Saturday, October 29, 2011

Session 6: Eagleton, session 7: Shukaitis

On Sunday, October 30, we'll be discussing Terry Eagleton's Utopia and its Opposites.

The text for Monday, October 31 is a chapter from Stevphen Shukaitis' Imaginal Machines: Questions of Aeffective Resistance.

Sessions start at 11:00 in the artist's tent at Occupy Amsterdam. Hope to see you there!

Friday, October 28, 2011

Occupy en het Politieke Populisme volgens Merijn Oudenampsen

Op Donderdag 27 Oktober hebben we naar aanleiding van de tekst 'Politiek Populisme: spreken tot de verbeelding' van Merijn Oudenampsen gediscussieerd. Aanwezig waren: Alexander Nieuwenhuis, Merijn Oudenampsen, Samuel Vriezen, Klaas van Gorkum, Iratxe Jaio, Katja van Driel, Wouter Osterholt, Ernst van den Hemel, Daniel Rovers, Matthijs Ponte, Huib Haye van der Werf en Elke Uitentuis.

Volgens Merijn wordt het populisme irrationaliteit toegeschreven maar doet deze benadering geen recht aan de effectiviteit van de verbeelding van deze politieke stroming. Populistische politici zetten een verbeelding van de wereld in die teruggrijpt op het verleden. Zo maken zij gebruik van bepaalde ijkpunten in de politieke geschiedenis om er vervolgens een draai aan te geven. Ze eigenen belangrijke gebeurtenissen en symbolen toe die onderdeel zijn van de collectief nationaal geheugen en scheppen op deze manier een wereldbeeld dat zeer herkenbaar is. Door de historische gebeurtenissen binnen het kader van de populistische agenda te plaatsen, transformeren ze de betekenis en zorgen ze ervoor dat de identificatie met de desbetreffende symboliek zich steeds meer beperkt tot hun eigen specifieke doelgroep.

Er zijn er die beweren dat de politiek met de komst van de populisten democratischer is geworden omdat nu eindelijk de stem van het volk is doorgedrongen tot de politiek. Het is een visie die uitgaat van de autonomie van het individu. Alsof het volk een stem heeft die zonder beïnvloeding van buitenaf tot stand komt en propagandatechnieken geen enkel effect zouden hebben. Dat is een fantasma. Opiniepeilingen volgen het verhaal dat door de media wordt verspreid. Door handig gebruik te maken van symboolpolitiek en media vormen populisten een narratief voor Henk en Ingrid en andere hardwerkende Nederlanders.

De reactie van de oppositie op het populisme is vaak reactionair. Terwijl de populisten zich richten op een imaginair wereldbeeld, grijpt de oppositie terug op realisme. Dat maakt dat de oppositie conservatief afsteekt tegen de bravoure van de populisten die durven te breken met een vaststaande orde en de vastgeroeste patronen. We mogen een gebrek aan voorstellingsvermogen binnen de emancipatorische politiek concluderen. De vraag is nu of de Occupy beweging kan breken met deze machteloze houding en een eigen narratief kan creëren? En zou dit narratief dan in plaats van naar achteren te kijken, een blik op de toekomst kunnen werpen?

Rond de Occupy beweging zijn wel leuzen te horen die in zekere zin populistisch zijn, in de trant van ‘Het systeem deugt niet’ en ‘Het is goed dat het eens gezegd wordt’. Een andere overeenkomst is de weigering onderdeel uit te maken van de parlementaire kliek. Toch onderscheidt de Occupy beweging zich van de populistische retoriek door met nadruk identiteitsloos te zijn. Er is geen sprake van een voorman die voordoet dat hij de stem van het volk representeert. De beweging is meerduidig en ontwijkt daarmee de fictieve eenduidigheid die bijvoorbeeld Wilders ons voorspiegeld. De vraag is hoe lang deze openheid behouden kan worden. Is er een mogelijkheid te voorkomen dat de beweging zich kanaliseert en een samenhangend verhaal gaat produceren?

Door de vaagheid en het procesmatige karakter kunnen velen zich onder de paraplu van de beweging scharen. Wanneer een samenhangender verhaal zal worden geformuleerd is er een grote kans dat we vervallen in het sociaal-democratische begrip van pluriformiteit: een harmonisch stelsel van verschillende entiteiten. In de praktijk is gebleken dat binnen de representatieve democratie er veel mensen buiten het kader van de pluriformiteit vallen. Alleen de onderhandelaar die mee wil gaan met de mening van de ander kan binnen deze structuur gehoord worden. De Occupy beweging staat voor de uitdaging de meerduidigheid te communiceren en sexy te maken voor een groot publiek zonder deze af te kaderen of in te perken. Daarnaast is er een uitdaging gelegen in het opheffen van de depolitiserende werking van de onderhandeling die tot een consensus moet leiden. Hoe bestendig je een continuïteit van engagement wanneer sterk polariserende factoren, zoals het populisme, minder machtig zullen zijn?

We zullen vorm moeten geven aan iets dat geen vorm kent. 99% is het beeld dat op dit moment uitgedragen wordt. Interessant is dat het geen beeld betreft, maar een getal. Het is een abstract gegeven dat zich moeilijk laat duiden. De vage contour van de paraplu dient zich niet scherper af te tekenen als dat nu het geval is. Het utopisch denken wordt dan ook vermeden terwijl de zoektocht naar een nieuwe mogelijkheid wel degelijk centraal staat. Men wil voorkomen dat de mogelijkheid wordt vernauwd tot een enkelvoudig pad. Toch zou het goed zijn om een toekomstig beeld te kunnen schetsen. Een toekomstig beeld dat recht doet aan de fragiliteit, de meerduidigheid en de procesmatige aanpak van de Occupy beweging.

Elke Uitentuis

Reading Nick Land: Meltdown

Nick Land's Meltdown is an intriguing text, written in the mid-90s, which reads at times like a prediction for our time - yet at the same time, it is very marked by the time in which it was written.

The text paints a picture of a collapse of the world as we know it, which in the process changes humanity as such, under the pressure of what Land calls a "technocapital singularity". He seems to envision the world capitalist/technological system as a huge entity with unpredictable, even anti-humanistic behavior patterns, all its own. It follows a logic that is proper to it, fueled by technological developments run out of control, leading to a moment of radical collapse, which at the same time heralds fundamental changes in the human perspective on life:

Level-1 or world space is an anthropomorphically scaled, predominantly vision-
configured, massively multi-slotted reality system that is obsolescing very rapidly.
Garbage time is running out.
Can what is playing you make it to level-2?


Meltdown is an apocalyptic text, reading like a feverish roller coaster ride, a kind of update of the Book of Revelations that mixes the critiques of capitalism & schizophrenia from Deleuze & Guattari with imagery from the state-of-the-art of science and science fiction as it was in the 90s. The feel is very cyberpunk.

As such, the text feels curiously accurate and contemporary on the one hand - he seems to be talking about a huge crisis coming from a world-encompassing capital system run out of control, quite like what we are experiencing today - but somewhat dated at the same time, since it follows a mode of description that felt very exciting in the 90s but feels a bit different today. Our contemporary technology makes our lives quite close to a life with "virtual reality" as it was imagined in the 80s and 90s; but no longer does this feel exciting and adventurous, but rather a bit mundane.

Land's text, for example, seems to assume that weird urban subcultures will have come to determine the state of global cultural schizophrenia. Cyberpunk depicted grimy formless metropolitan sprawls inhabited by hackers, punks and cyborgs. It did not predict the streamlined friendliness of Apple and other tendencies of culture towards normalization and cleanliness. Land's view in particular does not contain any sense that the populist, culturalist, inward- and backward-looking tendency, that we have been seeing in many places (from the American Tea Party to the Dutch Freedom Party), which may well be a direct reaction to the revolutionary radicalness of said "technocapital singularity".

Land's text is interesting to read for its utopian interpretation of capitalist/technological mayhem. The text seems to revel in what, on the surface, might look like an unsettling and dystopian view of technology and capital; in fact, Land expects total transformation and change to come from it. He seems to see a utopia to exist within the meltdown itself. "Level 2", the anti-human utopia that is to come, is merely hinted at; the text, which promises an all-effacing, final singularity, itself actually does not finish, but ends "To be continued". An alternative to the capitalist logic described is thus hinted at but does not seem to be the central point of the text itself.

Could capitalism keep collapsing forever, and thereby also keep alive the promise of a Something Else that might have to come after the collapse? At this session of the reading group, the question was posed if the fictions of meltdown & collapse, that have been with us for quite a few years and that seemed like exciting fictions at the time, may not have prepared the ideological ground for a politics today, that takes such imminent collapse for granted, and uses that to sell the necessity of austerity measures to a domesticated general electorate.

On the other hand, a sense of apocalyptic collapse may have been a symptom of capitalism from the very start. From at least the tulip mania of the 17th century onward, there have always been bubbles, there have always been manic accelerations of value and debt. Meltdown as an ideological image might not necessarily be particular to our age, but a constant background, a foundational myth, for capitalism as such. Collapse as capitalism's secret desire.

This is a summary of the discussion held by the Reading At Occupy Amsterdam group on friday october 28. It was a brief session with four people attending.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Sessions 4, 5, 6, 7

Texts for the reading group:

Friday, oct 28: Meltdown by Nick Land.

NB the above link is corrected, it leads to the text of Meltdown itself; the previous link leads to an audio version of the same text.

Saturday, oct 29: The Machinery of Freedom, by David Friedman. We'll not read the entire book but discuss the following sections: (1) In Defense of Property, (2) What is Anarchy? What Is Government? and (3) Police, Courts and Laws - On the Market.

Sunday, october 30: a text on Utopia, by Terry Eagleton - link TBA

Monday, october 31: a text from Imaginal Machines, by Stevphen Shukaitis - link TBA

All sessions start at 11:00 at the large army tent!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Sessions 3, 4, 5

Next session (tomorrow) will be devoted to Merijn Oudenampsen's text, Politiek Populisme: spreken tot de verbeelding.

Friday, we'll discuss Meltdown, philosopher Nick Land's apocalyptic vision of technocapitalist collapse. The text can be found here (alongside a musical version).

Saturday we'll take a look at a section of David Friedman's anarcho-capitalist text, The Machinery of Freedom.

Stay tuned!

Reading The Coming Insurrection, II

This post is a very rough summary of the discussion held by the Reading At Occupy Amsterdam group this morning, nine people attending. This was the final session devoted to The Coming Insurrection. The summary of the first session can be found here. Feel free to add any additional comments below.


Reading At Occupy Amsterdam takes place in the army tent that was initiated by the artists of the group Het Sociaal Experiment. For these artists, The Coming Insurrection functioned as a starting point. The text is so radical in its address to the reader, that it hardly allows for a comfortable reflective position; it presents a very direct, very urgent call for action. Yet the violent vision that it presents is so extreme as to be hardly acceptable for most readers. The call, however remains; if the reader can not find willingness to follow the Invisible Committee in its radicality, he or she still finds him- or herself forced to formulate an activist answer of his/her own.

What TCI does an admirable job of mainly is to show the untenability of the capitalist social order in its present form. It does not do so by presenting a very profound economical analysis, but rather by painting an extreme picture of the symptoms of this order and their unlivability. Possibly, the best way to read TCI is for its satyrical potential.

Even though the text does contain some insightful ideas about tactics and a basic call for the establishing of communes, a profound description of the world as it should be (after the violence has run its course) is lacking. With its emphasis on themes like excess production or pillaging, it does seem to keep supposing some social order, that radicals might stand in some parasitical relation to. Even in its activism, which seems to focus very much on the war zones of the contemporary metropolis, such infrastructure is needed if only to articulate the insurrection itself. The question, "But what do we do once all the TGVs have been derailed?" remains unclear.

There is no vision on how to "clean up the mess". Interestingly, by contrast, Occupy is practically all about cleaning up the mess. In a very literal way. The politics of Occupy are most clearly felt by the organization of the General Assemblies themselves, rather than by a fixed agenda. And the General Assemblies are at their most clear and effective when they deal with practical issues of camping, of organizing facilities. In this way, the strongest political message of Occupy is its very existence (and hence, all the calls by the existing political and journalistic classes for a program or a set of demands – let alone for a leader – are next to completely moot). It is precisely the way Occupy manages to keep the squares it occupies clean and livable that constitutes its politics.

However, there remains a feeling that somehow, this politics does not get written. Most of the time, the writing of politics is understood as the writing of demands and programs, or of a clear vision of the world we are working towards. But possibly this is not the most useful kind of document that Occupy might be able to produce. What might well be more interesting would be a manual, or a description, of its modes of operation. Possibly, what might be needed more than a program would be a journal, an anthology of texts produced on the site, or a novel – Walden might be a better model than The Communist Manifesto (or, for that matter, The Coming Insurrection).

At this point, the discussion swerved off into a discussion of nature and self-sufficiency. Being positioned in the centres of cities, Occupy still heavily relies on what the Metropolis (to use the term from TCI) can provide it with. Here, there is some ground to gain for Occupy Amsterdam. For example, the camp does not, as of yet, clearly show a position viz. technology and energy. It would be great if there were a way that Occupy could somehow show the existence of energy sources that are more democratic than the ones that have fueled capitalism in its contemporary form until now (fossil fuels, etc.)

Additional themes discussed included the uncanny possibility that ideologies of nature & self-sufficiency get co-opted by fascist discourses; the equally uncanny affinity between the revolutionary, dissolve-all-borders aspect of The Coming Insurrection and the same aspect of radical capitalism; the distinction that can be made between "capitalism" and "corporatism". We may get back to some of these themes in future sessions.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Second text: Politiek Populisme

On wednesday, the Reading At Occupy Amsterdam group will continue its reading of The Coming Insurrection (see below). On Thursday, we will talk about Merijn Oudenampsen's text, "Politiek Populisme: spreken tot de verbeelding". Please be welcome to join us at 11:00 in the large army tent facing de Beurs!

Reading The Coming Insurrection, I

The reading group started today with a discussion of The Coming Insurrection, by the Invisible Committee. This text was written by an (anonymous) collective of radical thinkers and political agents. The group's base of operations is in a "non-place" in Tarnac, France, in one of the poorest and least developed regions of the country. Here, people associated with this group live on farms, living without a concept of private property, living, working and writing together.

The Coming Insurrection is a manifesto, or possibly a program, consisting of seven chapters of social analysis followed by four chapters of activist prescription. In many respects, the ideas and practice of the Invisible Committee can be compared to that of the Occupy movement, but in crucial aspects, fundamental differences appear.

Thus, both Occupy and the I.C. analyse the contemporary political situation as a crisis of representation. The existing political, and social, institutions (such as parties, lobby groups, unions etcetera) are rejected as vehicles for true, activist politics; both criticize the existing regime of representative politics as out of touch with living reality, and both claim that their activities are closer to a real form of politics, that actually addresses the problems of today. The form this critique takes with the I.C. feels very much like an update of Situationism, with the complete social order being rejected as a falsification of true experience; Occupy seems to address mostly the failures of the system of representational democracy to deal with the radical injustices of contemporary capitalism and its excesses, and to formulate alterative agendas.

However, the nature of what might constitute real political activity differs greatly. The I.C. seems to want to hold a radical outsider position, whereas Occupy is working from within the system. Rural Tarnac versus central town squares, for example. A strongly romantic strain in the I.C. leads it to fetishize an absolute underdog position or radical Verelendung, expecting the new utopia to arise from the insurrection by those who are absolutely without hope in the present system. Hence, a positive valorisation of violence, an interest in the "unprogrammatic" uprisings in the banlieus in '05. Seemingly, the I.C. hopes that acts of aggression against conventionality would somehow liberate an authentic existence from the burdens of capitalist logic, the duty to be an "individual", to be defined by your job, etcetera. It also lends itself best to organization in very small, anarchic groups that act as nuclei of liberated existences, seemingly at war with a very large, abstract, outside "them".

Such elements are completely absent in the Occupy movement, which refuses violence, and seeks to address and include a variety of people that is as large as possible. Though Occupy is attempting to formulate a rejection of capitalist logic as the only valid form of political thinking, its practice does not actively exclude having a position within capitalist society at the same time. For example, the General Assemblies that are held daily are accessible to anybody - one does not need to camp on the terrain to participate - and are held at a time that is convenient, too, for people who hold nine to five jobs: a major contrast with a movement that holds its base in a quite remote, difficult to access, region of the country. Thus, Occupy allows people to exist simultaneously inside and outside the system, and builds towards its own political ideals by defining its own arena alongside that of society.

Finally, the reading group had a discussion of the concept of "work" itself, which is analyzed by the I.C. in the "third circle" of the book. The I.C. holds a rather negative view of work, interpreting it mostly as a social institution of repression: people have the tendency to define themselves as their job, and thus exploit themselves. Possibly, though, the I.C. concept of work is somewhat outmoded. In stressing the categories of "exploitation" and "participation", they seem to work mostly from an old-fashioned model of "work", that is still quite Fordist; their idea of work seems quite blunt in comparison to contemporary Marxist critiques of work in the post-Fordist condition, where the work you do is not merely something that constricts your identity, but where production is itself a form of authentic life. Such more positive notions of what "work" might be seem quite absent from the I.C. text. Instead, the necessity to sometimes do things is acknowledged, as no more than a bare necessity for survival.

Yet to live an alternative life, and giving form to its mode of operation, means working - albeit outside the logic of a "job". This is probably true for the people living in Tarnac, and certainly for those who live in the Occupy camps, as they erect, within public space, their own "non-place" out of thin air.

This is a summary of the discussion held by the Reading At Occupy Amsterdam group this morning, eight people attending. A second session will be devoted to the book tomorrow.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

First session: L'insurrection qui vient/The Coming Insurrection.

On tuesday, october 25 we will start by discussing The Coming Insurrection, or L'insurrection Qui Vient, by the Invisible Committee. We'll start by reading the introduction and the First, Second and Third Circle. We will probably spend two more sessions with this text, which functioned as a key starting point for our hosts, the artists of Sociaal Experiment.

The entire text in English translation can be found here. This page also includes a link to the full original French text in .pdf.

Some related sources in Dutch can be found on the website of the Flemish journal nY. Here is Joost de Bloois translation of Comment Faire, a programmatic text first published in Tiqqun 2. De schaduw van de menigte is the title of De Bloois' essay on the radical poetics of Tiqqun and the Invisible Committee. Finally, there is a critique of this position by Gijsbert Pols and a reply by De Bloois, followed by a very lively exchange between the two authors.

Il n'y a pas de hors-texte, mais il y a bien sûr de hors-tente!

Reading At Occupy Amsterdam is the name of a reading group, meeting on the terrain of Occupy Amsterdam. Starting tuesday, october 25, we will hold brief (one-hour) daily sessions at 11:00, which take place in the tent of Kunstenaars In Occupy Amsterdam – the big army tent to the side facing the actual Beurs itself, which serves as the O.A.-base for the artist collective Sociaal Experiment.

The idea of Reading At Occupy Amsterdam is to read texts within the activist atmosphere of Occupy. We plan to read texts on art, theory and activism and the relation between these fields. We aim for a wide variety of texts, in any genre and from any discipline.

We will read texts for their relationship to what is happening outside the tent, and read our environment for how it relates to the text. We seek to establish dialogues between textual reflection, activism, and the world, by including the situation around us in our readings, and by producing daily summaries of the discussions of the reading group.

On this blog, we will announce texts to be read, with links to .pdf-files of the texts available at least one full day before the session. Furthermore, on this blog we will post the summaries of the discussions.

PARTICIPATION IS OPEN TO ANYBODY INTERESTED - just come to the tent to let us know!