Category Archives: theory

Militant Research–Madrid

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It is one thing to call for activist research, it’s altogether something else to carry it out. There are a number of interesting existing models. They seem to have in common a willingness to work outside the formal structures of the university, to work on projects, rather than within disciplines, and to publish their work freely and open source on and offline.

One example is the Madrid collective Observatorio Metropolitano [OM from now on]. Their work was presented last night at 16 Beaver by Ana Méndez de Andés, an architect and urban planner who teaches Urban Design at the Universidad Europea de Madrid. In the announcement for the event, OM were described as:

a militant research group that utilizes investigations and counter-mapping to look into the metropolitan processes of precarious workers, migrants, and militants taking place in Madrid, brought on by crisis, gentrification, speculation and displacement.

In her presentation, Méndez de Andés described how the group had come together in 2007 at the height of the speculative building boom in Madrid to try and discover exactly what was happening in the city. With disarming wit, she commented that it was an advantage that Madrid was seen as a provincial city, lacking the cosmopolitan identity of Barcelona, because it was easier to examine the city’s changes.

The group was intellectual but not academic, interested in carrying out what she called “militant research,” which she distinguished from activism. In their Manifesto for Madrid, OM define this as being [these are my no doubt dreadful translations: do consult the originals before quoting!] :

Militant investigations which will bring the knowledge and policy tools necessary to address these enormous processes of change. To build a communication space between members, technicians and stakeholders, and above all between small projects (or embryonic projects) of militant research already occurring in the city and the social movements.

Méndez de Andés joked that she herself was not very good at organizing events, so she had stuck to analysis. Their research generates both substantial books, 400 pages long, and short, accessible pamphlet-length works available free as PDFs. The Manifesto strikes the signature note for OM projects in its denunciation of

the destruction of the elementary bases, which make possible common life (la vida en común) in a city like Madrid.

Written at the height of the boom, the Manifesto was able to visualize the transformation of Madrid into a global city at the expense of the creation of a marginalized class of people living precariously, the undermining of social provisions for health, environment and education and (as we all now know) spectacular debt.

Banner from Traficantes website

The related open-source copyleft publishing venture, Traficantes de Sueños does not define itself as a publisher:

It is, however, a project, in the sense of ‘commitment’, which aims to map the constituent lines of other forms of life.

Central to this venture is “freedom of access to knowledge.” All publications are available either as downloads or as books. Some people buy all the books as a means of supporting the project, regardless of whether they intend to read them. Publications are generated rapidly so that they can contribute to the ongoing discussion and debate within the social movements, rather than reflect on them later (I was recently asked by contrast to contribute to a collection on OWS, bearing in mind, as the call put it, that Zuccotti Park will be ancient history by the time of publication).

In La crisis que viene (The Coming Crisis) [March, 2011] OM see the the financial crisis as a prelude to the unrelenting privatization of the commons across Europe. For OM, there is:

a constant underlying all measures: interest and financial benefits go first. Although this will cost the immediate and future welfare of entire populations. Although this will involve the dismantling of pension systems and the decline of social rights acquired over decades. Although such policies will cause the whole economy to slide, limping along the path of stagnation. The next decade offers us no more than a new round of privatization of services and social guarantees, a greater decline in wages, and a social crisis which is still known only in its embryonic stage.

By October 2011, this pessimism was offset by the possibilities of the new social movements across Europe. Crisis and Revolution in Europe argues that, to quote the poet Holderlin,

“there grows what also saves.” The antidote has been accompanied by citizens’ movements now extend across most of the continent. This is the 15M, the movement of Greek squares, the French strikers and the indignados in a growing number of countries. It is in this work in progress of political reinvention, where you can find a social outlet to the crisis, in addition to rescuing that which really matters: democracy and European society.

Their analysis is now being translated into Portuguese, English, Greek and Italian in order to create a transEuropean dialogue about the crisis and build towards transEuropean social movements, perhaps even strikes.

No-one yesterday asked the quintessential Anglo question about funding. I took it that there the project was sustained by a mix of commitment, donation and the blanket subscriptions.

While there are many nascent publishing ventures using online and low-cost publishing in the Anglophone world, I don’t think we have anything to quite match this: though I would love to be corrected! Too many of the new digital publishing ventures spend so much time accommodating the demands of tenure, the one per cent of academia, that the online virtues of speed and accessibility get lost. Too much of the Occupy research is about the vicissitudes of Occupy and not the collective issues that brought us into the movement.

That said, where the Spanish have led the way before, we have also followed from the “Take the Square” movement to Occupy Wall Street. Of those who are still reading at this point, I bet many of us are intellectuals of one sort or another. How about it? A collective militant/activist research project(s)?

Take 2: Activist Research

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It seems that  my title “activism is the new theory” was somewhat misunderstood–or better, open to misunderstanding. I’ve had interesting comments via FB, email and word of mouth that made it seem worth following up the post today (by the way, if you feel nervous about posting a comment to the blog, you can email a comment to me and I can post it anonymously). If you’re not nervous do leave comments where everyone can see them:)

Objection one: isn’t “activist theory” just praxis by another name? Perhaps; but with a couple of caveats. Praxis is often described as something like the interaction of theory and practice, often with an able-ist quote of the “theory without practice is blind” variety attached. Or you can cite Marx: “the philosophers have only interpreted the world–the point, however, is to change it.”

For all that, the philosophy of praxis has tended to be more philosophy than praxis, especially in university contexts. On the other hand, I think it is perhaps the moment to leave philosophy to the philosophers. By suggesting that activism is the new theory, I didn’t mean it should replace theory. In rather compressed fashion, I meant that the highly privileged space afforded to “theory” in the academy might be replaced by activism, providing we take that to mean the “interface where we ‘do’ theory.”

Objection two: isn’t this is all wildly optimistic? Again, perhaps so. But if you look at the posts on debt, especially student debt, I am doubtful that you’ll find me so starry-eyed. I have spent my entire working life under the rhetorical shadow of crisis, from Thatcherism to the War on Terror and now the global financial crisis. I’ve been in left and social democratic political parties, pressure groups and even did some work for the Obama campaign.

I think this moment is different. The crisis is such that even as neoliberal austerity is clearly failing, a growth policy would only exacerbate climate change that is setting drought and temperature records daily. I’m still not pessimistic, because the global movement of which Occupy is a part has had more torque than anything I’ve seen. The very violence unleashed by the cops from coast to coast suggests that this movement gets under their skin in a different way. Once we give in to the pleasures of pessimism, though, it’s easy to read this as a “moment,” perhaps a transition. Since things started to move during the Arab Spring, it’s seemed to me that this is it–either there is change now or there isn’t for some long time to come.

I don’t pretend that this is all my idea. The 16 Beaver Group today circulated a very interesting text from 2005, a response from the Argentine Colectivo Situaciones to a set of questions from the Madrid-based Precarias a la Deriva, Precarious Women in the Dérive (Drift). Note that they were writing after the great wave of militancy in 2001 had passed. The Colectivo outlined their strategy of “research militancy” situated in tension with the “‘sad militant'” and the “detached, unchangeable ‘university researcher.'” Their goal:

a practice capable of articulating involvement and thought.

In a time when the phantasmagoria of common ground has dispersed, idealization of all kinds is problematic:

We think that the labor of research militancy is linked to the construction of a new perception.

This is precisely the project of my own work in all arenas. At the same time–because this project is after all not (yet) a collective one–I also agree with the Precarias

We consider as a primary problem to ‘start from oneself,’ as one among many, in order to ‘get out of oneself’ (both of the individual ego and the radical group to which one belongs) and encounter with any other resisting people [in order to] politicize life from within.

Research radicalism, a feminist politics of immediate experience, the necessity of a certain commitment, the awareness of the an-archive of refusal, all in a moment where uncertainty creates opportunity for new ways of thinking and doing–that’s what I mean by “activism is the new theory.” Call it what you like.

Activism is the New Theory

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Can we say that activism is the new theory? Not the replacement for theory, not the subject of theory but the interface where we “do” theory. As this project is today one quarter complete, a look around seems in order. I feel change, everywhere. I feel it most where I try to think, wherever that is: that place in the twilight of the shadow city where things look different.

I’m thinking back to Ruth Gilmore saying in her 2010 Presidential Address to the American Studies Association that “policy is the new theory.” She did mean “replacement for” (in part at least), I suspect. However, given the paralysis of the existing political process that began in November 2010 with the Republican takeover of the House and many state legislatures, such a move has not seemed promising.

With the wholesale conversion of the judicial branch to political theater, as evidenced by the ludicrous Supreme Court “hearings” on health care, the old stand-by of legal activism also seems foreclosed. Let’s pause to dwell on the rank misogyny of Scalia and his ilk, insisting that, like a bad mother, the government might force real men to eat broccoli. The legal and economic ripostes are beside the point–health care makes men into wimps, according to the Stand Your Ground right.

So in saying that activism might be the new theory, I’m not saying something as simple as “we can only learn in the streets.” I am suggesting that a certain kind of High Theory, so privileged over the past two decades, and so masculine in its exaltation of rigor, is demonstrably (as it were) not the way to get to grips with the crisis. For example, the widespread suggestion amongst theorists of a certain kind that we should read St. Paul–really? I’m just not going to do that.

For Jack Halberstam, the alternative is “low theory,” an approach that he sees as a mix of Stuart Hall’s Gramscian concept of theory as a “detour en route to something else,” the Benjaminian stroll and the Situationist dérive. Add to this Rancière’s concept of education as emancipation, learning what it is that we need to learn, and there’s a very dynamic way of thinking to hand. Unsurprisingly, these approaches have also featured widely across Occupy 2012.

What is surprising to an extent is the new viability of anarchist approaches in the critical context. When I was writing The Right to Look, I spent a good deal of time worrying about whether I could discuss anarchist interpretations of history, the general strike, Rosa Luxemburg and so on and be taken “seriously.” I wonder why I worried now. On the one hand, who cares if the seriousness police mark you down as one of them? On the other, the reason those ideas seemed important was a mark of the crisis in which we were already immersed. The an-archive is newly open for thinking.

At the same time, I’d be surprised if anyone who has been reading frequently here thinks of this as a theory project as such. I think of it as having a series of threads, one of which might be labelled “theory,” but which would not, as it were, hold up on its own. It gets energy from, and is sustained by, the interaction with a set of activities that can be designated “activism.”

The funny thing about being an activist is no-one really thinks of themselves as being one. Those that do probably get paid to do so, which is not quite what I have in mind. I think there’s a distinction between “being an activist” and learning from activism. In this sense, the current form of activism takes all of the activities and actions that we do every day as being the site of a new politics and a new invitation to theorize.

This invitation is about making connections, finding histories, creating tools, and hearing new voices. It is also about refusing: refusing the market view of the world, refusing to “move on, there’s nothing to see here,” refusing to give up, refusing to just accept that in the end it’s all about the [Democratic/Labor/Socialist/whatever] Party.

It’s not about being the cleverest kid in the class, showing how much we know, upstaging or undercutting others with ideas. For me, it was enabled by Occupy but it is not in any way limited to that frame. In some ways, it’s already moved out of the encampments into the networks and beyond the control of all the police trying to contain it.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the next nine months will bring.

What is Occupy Theory Now?

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The impetus towards this project began with a piece I called “Occupy Theory,” written last October, about what the Occupy movement was doing to theory. In keeping with the moment, I kept any resolution under suspension: “Occupy theory is what you do as you occupy.” I went on to discuss Judith Butler’s talk at OWS that she later expanded and published in the first issue of Tidal, the Occupy Theory journal, under the title “For and Against Precarity.”

Those days seem strangely far away now. Here to cheer us up is the second issue of Tidal with its subtitle: Occupy Theory, Occupy Strategy. It was launched yesterday to an exuberant crowd off Grand Street in Brooklyn, where it was claimed that the interaction of theory with Occupy was one of the distinctive features of the movement. That’s an interesting idea–in many ways this project is about how you might use all the discursive practice assembled under the name “theory” for the past twenty years in the new context.

Tidal is a testament to the energies of the new movement. It’s thirty-two pages long, full color, free and 60,000 copies have been printed. Yesterday I saw people all over downtown distributing them. Inside are essays by Butler, Spivak, and Marina Sitrin, as well as by as key figures from the movement, writing collectively and individually. In this and following posts, I’m going to read the two issues against each other, measuring differences and transformations, as we gather breath for a new moment this Spring. Let’s say out loud in the affectless context of the Internet that I love Tidal, it’s a great project.

First issue of Tidal

You know that there’s a difference by looking at the front covers. On the first edition (above), a panoramic montage of Occupiers at Liberty (top) and on the Brooklyn Bridge (bottom). At bottom left we can see two arrests, one woman raising her head to shout or scream. But there are photographers recording this, three we can see plus whoever took the image we’re looking at. Inside the cover, a sign reads: “I still can’t eat GDP but I can see climate change out my window.” That’s the clarity of Occupy.

Cover of Tidal Issue 2

The new cover is a single shot of the D17 action when OWS tried to set up a new site at Duarte Street but were thwarted by the police and the church. Almost everyone in the photograph is either a cop or taking a picture. Only a handful of people are pressing the fence that divides the image and appears to be at the point of collapse. You wonder now if a few more people had put the cameras down and pushed, what might have happened? Inside, we see a line of Spanish police with multi-colored paint on their riot shields.

In both issues, the journal opens with a “Communiqué,” a title that unusually seems to pay homage to the Weather Underground, but it may just be a coincidence. In the first edition, the Communiqué used the language of the spectacle to render the unreality of Wall Street:

We were born into a world of ghosts and illusions that have haunted our minds our entire lives…We have no clear idea how life should really feel…We have come to Wall Street as refugees from this native dreamland, seeking asylum in the actual.

The disciplinary institution this Communiqué seemed most aimed at was the university. Projects for “People’s Dissertations” and an opening of higher education to community and educationally marginalized groups argued for a proliferation of educational action:

To liberate our education must include, then, expropriating our ideas from systemic hierarchical misevaluation.

By contrast, the new edition opens with the experience of jail, police violence and a sense of breach of the social contract:

When you’re sitting in jail, the topic of justice can’t help but come up.

Jail is that which, without knowing it, we had already demanded. The figurative language is closer to Benjamin here than Debord, although no citations are given. In discussing the unnamed Thing (system or apparatus) to which we have apparently consigned ourselves in some Terms and Conditions clause, Tidal write:

The Thing resembles a ship that we’re all on together. Not a cruise ship exactly, but more of a steam ship/trawler. We have a captain who steers while we shovel coal and swab decks. …The captain stares at the impending doom on the horizon and grins ecstatically.

Here is an Ahab for the world of finance capital, one without a White Whale to hunt. Unseeing, “he uses his eyes offensively to project what he wants to see on the world.” In the academic world, this is what I have called “visuality,” the way that power visualizes history for itself and convinces us that it is right.

We might extend the figure. Moby-Dick has often been used as a metaphor for industrial capitalism with the wretched whales being dismembered to serve the modern need for light. It’s often forgotten that the most destructive whale hunting was done after Second World War, not by the sail ships, but by nations in search of cheap calories to feed war-damaged populations. The whales, social and language-using animals like ourselves, were invisible to the military-industrial machine.

The Caribbean radical intellectual C. L. R. James wrote a wonderful study of Moby-Dick, while imprisoned at Ellis Island by immigration officials. Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In (1952) initiated a way of seeing ships both as the epitome of capitalist hierarchy, and as the site for potential and actual rebellion. It is worth remembering in this context that the very word “strike” comes from the maritime world, meaning to take down sail as a mutiny. The sailing ship was the first modern institution where the command line was instrumentalized: a highly specific technical language initiated changes in the function of the machine. Unless it crashed. Or was taken over by pirates.

The interface with present-day digital technologies is clear. As Tidal put it:

In our age, the capacity for connection, self-education and self-cooperation has exploded. This offers a window of opportunity with its unspoken, unresolved question: who will take and shape the bulk of the resulting potential?…The window will not remain open long before being overwhelmed by claims from those in power.

Here, then, is a different countervisualizing that might be possible for those of us in “jail cells, in city squares, on Wall Street, from every space we occupy,” a look out of the window, created in part by the connectivity enabled by, but not limited to, digital spaces and machines.

What might we see there?

May Day poster

  • No work
  • No chores
  • No banking
  • No shopping
  • No school

MayDay 2012.

Next: demands and horizontalism.