducts and Aloof from Inspiration are doing a splendid job writing about it now.

My two newer young housemates are also going through this process, with the added bonus of living on their own for the first time. They seem like sweet kids, but i do find them endearing and amusing in a paternalistic way, when they routinely melt plastic cooking utensils and burn pasta, in their valiant attempts to cook the simplest meals.

What I find interesting about myself in this situation is the disjuncture between how acclimated I feel and how other people interpret me. I never think of myself as American, let alone an American living abroad, but that is how many, if not all, people perceive me. I’ve been asked where I am from at just about every temp job, most having already deduced America, apart from someone who thought i was from Devon. It also seems to be how people in SPT perceive me, talking to me about American culture and saying they love my accent and mannerisms. And, its what set some wasted lady off last night about how wonderful seattle is.

Theoretically, I suppose I serve the function of some exotic/ hegemonic other, but I feel more estranged temping in some hallowed neoliberal yuppie office hell in  Seattle.

Sunday’s are supposed to be my day of rest. I try to take a break from reading and relax or do something else. The problem is I’m not very good at doing anything else. My budget can’t fund day trips or movies because I save my extra cash for social occasions or shows. So I often fall back into reading, sometimes with a longer walk if the sun is out, or I piss about on the internet.

Unfortunately, I piss about on the internet far too often, transfixed by my laptop, its the sort of distraction that provides endless information; some of it useful; some of it of questionable use. This distraction seems to mediate my relations with the world more and more each day. It makes some sense that i resort to it when i am exhausted from reading and can do little else, but i want to spend more time reflecting on what i’m reading and try to be creative.

Today I’m too tired to read productively and have no energy to do anything but piss about on the internet. I went to bed at around 8am after going to a club and then listening to records and talking to friends. It was grand and something I ended up doing last week as well. I think this proves Brighton is good for me because it caters to both my academic and social interests. Its like olympia used to be without the painful embarassment of being young, insecure and unaware. Being old, more secure and more aware is much better.

Perhaps its good that i’m too tired. I can’t be productive all the time. Besides, sometimes my best ideas come during breaks, like yesterday when i thought of replacing debord with fanon making my thesis more rounded and cosmopolitan.

Some kids were just yelling at me from the street. Calling me Peter Pan. At least my routine hasn’t aged me, yet.