Anti Politics

I'm going to make a bit of an effort to change that. Perhaps this is a good thread to start some of the "theoretical" discussion about how to do that. In my minds eye I'd like to see anti-politics/forum change to reflect the times and the need.

The board started as a discussion site between a circle of people who coming from a more-or-less educated anarchist or communist perspective. I'd like to maintain that. I'd also like to maintain the dialogue between perspectives that I always valued about the site and perhaps push this a little further. Since ap came out of Killing King Abacus there should always be a certain "center of gravity" around the ideas of Italian anarchists and action-without-mediation but obviously a lot has changed since the publishing of that magazine.

1) The new-french currents. Informed by Agamben, the actions around Tarnac, and the writing of the Invisible committee
2) The (seeming) end of Green Anarchism as a tendency-with-a-voice
3) The rise of bookfairs (now once a month in North America)
4) PDF publications instead of print
5) The shift away from boards like this and towards FB and sites like anarchistnews

I am going to point some people to this thread and hopefully we can maintain the value of the site (and I will be more aggressive about removing trolls moving forward as I value the connections I have made here more than the openness of the past).

Aragorn!

I have a couple of very brief comments to make and maybe I'll think of some more or others will take off with it and I'll jump back in.

1) The new-french currents. Informed by Agamben, the actions around Tarnac, and the writing of the Invisible committee

I dig Agamben but I hate most of this stuff. I haven't read The Coming Insurrection yet, but I think the Call could be lumped in here, I thought that was terrible. Theoretically, I've been getting further and further from Insurrectionary Anarchism over the years so maybe it hasn't changed so much as I have.

2) The (seeming) end of Green Anarchism as a tendency-with-a-voice

Interesting. I don't frequent many radical web places, right now I peek in here once in a while and look at libcom occasionally, and that's it. Oh, and I still look at Salon de ver Luisant, although I've been apparently been demoted to someone who can't post there, and not much happens there anymore. I haven't, then, heard any GA voices in a while, but I didn't realize that nobody else has, either. I guess my impulse is to say "good riddance." Green is a good thing, and anarchist is a good thing, and anarchy should be green, but the GA tendency was just the stupidest thing imaginable, in practice. As someone who had a lot of up-close personal experience with it as well as staying reasonably abreast of its theoretical productions for a while, I will say I don't think much of value came out of it. If it made a few people critical of industrialism who wouldn't otherwise be, then maybe there was something half-decent about it.

3) The rise of bookfairs (now once a month in North America)

I didn't know they were that huge. When I lived on the West Coast I always went to the one in San Francisco, which was a wonderful time. I hope to go back some day. I don't know if there's anything significant about these other than a social occasion--I would venture to say there is not.

4) PDF publications instead of print

I have no idea. I mostly read books. Anti-authoritarian periodicals are a dime a dozen and are mostly read by people who get a sense of comfort from knowing there are like-minded people out there. No thanks.

5) The shift away from boards like this and towards FB and sites like anarchistnews

I have no idea. The discussion on anarchist news is of abysmally low quality. It's useful for the news though. I don't generally go there. I don't know what this means, if it means anything, or if it's even happening.

That's all I've got for now. I was just thinking as I clicked on the link that this site is dead, but here's another attempt at revivification. I think it succeeded at first because it brought together a loose group of people, many of whom already knew each other, who had enough in common to converse. Some people have left, others have changed, and there doesn't seem to be much left here.

And what's FB?

Facebook.

bzfgt wrote:I dig Agamben but I hate most of this stuff. I haven't read The Coming Insurrection yet, but I think the Call could be lumped in here, I thought that was terrible. Theoretically, I've been getting further and further from Insurrectionary Anarchism over the years so maybe it hasn't changed so much as I have.

How have you changed? Sitting in chairs too much?

I have really enjoyed the french coming-invasion, but mostly because it is all so post-situ IMO without the entrenched kind of post-situ attitude of our North American milieu (and I'm thinking of the translators and keepers of the faith here). It reads to me like a "reading" of the situationists 40 years later. I haven't read Agamben closely enough to get anything out of his ideas yet but its on my short list once this period is over.

bzfgt wrote:I guess my impulse is to say "good riddance." Green is a good thing, and anarchist is a good thing, and anarchy should be green, but the GA tendency was just the stupidest thing imaginable, in practice. As someone who had a lot of up-close personal experience with it as well as staying reasonably abreast of its theoretical productions for a while, I will say I don't think much of value came out of it. If it made a few people critical of industrialism who wouldn't otherwise be, then maybe there was something half-decent about it.

I miss it myself. But I wish that the discourse wasn't so, or didn't become so, simplistic. I never really liked the terminology (rewilding, civilization, industrialism, etc) as I thought it all felt... scientific (or in a dialectical relationship to scientism). On my list of projects is something that pushes in this direction but I doubt I'll get to it this year.

bzfgt wrote:I didn't know they were that huge. When I lived on the West Coast I always went to the one in San Francisco, which was a wonderful time. I hope to go back some day. I don't know if there's anything significant about these other than a social occasion--I would venture to say there is not.

None of the other bookfairs have as much of a magnetic social appeal for me as SF but perhaps if I lived somewhere else that would be different. I guess the structural aspects of these events are what really has me contemplative this morning. I am against, yet have become, a merchant at these things and the way in which that impacts my critical facilities and ability to move is still something I'm sorting through.

I'm not sure I'd be excited that a-p reflect the "times and needs" of the current direction that (part of the?) anarchist (maybe just the internet-?) subculture seems to be going. Cuz it looks like a downhill slope to me. It seems like a lot of the a-p current has become more and more ridiculous and incoherent as it has spread. Then again, I never really claimed any strict allegiance to it, but I do feel it has influenced much of my thinking. The proliferation of anarchist web forums and news sites doesn't seem to help for any coherent discussion and that seems indicative of the fact that none of us probably know each other and can easily talk shit. (Sometimes I wonder if the dumb things people say on websites are anarchist/a-p friends of mine I care for and have met in real life. I hope not or I hope there's some sense of sabotage involved).

Most of the publications coming out with a vague connection to insurrectionary anarchist/anti-political current often feel like just another commodity looking to create another edge on the market (and I think for some it's very much on purpose). They talk in vague and impersonal ways that really just come off as rhetoric (ex. against everything, for nothing, anti-activist-activism, total destroy) that can easily be reproduced without thinking too much about it. (I wonder if this has anything to do with the decline of this message board?). Not to get too sentimental, but I never really felt that way with KKA, WoM or AMOC, because they spoke to me in a very personal and critical way. And they defined themselves and their terms very well! Anyway, I've become less and less interested in reading most of the stuff coming out now.

I think there is some argument in saying that the whole PDF thing has caused a pretty big decline in quality and connection with others. We can easily print out things or read them online in our own private island. But it's not the same as running into them on someones table or getting a random something from a friend and having an awesome conversation. Much of the reason I got into anarchism was because of writing in zines and meeting people with similar interests because of it or running into random zines around town or going to the library after school. In fact, much the more poignant connections I have gotten with other anarchists is from traveling and meeting folks and actually being able to have conversations where we can hear each others voices. There is value in the internet for networking, but to use it as a big means of spreading anarchy is ridiculous.

I've never really valued the internet too much for discussions, but I do remember A/P being of much better quality and a huge inspiration to me years back. I have no solution other than I'd like to make more connections in real life and used this as a way to continue more conversation.

All of my comments should be understood within the context that I have no connection with the criteria set out in the o/p – I have never been interested in Italian anarchism and am not interested now in the French counterculture .

I think it might be a good idea here to examine the parameters, and even the meaning, of Self-Activity (we can drop the ‘revolutionary’ bit as that makes no sense). I think the term refers to that activity which is realised by a definable need and which cannot be satisfied by already established means. In the past radical politics has been in the position to supply certain conceivable objects (however understood) which were otherwise unavailable... this ranged from justification of rebelliousness to advice surgeries, from membership organisations to acts of solidarity.

I think it is fair to say, the supply of these objects is now being better met within the confines of commodity production and thus it has become increasingly difficult to conceive of a shortfall in need in terms of ‘self-activity’. What are we for? It is not possible to sustain an artificial need for long and projects only fail where the need and the activity are not commensurate.

There is no particular need to read radical literature, it says nothing, no need to join radical organisations because that gains no benefit, no need to ask us for advice as its easily available elsewhere (and minus the Salvation Army style injunctions), no need to engage in acts of solidarity as the shortfall between what is being supplied and what is needed is simply too great. Where before there was a perceived need for ‘liberated space’ such spaces are now experienced as doctrinally conservative, dominated by the issues of what become radical landlords, in other words, it is a space not liberated at all.

I have mentioned here before, that there has been and perhaps still is (but its rate is declining) a need to use ‘anarchism’ as a means of growing up and coming to terms with the world. Once this has been achieved, the ‘anarchism’ is dropped. I would suggest that classic period A/P was powered by a number of people in their late teens and early to mid twenties who have now got 5 years older. They have grown up. It is what happens to most of us because ‘anarchism’ provides a means by critique of understanding the world and the self’s place in the world but has become extremely lax in informing people how to engage in other forms of relation beyond this very one sided (and frankly oedipal) critique. Life is more than being anti-capitalist but there is simply no literature/culture which deals with issues of maturity where opposition to capitalism must take its place with other concerns.

Is there a need for the self activity of Anti-Politics? I am going to be provocative here (although obviously I have put a lot of effort into my response and therefore am ever hopeful of coherent counter-arguments), I think the very fact that over 3 or 4 days, the o/p on this thread only got 30 or so views and no responses, suggests there is no need for it. I also see that the Swedish site is lapsing into silence. There is no real world milieu to serve as context for discussion here, and the site itself is not safe enough for research purposes.

One of the fundamentals of any activity however conceived is the separation between activity itself and its effect elsewhere. Whilst we are able to control to a greater extent what we ‘contribute’, we cannot control the effect of that contribution and we need to stop thinking that just because we undertake ‘A’ that others are going to consume it and become transformed by the experience.

I think that we are now collectively at the point where we are not engaging new people, and there is no means for engaging any new people and that also the number of old people is constantly declining. In other words, our immediate effect is declining in the world and we are not in a position to reverse that. We can produce ‘A’ but we cannot produce the effect of ‘A’ in others. However, this irreducible fact shouldn’t in itself impinge on ‘self-activity’ if it is conceived in terms of the need to construct things which have their own worth, i.e. the production of ‘A’ despite the absence of its consumption. In this sense, self-activity becomes an enclosed but not worthless undertaking.

My recommendations for this board is that the first page of topics should all become ‘stickies’ with general headings, such as ‘what is capitalism?’, ‘marxism’, ‘Italian anarchism’ ‘Nature’ ‘French Texts’ ‘Human Relations’ ‘The question of scale’ ‘production’ etc etc. People should then be able to deposit their thoughts under these categories with the understanding that they or others could use them in other projects. I find the ‘nowness’ of discussion boards to be their most unappealing aspect. I also think that the number of boards/projects and so on must increase... in other words, A/P will only be sustained by other communities feeding into it.

Generally speaking, there is need for collation, for editing, for critical engagement; for re-definitions, for clear authorial voices, for publication. Is there anyone participating here willing to do any of this? I would suggest that there needs to be a period of 1 to 2 years of serious formal discussions to re-clarify the situation in order to put out a series of clear statements.

One last thing, in a capitalist society, commitment is defined in terms of investment, those who put effort and money into projects care the most about them; the less the investment on the part of individuals, the less the obligation. The trick has always been how to commit yourself into the future... when people are young the investment of the self is all or nothing, but the returns are required immediately and the commitment is very short term. In contrast, what is needed is a very long term commitment of (necessarily) lower intensity.


sincerely etc.

I think we've already discussed what this site could possibly be. The trolling has stopped or gotten stale. Academic level discourse isn't something I'm looking for, though some here seem to enjoy that, it definitely isn't encouraging to go into what so and so said in some obscure essay or book. To me, such discussions are uninteresting, but I've already stated such. I also don't seek to have a relationship with "anarchists" or examine how pathetic the milieu is and why. What is the point to having a macro understanding of the world? Why must the "social order" be an examination of global power and break down its hierarchy to a local level? Why couldn't we hold more limited understandings of the world that look more into our personal relationships with how power is expressed in the world? We can say this or that is pointless, but then we seem to keep coming back to these things we recognize as pointless only to be thwarted into examining the pointlessness of radicalism when there is a large but finite number of interests that are pointless but are often not examined because they seem more trivial than what we enjoy to criticize and dismiss.

I also don't seek to have a relationship with "anarchists" or examine how pathetic the milieu is and why.

I agree. The only reason I still linger on anarchist message boards is because I can almost endlessly amuse myself with polemics. That, and anarchist principals are thoroughly burnt into my mind (so exercising my intellectual curiosities at @ sites seems like the most convenient place to do so). Therefore, I also can't say I have any interest in forming relationships with people simply because they're anarchists. My compulsive engagement in intellectual debate has made me fearful of any idea, on my part, of joining 'the milieu'. I'm more comfortable placing myself nowhere (i.e., trying to survive in a socio-cultural context inhospitable to my skepticism and intellectual interests) than suffocating myself in somewhere (i.e., a small political milieu). Social retardation appears to be an imminent threat if I were to abandon my distance from other anarchists.

I've also noted how the majority of discussions that take place on anarchist message boards is just an endless repetition of self-pity. Like a medical-psychiatric subject in a padded room banging their skull against the limits of their existence. This annoying tic anarchists constantly demonstrate steals away time for, and the quality of, other (possible or already present) discourse. It's probably reasonable on their part, but it's annoying insofar as it presents itself as an obstacle to those, like myself, who have no tangible relation to the affairs and events unfolding in the milieu itself. I don't care if 'the movement' is a joke because not only am I disinterested in movement building but I'm also not a part of that movement - either in it's manifestation as a marginalized milieu or a recruiting mechanism. I could choose from several subcultures to meld myself into, but I refuse all of them because I always get a bad taste in my mouth whenever I get too close. The @ milieu is no different. The excitement I felt when I read the first Vengeance has since dissipated (it validated my abrupt, intellectual abandonment of leftism). Presently, I'm as wary of, and indifferent to, the platitudes of anti-subculturalists (Vengeance, 'insurrectionists', etc.) as I am to their quarry. They're both suspicious...


On the topic of insurrectionary anarchism:

I suppose I have the same intellectual nostalgia for I@ as Aragorn! does for green anarchism. For instance, the hypothesis that anarchists and the like are not demonstrably more functional or specialized in the task of producing revolution or struggle as anyone else has largely been broken down into a composite of everyman's militancy and shallow attempts at splicing anarchist values into daily conflicts. This is exemplified by, say, the 'anti-broke on broke crime' campaign invoked by Modesto Anarcho or the 'insurrectionist' presence at the Pittsburgh G20. The original hypothesis, while not pristine in it's analysis, could have been taken through much more desirable routes of thought.

The analysis of institutional power has been abandoned in favor of the convenience of class struggle narratives - ranging from anything like the reactionary subculturalism of Class War to more nuanced approaches inflected with tones borrowed from obscure ultra-left theory (I'm in the latter... I think). Antagonism towards the Left is way too quiet (but not as alien as it appeared to be when I first dealt my hand in anarchist commentary about a year and a half ago - which should be noted, IMO). The critique of political organizations was lost in translation during the skirmishes between organizationalists and clandestinists. Etc. The only aspect of I@ still completely obvious is the attempt to consolidate communist and anarchist praxes. Post-situ theory has made this task more bearable for some.

And wtf is insurrectionism? It's certainly not some mutated vernacular.

Anyways... I've never even thought of the french current as being a post-situ tendency. I've only recently been exposed to the north american pro/post-situ... uh, 'milieu'. Like Bob Black's ranting critique of Vaneigem or Bill Brown's zaniness (i.e., his constant posting of really obscure shit on @news and news updates on the Tarnac 9). Seems even more miserable than the general anarchist milieu (at least the north american rendition of it). The wake left by the hype surrounding TCI, Tiqqun, etc., turned me off to it (even if I was caught up in it for a period of time). Some of Claire Fontaine's theses caught my eye, though.

Social retardation appears to be an imminent threat if I were to abandon my distance from other anarchists.

Lol... in retrospect, that probably came off as a bit harsh. Clarification: I have no interest in saturating my social life with boring anarchist memes, people who roughly share my values but are jackasses, and/or becoming a political zealot who speaks in militant patois every time I undress my intellect for so-and-so to see in all it's naked glory. I will never go to a protest; sit at a table covered in uninteresting propaganda; or talk about how 'anarchy' died in this year, that year, or whatever year and how sad I was to see it go. Etc.

That said, I would be happy to have relationships with other anarchists on the basis of them being people I enjoy being at my side.