Re: [AUT] OUT NOW ON METAMUTE.ORG

["Kurasje Archive" <kurasje@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi ben

 

This sounds very interesting. I am looking forward to see Quadrelli's accounts on the struggles in the 'banlieux' of Paris.

 

J.

www.kurasje.org

 

----- Original Message -----
From: ben@xxxxxxxx
To: "Autonomia, Operaismo, and Class Composition"
Subject: Re: [AUT] OUT NOW ON METAMUTE.ORG
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 00:50:30 -0000 (UTC)


Hi J
Just a quick response, very glad you found Stewart's report interesting.

I found your account of the "Social Rebellion" event very interesting too,
not least because it chimes strongly with a text that we are very excited
to be publishing in english - hopefully in the next week or so. It's by
Emilio Quadrelli and translated by Matthew Hyland. Apart from Yves
Coleman's reporting during and immediately after the revolt in France,
perhaps, it's the only text of its kind, to my knowledge.

it's based around a series of extensive interviews with what i shall for
the sake of brevity call activists (leaders? organisers? guerillas?
analysts? - all the above apply in different degrees) who, unlike the
majority of the left, were indeed there in the banlieux, some of them
acknowledged leaders of the insurrections. This text makes it clear that
we haven't really begun to understand what was going on in the 'hot
autumn'.

In fact the spontaneity v left-wing intervention/support opposition is
misleading, though up till now i, like you perhaps, had viewed it as a
spontaneous uprising as against an organised movement - one of the very
misconceptions quadrelli demolishes (cf Moulier-Boutang's patronising and
racist account).

By Quadrelli and his interviewees account the revolt was actually highly
organised and indeed the result of planning, albeit a process with the
complexity and depth of - as Quadrelli claims it was/is - an (ongoing)
endo-colonial guerilla war.

In brief, his text draws our attention to the extent of media
disinformation at every level, subsuming the left and the proponents of
the 'multitude' as well as traditional parties etc etc; it shows the
extent to which the military action of the blacks (and he insists on this
category) was coordinated with the support of the majority of those in the
banlieux - it was not the brute ('bare life') effusion of some adolescent
macho fringe. further, that the guerilla 'military' and their leadership
included many women, some of whose testimony and analysis appears in the
article.

I wont go on because there is too much to say and the text says it far
better than my paraphrase, obviously, but i just wanted to let you know
it's forthcoming and because I think it will turn the way we look at these
events upside down (even those most sympathetic to an understanding of the
revolt as political, not a mere cry for inclusion).

I believe that the group you mention ("Movement of the Suburbs and the
Immigrants" - I don't have the article at hand to give you the correct
name, sounds right to me)as participating in the Copenhagen conference are
among those discussed by quadrelli as an important force. their contempt
for the left - particularly the post-autonomist Multitude-reading,
Negri-regurgitating academic rank and file, is visceral and by Quadrelli's
account very well-founded. (cf his 'Centres and Peripheries - Left
Snobbery and radical right' - also translated by Matthew Hyland on Mute)

i'll shut up now but i can't wait to see what people will make of this
essay, and i will send you a copy as soon as it's out. apologies again if
this sounds like brazen plugging, but i guess you'll have some idea now
why i think the article's important.

thanks again for your response and news about this conference!
best,
ben



Kurasje Archive said:
> Hi there I like the account from your visit in Copenhagen and am sorry to
> have missed this conference of the Situationist Movement in Scandivia -
> I didn't know that such things still excists/continues. I went to another
> meeting the same place, i.e. Folkets Hus (Peoples House) on Stengade just
> recently - under the title: "Social rebellion - in Copenhagen and
> Paris". Some swedish comrades had arranged a tour in Scandinavia for
> representatives of some French "Movement of the Suburbs and the
> Immigrants" or some "Forum social des Quartiers populaires" (?). Those
> folks talked about the spontaneus riots in Paris and other cities in 2005
> and their following activities confronting the the French authorities.
> Really a funny meeting somehow. There were only a few very young persons
> who could have come from the Jagtvej 69-house, and some others whom I
> think are more or less 'professional'/'established' 'autonomists'
> connected to this recent struggle. Apart from that were some local and
> generally interested people, like myself. The funny part of this was the
> contrast between the expectations of most of the participants and the
> messages delivered from the French speaker: The French speaker explained
> the riots of the Parisian suburbs as something really spontaneous and
> exploding out of an unexpected nowhere. At first the Danish
> 'professional' 'autonomists' didn't understand that such mass activity
> could have happened without some sort of preparation - they had just
> been engaged in years of general preparations around the Jagtvej-house.
> The French speaker continued and explained that during the riots nobody
> from the established 'left' political scene did anything. The local
> 'autonomists' were surprised: "Didn't any of our folks support and
> contribute to your struggles at all ?" Here the translator had to clear
> up with the audience the meaning of 'our folks' and got the reply that
> the question was if not this spontaneous struggle was somehow supported
> by local French 'autonomists' like themselves. The answer from the French
> comrade was killing: In the first instance the riots were spontaneous and
> the French 'autonomists' or anyone else on the political 'left scene' had
> newer shown any interest or presence in the daily life of suburbs of
> Paris. The event was simply exploding and those who were not there were
> not part of it. Afterwards lots of political groups and 'autonomists'
> came for 'rescue'. To the local youngsters of the rebellion all of these
> were only 'paternalist' outsiders. They were only trying to 'save their
> souls' by learning them some 'lessons' about what their struggle was all
> about. Another related theme was that of defining the meaning of
> 'autonomism': Confronted with the presence of some very convinced
> 'autonomists' from the rather provinsial Copenhagen-scene this guy from
> the Parisian suburbs made it clear that in France at least there were no
> real 'autonomists'. Those who present themselves as 'autonomists' have no
> real idea or perspective behind their attitudes. He didn't want to
> generalize, but in France 'autonomism' was only a superficial attitude
> without any interest and any importance to real socal conflicts of
> society. I justed listneded and had my difficulties not laughing loud
> from time to time. Representatives of social rebellion in Copenhagen and
> Paris were confronted - hopefully for development. J.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ben Seymour"
> To: "'Autonomia, Operaismo, and Class Composition'"
> Subject: [AUT] OUT NOW ON METAMUTE.ORG
> Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:18:57 +0100
>
>
> Hi, hope one or both of these stories will be of interest to some
> people on this list - excuse the spamming.
> Ben
>
>
> M | U | T | E | __ rrrrrread it!
>
> ______________________________________________25 April 07 _
>
>
> OUT NOW ON METAMUTE.ORG:
>
> The End of Copenhagen?
>
> by Stewart Home
>
> The Situationists and the Creative Class are neck and neck in the
> competition
> for most mythologised ?avant garde?. In riot-torn Copenhagen at the
> end of last
> month the two converged. While the conference There's Life After
> Death ?
> Scandinavian Situationism in Perspective was laying to rest
> delusions about the
> SI, partisans of the creative class seized on the riots as a
> victory for the new creative
> vanguardists. Stewart Home rattles some cage
>
> http://www.metamute.org/en/End-of-Copenhagen
>
> *
>
> The Circular Story of Black Arts Policy
>
> by Geoff Cox
>
> Richard Hylton's recent book The Nature of the Beast: Cultural
> Diversity and the
> Visual Arts Sector indicts the multiple failures of state backed
> multiculturalism through
> a fine-combed history of visual arts policy in the UK. In this
> adaptation of a talk given at
> the launch of the book, Geoff Cox reads off the charges
>
> http://www.metamute.org/en/Foreclosing-The-Nature-of-the-Beast
>
> *
>
> SUBSCRIBE TO MUTE MAGAZINE HERE:
> http://www.metamute.org/taxonomy/term/3480
>
> FOR A LIST OF STOCKISTS:
> http://www.metamute.org/node/254
>
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