RE: AUT: antiwar movement

[chris wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Angela,
>
> Maybe it's a case of insisting that
> communicability cannot be the principal aim of
> political practice.

This is interesting.  I had never assumed that communicability was a
principal... aim... of political practice.  Either there is
communicability based on some shared aspect of social relations or there
is not.  At best, we can enhance or inhibit, but revolutionaries, I
don't think, can make overcome certain social barriers.

That is, communicability as a
> tacit agreement on the framework which makes
> communication possible.  This is precisely
> modelled on the market: products circulate within
> a framework in which they are all measurable,
> exchangeable and communicable precisely be
> reference to the universal standard.  What makes
> something no longer a product is when it cannot be
> measured, does not circulate within this
> framework, is incommunicable.

Hmmm....  What is what makes something not a commodity is that it does
not have an inherent objectivity?  What if a product of human labor has
a universal standard as a product of human labor, and is directly
social?  After all, we are not communicating with most people except
through a commodity, ie indirectly.  Our social bond with most people is
not conscious or direct, but extends only through exchange relations.

In the abscence of exchange relations, are we in a state of
incoomunicability?  If so, what would that mean?

When difference
> isn't just figured as a difference of 'taste' or
> 'opinion' relegated to the 'private' sphere of
> consumption but as irreducible difference.

Please continue, I am not sure I understand that.

> Chris:
>
> : So why are these projects bound
> : together by language, per se?  Not that
> : I am defending or rejecting the notion
> : of projects.  Why language
> : instead of reason or some other such?
>
> Can you have reason outside of language?  Or,
> isn't reason a particular kind of language?

I object to the reduction of reason or logic to language.  Logic or
Reasonmay be expressed through language, but it is not language which
constitutes logical relations or reason.  It seems to me to be a
collapsing of a more mediated relationship.  I admit, it strikes me as
completely redcutive.  Let me chew on it a bit and I will try and
explain it a bit better later.

> : the equality of all commodities before
> : money, before the abstract
> : equality of the individual under
> : capital, the citizen to the state
>
> Indeed.  And might it not be that this abstract
> equality is always attended by hierarchy,
> division, discrete markets, competition as a
> condition of its actual functioning?  That it's
> abstraction which actually assumes the requirement
> for the fortification of identity, that, for eg,
> without the latter in the form of nationalism the
> actual, affective adherence of citizens to
> particular nation-states would falter, etc?

Not sure what you mean.  Indeed, the abstract equality of the citizen or
of money is tied to those things.  But where are you going...?

> The practice of what's been called 'hit and run
> activism' (ie: deliberately impermanent
> organsiational forms) has a lot of going for it,
> two reasons being are that it makes it more
> difficult to furnish the basis for either fixed
> identities which are then defended as a condition
> of maintaining those organisations or providing
> easy markets for (political) capital, enclosure,
> etc.
>
> There are other reasons, but in this context,
> those two are worth noting.

And yet this almost seems like activism in the anti-intellectual sense.
There is something to be said for a continuity of shared ideas and
practices, not the least of which is that it takes time to build
relations of trust and to accomplish more than spectacular acts.
Otherwise, what you are really talking about are little groups of
activists who share some implicit political agreement from which other
people are locked out unless they get into the social milieu of the
activists.  My experience with the Direct Action Network is exactly that
the informal hierarchies Thiago critiqued appeared and actually made it
impossible for people with kids or who did not drink or who were working
full time to participate, leaving the whole thing dominated by young
activist types with no ties to anyone but each other, creating their own
little ghetto.

Cheers,
Chris



     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---