Re: AUT: RE: Re: imaginary communities

[Steve Wright <pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

".: s0metim3s :." wrote:

> No, I don't think there's one, shared space among
> activists ('older' and 'newer'). But there is a
> stratification that similarly arises in the
> ascription to oneself of a revolutionary
> consciousness and claims for recognition, however
> remodulated by given and newer forms of
> labour/industry, and at whichever precise point
> those claims for recognition might be located
> along the political-juridical line: the state /
> emergent state forms / state-in-waiting.

Can you say more about these terms?

> But less obvious ones, esp among those who tend to
> overtly position themselves as part of 'a new way
> of doing things.' One of the earliest
> manifestations of the latter (on the eve of the
> s11/anti-WEF protests) was the expression of
> frustration at the 'lack' of recognition that
> arises in decentralised protests.  Blithely
> erasing the concrete debates that occured at the
> time about the connection between police violence
> and mediation, the only thing that seemed to be at
> stake was whether or not certain people and groups
> had manged to accrue their sufficient
> remunerations of social-political capital. Now,
> it's pretty obvious that people wanted recognition
> beyond simply their own activities -- they wanted
> 'positioning.'  This is a 'frustration' that
> various people have tried to scratch, in numerous
> ways, for the last four years. And it's a
> 'frustration' (or desire) that's hardly ever
> linked to particular forms of labour/industry:
> academic, cultural, media, etc.  This is the bit
> that I'm pretty sure will go unexplored -- too
> close for comfort.

You may be right, but it migh be worth trying to unpack all the same.

Does the piece that Mark posted offer some clues as to how to approach
this?

A propos of nothing, I'm not sure if anyone has seen the sort of
putdowns in passing that the likes of Negri and Bologna produced in the
seventies concerning 'intellectuals' (both in the sense of academics -
which both then were, albeit not conventional ones - and of people who
assigned themselves a privileged role in understanding the world around
them). Some of Bologna's thoughts are in The Tribe of Moles, others are
scattered around the place. Negri's comments I recall above all from an
interview with Giorgio Bocca from 1979, where he said 'personally I hate
intellectuals ...'

Steve



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