the institute for experimental freedom

Oh yeah, we made a snapback hat

2011-10-07T12:08:00.000-07:00

The Institute for Experimental Freedom is proud to announce the release of the dumbest commodity we've made as of yet. The Coast to Coast Hoodlums (very) limited edition snapback comes as an ode to all y'all who can't stop gettin ignorant. Even though some dummies are talking their stupid mouths, the rest of y'all are holding it down, wil'n out, and keeping your mouths shut. So ya know, if you wanna buy a black hat with a red bill and trim or something, we got you.

Specs:
Black/Red "quality" wool-twill
$ 23.00 USD plus shipping
Check out the sweet close up image with bad photoshop shadowing below.

These colors still don't know how to run correctly

2011-09-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

Ten Years Later

IEF | On a Day of Remembrance for Fallen Heros

9/11, ten years later. Ten years of terror and counterterror—ten years of innocent blood—and the nightmare finally appears to be over. Osama is dead, the war is won[1], and most importantly, a new wave of resistance is sweeping the globe, a resistance that has nothing in common with the terrorists or their enemies. If the most nightmarish aspect of the last decade was its unreality—a dream-world corpse-machine—today's struggles are striking because they are real. This is the moment we have waited for: a moment without distractions, a moment ripe for revolution. And yet, perhaps there is a lesson still to be learned before we close the chapter.

At one level, at least, the terrorists did win. Nobody today thinks of exporting democracy. Not only democracy, but the whole idea of a smooth space of cultural exchange has been thrown into confusion. Without this idea, which was always utopian, it is difficult to believe in the neutrality of the market; at an intuitive level, the "economy" loses its self-evidence. Not that this implies any sort of anticapitalist groundswell. It simply generalizes the knowledge that capitalism is sustained only by continual war. One must be willing to die for the economy. And if not, one must find something else worth dying for. There are a thousand mechanisms for suppressing this knowledge—the attempted reconstruction of the soldier as a computational nexus, the surgical precision with which Osama was eliminated—but they cannot erase it. We saw it on TV.

The dirty wars of the eighties, like the terrorist attacks of the same era, were maintained at a subliminal level, as real events that could be represented or misrepresented, discussed or brushed under the rug by politicians and commentators. One saw the smiling face of Arafat or the Gipper, but not their hands. In our era—which revolves around 9/11 but began some years before—the opposite has been true. The events are their own representation. This was as true for the Seattle black bloc as it was for the embedded journalists in Afghanistan. The magic of 9/11, the sorcery that gave a symbolic act material consequences, was that it took this truth to its conclusions. By becoming a perfect image, it broke the stream of images, and thus broke the stream of events—of nonevents—as no mere event could do. The reluctant nihilist's apology for Al Qaeda, "At least they did something," reveals an unconscious understanding of this fact.

If propaganda is a visible lie pointing towards an invisible truth (if only the truth of consolidated power), pornography is a visible truth pointing towards nothing. The great propaganda event of our century was not propaganda at all. It was a pornographic nightmare that swallowed the world.

Towards the end of the decade, we active nihilists began to catch on. Against a depleted anarchism preaching "back to the community, back to the real," we radicalized the most unreal aspects of the summit protest. It began as secession from activism: do not seek affinity on the basis of political abstractions and their associated imperatives, but on the basis of shared conditions and the desires that inhabit them. Plan B was above all an organizational proposal, a proposal to establish affinity through the immediate gesture of attack. 100-200 = 1000. The exact texture and meaning of the gesture was ambiguous at first; eventually, through experimentation, it revealed itself as the pornographic. Invisibility did not mean merely evading detection, refusing communication; it meant a communication of meaninglessness. Although we did not find strangers spontaneously joining us in the street, we observed a certain resonance among worlds that seemed to make us stronger. This was the second secession: the social terrain of insurrectionary generalization became the image-world, in which spatial and temporal fragmentation mean nothing. "Shared conditions" ceased to mean physical or even social proximity; it meant the universal emptiness that our gesture revealed as act.

The difference between the terroristic strategy and our own had less to do with our squeamishness than with our rejection of professionalization. A central criterion for action: is it reproducible, does it promote or inhibit spontaneous antagonism? We articulated this tactical distinction as a matter of strategic principle, a gulf between ourselves and the theocrats. In retrospect, this was an exaggeration.

September 11 was a Hollywood production, with an executive producer and a massive corporate staff; with the advent of YouTube, Hollywood is passé. Ours is the age of participatory spectacle. Therefore, the tactical departure (or resuscitation) that we attempted was, rather than an internal development of the anarchist milieu, a selective reactivation of possibilities in adaptation to the times. A new iteration of capitalist sociability made a certain theoretical hypothesis realistic, and so we took the torch held out to us. Held out to us by terrorism. We were not the only vector of this historical transmission, but we were one of them. The result, which we witness in London as much as Athens, is a diffuse pornographic intelligence: Osama Spontex.[2]

Our own experiments eventually ran aground on the difficulties of sustaining a project that expresses itself only as emptiness. The secret thread of revolutionary commitment running from event to event did not matter at the level of our social reproduction or our material support base, for the simple reason that it was secret. We dispersed in various directions. Some formed communes, some got serious about Marx, some returned to building the anarchist movement. In every case, we took a step back from the extreme hypothesis. Without abandoning the insurrectionary strategy of rupture, we reinscribed rupture within a logic of continuity.

One might read this experience as a transitional phase in a continuing revolutionary progression. A nihilist moment was needed to clear out the vestiges of liberal, pacifist, and socialist compromise, so that a fighting movement could be reborn, a movement ready for the coming struggles. From a tactical perspective, the militant potential of the antiglobalization movement needed to be isolated and developed so that it could enter into new configurations: anti-austerity and anti-police struggles as the two fronts of tomorrow's class war. Maybe.

On the other hand, this return to bread and butter seems to resonate with a broader trend: the pacification of the image-world. When Greece burned in 2008, it was the European media, not the rioters, who talked of the "700 euro generation." The Greeks called themselves an image, an image from the future—and the generalization and success of the revolt (among Greek cities and towns, and also globally), was achieved at the level of images. In this respect, the more recent Egyptian insurrection was conservative, not only for its rapid recuperation by democratic demands and regime change, but also for its representation as secret, subliminal: everyone knows that what mattered is what happened in the street, away from the cameras; everyone knows about the media blackouts, the inaccessibility of truth. This gives credibility to an equally subliminal strategy for revolution, which limits attack to the real, to the explicable, to the truth suppressed by lies, to the antipornographic—a strategy that meshes seamlessly with the endgame of the counterterrorist decade. Namely, the return to normalcy of a system that digests and commodifies even the abnormal.[3]

The terrorisms will continue, with or without us, ever more diffuse. Certainly, the strategy of subliminal struggle will bear fruit, as surely as the activist strategies of the past. It will find its limit, though, in constructing a social body that can only normalize or exclude the spontaneous nihilism of our time. We do not want to repeat the spinelessness of our earlier excursion, nor do we want to democratize terrorism. But we are not content with this limit.

1 The continuing hostilities in Afghanistan have become yet another multilateral police action, more like Belgrade than Fallujah.

2 Mao Spontex denotes the attempt in post-68 France to elaborate the theory of revolutionary guerrilla warfare without reference to a centralized party-apparatus. Its intellectual expression is exemplified by writers like Deleuze, Foucault, and Guattari. Practically, it is supposed to have influenced (and learned from) the Italian Autonomia. The ideas seem to have affinity with the Invisible Committee's idea of the Party, which (incidentally) also references anomic violence in the terrorist manner.

3 "We didn't do it for the lulz." Anti-austerity is a political abstraction inviting a new activist imperative. It differs from the old anarchist abstraction only in presenting itself as concrete, economic, specific to the times. Anti-austerity action without an anti-austerity ideology might be another matter. Whether or not that's a good idea is another question.

New Pamphlet about the Struggle in Wisconsin | Early Spring for the Badger

2011-05-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

Early Spring for the Badger is a collection of anonymously written notes on the Wisconsin February – March 2011 Struggle against Austerity Measures. Contained is a collection of communiques and actions, reflections on the struggle, critique concerning the themes of democracy, race, policing, madness, and violence, and propositions for a revolutionary strategy within the global anti-austerity struggle.

The first 100 print-run of Early Spring for the Badger was distributed at the Look to Wisconsin Conference in Milwaukee May 20.

The demonstrations against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was only the first spectacle of what will become the US struggle against Austerity, and the consequences of global economic turmoil. This pamphlet hopes to sharpen the anarchist and communist critique and point towards a trajectory from which a meaningful counter attack can be realized.

Read Online PDF

8.5x11 Imposed for Print PDF

Delete Me, I'm so Ugly | New text on Madness & Despair

2011-03-17T14:45:00.000-07:00

Forty years ago, the Socialist Patients Collective, embarked on a project to turn illness into a weapon. To hold on to the fear and paranoia that dresses our despair in its most vibrant colors; to claim that experience as valid, and as the very condition on which modern capitalism reduces sense, claim bodies as its subjects, and functions to generalize alienation. The gun followed shortly.

Three stories separated by almost a century links the terror of woman. In Daldry's The Hours, Mrs. Dalloway lives and continues to reveal the tragedy of our world. There is nothing comforting that calls on the bodies marked dysfunctional to restrict their desire toward death. The body wants to fall, to submerge, to cough, to inhale the dark liquid and dissolve.

The house wife goes on strike, alone, acting as does the marginal factory or service worker. Stealing no longer keeps despair at bay; cheating can't bring back the years of doomed performances ahead. The future is always bleak. Addiction, a slow death. She drowns her children, she murders herself. She interrupts, in the most grotesque and elementary form, reproduction, and she assaults the meaning of this world. Minus one.

Madness, addiction, dysfunctional positionalities. I am terrified by the pen mark of the doctor, and of the indifference afforded to me by the consciously depressed. I want to make sense of it, but I can't. My texts, my speech, constantly acquiesce to the demand for rational discourse, molds into another author-function—disciplining her, and making room for me, and repeating the operation that gives encouragement to others who want to play with power. My experience drifting through twelve step programs will always remind me of a sense that there are those who want to hurt us, and then repair us. Who want to manage our despair, and reproduce the addicted-rock-bottom-body, the broken-mad-body, as a petri dish on which to make a different functional subject. While it's important not to equate madness with addiction, the scandal of these dysfunctional subjects is nevertheless similar. The sadness provoked by the realization that these experiences find analogous homes in what could be called an emotional commons requires unblinking eyes, and, in the days we can get out of bed, collective self-organization of care. Should it surprise anyone that this “care” has come and will come again in the form of “force?” We chose to publish Delete Me, I'm so Ugly in order to contribute to a reading of our times through the lens of despair, to hone in on the intelligence of madness, and to continue to ask “Of what does our congregation consist?”

Readable PDF

Imposed for Print PDF

Poster & Comments on Wisconsin Anti-Austerity Struggle

2011-02-27T09:54:00.000-08:00

Okay, We're weirded out as much as the next hater that Madison law-enforcement have joined the very nice occupation of WI capitol building, bringing their riot gear. If we wanted to be vulgar, we could say, well, so far the struggle's character is arguably captured in the image of what critical race theorists would say is "whiteness." However, it would clearly be a bit dishonest to say that's whole story. Nonetheless, the struggle, like other anti-austerity struggles stakes its claim on an image of past illusions restored: that of a working democracy, with liberal subjects contesting their value in the economy. Civil discourse in the labor of producing a "social" that is no longer tenable, and that defines the borders of inclusion in "civil society," which no longer can have borders. In content and in form, it has so far taken measures to extract and make invisible the naughty elements.

On the other hand, diffuse sick outs and doctors notes and international solidarity are a fascinating development. The fact that some have said "get a little bloody," might be part of the union bosses in the US falling into the same powerlessness as the CGT. Whereas it might be a threat of violence that no body who wants society to keep functioning actually wants to come to fruition, it might also reveal how this shit is so bad that the unions need to talk a big game. Eitherway, a funny thing happens when authoritative voices say it's okay to get wild and those who listen start to define their own parameters of force. All that being said, policing is a function that anyone who serves the concept of The People, and anyone who protects the flows of capital can perform. Cops, snitches, para-military, bosses, managers, citizen-arresters, military, fascists, blablabla. Optimism: What else could it mean when the uniformed subjects of this refuse their role? We can only hope those who will be at the decisive fault line understand their historical task.

So, General Strike eh? Sorel? Divine violence anybody?

11x17 Poster

Enemies We Know Poster Series

2011-02-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

As proof that we are not merely the purveyor of false promises we submit to you, finally, the Enemies we know poster series. Sorry about the wait, but you did savor the anticipation, no?

Design

Each lovely piece of rhetoric is to be printed black and white on 11x17. We have taken care to adhere to certain design criticism, and believe we have achieved a quality result. The headings and drop caps are set in Pixture, a pixelated typeface referencing the centuries old Fraktur. We did this to make reference to the technological and cybernetic content of the posters—all this talk of “apparatuses.” The body text is set in Plexes Pro. We might live to regret this decision, but we think the humanistic warmness of Plexes doesn't subordinate its speaking power. Type decisions by our contemporaries attempt desperately to achieve a kind tone in order to make the short-attention span of a likely user forget she is looking at a piece of propaganda. We, on the other hand, will use the deceptive “I” statements to achieve a more subtle result. Plexes is undeniably “user-friendly,” but remains a disruptive internety text in it's strange “k.” Hopefully, our design decisions effect the results we'd like. If not, at least some citizen will be a little less cheerful when they experience the poster as if they were texting, “I've painted a world at peace that can only be described as war.”

Identity

As we mentioned before, to cancel out, or add your own brand: Adobe Acrobat, Tools, Advanced Editing, Touch Up Object Tool/ Touch Up Text. Or whiteout or whatever.

Use

Walls, windows, your room, police cars, etc.

Oh yeah

If you see any of these shits posted around, and find yourself armed with camera, why not catch a couple flicks and send them our way.

Enemies We Know poster series

Intro (i.e RIP Democracy LOL)

Police

Bosses

Rapists

Mad love for the Asheville May Day Defendants, and the Egyptian proletarians

IEF | Cold-ass South | Winter '11

Belated Letters to Insurgents and Good Tidings | part 2

2011-01-28T09:02:00.000-08:00

L. Desormais,

My never ending apologies for truant letters. The metropolitan trenches have this way of deepening my lack of faculties—making what words should come with ease into an endeavor all its own. Our congregation is so very far from the lovely scent of open conflicts. Still heeding the watchwords and making sense of the inspiring images and messages from distant lands, we lack the immediacy of speech. All of this makes communication remain a potentiality to be realized, rather than the result of the dispositions we take on during conflict. There is still a road ahead of us.

It's not difficult to understand or conceptualize a strategy of general withdrawal from production. What is bothersome remains the technical operations that follow this strategy, and the confusion surrounding the question “Of what does our congregation consist?” The answer to one informs the other. Understanding the makeup of our collectivities would give us insight in to both the questions of “What material resources, languages, and terrain do we already possess?” and “What role do we play in modern society?” What means we employ in order to withdraw from this role would be informed by the former question of what we already have at our disposal. I'm sure you can empathize—it's hard to know whether or not a collective should put its efforts into cheerleading the various protagonists that emerge in struggles that are geo-socially foreign—through means of revolutionary solidarity, public discussions, and general propaganda. Or if a collective owes it to the struggles taking place to seek out, make links and, with a careful hand, tie together the threads of a coherent active minority position that can itself contribute in its own unique way to the emergency situations when they come. One does not exclude the other—and it's best to simply wager and go for it—but I think a collective still must suss it out collectively in order to make the best wager.

You'll notice I don't mention the syndicalist, or big organization method. And though I'm sure you're familiar with critiques of unions, the left, etc, I want to put this argument to rest. Allow me to test my logic. It's not that I don't have a small yearning for the proletarian programs of the past, but as it stands no mass organization can resist the seduction of producing subjects, and no economic hypothesis can fathom a life without “the rule” and “value” as its basis. There can be no free labor when any attempt to free ourselves is limited by the process that created labor as such. Not to be such an art-douche, but forms do not exist in a vacuum. If all social forms are dominated (subsumed) by capital, no social form can be expected to generate a world free from capital. Furthermore, if we are in a period of capitalist valorization dominated by the process of producing capitalist content, then the fight is not happening primarily at the level of classical politics. Although we can see different social movements influence the policies of politicians and capitalists through legal and illegal means, we always see, in the same operations performed by these social movements, the realization of fully functioning capitalist democracies. This is why the fight is called “biopolitical,” because the war in progress takes place as conflicts over what lives are licit and illicit. This makes fomenting any real oppositional force a challenge because to be included or excluded is still to be perceived and incorporated. Would we prefer to be marked for death or for market research? We see the “protester” or “activist” take its rightful place among the loyal opposition, and we see the unions make abundantly clear just exactly what “the worker” identity has won us. We can't trust anything to wither away, but I don't think that means that we are irredeemably destined to experiment with failing forms. I think in the US in particular, because of how advanced the process of social dissolution and alienation, we are best suited to experiment with content—with what undocile means of living we find to arm us for withdraw from production. And this will always find itself antagonistic to mass organizations. If there is a dictatorship of the proletariat, or a strike as delimited as is capitalism, it will be anonymous and terrible.

Okay. As you can imagine, Obamafication in the US has not abolished the dark ages, and the citizens of this society keep hoping against hope for change. Curious, today the global north might be split on its feelings about the free flows of information. Wikileaks, rather than tuition costs—rather than meaningless labor and an equally meaningless “social life”—cause pause for alarm in this country. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that the autonomous elements of the information super highway are the state's only composite hostis, but I think the intelligence of these events shouldn't escape our gaze. The Obama campaign relied heavily on the free flow of information, incorporating the partisans of Web 2.0 into its troops. Today Obama's administration considers using military force against one of the recognized instruments of cyber political crime. One can imagine that those who hacked and attacked Visa and Mastercard as retribution for the arrest of Julian Assange and Brad Manning were also those who voted for hope and change. Someone asked if terrorism was the new paradigm of warfare, forgetting for a moment, that partisan forms have always also contained terror as their content. Today we're forced to consider what is the meaning of purely immaterial combat with material consequences? This is where I am not as well read in Baudrillard as I probably ought be.

After the spring, US anarchists felt their “we are winning” myth drift away. And with the loss of that myth, they also lost touch with the constellation of areas of revolt—the places, bodies, thoughts, and practices that generated a collective sense, or meaning. But once again we are reminded of how both the “we are winning,” and the “we have lost” myths are gaseous, and quickly dissolve without leaving any substance. Greek anarchists do what only the Greek anarchist can do. The French strikes reveal how the French areas of revolt are linked in a tactical feedback loop to Greece, to the US, to Iran, etc. England and the whole Green Isle flare up and remind us that history has not overlooked even the most panoptic societies. In Italy, the author-function literally becomes a shield to hide behind. I'm not interested in simply demanding that we keep finding inspiration in these events. To wave a flag and give backrubs when they are needed does not make a revolutionary force. Being faithful to history requires us to examine these events with suspicion and precision. What will it mean to communicate “we hear the call” each time civil war escapes its sovereign capture? To elaborate the piercing sound of revolt, and make it audible across the borders of identity and nation states. To not fall victim to the feeling that time is running out for us, but hold still the truth that even as we are repressed, it is a sign that time is running out for them.

In November, the FBI sent out a document regarding the domestic threat of “anarchist extremism.” Years before, they decided that ecological and animal liberation extremists were their public enemy. The image of detentions, deportations, and raids quickly arises. We've all felt the looming sense that Auschwitz never ended, and we've been reminded time and time again that this facility easily becomes a prison, this stadium easily transforms into a concentration camp. Katrina, New Orleans must not be forgotten, nor should September Eleven, Chile. Today, the deaths of eight squatters in New Orleans reminds us that Katrina was linked to the murder of the Lower East Side. Bordiga said that disasters were unplanned massacres in Capitalism—unplanned expenditure, where surplus labor was recycled. But fascism is not merely an extreme excess, it is an originary potency of sovereign power. The same operation that produces justice produces mass graves. How do we draw on this history? How does the image of starving ancestors give us strength when the enemy—who will accost even the dead—has never ceased to be victorious? I wonder if one of the defining operations of an insurrectional process in the US would be a constellation of actions that makes these historical tragedies immediately referenceable and contemporary. A friend said sometime in '07 that we want to give rise to that old class hatred, to make the rich, the police and the politicians tremble—to sleep uneasily with the full knowledge that something terrible awaits them—sooner or later. And in '10, the English civil war resurfaces with a resounding “Off with their heads!” Despite Charles and Camillas pouting, we live past the time when kings die. Sovereign power has a lot more to do with the whole of police operations than it does with elected representatives. But in the US we are outmoded and outmaneuvered. We expect to be arrested and imprisoned. We countdown, joking about the End of the world, but realistically anticipating our own political mortality. We have approximately five minutes before the police show up, and if we are not ready to fight them, we must be equipped to withdraw. The whole of what we are fighting for actually depends on this.

Across Europe since I've begun to write this, the Informals return. Their demand, like that of Greek Uprising, is simply a call to participate, but unlike the fierce demand of '08 to join the history taking place, the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, and the Informal Anarchist Federation's (FAInformal) demand reanimates the partisan, a hero of honor and glory. Take a position in the new urban guerrilla war. We are reminded of the years of lead, but not so much of the Commune. Comrades in France were initially charged with being a part of such a conspiracy, but even what they were alleged was a different tone of sabotage. But what is it about the spectacle of terror that is so salient with our contemporary conditions? As I said in the beginning of this letter, we in the US don't live in the conditions where an armed group is even a hypothesis—even if violence is present everywhere. But the parcel bombs mirror in a small way the armed madness of the isolated Individuals taking their sad acts of revenge in the US. The last two years speak volumes to the terror of everyday life. More students turn their sights on their classmates and teachers. A man, after years of deliberation, crashes his plane into an IRS building as an expression of his desperation and desire for a classless society. A Dean is stabbed and the Governor of MO, who was the main target of the anarchist, escapes his blade. A man takes aim at a Parent Teacher Association. The Discovery Channel is taken hostage and demanded to learn the language older than words at gun point. The media prattle squabbles over the political identity of the AZ shooter. So many disturbed individuals frighten our public consciousness. There is literally nothing that links these strange acts besides their disturbed reality. Would any of this make more sense with a more coherent political pole of violence? I'm not sure. In Europe, a world that hasn't lost its taste for collective approaches to life, the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and the FAInformal create a spectacle of anarchist terror. Is this armed joy or simply the same desperation and suicidal gesture as its US counterpart? It is difficult to say. I think its important to really think about these events. Many of the criticisms leveled at the Cells of Fire and FAIinformal rely on an ethical detachment from life-harming violence. Other critiques rely specifically on the results of their actions—were they effective? Effective at what? I don't think even the Cells of Fire or FAInformal think their actions cause significant economic damage or create enough of a threat to influence politics. They do openly make the argument that their actions are intended to frighten judges, bosses, politicians, and police. The partisan dignity of the armed group does have its allure, but I don't know if its enough, or if the military logic necessarily subjugates the intelligence of other strategies. From our position, an action's effectiveness should be measured in its ability to spread undocile practices. The spreading of different techniques of resisting authority and domination necessarily includes violence, but it also includes techniques of anonymity, fraud, laziness, co-operations and collective strategic thought. And so, if a thousand hands reach out and pick up the gun, and anonymous attacks proliferate and deepen, perhaps the Cells of Fire and FAInformal are correct. However, I'm not sure where these hands will come from when most people are too frightened, alienated, and disconnected to fight for even the most basic social change. I fear the Cells of Fire and the FAInformal more than likely produce themselves as specialists in a war that most people cannot even perceive. However, it must also be said that they are comrades and deserve critical solidarity. The best way for US anarchists to provide this for them will be in sowing the threads that give those isolated individuals who would sacrifice themselves against the terror of everyday life, a different option for how to fight. To make the war more perceptible, and to critically act in solidarity.

This year will be eventful—we can count on that. US anarchists will not be frightened from their task. However, to you and yours, I think it's important to stress that what you don't see on the news will be more important than what you do see. Many comrades are facing higher charges and more calculated repression. It's important to remember that techniques of repression are not deployed in order to annihilate an enemy, they are deployed in order to attenuate and make us manageable—to discipline and domesticate us. The way we resist this is by finding ways to not be harmed, or destabilized by their threats. In many ways this is why camaraderie and a sense of collective meaning is so important. Because when they begin to perceive us as a conspiracy, we have to know that the worlds we are attached to are caring, powerful, and will keep fighting no matter what happens to us. Through the process of living through this repression, the material solidarities that keep us holding on will be strengthened. We will establish certain bonds of trust and solidarity that come from sharing the intensities of war, from knowing the stakes. The actions that make reference to our comrades who are under attack let us all know we are not alone, and that we won't be neutralized. This is good, but we need to make sure that when the cases are all over the intensities—of our care and our force—are not subjugated by a desire for our collective rest. We need to take the time and consideration to generate our spaces as fighting-territories that welcome home our released comrades, and remind them that we refused to be terrorized while the state attempted to make an example of them. This is all part of the process of resisting repression.

We are now dealing with an advanced environment of repression—a more intelligent apparatus of “conspiracy” production. In these conditions, what constitutes a conspiracy in the eyes of the Law will be increasingly murky. It will be difficult to count on sympathetic jurors because there will be no social movement of which they share sympathies; the means to struggle have already been cut from the legal sphere and have already been judged as “conspiracy.” It comes as no surprise that in terms of public consciousness “conspiracy” rhymes with “terrorism.” However, this does not mean that we should shy away from such conversations that take our objectives and the stakes of struggle seriously. On the contrary, we must be prepared to elaborate this logic and share it. In many ways, this means those of us who have learned the taste for strategic thought must find new ways to share that practice.

More than likely, the events that make up the face of US anarchist practice will only be slightly altered. Some wild demonstrations, bookfairs, night-time attacks and gatherings will continue relatively unscathed by the counter-insurgency operations to come. However, there will be new places that take their position in global civil war. There will be disillusioned students from the East and West Coasts who join up and use their practical education from the occupations to begin a new conflict. Anarchists who learned so much about themselves and what they are capable of during the Oscar Grant riots, will share and apply their lessons during other emergency situations. Those who have dug-in may venture elsewhere, and those who have landed may take over uninhabited spaces, and make them livable. Perhaps research and reconnaissance will give rise to new maps and intelligence of different territories of conflict that we have not yet encountered. Twenty Ten, we experienced some growing pains, but I think we are on our way to finding those truths of which we will not let go. And from these, new worlds will be constructed, and populated. We are collectively learning how to speak and how to breathe together. A disintegrated US will take its part in a global cartography of areas in revolt. Ten thousand Spanish Civil Wars.

I should hope to find my body in the care of your loving arms soon enough,

kisses,

your devoted comrade,

Liam

Belated Letters to Insurgents and Good Tidings | part 1

2011-01-27T13:56:00.000-08:00

After Infinite Strike was posted some time ago, I received a letter from a beloved comrade translator. Like everything else, my reply suffered from sloth and soon transformed into a text better meant for others; something of a welcome to 2011, and so on. Our correspondence follows.

kisses,
Liam

Liam,

Ô! 'Tis exceedingly well set. Very good, very strong.

The numerals and the latin redound to your own better instincts,

to say nothing of your incorporation of the french in the larger fonts.

Brilliant. Gentle. People will complain & they will be mistaken.

Foreign Words. Splendid. Splendid!

And now, how not to let up?...

The weather in B______ is dead dreary, empty streets, an armistice holiday.

Another fortnight of that, even less as I'm writing, and we'll be rejoined warmly

among the cozy little side street of my burg of predilection toward the south,

where we'll make winter and springtime and who knows? Lots of new friends,

gaming, suppers, heels dug in conspiring. After the final 'strophe in _______ you

ought come pay a visit.

We'd be delighted of course,

More soon from one who is happy to be,

Your devoted appendage,

And what is more,

Your admiring well-wisher,

L. Desormais

"Bless us!—what noble work we should make!—how should I tickle it off!—and what spirits should I find myself in,

to be writing away for such readers!—and you—just heaven!—with what raptures would you sit and read—but oh!

—'tis too much—I am sick—I faint away deliciously at the thoughts of it—'tis more than nature can bear!—lay hold

of me—I am giddy—I am stone blind—I'm dying—I am gone.—Help! Help! Help!—But hold—I grow something

better again, for I am beginning to foresee, when this is over, that as we shall all of us continue to be great wits—we

should never agree amongst ourselves, one day to an end:—there would be so much satire and sarcasm—scoffing and

flouting, with raillying and reparteeing of it—thrusting and parrying in one corner or another—there would be nothing

but mischief among us—Chaste stars! what biting and scratching, and what a racket and a clatter we should make,

what with breaking of heads, rapping of knuckles, and hitting of sore places—there would be no such thing as living for us.

But then again, as we should all of us be men of great judgment, we should make up matters as fast as ever they went wrong;

and though we should abominate each other ten times worse than so many devils or devilesses, we should nevertheless,

my dear creatures, be all courtesy and kindness, milk and honey—'twould be a second land of promise—a paradise upon earth,

if there was such a thing to be had..."

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Book III, ch. XX.

Oh yeah, that review of Introduction to Civil War for Theory & Event

2011-01-19T09:51:00.000-08:00

So, we didn't do our research. It turns out Theory & Event is one of those online academic journals that you have to have a password to read, and after some coaxing by our friends, we decided to post this on the blog. Enjoy.

ps: If you do have a password read T&E issue here. And if you want to share your password, so we can read other cool articles online, email us.

Civil War: The Continuation of Communism by Other Means

Introduction to Civil War is an alternative origin myth. Introduction to Civil War is the vademecum when you show up to fight club, or any strange twelve-stepesque community of friends. Introduction to Civil War is the book to keep out of the hands of children who are ready to subtract themselves and all of their classmates and teachers from production. Introduction to Civil War is a molecule of a war machine.

The text was originally published in Tiqqun 2, a short-lived French journal of radical thought. Emerging out of the fervent struggles of the European anti-capitalist movement, Tiqqun located itself within a nexus of radical feminist thought, Foucault's studies on biopolitics, Italian Autonomia, situationist-inspired theory, and Benjaminian approaches to history. The editors intentionally practiced a desubectivizing operation of anonymity, and the texts themselves, a feminist/Deleuzian operation of multiplicity. Where there are many links between the journal's thought and the editors’ participation in the struggles of the late '90s and early '00s, it would be difficult to claim Tiqqun as specifically “anarcho-autonomous,” “ultra-left,” or whatever else Sarkozy and Glenn Beck claim to be the ideological bogeyman behind the French editors, who are now being accused of this or that terrorist enterprise (see: Nov. 9 ‘09 Tarnac Arrests). Tiqqun was a journal that examined the exceptional situation of everyday concentration camps, and theorized from that point, highly influenced by Giorgio Agamben. Today, Tiqqun's contributions are becoming available to English speaking worlds, and their final concept “civil war” emerges as visible and viable.

Civil war: the continuation of communism by other means. History will decide whether or not civil war replaces Foucault's concept of contesting the meaning of the social (social war), but one thing is clear from Tiqqun’s contributions: if the social has dissolved, and governance is now only techniques of managing its collapse, then civil war becomes the necessary condition of this existence. And if this is the case, then the last bit of poetry found at the end of Introduction to Civil War, “How is it to be Done?,” may be accurate in exclaiming the only way for us, within this condition of global civil war, to touch on our humanity again will be in a collective negation, namely, an unlimited human strike.

Civil war presupposes the state. Even by advocates of the state's own admission, the state serves as a preventative measure. Tiqqun locates the elementary human unity not in the body, which quickly becomes subject, but in form-of-life (16). Since all thought is strategic (20) they begin here because the state is the consequence of a certain metaphysics that governs each form-of-life at play in the self—an attenuation of difference through subjectivity. Tiqqun proposes that another metaphysics, a negative one, can be made present, within which forms-of-life might be left to play. This free play of forms-of-life, this “principle of their coexistence” (32), is nothing other than the condition of civil war that the modern state was developed in order to suppress.

This logic reveals a hidden fact regarding the formation of the modern state. If forms-of-life take place through bodies, animating bodies with taste and inclinations to lose themselves and to pass into another's spheres, then the development of the state, the borders and executions it visited upon worlds, were also visited upon selves. When the state is the suppression of the self, civil war is not only inevitable but already omnipresent. From the absolutist state to the welfare state to the liberal state, the state serves as merely a parenthesis in civil war, first as an attempt to exclude bare life from a territory, then from a population, then from the singular body. From classical politics to biopolitics, the state sets out on a steady course of encountering its own impossibility. This steady course is civil war.

With and against Marx’s dictum that the history of human societies is a history of class struggle; Tiqqun reads the history of forms-of-life as the history of civil war. The story of the state, namely “status,” is the story of an attempt made to freeze this free play of forms-of-life. Again and again, it fails, and out of each successive failure develops a new form of governance and new techniques to suppress civil war. The present conditions of “Empire” are nothing more than an outgrowth of these failures. The modern state is nothing more than a complex set of governing and neutralizing apparatuses that continue the political suppression of civil war by other Clausewitzian means.

But what does sovereign power do that classical politics doesn't? Drawing on Hobbes and Schmitt, Tiqqun argues that the modern state is a theater of operations in which the intensity of ethical difference is neutralized and every image of difference is pulled to the center for a endless photo-op. Classical politics, through a holistic and despotic state, arranged an order of moral codes via absolute force in order to come to some higher meaning. Classical politics put religion and the sphere of ethics into the theater of the political by including kings as the living heirs to God and individuals as the loyal disciples of God's moral order. In contrast to the rituals of redemption offered through the bloody play of forces contesting territory under the reign of classical politics, sovereign power can point its population to nothing. The modern state is quite literally the management of life, devoid of transcendental authority. The modern state governs, but learns not to govern too much. Moreover, the modern state applies the classical maxim cuius regio, eius religio, and contends and defeats all opposing religions in order to continue as the hand of god on an earth without God.

The paradox of law, which is the founding thesis of the norm, is as follows: law is in force only in its imposition; law appears only in the act of law. If law is fungible or malleable, this is because it has no justification other than its logic. “It is my pleasure” says the modern sovereign. The norm develops from this essential lacuna of law, but things are as they are not simply because they are, but because of material practices, because of how they are. Norm as nomos emerges from specific means deployed through apparatuses of control.

Enter the reign of the economy. There could never be an economic subject without a political subject. Tiqqun reads Foucault's study of biopolitics not as a story of power outmaneuvered by the deployment counter-subjectivities, but instead as processes of subjectivization by a vast number of apparatuses. Such massive, overdetermined subjectivization mitigates vital and substantive opposition. Capitalism could not have spread across the globe without first the physical neutralization of hostile populations and practices—which is to say, the condition of war had to be neutralized, in order for “peace” to become the normal condition.

Through Tiqqun's matrix of civil war, we learn that the development of capitalism, primitive accumulation, and war are not mere periods of tragedy that human society had to endure as the necessary, teleological process of the modern state. Instead, they are the originary operations, the operations that are repeated in order to maintain the status of the so-called peace of citizen-subjects. The Hobbesian operation of exclusion/inclusion is looped on an endless repeat. With the advancements of liberal techniques of government, the operations no longer take the form of a visible exposition of disciplinary force aimed at beating a hostis out of a population, (viz., an external military affair). Rather, these neutralizing operations take form in self-managed policing (viz., an internal police). Foucault explains the process of how the “delinquent” was made into an enemy of society; Tiqqun clarifies that the criminal practices had to be excluded and named “anti-social” in order for there to ever be a formal workers’ movement that could be associated with a public social (albeit, illegal) justice.

Introduction to Civil War exposes the modern uneasiness with “violence.” Violence must be excluded not because it threatens to turn the earth into a pit of corpses (capital has no qualms with such a process), but because it threatens to break the imaginary boundaries of subjects, and release forms-of-life to their free play. Hobbes remains the originary political theorist, in that we can already see the beginnings of self-managed subjects through the threat of exclusion. What must be excluded from a living being in order to include it in the caring arms of the state (and thus give it political-subjectivity) is precisely what attaches it to worlds and what gives it the capacity to encounter others. The exclusion of bare life produces docile bodies. The forced retreat into the self typifying the modern subject must be understood not merely as the process which the western individual was founded, but specifically as the process that generated economic “man” whose stupid (literally: stupefied) concept of freedom ends where all else begins.

Thus, what Tiqqun calls “the black magic of the economy” is deployed at all levels to integrate all human life into “society” first as living beings (zoe) then to continue functioning as legal subjects (bios). But this process can never generate today’s citizen-subject as a perfect artifice of legal behavior. On the contrary, by forcing the political-economy, the process makes society—the massive circulation of legal practices of freedom—indistinguishable from the state. Through the proliferation of the police, the dark memory of the state's violent origin exposes each terrified citizen to the paradox of its existence.

The liberal state and the welfare state, or liberal democratic and social democratic institutions, are not distinct modes of government but rather two poles of the modern state. Tiqqun argues that the management of a certain social definition of happiness was all it took for the liberal state to control its population (118). With police and with publicity, the liberal state could cynically keep order, but the police and publicity developed in a way that served and exceeded the institution of the nation-state. With the collapse of liberal and social hypothesis, the police and publicity were able to shed their institutional justification and become exposed as mere apparatuses of sovereign power. Through this collapse, this folding up of the liberal state, police and publicity gain a new important role; they are exalted as the super-institutional poles of Empire. Techniques of policing transform into Biopower and techniques of publicity transform into Spectacle. The state itself does not disappear just yet, but it is demoted, and Spectacle and Biopower begin the reign of Empire (118).

It is in the planned-environment of Empire that Tiqqun calls on us to take a partisan position: to intensify the play of forms-of-life beyond their attenuation; to loosen the nooses of subjectivity that Empire places around our necks (176). Civil war is where forms-of-life can freely play. An armed joy of bank expropriations, strikes, bombings, occupations, pirate radio stations, riots, and experimental forms-of-life (such as those in 1977 Italy) rises to a new metaphysical plane in the history of the citizen-subject. Civil war can never be routed. Each hyphen between a citizen-subject contains an intense flow of inclinations. What Tiqqun makes abundantly clear is that these intense inclinations are themselves the many protagonists of history. Civil war, not the state; the form-of-life not the subject, takes us, gives us meaning, and exposes us to a new plane of experience. The Imaginary Party—Tiqqun says “we,” (174)—can be understood as the party for civil war. It is a fragmented plane of consistency where each practice that prefers not to conjure away forms-of-life calls home. Unlike other discourses that rely on a single revolutionary-subjectivity, Tiqqun's Imaginary Party is nothing but a multiplicity, but unlike Negriist dreams of global civil society, the Imaginary Party does not shy away from the global civil war.

Tiqqun's concept of communism by other means performs of a particularly interesting operation from this point. Moving beyond the false consciousness of the Left, Tiqqun concludes “There is no visible outside anymore […] Madness, crime or the hungry proletariat no longer inhabit a defined or recognized space, they no longer form a world unto themselves, their own ghetto with or without walls” (131). If there is no longer any pure outside but rather exteriority present at every inch of the biopolitical tissue, then the Imaginary Party is not a political party that contends for power, nor a class that wishes to overthrow another class, nor a multitude that sees its desire reflected back at it through its representations of power. The Imaginary Party is the party of the political only insofar that through its presence it exposes each citizen-subject to the intensity of what it means to act politically.

Despite Tiqqun's insistence on the need to reclaim violence (34), we learn this need is not in order to simply pose a greater technology of violence against their state's violence, but rather for each body to become at home with its capacity for force. So-called “terrorism” today exposes citizens of Empire to the conditions they have placed on forms-of-life. What Tiqqun advances in terms of civil war, is in actuality a perverse war-machine. The Imaginary Party is full of precisely the content you might imagine. In a queer gesture, Tiqqun explains that “Empire is not the enemy with which we have to contend, and other tendencies within the Imaginary Party are not, for us, so many hostis to be eliminated, the opposite is, in fact, the case” (182). This means that the capacity for force, that inaugurates an element of the Imaginary Party, is specifically a force directed inward. Through the release of forms-of-life to their free play, Empire's meaninglessness and its lack of substance are totally revealed. The warlike penchants of forms-of-life form a war-machine only insofar that these penchants conjugate “friends” and “enemies” whose ethical distinctions are far more intense then any banal promise of security that Empire can articulate.

Introduction to Civil War ends exactly where you might expect: at the question of “how?” Like Debord's Society of the Spectacle, Introduction to Civil War, is not (despite the Library of Congress) an essay of critical theory, but rather a text at home with Clausewitz and Blanqui. Although their insistence on Heidegger's “the they” and all this Schmittian talk of “friends and enemies” situates Tiqqun in a framework of armed struggle, the anonymous editors break free in their concluding piece. What Tiqqun theorizes and what Tiqqun strategizes operations within are two different disciplines. Perhaps this is one of the most difficult positions for Tiqqun to articulate: What it might mean to live communism, and what it might mean to spread anarchy? History (or perhaps the messiah if we go by Benjamin), will have the final say, but what is irreducible in Introduction to Civil War is the feeling of meaninglessness that is the alibi of daily reproduction and the fact that whatever new struggles are emerging do not fit into the normative nor formal leftist conception of revolution or revolutionary subjectivity. Perhaps forms-of-life will animate bodies and advance what the religious wars in Europe only dreamed of. Perhaps everything will be in common, especially our fragile bodies. Or perhaps Tiqqun has misread something of our times and the coming community will have no allegiance to flesh and sinew, nor even thought. Either way, whether it is through the phantom of terror itself gaining substance (Baudrillard) or the inauguration and multiplication of collectivities whose ethical tissue is robust and whose thought is strategic, Tiqqun concludes that the time of the now is decisive. Empire or civil war?

Liam Sionnach is a terrible “art” project gone awry. It was based in a misreading of Foucault, Deleuze, and Agamben, and in the miserable conditions of the US Service Industry. It attempted to reveal the vacancy of the author-function, but conceded to feminist critiques of anonymity. Ultimately Liam Sionnach misunderstood the meaning of “what matters who's speaking, someone said.” Although The Institute for Experimental Freedom's Liam Sionnach project has been around since '05, it has been most successful at interrupting the intellectual development of contemporary US anarchist theory from '07 to the present. Liam Sionnach has written a few pamphlets, lectured at some Universities, and contributed to journals of contemporary radical theory. Currently, Liam is pushing toward the threshold between this form of life and another, and mourning the truancy of communism. www.politicsisnotabanana.com

Infinite Strike | La Grève Infinie

2010-11-10T12:05:00.000-08:00

The Institute for Experimental Freedom's European appendages and friends are proud to release an English translation of “La Grève Infinie” (Infinite Strike). This text was written on Oct 27th 2010 from within the events transpiring throughout the French strikes and blockades. It has appeared throughout France, and is available in at nantes.indymedia.org/article/22087 and http://juralibertaire.over-blog.com/article-la-greve-infinie-59845046.html.

Although the US is not France, we can't help but find a certain resonance with the strike, with the determinacy of struggle. We welcome the return of causseur, of the vandal, of course! We delight in the fine fractures that link our deep sense of despair with the its negation—the secret solidarity between our weakness our others strength. And so, as a means of reverberating the call, the IEF offers this text to those of us who are everywhere homeless, and everywhere foreign.

Within the text—which is just overheard within the event—we see a clear proposition. The elementary strategy of “shutting it all down.” Blockade the oil refineries, extend all self-reductions beyond ourselves, block the ports, defeat the police, shut down the nuclear reactors. Realize all strikes as a position.

Practice makes perfect.

Infinite Strike | Readable

Infinite Strike | Imposed for Print

With love and in struggle,

The Institute for Experimental Freedom | Nov 2010

INFINITE STRIKE

It's clear. The Party of Order seeks, with all the forces at its disposal, to have us return home. On this point, at least, the unions and the government are of one accord. Doubtlessly banking upon our most miserable inclinations, our insidious predilection for the emptiness and absences in which we have so perfectly forgotten how to live and struggle. Here they are mistaken. We will not go home; we who are everywhere homeless. For if there exists a single place that we might deem inhabitable, it's within this event, in the intensities taking shape therein, thanks to which we are living. In accordance, above all, with the means we will be able to provide ourselves.

It's clear. An insurrectional process gathers strength to the extent that the givens that make up its particular understanding of reality become, imperceptibly, blaring truisms. Being given that Capitalism is a universal lie, the form of its negation, inversely, will be that of a plurality of worlds combined jointly by the truths that hold them together.

The words by which a situation becomes comprehensible to itself directly determine both its forms and its spirit. The forced objectifications will manage, at best, to trace vague contours around a muchness. The diversity of analysis, be they those of the sociologists or those of the radical activist, put about the self-same concert of confusion: broken-winded apology or interested pessimism. In either case one is struck by the want of so much as a glimmer of the tactical sense by which a voice finds its real comprehensibility, a veritable Common which could liberate the possibilities opened-up by the situation, and through which one could rid oneself, like a nightmare upon waking, of our programed despondency. The trenchancy of this voice resides as much in its choice of words as in the positivity of its orientation.

An opening gesture proves necessary to set out the strategic intelligibility of the events in progress. That of situating oneself, of orienting oneself. To speak from somewhere, not simply from behind one or another point of view, but from the position of a party.

This movement, to name but one of its virtues, has, from the very outset, approached matters from the root. Generalized economic blockades, deliberate organization of a total paralysis, refusal to compromise or negotiate. Direct, crude language. From there it has simply given material form to the slogans habitually condemned to languish as expectations or simulacra. The strike has materialized itself in so many bodies, in so many determinations. And it's for this reason that it appears as something truly menacing. So it is, from the perspective of practices set in place, that the movement situates itself beyond a simple social movement, that it participates already along the lines of an insurrectional process. This is our point of departure.

Let us set down a fact: there no longer exists, at the present, anything of the old revolutionary movement. And as those who'd taken over the watch plunge ever deeper into the morass of self-satisfied civicism, we can feel out, from time to time, the sensation of an emptiness. It's precisely this emptiness that we will need to inhabit, to transform into an opportunity.

In France a singular superstition afflicts a great majority of bodies who otherwise pride themselves on being so rigidly secular: the belief, a reedy thing, though apparently unshakable, in the reality of the "social movement". The misfortune of this acceptance resides in the following: it's a belief which no longer credits the least amount of faith among its adherents. From "victories" to "defeats", from sporadic mobilization to conclusive demobilization, it's a belief ever more clapped out and threadbare. Never mind that the object of this belief is itself the heir of a historical catastrophe, that of the classical workers' movement. The latter, as underlined by Mario Tronti, was not defeated by Capital, but rather by Democracy. Not by some external victory on the part of the former, but by as a result of the internalization of the latter. To the extent that this pack of illusions goes unrecognized, the burden placed upon those who struggle is that much greater.

A movement defines itself negatively in accordance with its limits. Its field of action is nevertheless circumscribed by that beyond which it dares not venture. This predefined scope assures that the movement remains nothing but the hysterical conjuration of a predictable end. The very life of a movement is directed under the sign of this headlong rushing ahead, this frenzied effort to forestall the end for which it had been set going in the first place. Its end is frightening in that it means nothing less than its death. A temporality separated from the course of History. No enduring project or vocation. The movement is to be forever started over again, laboriously, from the beginning, out of the same nothingness. From such a beginning we can only ever start over, without learning, since there's nothing to learn, ad infinitum. Close the parenthesis.

But the horizons of true historical action hang not upon this sad canvas, there isn't any "return to normalcy." What there is, on the other hand, is the persistence of a revolutionary project, with its subterranean accelerations and decelerations. With respect to such a process there exists but one time. A time in which nothing left undone is forgotten. What there is are two camps: on one side there are those who seek to carry out a total strike, an irreversible blockade of the circulation of flows, and, on the other side, the scabs and the cops. The entirety of the social landscape is subject to this cruel partition.

To the extent that a strike recognizes itself as forming part of this process it remains one of the rare sites in which a transmission of experience persists. The strike doesn't set out to commemorate past struggles, but rather to recall them: which is to say, to restore them to memory. This is done not only for the sake of the strike itself, but for the carelessness of a world occupied with the organization of forgetting.

One must always take care to see that the terrain upon which a situation is articulated isn't chop full of mines. Such is our case. First step: abandon the neatly demarcated terrain upon which a thing, an event, is understood in the form of a thing. A thing never exists for-itself, for nothing exists outside of the intelligence beholding it. It is possible that by dint of usage the term "social movement" no longer serves to designates anything but a particular form of powerlessness, the semantic operation of a certain sociology, which, from the moment it finds acceptance, paralyzes any and all strategic elaboration as much as any form of collective intelligence. This stems from the fact that sociology has itself been completely socialized. It invests every discourse with the same obsession for statistical calculation, allowing only for a laborious objectification of reality via a handful of depressing categories. That which shapes and gives form to our worlds remains firmly beyond its grasp. For them, our friendships represent no more than a handful of aberrant variables. The unknown of their equations. The infinity of a strike.

Saint-Nazaire. The demonstrations called for by the unions lead systematically to confrontations lasting several hours. Heroic displays of rock-throwing and hastily set-up barricades. "Sarkozy, you're fucked", intoned by the thousand. A courthouse jointly stoned by diverse groups of rioters. A friend said, "how beautiful to see a city rise up against its police."

The true orientation of the struggle is not to be found between opposing classes, Capital versus Labor, but rather a partisan opposition between those who make a pathological cult of work and those for whom it inspires a simple disgust. From here on out there are those who still want to work and those who would prefer not to.

A disquieting omerta reigns within the interior of the movement. It consists in the denial of what the events themselves ceaselessly demonstrate, namely, a pained rejection of work. Not merely a local protest against a quantitative extension of the latter, but a total indictment of the manner in which work is everywhere experienced. Which is to say, as a disaster. The rejection is unequivocal. Work. The looming shadow of death. The "theft of human energies", mesmerizing its victims. We are witnessing the agony of the classical world of Work, and with it the disappearance of the figure of the Worker. The ruination of the cozy intimacy that the latter had achieved with his hardship. Even though work has always been experienced as a prolonged torture, one still finds "mind over matter" specialists who attempt to determine the threshold beyond which work becomes intolerable.

Traditional politics is founded upon a few axioms, invariably presented as unsurpassable a priori. The principle of "governmentality"; the organization of a social need in virtue of which "things must be governed", failing which they would invariably fall into chaos. "Work" is likewise postulated, like a blackmail, affirming nothing but the obligation to "make a living", under any circumstances and however possible. Thus a narrow solidarity unites the apparent diversity of political conceptions and their attendant neurosis, all deriving, in the final analysis, from the same feeble anthropology. On the one hand, the cybernetic project of generalized governance, on the other, the anarchist ideal of a heavenly autonomous governance. The myth of full-employment directed toward sustainable development and the self-managed fable of voluntary work, lotted out along egalitarian lines. In either case we see the same managerial apparatus applied to life and living, the same ferocious will to suppress our better instincts. The same objective of desperate regulation. Mobilization and Total Appropriation constitute at once the ethico-practical ideal of the most inveterate activism and the very power which it pretends to combat.

Return of the paradox: the contestation of a reform remains the prerogative of the most advanced reformists. Calculating the future to the point of abandoning any present, any form of presence. The exemplary schizophrenia of the anarcho-syndicalist, codifying, from the present on, the posterity of the revolution, legislating the "after". But to legislate the after is to have already forgotten the now, to have let slip away the absolute necessity of a present which escapes us and for which we are on strike. The density of a time that couldn't be reduced to the platitude of a bare chronology. A foreseeable future will always be at war with the invisible destination of the present. A programed thereafter will never rhyme with the here and now. Freeing up a bit of "leisure" in the interest of an improved management of labour-time harks back to the most suspect utopias. One cannot qualitatively improve work by a quantitative reduction of its duration. There is no duration of labor for the very reason that labor is duration, a time one endures.

The current media discourse contrives to stage the climate of the strike as though it were a question of some recently discovered branch of meteorology. One frets over a fuel shortage as if it were an imminent heat-wave; one casts the riots of the high-schoolers after the fashion of an unexpected snow-fall; one prattles on about the strike just as one might ruminate over a capricious storm front. Thus each in his manner would have it in for the weather, groaning over their provisions. "May the blockers by struck down by the wrath of the people!" But it doesn't hold. Inserted among the endless ream of news updates, the nightly display of so many "malcontents", of "we're-being-held-hostage"s and "frustrated-at-the-pumps", presented in the manner of tourists stranded by a flood in India or Chilean miners trapped in the bottom of a hole, shows itself to be a decidedly precarious strategy on the part of those in power.

In a world where the circulation of flows extends upon a global scale, the party of the blockade, of the insurrection, cannot logically prevail without having forged, globally in its turn, the solidarities necessary to endure. The field of action proper to the latter, like the breadth and reach of its ambitions, knows no limit.

Barcelona, September 29, 2010. Day of the general strike. One day against ten years of murmuring silence. What had seemed so securely locked-up in the ghetto of the "anti-system" milieu sparks up, catches fire again, and catches fire at last. Ten years of socialist democracy will not have been equal to forty years of fascism. The order put to heel that day looked every bit the frightened Falangist. Everyone was back on the street, across loose stones and broken glass, the laughter and the cheers going up, as if to give chase to the hasty exit of the police.

Once again, the appearance of the "vandal". Nevertheless, no one is really taken-in any longer by this stylistic figure. The dramatic mise en scene of the latter is played to little effect. Perhaps only the innocents at the student union, or the members of the veterans' society remain capable of being thus stirred. But what's going on today? One could speak of a certain return, our return: a return to working-class violence, a return to youth violence in the streets, a return to the violence of the "old" who pass stones to the "young" in homage to that which they'd never ceased wanting. The words of an old man in Lyon to a young rioter, "we give you the stones we can no longer throw." What had been so perfectly unlearned and forgotten reappears today with all the violence of a thing repressed. The magic linked to the figure of the "vandal" seems to have lost its efficacy to the precise extent that the suburban delinquent, the foreigner, the anarchist, in sum the outsider, no longer serve to delimit anything. How can one seriously speak about exteriority, about marginality, in a world bereft of any outside? The question of violence is no longer posed, but everywhere imposed.

By the same token, the practices of rioting that so regularly punctuate the movement deserve to be recognized as another, mores specific, more surprising form of the blockade. The uncontrollable recurrence of looting and confrontations spanning several days that leave the city centers in total paralysis. The GIPN (the french domestic counter-terrorism unit) in arms, facing down the unarmed crowds. A lesson is to be drawn: the strategy of an economic blockade can never be disassociated from the imperious necessity of annihilating and/or routing the totality of police forces.

One never locates oneself simply within a movement, but always in relation to it, facing it, perhaps even in opposition to it. Opposing all of that which is incoherent or flimsy, the reflux of despair, where it flows back into emptiness. It's a question of attacking the material and affective conditions that bind us to this world. The return to normality must be rendered not only impossible, but undesirable. To establish a cartography of everything which holds us: flows, forces, affective states, logistics, and supplies. To acquire, across the conspiring weave of our friendships, the insurrectional know-how to rout this world. We've learned the opening letters of the alphabet of sedition: blockading the refineries, the oil depots, the ports. Allowing the streets to fill with garbage and transforming the latter into barricades. Smashing the shop-windows that reflect our absence. The question put to us might just as easily be: how to shut off, definitively, the nuclear reactors? How to turn the strike into desertion? How to care for, nourish, and love one another without leaving this world in peace?

"Una salus victis nullam separe salutem."

"The sole salvation of the vanquished
Is to await no salvation."

France, October 27th, 2010.

Enemies We Know

2010-10-26T13:14:00.000-07:00

The Institute for Experimental Freedom is proud to announce the release of “Enemies We Know.” This project was originally intended to be a 4-part poster series, and will be released in this medium as well. However, after careful consideration and reflection, these short texts are currently being released as an easily reproducible pamphlet—designed with high contrast black and whites, easy readability, and succinct critical messaging. This pamphlet serves the purpose of an “instead of an introduction,” and because it is not designed to spread ideology, it focuses on clarifying who and what are our enemies, rather than what is our program. The three known enemies that are the subjects of this pamphlet are “Police,” “Bosses,” and “Rapists.” Each is examined from their functional role within the environment they serve and exposed as an amorphous set of practices rather than a substance. Our intention is not to merely name the enemy—who doesn't know know the name of that occupying force in blue? Rather, our intention is to elaborate an analysis of what function each realizes, and how they can be disarmed, undermined and neutralized. In a world of such confusion, it's nice to know certain truths.

Identity:
If you don't like the “IEF” brand and contact on the back or you wish to add your own, use Adobe Acrobat or another PDF editing program to digitally edit it (for Acrobat: tools, advanced editing, touch up object tool), or simply white it out during production. Even though, it would be more satisfying to leave anonymous letters to potential comrades, we concluded its more beneficial at this time—a time without clear escape routes—to direct a reader toward some signal that they are not alone.

Use:
After considering the social and political environment you occupy, leave this pamphlet anonymously at potential points of encounter (the cliché and historical points: cafés, bookshops, colleges, record stores, and bars).

Enemies We Know

Read
Print

With love; in struggle,
The Institute for Experimental Freedom

Got 55,000 Problems but a "Local Project" ain't One

2010-06-04T01:38:00.000-07:00

To whom it may concern,

Revolution is not a risk management endeavor. It is, in many ways, a slight alteration of everything that gives life meaning, the fear of the fragility of our bodies included. Insurrection is not a game—even if it uses game-theory. Insurrection—not a military campaign, not a movement for democracy—is the contemporary method for revolution because it combats the productive process of the pacified citizen-subject. It makes everyone and everything into a device of revolt. Insurrection returns risk to eros, and meaning to love.

Whereas its good to learn from experience, we learn nothing when fear of experience is paralyzing. Now is not the time to lose courage, nor is it the time to grind our teeth against walls. It's been said by one that we ought think of revolution as the development of small businesses. You invest this here, you get this benefit there. If the I had $55,000, the I would invest it in more security and comfort for its existing franchises and political allies. Don't be fooled by the investment-anarchists, there is no project or other group that should be prioritized that requires our hasty deployment of resources. We do not have a collective pool of money that can be deployed at any time; only at the right time. On the other hand, wouldn't it be cool if we did? The only project that should be prioritized is the refinement of the practices and material solidarities that constitute a partisan warmachine of insurrection. Without access to the networks of legal aid and deception that are abundant within the false mobilization of activism, a partisan warmachine can quickly expend its resources.

Money is not a substitute for emotional support, but paying the rent of your comrade who has been traumatized by the police, in order to have more time to collectively strategize reveals a material solidarity that links friends and comrades into a singular event. It has been said that insurrection requires that its proponents accept a criminal nature of their existence. To really become present to this existence, we will need far more than the Four Star Anarchist Organization's imaginary $55,000, and as has been proven, sometimes in the art of war having a few good contacts is better than having many bad ones.

We mean it: Now is not the time to lose courage. Now is not the time to fear experimentation. Solidarity means—does anything not mean attack?

With insurrectionary love,
Liam Sionnach

For our beloved friends

War
as a form of life
is messy.
Count up
the habeas corpus,
walk softly
on shards of glass.

Honest, fearless,
communication
an assault on meaning
in the utopia of meaninglessness—
is punishable by
a different frequency of
social death.

The polite police officer says
“I understand your frustrations
and we can talk about it now if you'd like to,
but your father...
when we gets home...
I just don't know.”

We're sitting
legs crossed
clutching cigarettes
holding back tears—holding it together
sipping thick black coffee
hoping to traumatize
our strange fragile bodies—
to override their emotive functions.

Soft rain, sharp plateaus of wind
enter through the little holes
in our ears
interrupting the lack of speech.
Words drop from our lips,
nothing is conveyed.

If the phone rings
we won't be any safer
but if the phone rings
we'll be able to
not-sleep calmly.

We know the script
the most savory excess is revealed.
The violence of the process
through which subjects are made
is exposed.
Through the deployment
of authoritative voices,
the rhythm of this violence
extracts this or that practice,
excluding history from
the workday, leisure, holiday
and restores a false unity
of vacant time
with infinite little atoms bouncing
off police batons.

If the phone rings
the script is confirmed
but we'll be able to
not-sleep more calmly.
An annotation
a note
in the negative space
oscillates the thought
that takes us
from the script
to a new meaning.

Take a perverse pleasure
in the torment
let tears harden
into diamonds
and coal

The violence of
discipline
marks our fungible
tissue
traces new scars.
Without innocence,
sensuous debt,
history.

Let the blood
roll down
into the crevices
at our hips and
in between our fingers,
feel it dry
and crack
dark red.

Share its accursed
taste
with those we
keep loving.

Touch the crevices
and veins
and take pleasure,
take time
to let those we
keep loving
spit
dark red
tar
against the open lips
of Grampa
on life support.

The Dictatorship of Postfeminist Imagination

2010-03-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

After a few dozen email conversations, grammatical and content edits by our beloved friends, and the addition of critical annotations, the IEF is proud to announce the release of The Dictatorship of Postfeminist Imagination.

from the preface:

This text is a sort of meta-critique of anarchist practices of feminism. It was provoked from this editor, generally, because of a certain absence of critical feminist theory within a milieu which adopts the assumptions and imperatives of identity politics. It was provoked specifically, because of the intelligence which the text “Is the Anarchist Man our Comrade?” and “Why She Doesn't Give a Fuck About Your Insurrection?” honed in on—of which many of us already know: the affects produced by our practices of consent, accountability, community and identity are weak. Moreover, because the forms, which mimic legal practices, that are taken up to combat internal gendered and sexualized oppression are empty of a consciousness of their historical development. Although this text is responding to particular texts and particular utterances which followed, as a sort of ethical practice, this text refuses the limitation of the milieu that speaks to itself in a particular jargon. By revealing the discourse that is taking place and staking a claim in it, this text intends to overflow its sad boundaries.

The text has multiple voices, contradictions; seams which exist as a threshold between this idea and the next. It always does. It is assembled merely as a temporary space which these bodies who are attached to worlds and their meanings communicate. Although it comes from an editing process which seeks to weave an amalgamation of intelligences and sensibilities into—at the very least—the raw intellectual materials to reveal a political position, this text is also only one such rudimentary position in a long history of feminist theoretical development. And although the voices which are put to use by this assemblage may very well scoff at certain feminist writers, it would be foolish not to examine this history.

The writers, or worlds, which inhabit this text are both infantile and full of a decade of scars. We've been experimenting with our lives, our bodes, spaces, and temporalities, and we've met similar and unique pitfalls. The theory we write is an extension of the theory we inhabit. We start from the horror that we are all potential perpetrators, because we are not sure we have developed the spoken language, or gestural vocabulary to articulate our experiences, and because we can't count past one in four—or was it one in ten? We love power, we even sometimes love to authorize, but we're terrified by the means which we must encounter our power. Because we know it's often at the expense of others.

Hating the irreversible time of daily miseries
and their repetition,

-Liam Sionnach | IEF | 2010

online reading
8.5x11 imposed for print PDF

Even Feminism Desires the Text of Power & A Few Clarifications on Key Concepts

2010-01-29T01:43:00.000-08:00

Even feminism? Yes even feminism desires the text of power

Theory is another word for nothing left to lose. The Institute for Experimental Freedom is beyond masochistic with its bodies, murmurs and texts. We publish, print and distribute works foolishly against their future renditions. The typo or technical error pale in comparison to the shame we experience the moment our desire codified in digital mappings of vectors and typography brushes against the docile or eager appetite of whoever reads PDFs, blogs or printed zines. This shame, a sort of abjection, reverses onto us as it returns ten-fold in so many little confusions: a misinterpretation of a key term, a refusal to love our refusal to be governed by value in its textual form, an anxiety regarding one's own capacity to be acted on by the text, or feeling outside of the ironic horror we cannot help but know as a world we are attached to. Years ago, we might have simply turned deaf ears to these confusions which come in the way of half-critiques. We may have been mobilized as yet another faculty of the impoverished subversive text apparatus. We could—and have, in other incarnations—modify our words, and our practices of the text as a text of pleasure, in order to suffice as rational discourse. We could be resubjectivized by the grammar of ideology and its pathetic cry for attention; the “ideas matter” of the infant in an IWW shirt who just won't shut up about Noam Chomsky, or that of the internet forum poster who believes that he might not be such a lonely loser if everyone would just read The Coming Insurrection and talk to him about it. But, we'd prefer not to.

The Institute for Experimental Freedom practices a text of pleasure and text of power, both on paper and on the body. The CrimethInc jabs in Rolling Thunder are no misnomer. We are experimental material, and we're in it for us, our friends and the friends we have yet to meet. However, this is not to say we are not a part of a stupid milieu like everyone else, nor is it to say we are not trying to find the exit; we are, carefully.

We take the practice of thought, the practice or writing, the practice of power, the questions of “what is an artist?” “what is a writer?” “what is history?” “what are our conditions?” very seriously. And we think through a ruthless experimentation with our lives—by subjecting ourselves and our friends to high frequencies of cruelty, banality, joy, and sadness—we might stumble upon something which we would carefully put close to our hearts and share—with the milieu and with what survives it. Which is perhaps another way of saying, although ideas don't matter, the practices of a discourse require critique and provocation with which we will lovingly shock the face of any of our comrades or opponents. We have been hoping this would be reciprocated. Alas, still we sit on our knees, while our “insurrectionist” and anti-state communist peers merely stumble on their dirty-talk in front of the mirror.

Nonetheless, The Institute is a warm calculating assemblage. The comments between stories on anarchist websites which have nothing to do with it, the subtle jokes of our friends and hostiles, and the horror of our lovers' Fathers do a rudimentary violence to our corporeal topographies. From the tidy paper cuts, we excrete just a little red—enough to paint our lips or a small American flag. However, perhaps we underestimate the force of nagging slits on the skin—whether it be political or otherwise. Nothing itches more than a thousand paper cuts.

So we scratch; we'll give in a little bit. But, rest assured we have no illusions that scratching will make the itch go away. On the contrary, we're hoping to pull the wounds open just a bit more.

From these rips in our texture we'll offer these humble gifts: a series of elaborated descriptions of the terms we hold close to our hearts, which demand to be shared.

Still very much wanting the text inscribed against our unsurprisingly thick skin,

-Liam Sionnach | IEF | '10

A few clarifications on key concepts within many of the texts we publish and distribute in the way of a series of complex glosses to be irregularly posted online.

Without further adieu:

World Civil War | Gloss 1.

Civil war presupposes the modern state. In some ways, civil war can be read as both what was outside of history and then, with the development of the modern state, what became included in history. A comment like “The history of societies thus far is the history of class struggle” has a secret intelligence contained within it when we read it through our magic decoder matrix: civil war.

History and society were only really unified with the development of the modern state. The modern state in Hegel became the subject of history for his philosophy. Marx, among other Young Hegelians made this their object of critique. However, lurking bellow the surface of such idealism in Hegel was Hobbes and the concept of sovereignty. The state of nature in Hobbes was a sort of permanent potential of war of all against all. Law, enforced by the state, would create a clear divide between what was inside the law and what was outside of it; generating “civil society” (or “the civil state) on the inside, and civil war on the outside. This meant that living beings would only be included in human society (and thus, history) once they became subject to the rule of law; all manner of imperial practices come with ease. However, even in Hobbes's hypothesis, there remained a permanent problem. Law, which gives human society its so-called order, can only be enforced through means which appear indistinguishable from civil war. What Marx discreetly references is not that class struggle is the history of living beings on the planet, but that class struggle is civil war inside the gates; and is the general conditions of capitalism.

The concept of a “world” may be important in some of the ways “world civil war” is used. “The evident is not merely a matter of logic or reasoning. It attaches itself to the sensible, to worlds” (p4, Call). A world is a zone of meaning, sense—“before time, absolutely, there is sense.”(Ok, War it is Tiqqun 1) History is the reification of time as Man's time, and perhaps even the concealment of civil war. It locates a living being as subject to the sensuous praxis of generating and reproducing human society. Civil war is the free play of bios, of forms of life; life which acts in a world. “Civil,” because worlds are not limited by the boundaries or laws of nation-states and because conflict can take place in myriad of spheres, with a multiplying array of techniques. “War,” because the potential for doing violence to the most just must not be discounted, ever. On a terrain with a multiplicity of worlds, only forms of life who feel their power can act decisively.

Even in Hobbes, if there were not civil war, there would be no need for Leviathan. Leviathan wasn't a god on earth, as much as the political equivalent of someone who's afraid of the dark. The modern state therefor had as its object the warding off of an ever present civil war. It coded civil war as “evil”, and put religious apparatuses to work. We could say the modern state's practices of government had the character of a war against civil war. The development of techniques of governing which corresponded (liberalism) excluded and disciplined dangerous elements. At certain times these elements were juridically coded as “the hostis” (hostile, unknown, outside), and came in the way of invading parties, but also in the way of crime, and later, sickness.

What we call “world civil war” develops out of the modern state's failure, and each and every elaboration of civil war. Reading its history religiously, we learn that good does not triumph over evil; moreover we learn that coding the state as the hand of god reaches a threshold because its teqinches of power continuously collapse into the terrain of evil. Law cannot be enforced without the possibility of doing violence to the most just. Civil war is then the omnipresent aporia of the modern state. It cannot prevent transgression and revolt and yet it is logically demanded to develop itself to do just that.

On the other hand, we can read “world” synonymously with “global.” World civil war develops as the excess of liberal techniques of power. Capitalism generates a fracture in the being of Man's time, elaborating the fracture caused by the state. Two representations develop. On the one hand, the bourgeoisie, who managed, tuned, and attempted to master capital, and on the other hand, the proletariat, who produced all value and whose subjugated existence pulls the two into an intense conflict. Because war between nation states is governed by international law, a war between non-state actors forces both parties to develop techniques of war which are out-side the law. From the moment the first partisan disrupted the separation between solider and civilian, the development of an exceptional and irregular technique of war was set into motion. Whereas capitalism created the conditions where the state was no longer the authorizer of the political, and in fact becomes another technology for the bourgeoisie to deploy in order to neutralize intense political relationships, class struggle within capitalism returns the question of the political to forefront and cuts across national boundaries by deploying the figure of an irregular fighter in the image of the proletariat across the earth. Class struggle was the prior most intense configuration of civil war, because of its international dimensions, its ethical character which transforms any conflict into absolute enmity, and because of the proletariat's capacity to hold the threat of a self-negation: The proletariat is the class which abolish class society through its own self-abolition. However, if the proletariat who came in the way of the working class general strike, and later the diffuse irrationality of autonomous armed joy were defeated—as it was—then what would survive this condition was the representation of the bourgeoisie (at a planetary level) with a new paradigm of war without the limits of national boundaries and international law; who stood on a new terrain without a stable enemy but rather a globe of hostilities which could be intensified, if need be.

With the development of a War on Terror and permanent counter-insurgency, world civil war now returns to its initial terrifying presence. Capital, liberated from the tyranny and stupidity of bourgeois management acts as its own sovereign force and subsumes all hostile forms of life: The phase of real subsumption. The state as an appendage of capital is deployed to give meaning to the world of images by imposing the category of enemy on any one of its own excessive consequences. The ontological character of this gesture is completed once the enemy has been reintegrated into the symbolic-order, either through rehabilitation (democratization) or exclusion (a fair amount of killing).

However, perhaps the proletariat has not been defeated. Perhaps the proletariat is still the class, or vocation, which abolishes class society—and elaborates civil war. In the conditions of civil war against the bourgeoisie with the development of industrialism, the proletariat's force of negation was contingent on a strategically positioned portion of workers: the industrial working class. However with the dissolution of the both the factory and its inhabitants, and with the integration of subculture and all manner of past “revolutionary subjectivities” into the rationality of commodity production; perhaps there are different conditions and different contingencies from which a more terrible proletariat is awaiting to be revealed. In these different conditions, civil war is elaborated by an equally diffuse, almost imperceptible irregular fighter. The pure negative potential of a planetary multi-cultural petite bourgeoisie. An impure hostis humani generis. An army of sleeper cells with allegiance to no identity; with no more statist fascinations or illusions of a just society; and with no use in the economy of superfluous labor, already begins to advance civil war to its logical and redemptive conclusion: the dissolution of society, social war.

Family and Historical Materialism 2010 has this way of making me oh-so proletarian

2010-01-21T23:32:00.000-08:00

Another Cold Year for the Warmth
Death and Redemption

“Theres a man goin' round taking names and he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won't be treated all the same.”

The fold of our history is either death or redemption. The history of the vanquished and the history of preemptive alienating and policing apparatuses yearn to conclude. We all have a door and a rotting carpet; a family and a dynasty of fuck ups; advanced social dissolution from worlds and senses to answer for. They say men make history, but not in conditions of their choosing. If it is our sensuous activity within a world, a praxis, which generates a world, then by what means do we confront the millions of potentialities which are taken from history? Those souls who are irrevocably lost, or worse yet, rendered bare life through processes of subjectivation, are prepared to be judged, not by history, but by the police. Each death is a tragedy because in “each” there is a shame of separation. The private life only becomes public in death. But this public death is itself a technique of exposure, which links the family and society to the church, to the school, to the prison. The tragedy which the living are constantly exposed to is not merely their own telos but capitalism's continuous merciless holiday. In this society, no one dies. Everyone is murdered.

What is pathetic in death is not the loss of a container of memories and affects or the fleeting away of another productive member of the family, of society, but the loss of the capacity to speak. Death acts like a nightmare on the living. Conjuring images of “once upon a time,” the living attempt to answer for the horror of a brisk wind which extinguishes light in one subtle swoop. But the sad conclusive cough of a body judged guilty of living in capitalism is repeated and shared. Each voice is rendered mute. Each potentiality perfectly aware of what strangles it daily. The tears of the living for the dead, while representing a real sadness, never conjoin to form the flood which will redeem the past. Instead, the mouth opens, limbs shake with anxiety; our small, light-colored hairs stand up searching for a warmth which is not in this world. And in the end, what could be communicated—the single gesture of communicability itself—is once again lost, irretrievable, amidst blinking lights and the flow of commodities which live so much longer than any of us.

What is redemption in such circumstances? Is it forgiving our trespasses, and forgiving those who trespass against us? By what means do we admit a presence which annuls memories, scars, blood?

My family is connected through Facebook. The eulogy for my grandmother stumbled on her truth. She took on a predictable position of women married to husbands in the twentieth century. She mothered many children and formed the foundation to a family whose care was held by a second-generation Italian pater. She, and all the other shes of the family, suffered only the absence of en-courage-ment. It is not surprising: they all left. My grandmother quietly lived as if she had been redeemed, doing the books to my grandfathers photography business, never once elaborating her own passions for paint on canvas. The eulogy concluded, as my grandmother often would, that if anyone felt despondent, the eulogist would happily go shopping with them. The analogy to government orders following the events of September eleventh to go shopping is not lost on me. There were some really good sales at Macy's

On the other side of the family, between drinks, and with far too many teenage mothers, I learned cousin Ian had been sentenced in 'Oh-four. My absence from Facebook excluded me from hearing this bullshit earlier. Was it three-strikes you're out? Did he have guns too? How long is a life-sentence? The silence of social death touches even the Midwestern Irish working class. My other cousin, who used hockey like how the black body uses football or basketball, or how southern whites use the military, received a terrible back injury and was sentenced to a fancy new oxycodone addiction. Again, if only I had Facebook... One of my sisters still clings to the myth that we're different because we didn't grow up in these fucked up conditions, but she conveniently forgot about all the suicides and boredom; the drive-by's and the addictions, even the empty refrigerators, which painfully illustrate our miserable upbringing. We all ran too, and we ran for a reason.

The fold of this history is uncertain. On the one hand, everything about today, and even yesterday, just points toward the production of death. Enduring high school, when anarchy was merely a secret which Propagandhi attempted to whisper to me through power chords; or when struggle was just some band that that dude from the Locust was in, Columbine seemed perfectly reasonable. We sketched pictures of it all the time. We searched our history books, attempting to discover any time when the underdog wreaked its vengeance. We had no voice then, no words to call our own, and no world which affected us. We had only the conditions of all of that dissolving. In that time, many of us were quite literally unwanted children; and judging by the fields we set on fire, the plots to blow up schools, the churches we vandalized, and unfortunately, the animals which we tortured, we were capable of some fucked up shit. The youth of today are even worse.

On the other hand, maybe we can once more be affected by “Death to death!” Which is not to say, “peace.” But more specifically, our time, capitalist time, is a time of living-dead. Techniques of government expose life's limits to itself and generate bare life. No one knows sovereignty better than the life which is judged not worth living by the police or the life which is let to live by its manager. And because of Biopower and the Spectacle, it's increasingly difficult to separate any of these figures. Redemption in this world is not repaying a debt, atoning for guilt which we owe society. Capitalism is guilt. We owe them nothing. Redemption is giving them just that.

Walter Benjamin writes: “For we have been expected upon this earth. For it has been given us to know, just like every generation before us, a weak messianic power, on which the past has a claim. This claim is not to be settled lightly.” The day after my grandmother died, I set off for New York to do a panel about the messianic analogy within the proletariat. The day before my grandmother's funeral, I spoke of becoming sensitive to the imperceptible civil war which has taken place as class struggle and now takes place as social war. In the conditions of social war, this civil war can be felt as a war between normality and its cracks. The proletariat within this civil war is a force who is contingent on history but whose possibility lies outside of it. The proletariat cancels and fulfills history through its own self-negation. At one time, in the conditions of industrialization, classical politics, and a strategically positioned portion of the oppressed, the proletariat took form in the messianic-gesture, what Benjamin called the “divine violence” of the general strike. The proletariat, who was contingent on “a class of civil society but not of civil society,” was expressed as the industrial working class using their own labor-power—what produced value—to negate value and class society itself: redemption.

Benjamin continues, “nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history. Only a redeemed humankind receives the fullness of its past. Which is to say, only for a redeemed humankind has its past become citable in all moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation a l’ordre du jour [order of the day]—and that day is Judgement Day.”

“The hairs on your arm will stand up. At the terror in each sip and in each sup. For you partake of that last offered cup, Or disappear into the potter's ground. When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers. One hundred million angels singin'. Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum. Voices callin', voices cryin'. Some are born an' some are dyin'. It's Alpha's and Omega's Kingdom come...

Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still. Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still. Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still.”

The horror of death in capitalism must be met with a greater horror. Hollywood produced this a representation of this horror some forty-two years ago. How appropriate that in a world, where all death is murder and all life is bare life, the dead would come to life to feed on the living. The death which the proletariat brings with it is the reversal of the operation which lets bare life live or die. The violence of redemption fulfills all past antagonisms. Its operation returns everything to use, especially our fragile bodes, especially the rot of the world. The proletariat—who perhaps takes us, affects bare life—strikes against being human when human progress is analogous to capitalist development. It turns all things which have been given value above life to toys to be ruined. It makes common everything, and like the Spanish militias who danced with the corpses of nuns, it brings our dead grandmothers to share in the collective arson of beauty salons.

The insurrection which comes is not generated from the desire for a better world: there is none. It is not even the accomplishment of democracy. It is the nightmare of the past holding the future hostage, and publicly killing and feasting on it on youtube, over and over again. In our conditions, that of an absolute social war, insurrection and its total extension is the rhythm we must collectively write and impose on capitalist society. Through these experiments and repeated gestures we develop a new sentimental intelligence and different sensuous praxis which no longer accepts our shameful conditions. We impose different collectivities beyond family, nation, and society exactly at the point of their negation. We find we are not alone, exactly at the point we lose our selves. We share exactly at the point when we begin to seize. When each funeral loses what was attempting to kept it a private affair—when newspapers are terrified to write a single obituary because the will of the dead keeps leaving ruin in its wake—then we will begin to know what redemption entails.

-Liam Sionnach | IEF | Jan '10

Oh yeah, We made a book

2009-12-08T10:50:00.000-08:00

The Institute for Experimental Freedom (IEF) is proud to release the little book: Politics is not a Banana: The Journal of Vulgar Discourse, What are you Doing After the Orgy or Insurrection or Whatever?

From the introduction:

The insurrection has not transformed our rotting teeth into pure indestructible diamond grills. The orgy only spreads our combined STDs, unless we cover our filthy used bodies in saran wrap—which is pretty cool. Whatever; we made more than $6.50 plus tips but then blew it all on wine, cigarettes, rope, and ceiling hooks. The insurrection gives us this opportunity though, to forget, to practice, and even to run up on some doctor and force his medicalizing ass to nurse our irrevocable rot; to re-imagine our relationships with our stupid dying bodies. It makes us become attentive to the force of our little deaths and the inexhaustible desire we can embody.

The book is a collection of texts, images, and design sensibilities which combine insurrectional theory, critical theory, and post-structuralist inquiries about power and subjectivization with experimental fiction, flarf poetry, Brechtian pornography, and Swiss-influenced post-ironic typographic design.

Following a strange popularity of the '07 printing of Politics is Not a Banana 7x7 journal, the IEF put out a call for submissions for another issue. Contributions were overwhelming, and resulted in our decision to print this beautiful magenta 4.25x6 book/textual war-machine.

Contributions range from the IEF's own Liam Sionnach and Maxamillion Stihl, to new English translations from the collectively written French journal Tiqqun, to a lesser known French group “The Enlightened Avant-Garde” (aka The Movement for the Apocalypse of Montpelier) to Parser's Magazine's Robert Farr flarf poetry to Wax Poetic's own Idris Intifada.

Distributors and Bookstores Get in touch for wholesale prices or use the order form at the bottom of the post.

Politics is Not a Banana is currently available in the US at:

Firestorm cafe and books in Asheville, NC

Internationalist Books in Chapel Hill, NC

Blue Stockings in NYC

Book Thug Nation in Brooklyn, NY

Spoonbill and Sugartown in Brooklyn, NY

The Cream City Collective via Burntbookmobile, in Milwaukee, WI

Sporeprint Infoshop in Columbus, OH

City Light Books in San Francisco, CA

Modern Times Books in San Francisco, CA

Needles and Pens in San Francisco, CA

Bound Together Books in San Francisco, CA

Online Distributors:

Little Black Cart

Last Earth Distro

(this post will be kept up, and updated as new locations come in)

Also, who likes reading books online and printing terrible bootlegs?
[aka: readable Politics is Not a Banana | What are you doing...? PDF on issuu]

Oh and by the way, in part because our absurd negligence, and in part because of riseup.net's low file space, some contributors may not have received a copy of PNB in mail, please email us if you contributed and have not received a book. We'll totally make it up to you, if you know what I mean.

Get Paid | Wil' Out | Push the University to Crisis

2009-12-06T10:10:00.000-08:00

Here's a recent post on infoshop which touched us in the most charming lumpen-bourgeoisie ways. Although ruining the University financially through a sort of self-abolition of the student is quite a good start, we'd like to point out there are other means with which to elaborate this practice, and other ways which a university is occupied.

From infoshop news

Bankrupt the System, Exploit The University

The recent student struggles in California to transform their universities have been inspiring examples of what people can do when they come together, and begin to collectively believe in the future rather than fearing the threats issued in the present. Social wars need money, as Alfredo Bonanno (a 74-year old anarchist recently arrested in Greece for bank robbery) can attest to, and the university has put the gun in your hands. All you need to do is pull the trigger. Max out your credit cards, max out your student loans. Bankrupt the system that is bankrupting us!

All my life, I've been washing dishes, delivering pizza, bagging groceries, and hustling to make enough to pay rent. I've always been a working class, Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher kinda guy. You betcha!

In the past, I've dumpster dived, telling myself it was because I wanted to. But really, I would've preferred to eat the fresh food in the store. I did it because I didn't want to waste away my entire life in that hot, wet, greasy dishwashing room. I did it to be able to save up money so I could quit my job and travel before I became a shriveled up old prune with arthritis, whose only way to see the world was using an RV, something that I would probably never be able to afford.

Anyway, I got into some shit with the law, you know the deal. The cops love to make their quotas. It was military, prison, or college and some time on probation for me. I applied to college solely to save my own ass, not for some stupid degree that I can present to a potential boss for the "opportunity" to spend the next decade kissing his ass.

College is a social structure full of the privileges the state gives to the middle class. No one ever explained this dope ass scam to me before! My parents didn't go to college, they didn't know what the deal was. No wonder you middle class students are so content, I'd think to myself. No wonder you didn't want a revolution.

Well, now that some of you do, or at least you know there needs to be some serious changes because the system is breaking down, it's up to you to pull those triggers.

This is a call for all students to take full advantage of the benefits the middle class is offered through the university. To bet on the future and not on the present: to take out as much money in student loans and credit cards as you can, with no intention to pay it back.

We're only partially responsible for the Apocaplyse

2009-12-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

New text Regarding Social War and Climate Change: Introduction to The Apocalypse

The Institute for Experimental Freedom's European appendages and friends are pleased to announce the completed layout for a new text in preparation for the Cop15 summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. Introduction to The Apocalypse gives a concise and critical analysis of the current ecological catastrophe, the climate change movement and its limitations, and the real existing potential for an immediate reversal of the future. Copy and distribute freely.

(8.5x11) Letter imposed for print PDF

(A4) Imposed for print PDF

(A4) Readable PDF

From the introduction:

“All of us secretly desire for this world to end. The future lasts forever. Or at least, it used to. The grand illusion of Western civilisation has always been the myth of progress, namely that the flow of history would beneficently extend into an infinite future. To our parents, civilisation offered houses in the suburbs, computers, and automobiles. And civilisation delivered. To the children of these workers, civilisation offered life on the moon, artificial intelligence, endless peace. All of which have failed to emerge. While our parents cling to the belief that someday the mortgage will be repaid and they can retire in happiness, their lost children know this is a lie. This world offers nothing to us: no meaningful work, no rest, no future – only fear. Over and over again, we find ourselves conditioned like rats by the images of not just our own death, but of total destruction. From the collapse of the World Trade Centre to the alien invasion, from the spectre of nuclear war to the hole in the ozone layer – and now the melting glaciers – these images ingrain themselves in our very being. These images are nothing more than modern projections of the deep-set fantasy of all religions: the apocalypse.

Today, catastrophic climate change is the image of the apocalypse. Nothing has escaped the touch of humanity, from the deepest oceans to the atmosphere itself. There is little doubt that carbon emissions caused by human activity may bring about the end of the world as we know it. It’s just a matter of listening to the ticking of the doomsday clock as it counts down to a climactic apocalypse. Never before in recorded history has the question of the earth’s survival been so starkly posed, and never before has such news been greeted with such indifference.

What is to be done in the face of a crisis so large it dwarfs the imagination? We are left with nothing but a sense of impending doom, a strange depression that keeps us oscillating between hysterical hedonism and sad loneliness, and in the end both responses are merely the two faces of the selfsame despair. Those self-appointed to “save” us from this crisis – the governments, scientists, activists –seem incapable of anything but sloganeering: clean development, carbon markets, sustainable development, climate justice, ecological reparations, green capitalism. We know in our heart of hearts that these fantasies give any sensible person as much cold comfort as a stiff drink. Confronted with the real possibility of the apocalypse, the world becomes inverted: to continue as if everything is normal in the present moment is the most refined act of nihilism.

This generalised delirium, formerly confined to only a handful of activists, has spread over the last few years to the population at large, and even the state seems a sincere believer in catastrophic climate change. Observe the reaction of the nation-states who, while in endless summits to “solve” the climate crisis, such as the COP15, continue to build airport after airport, highway after highway, giving industries the remit to emit ever-more carbon. The nation-states continue to act as if everything is normal, while at the same time lying through their gritted teeth that “we are solving the climate crisis.” No-one today, even the children, believe them. Their summits and pledges are mere fiddling while Rome burns. The absurd plots hatched by scientists to avert this coming apocalypse, from putting mirrors into space to pumping water from the bottom of the ocean, have only the virtue of being at least mildly entertaining. There is a distinct air of madness about our rulers, a madness that reminds us only too much of the monarchs of the ancien regime shortly before their beheading. Yet, what can a single person do? The despair felt when confronted by the reality of climate change is an honest appraisal of a disaster where there is no easy escape. Let us hold this despair close, let it nurture us. Honesty is always the best policy for survival.”

Two New Speaking Dates & Thoughts on Intellectual Production

2009-10-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

Social Justice or Social War?*
Other means of War in the Time of Depoliticized Life

Monday, October 19, 8PM at New York University, New York, NY

Kimmel Center Room 912 (60 Washington Square South)

Monday, November 2, 7:30PM at Ohio State University, Columbus, OH

Hagerty Hall room 180 (1775 College Rd)

*“Social Justice or Social War?” defines a rudimentary theory of social war. It posits civil war as an underlining condition to life and the modern state as a development intended to police and conceal this. In the time where all states have lost their imaginary force of attraction, we propose that social justice is an auxiliary mechanism to “defend society.” Social war, on the other hand, is opposed to social justice as a different discourse of revolutionary change—one which has a different concept of history.

Although the talk will contribute to a refining of these terms and their deployment, it will ultimately lack a specific conclusive direction. It will hastily engage with far too many concepts but has been said to be “surprisingly coherent.” Its surprising coherence is more than likely the result of the length of the talk and/or the performativity, which was inseparable from the talk given at the University of Wisconsin on September 11. Rather, “Social Justice or Social War?” will engage with concepts, figures, historical events as devices which we will put to use to compose atonal rhythms. These rhythms, when examined, will help us collectively write a strategy. Everything before this is conjecture—of which the IEF willfully contributes.

A few more notes regarding the IEF's intellectual exercises in impotence

The gesture of the lecture cannot be separated from the discourse it happens within. Whereas the IEF has located this gesture's site of taking-place in the university, it must be noted that many of us who are taken by the IEF and by the practices of insurrection are not the loyal subjects of academia. Our less than scholarly practices follow suit. On the other hand, the gesture of the lecture, because it is the taking-place of a discourse, reveals a world within which partisans take the practice of thought and its exposition seriously (even if that means we take being irresponsible incredibly seriously). Which means: performativity can communicate thus as thus, not just thus as that. We're like, being the communism/violence we want to see in the world, or whatever.

What is concealed by the gesture of the lecture? Because it happens within multiple discourses, the grammar of critical theory may conceal the fact of civil war. Someone in Wisconsin asked, “How, after we have sort of exploded, do we not return to normal? I mean, after the chairs which caught flight have landed; and after this room, which has been torn apart, is no longer becoming torn apart; and our bodies are not encountering each others with a joyful violence. We seem to return to performing our normal roles: You as the speaker, and I among my peers as the listener? How can we stretch it out?” Can the lecture ever be profaned in such a way that is no longer recognizable as such? The lecture, the study group, the journal of strategy always also occupy a position in the economic production of intellect. Willfully practicing stupidity, and attempting to wash our hands clean of this, will not contest that position. Likewise, occupying that position—even the wrong-ass way—may do little to contest it. Like other positions one can have within capitalism, intellectual production is work. The lecture, through the framework of the speaker/listeners, conceals the way in which voyeurs are engaged in this collective process of intellectual production. However, only a practice which leaves none of these roles intact could collectively generate intellect without value. Which is to say, only once thought's potentiality for a consistency of practices is revealed (not necessarily, “realized”) can intellectual value be attacked at the point of production.

In the past, marxists had posed the process of “socialization” as a way making labor a social entity. Such a process occurs in conjunction with a progressive concept of history where the proletariat becoming a dictatorship of its class makes private entities social. The anti-globalization movement's avant-garde sought to achieve such a process within the intellectual and artistic spheres of the economy through its emphasis on reclaiming social space. At its more honest moments it would speak of “autonomy,” but there is no autonomy within global capitalism, as the self-managed factories of Argentina demonstrate. If such spheres of the economy are going to be profaned, they must become unrecognizable and be redeemed of re-semblance. Communization in this regard immediately imposes a destruction of the faculties to generate value. It is no coincidence that the university, a factory of intellectual production, refers to its material spaces and its authoritative positions as “faculties.”

Aggressive survival practices cannot be discounted. Whereas our backsides are caressed firmly by the specters of the past generating an urgent need for negation of the present, the IEF in its erotic practices and its practices of war understands the virtues of privation. We are delighted by all the headlines which make the bourgeoisie tremble and all the events where shit goes to pieces. However, we also understand the need to extend our practices by holding positions which translate into being able to share material solidarities. If any of the colleges we speak at do not immediately become occupied in that New School sort of way, no matter. We're also occupying them in another sort of way.

We'll see you on the many roads of impotenza.

The IEF does not fight*, nor do we argue, we simply hit that person with a bottle

*Well, actually...

-Liam Sionnach | IEF | Oct. 09 | The Dirty

DOOM$DAY WAR MACHINEZ | a Quip from a lil' Wildness in the Midwest

2009-09-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to MKE comrades for this charming report back

On September 11th 2009, a slew of miscreants from all corners of the insurrectional constellation descended on the University of Milwaukee campus for a lovely evening with the IEF's own Liam Sionnach. While being fed grapes and smoking indoors (naughty, naughty) The Institute got differently-abled on profanation, the end of time and the human strikes of our disease ridden bodies. The room may have gotten wrecked a bit, chairs may have gained flight, everyone may have shared a lick, and a speaker may have been pied. It is all a blur by this point. What is certain: some folks in Milwaukee definitely got a stern-talking-to by their landlords, we practiced a trans-geographic sharing of complicities and bodily fluids, offered the gift of enmity (served cold in bottles) to some frat boys, and of course articulated our favorite gesture; sadomasochism. Oh, and we're also probably never allowed back at a certain luxury hotel in downtown Milwaukee.

THE INSTITUTE FOR EXPERIMENTAL FREEDOM 2009 TOUR:
come for the commodities, stay for the strip-searches.

1. How does it feel to be never alone, every-so-often?

Last week in the Midwest we continued a process which can only be called “beginning again”. Either because we occupy the position of being an active minority of proletarianized life, or a profoundly bored minority of proletarianized life. We are captivated with finding, and sharing each other. Perhaps a certain textual promiscuity, and a certain seductive distance brings us together. Perhaps an invisible voice acted on us collectively, and perhaps we simply like the similar clothes, music, and inside jokes. Either way, let's not reduce what could grow and become stronger by claiming to be the insurrectional queer, power-hungry, bro'd out, mean bitchez, that we also are. But let's hold on—without forgetting where the boundaries of exclusion are, which we are setting out—and keep losing ourselves in the thresholds.

2. The Other Means of War

What would it mean to engage in methods of conflict and even combat which reveal how it is done? And yet, how could this be invisible? These are some of the challenges which face the contemporary insurrectional project. The intimate event appropriates us—makes us the technologies of whatever force it may wield. How an event is populated and practiced gives it its form. If the content of insurrectional events is defined only by the intimacy between a small group, then it is far more likely that the specialized division of labor relation which alienates us daily will be replicated. On the other hand, if we engage in an open discourse of conflict, a certain potency which is located in becoming sensitized to each other's shared desire can be lost.

Of course there is a tension between experiencing hostility (unknown, outside) with new people and place, and experiencing friendships. We are not trying to become secure, or reject the hostis—which is the foundation of all relations. However, the construction of a partisan war-machine of insurrection requires that we face, and practically answer these questions. How is the rhythm of our shared-time—the history of social war—felt beyond the confines of what happens between our bodies (communication), how is is felt as what affects us—what we are taken by? How is this achieved without a protest-media strategy? Are there voyeurs within the immediate vicinity of a given gesture of insurrection who will be seduced by our gifts? If the answer is “no,” then we must either face the fact of singularities, which happen as mere representations with affective faculties (the one-off event which sucks everything into its vortex) , and/or seek out, occupy and if we have the capacity impose new topographies which we are better suited to populate with affects (the consistency of ungovernable terrains—occupied workplaces, schools, and social spaces which generate material solidarity and portals into our worlds).

3. Dispossessed are Turning to Communism/Violence

If we are turning to communism in a world without it, it means we are immediately getting organized, collectively to improve our conditions. It means we will, one way or the other, find ourselves in combat. A crass provocation: get money and power by all means. Some still want to continue their projects which help others. Cool. Others want to be able to live and fight. Both need money, and positions which we will defend.

On the other hand, how is violence shared? How are the spaces which we inhabit combustible? This week proved two weaknesses: 1.) We are not currently positioned to attack those whose bodies have been structured as military-machines. 2.) We are still afraid to start shit (perhaps, reasonably). Quite literally, the man with dog tags is better at manning-up than we who perform tough. Perhaps reclaiming force will have to take place a different level. Other material forces who perform being tough and mean are better situated to start shit and bully. Perhaps if we are going to locate a biopolitical sadism, it must happen along side a biopolitical masochism. But who wants to get hit first? Or rather, how will we hit first?

For those of you coming to get B-A-N-A-N-A-S in PGH, we'll see you in the Thug Section. Others, perhaps we'll continue to find out if we've reached our expiration date in the Spring.

Whats another word for "The partisan War Machine of insurrection?"

“Doom$Day” —or was it “Doomsgay?”

My neck, my back, my hipbones, and my crack, still ache so much, but at least I still have my shoes. How's your ass doing?
-Liam Sionnach | IEF | '09

ps: If anyone was there and would really like a copy of the text, feel free to beg ief-southeast(at)riseup(dot)net.

IEF wil'n out in the Midwest on big words

2009-08-27T14:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, there's rumors. Not all of them have been proven true.
What we do know is that an IEF posse is gonna be getting retarded on theory and sizurp on Milwaukee, WI and making everything just a bit more terrible—even with the lack of some people. I mean we're not naming names, but a certain Max, will not be stealing millions in WI and that's a fucking shame. Just saying.

On the other hand, what's better than the late '90s hardcore scene and early '00s anti-globalization activists traveling through your town and eating all the garbage at your so-called collective house?
IEF insurrectuals making it fucking rain.

“Social Justice or Social War?”
Friday | September 11 | 7pm
UWM Union | room 280

*PDF of 11x17 poster here

The Institute for Experimental Freedom was an inside job.

Politics is Not a Banana | "What are you doing...?" & new website, coming extremely soon (let's say September)

2009-08-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

What are you doing after the orgy or the insurrection or whatever?

Politics is Not a Banana is at the printer. After some practical gestures to expose a plane of consistency for theory and practice, a few old questions posed from a different angle, a bit too much smoking inside, and an excessive use of typography, Politics is Not a Banana: “What are you doing...” has reached its threshold. Some 168 pages of content, color covers, off-set printing and 2-color-pantone insides as a perfect bound 4.25x7in assemblage will make up the machine of PNB. Around a thousand copies will be printed for the first run. Seriously, we don't even know a thousand people, much less a thousand people who will want to read this fucking thing.

“Politics is Not a Banana: What are you doing...” is not “Politics is Not a Banana 2.” While it is certain that the Politics is Not a Banana that has been floating around since spring of '08 was the first of many issues we have, it was not “Politics is Not a Banana 1.” This project is not intended for progress or development. If by chance we get worse over time, it is because we will have given in to the seduction of becoming a better commodity or a more terrible practice of print—which are temptations that are felt at every corner. If the former is the case, it would behoove you to not merely denounce us. If the latter is the case, may god have mercy on the anarchist milieu.

“Blablabla form blablabla content”

We believe that we can get what we want. Its difficult perhaps; we have to become sensitive to each other in order to really be expositional, rather than merely performative[1]. However, with a meaningful practice of doing relationships how we want to, we may accidentally stumble upon something a bit better than just a different form of terrible. It is this logic that motivates the experiment with the commodity known as Politics is Not a Banana.

The Institute for Experimental Freedom would like to congratulate itself. We engage in projects with a certain lightness and prefer the form of the experiment, which serves to prove—to give experience—to a what we believe to be sensible. If the 7x7 issue of Politics is Not a Banana proved anything, it was that the practice of DIY print (zines) could be reappropriated. Solidarities between service workers felt as inclinations were made material, and whatever force of seduction was afforded to Politics is Not Banana translated into crews across the US figuring out their own shit and printing a few copies. The theft and use of the hookup network between various metropolitan service workers made the initial 300 copies of Politics is Not a Banana possible. The use of the information super highway and the PDF form accounts for the other immaterial conditions which gave Politics is Not a Banana its strangely vast distribution. The practice of so called DIY print is not dead, it is merely refined.

Cool.

Despite the fact that Politics is Not a Banana “What are you doing...” was professionally printed, it should not to be understood as form in favor of content. Rather, it is an elaboration of the methods employed to produce the glossy pages and the design decisions of the first issue that tormented Anarchy Magazine. Should we pay from our own pockets to produce beautiful things that will be captured as commodities? Never. Although, sometimes we do. This time, however, like the last, is a testament to what is possible through a profaned use of class antagonisms, friends, sadomasochism, a few hoops to jump through, and, of course, material solidarities. Although currently we shamefully practice doing the commodity ethically or whatever, perhaps soon we'll give the purists a real reason to hate us.

Don't mistake cohesion and rhythm for a coherent political program. Although some readers will applaud a more easy to follow amalgamation of texts, Politics is Not a Banana “What are you doing...” is not the result of ideological unity between contributors. After carefully reading the proofs, the editors of Politics is Not a Banana turned to each other and shared the tiniest single tear for the undoubtedly stupid readings of our so-called work of art. Yes, we could have more effectively splayed aphorisms and nonsensical maxims across the page; we could have interrupted the reader with more confusing pornography, with more experimental fictions, but then again we, so charitably, decided to cut a lot of our own writing. Perhaps we can all learn a valuable lesson: there is more to the practice of radical discourse than propaganda and discipline. Make no mistake, we could give a fuck, and we certainly do give fucks, but our perversity cannot be contained in any one literary singularity. We take whatever seriously.

So how will we distribute this? How will we share our shame and power? How will we write our ignoble desire on new generations?

We have no illusions about the class composition of our friends and comrades—we work stupid jobs and survive on coffee and theft, but we're pretty good at it. Likewise, we have no fucking idea what to do with a thousand copies of anything. When anarchists give us their newspaper advertisements for this or that protest, we are usually able to get rid of like twenty and then the rest usually sit around. Sometimes print is lucky enough to be used for kindling. Most times, it's near a toilet. “Politics is Not a Banana: What are you doing...” is useless as toilet paper. It is best as a sexual technology or fashion accessory.

It is from this knowledge that we pose the question to our comrades, to our vile territories of revolt-in-practice. We will be selling Politics is Not a Banana at a retail price (around $10-12) and a wholesale price (around $5-6). We ask that comrades buy fifty or so at wholesale and then sell it to make a reasonable amount of profit to benefit their projects; we ask that distributors get in touch too, but we're not super worried if Glenn Beck doesn't cry about us on Fox news. We ask also that comrades in university and comrades who work with social spaces would be so kind to get in touch with us, to prepare this year's IEF tour (SRSLY IEF T0URz 0MG!!!!1).

Nothing is too beautiful for the unwanted children of capital,

-IEF friends

from the dirty, and across the puddle '09

[1.] the poke at performance here is not meant as a denouncement of all things performative—in the world of lies, it is useless to tell the truth—rather it is meant to critique a vulgar logic of advertising that is applied in many contemporary radical projects. We want to become sensitive to each other in order to lie together.

PS: Our sincerest apologies to those who did not make the cut—you gotta want it more. To those who sent us an email saying, “Do with this what you want.” we must reply: this is neither submission nor cruelty, it is merely feigning indifference. Perhaps the shame you feel should motivate you to redeem yourself one way or the other?

PPS: www.politicsisnotabanana.com

Some gems from inside the typographic war-machine:

Public Sex and Social War

An examination of the orgy and public sex as a biopolitical strike aimed at dissolving the categories of “public” and “sex.”

I am a Bulging Tangle I am a Stringy Mass

A pornographic critique and analysis of anarchists election year strategy using Baudrillard and Antonio Negri (Oh, my!), featuring an Inhuman violation of Barack Obama.

O.K.

An IEF Favorite. Two communiques from the Enlightened Avant-Guard regarding the “so-called anti-CPE struggle,” featuring their “politically coherent propositions” (PCP).

Taking Communion at The End of History

An elaboration of the theories of rupture, divine violence, and insurrection and a critique of the dual power revolutionary strategy using Agamben, Tiqqun, Miranda July, Walter Benjamin, and Pasolinis' Salo 120 days of Sodom.

The Revelation of St Narcissus, with annotations by an Yadira Lopez, and a tangled mess of IEF critiques.

A critique of the anarchist identity using a framework of the Situationist Internationale's critique of the image.

Biófilo Panclasta: Lover of Life, Destroyer of Everything

The first English language biography of the Colombian anarchist Biófilo and his misadventures, poorly translated.

Horrible Sound Objects

A critique of the music form and elaboration of Takeshi Kosugi's gesture, alongside some provocative images of pandas doing naughty things.

The Heart of War

An elaboration of the theory of social war and a tactical contribution to the theory of Human Strike using Clausewitz and everyone's favorite utopian fascist, Carl Schmitt.

Oh Good, The War!

An English translation of the 1999 Tiqqun piece which examines the concepts of war, spectacle, and a redemptive concept of revolutionary time.

Something More Terrible Than Fight Club: The Girlfriend Experience and the Coming Human Strike

2009-06-22T01:43:00.000-07:00

“In the early 1970s there was an advertisement shown in Paris movie theaters that promoted a well-known brand of stockings, “Dim” stockings... Anyone who watched even a few minutes of its images, however distractedly, would have a hard time forgetting the special impression of synchrony and dissonance, of confusion and singularity, of communication and estrangement from the bodies of the smiling dancers...Each dancer was filmed separately and later the single pieces were brought together over a single sound track. But the facile trick, that calculated asymetry of the movement of long legs sheathed in the same inexpensive commodity, that slight disjunction between gestures, wafted over the audience a promise of happiness unequivocally related to the human body.”

– Giorgio Agamben, Dim Stockings

“The young girl makes love in the same way she washes her car”

– Tiqqun, First Materials for a Theory of the Young Girl

"The Spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes image"

– Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

This is not a time for fight club, is it? The cynicism of the '90s appeared to have reached some sort of apex of anomie near the end of the decade. We could no longer choke down our own image as bored consumers, pathetic workers, and depressed youth. The course of action became disturbingly clear: one could either kill everyone in their vicinity, or learn how to fight with others. With some dumb luck, the anti-globalization movement made an appearance and gave so many bullied children, computer nerds, and petty sociopaths a new collective house alongside the indigenous people of wherever, the left, and the lesbian avengers. Then, as goes the activist version of Revelations, Osama Bin Laden came long and ruined all our fun—returning the image of darker skinned people who believe in stuff to a more scarier position than people with masks breaking stuff. The banality of cinema (exceptions included: Children of Men, JCVD, Let the Right One in, and Paradise Now) analogizes this trite world of false good vs false evil. In the bad ol' days, we didn't know it could be better, we tried to believe in things, and now, silence.

Steven Soderbergh's new cinematic trauma, The Girlfriend Experience, captures the world after the world ended—and History is as banal and horrifying as ever. The Obama election and the economic crisis are a less than subtle background to an everyday life that reflects each and every shameful ounce of the emotional and material poverty of our times.

Sasha Grey, self-described existential porn star in “real life,” stars as Chelsea, a high-end escort. We follow her lukewarm calculated performances through all echelons of bourgeois society. We can thank Soderbergh for the most amazing, boring, and frustrating scenes of something like sex. Chelsea spends scene after scene talking to her agents and her website and brand development teams. Questions of anonymity are brought up alongside meaningless gestures of affect: “hows the family?”

We are reflected our own image—running into an old friend, a business acquaintance, a sister, having an interesting conversation, performing being-amicable. We press the “hows the family” button, a response. We press the “Ha! Remember when you...” button, a response. We poke fun at one friend's less than charming qualities, multiple responses from the crowd. Others come to dine or get drinks at such a charming, lively, or “funky place.” This isn't simply the shameful cultural habits of late capital, it is capital. Chelsea knows this, and would prefer to get paid for it.

The relationship between immaterial labor, care taking, and sex work, is illuminated in The Girlfriend Experience. Shoderbergh, oscillates between scenes of Chelsea talking to men about their financial predictions, Google-ratings, and Obama as they undress revealing underwear with diaper-like qualities and scenes of her boyfriend, Chris, working as personal trainer with men and women in a gym, referred to as a “boutique.”

Nothing new to the seasoned craigslist whore, there is still an element of provocation in Soderbergh's elucidation of the current postionality of workers in our biopolitical hell. The incredibly wealthy men with families could not function as such without their high-end escorts who play at being-the girlfriend. The friendly performances of Chris follow succinctly. The gay men need someone to hit on at the gym to function as gay men, the petty bourgeois woman needs someone to touch her, and encourage her to do her best. These John's and Janes don't even desire the sex-object anymore; they desire “the real thing.”

Chelsea and Chris as images being-images, are able to perform their way across the bridge of fiction into a whole regime of playing at being. In one montage, Chelsea negotiates with a web developer about how to increase her rates and hits. She poses questions in a pseudo-web speak, referencing “that thing that makes me show up in Google searches” which are fielded by the developer playing at being professional, who makes up pay-rate on the spot. He is clearly doing this labor through an expropriation of his work's facilities which we see in the background. Chris, on the other hand, is searching around to increase his rate as well. He talks with a miserable gym owner about its faculties using synergy and nu-speak. They share laughs. The next scene he is trying to use his subtle transgression as leverage to get a raise. He's been shopping around. The economic crisis is an ace card for Chris's current boss, and of course, some blabbering about being a team player. Unfortunately Chris is not a “t-shirt kind of guy” By the end of the scene it, would appear Chris's Boss's sentimental maneuver—“you've been working here for years, man”—pays off.

The liberal project of neutralization is made no more clear than in the non-violent communication between workers and bosses, employers and potential employees, and contractors and who ever the fuck pays them. Only one thing can be communicated: a gesture in every direction, the total domination of capital. We can hear anyone of our assistant managers “If you have any problems, just come talk to me, as two individuals. Nothing is more pathetic than facing an enemy alone, as an individual.

At some point in the film Chelsea's mystical “personology” books inform her that a John, a happily married John with children, might be the one. She is invited to go away with him for the weekend. Chelsea is perhaps confused about “this feeling that I have, ya know.” She's convinced “it's just something she has to do.” We wonder if she has never had a crush or if we have said such dumb shit in our lives too. Unfortunately, its probably both. It proves to be a surefire way to defeat her boyfriend's hold on their previous positions about dating Johns. She goes. Rupture. Fizzle.

The Girlfriend Experience will not seduce everyone to smash windows across the world. It is not an action movie. Life is not action packed. However, intentionally or not, the film lays the terrain for some of the biopolitical conflicts of our time. If the concept of history as a history of social war is going to mean anything it must be understood as an elaboration of a concept of the history as class struggle. Soderbergh's film presents us with just this cinematic gift. Through our lens of insurrection we can make total sense of the banal and horrifying life presented in The Girlfriend Experience. And perhaps, through our proletarian techné, we can profane the film's status as a philosophical commodity form. If Sasha Grey wishes to make existential porn, and ruminate on yet another meta-character in a movie, so be it. It is her real positionality, played by Chelsea, that ought interest us. It is in the fact that the so-called existential porn-stars of the alt porn genre cannot be made separate from the material worlds they are attached to. Thus, Sasha Grey, alongside some Senator, alongside our high-school friend, share in a practice of increasing their facebook rates by any means necessary. The youth in France and Greece use their social capital the wrong way, and territories light up. Mousavi declares a stolen election from twitter and accidentally becomes complicit in a revolt against the fabric of theocratic society. And Oakland? Make hyphy a threat again? Social war.

“they're doing...being totally of control”

– a police officer speaking over police radio about rioters in St. Paul at the Republican National Convention

Capitalism is a system of the flows of capital. It dominates all relationships. All relationships become relations of the flows of the capital. Capitalism is tautological. Everything is included, even the excluded. Capitalism functions by each circuit of capital having its proper place. If something severs or impedes the flows of capital, in any relationship, then capitalism can begin to not-function. If humankind, like a vegan slop of multiculturalism, constitutes a whole (a subject, a multitude, whatever), then it is how we produce a whole, how we function which must be examined, and interrupted.

To block any given artery of the metropolis, to block a road with burning objects, we interrupt the flow of capital from the center of the metropolis (the city) with its margins (rural areas) and in-betweens. After the fire goes out, the metropolis functions again, and perhaps prepares itself to manage such interruptions in the future. However, what is interrupted is not merely the relationship of commodities flowing through the metropolis, but the relationship between us and commodities. The generation of affects and sharing of complicity is of far more interest to an isolated and disempowered proletariat, than the imposition of punishment on this or that evil business.

The new subjectivities of the metropolis are just as miserable as the old ones: the high-end escort, the bike messenger, the craigslist whore, the anarchist, the graphics-designer, the web programmer, the hip hop artist, the DJ, the personal trainer, the private mercenary, the alt-porn artist, the transfeminist academic, the gay landlord. Our task is to locate these subjectivities, locate our being, and practice an ethics beyond suicide.

Self-abolition is realized as the pure means of the human strike. Positioned as high-end escorts to the super rich, we can imagine how such biopolitical assaults could interrupt the economy. In Q.libet's upcoming essay “The Heart of War” a form of combat dubbed “heartwar” is theorized. Its means, the heart; its object, the heart. Imagine if, rather than merely taking money from elites for a job well done, Chelsea's character, alongside others, practiced the same destructive love we practice with each other, ambitiously. Collective emotional strikes, either through disruptions of the normal structure of the family and escorts, or through a refusal to do care labor, can cause rifts that would stretch out in their affects. One can imagine making demands, or just expropriating and making attacks. A well situated group of escorts can gain access to far more resources and capital then currently situated insurgents in the anarchist milieu. Escorts can find common desire with other sex workers or care workers. The beautiful can go on strike against being beautiful—become disfigured. The streetwalkers can do being-in-love with entire police precincts. The entire industry of care and desire, can go on strike against their very being. Human strike after human strike.

Being well positioned, means being well positioned to interrupt. The revolts of '68 taught us that even the privileged have become decomposed by capital. The revolts of today, will show us what life which has endured all the horrors of psychology, medicalization, miserable wages, irreversible time, rape, policing, war, biotechnologies, and cybernetics is capable of. The modern subject is dead. May we be so fortunate that subjectivity can finally be undone as well. Our being is on life support. Unplug it.

Politics is Not a Banana: Call for submissions | Deadline is April 3

2009-03-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

Politics is Not a Banana: The Journal of Vulgar Discourse, is a small 7x7 publication of what some might call “insurrectional anarchist and communist” theory—although we may hazard to add the qualifiers, “post-structuralist” and “cyber-feminist.” Furthermore, PNB, rejecting the false binary between theory and practice, also contains content of the experimental fiction/pornography and cultural criticism variety. PNB is vaguely and dangerously lumpen-bourgeoisie and becomes a material force annually. The next issue is set to be a pretty little object come June '09. It may be professionally printed and it may have a quaint débutante ball to celebrate its coming out—and it would be in your best interest to attend.

PNB is receiving submissions for the previously mentioned upcoming issue themed:
“What are you doing after the orgy or riot or whatever?”

Politics is Not a Banana: The Journal of Vulgar Discourse is an orifice and an edge that desires to be filled; that desires to scratch itself on your mildewy surfaces—won't you oblige?

Submit, add complicity, expose everything.

We want it. We want your terrible little secrets; your thoughts on the recent events in Europe, in Oakland, on the fictions we are currently writing. We want thoughts on elaborating the technique of rioting and the technique of occupation. We want perspectives on expanding and refining anarchist rituals, and thoughts about other portals to our worlds beyond Food Not Bombs. We want thorough examinations of the concepts of class struggle, global civil war, and social war. We want contributions to the destruction of The Individual, The Family, and the liberal social contract. Give it to us, or we're going to take it. Politics is Not a Banana is a forum for vulgar and perverse methods. We want you to use us. We want you take pleasure in your writing, in theoretical contributions and in the practice of discourse. So here's our double-dog-dare: write what you like and take it seriously, but do it by April 3rd.

A few helpful restrictions:

Send articles, fully edited(content, spelling and grammar) between 500-3000 words and photos or graphics art (300-400 dpi at least 4x4 inches) to ief-southeast(at)riseup(dot)net no later than April 3rd.

PNB is not a democracy. We have no illusions about the power we wield as those who pose the questions—and we love it. If you want to submit to the crack of our whip or you feel a charge and a potency to expose your content to us, feel free. However, if you're going to wag your accusing finger when we don't attend to your particular fetish-object, we have to say “Sorry, that's just not how it goes, hun—you don't get that.”

Awaiting that webcam picture you promised me—that one with the mask and all that paint,

-Liam Sionnach '09

We're back on our grizzly

2009-01-31T18:44:00.000-08:00

As you may have noticed by the frequent posts on this blog, The Institute for Experimental Freedom is beginning to take ourselves a bit too seriously again. After an extended summer excursion, a long hiatus for some and a drawn out moment of offensive for others, we're back on our grizzly.

These past few months have been full of meaning. We've endured some new horrors and banalities, and we've felt our potency multiplied across our corporeal boundaries and across the mythological territories of nation states. Still though, it's been difficult. The lovely machine we relied on for oh-so-many proclivities, has reached the limit of its potentiality and will soon be a sad material proof of human foolishness—idling in stasis, meeting our desire with indifference. Rest in peace, peti macchina di compact.

But hold back your tears, we got one those “going green” dell laptops and the game is back on.

The two of us are as pleasantly detached as we ever are and as perverse and drunk on social power as we can be, so stickyfingers the next Danger LP or bump your favorite song about ascending in ante, and get your shit ready for the our lil' syndicate to vandalize everything with meaning.

The next big fucking things

1. More expropriations from history

* which is to say stealing from radical history books and such

2. Textual Mashups & Mixtapes

* All text takes the form of mashup. We want to do to contemporary genres of text, what Spilled Milk did to DMX. These texts will likely occur in multiple series, and so far we have conceptualized the textual mashup as thematic, or as more specifically in reference to a particular question. If we are left to our own devices, one can expect the forms we choose to expose and appropriate to be the forms already so at home within the Institute, you know like theory and porn and stuff.

3. The Pleasure of The Subversive Text

* A text, clearly referencing Rolland Barthes, exploring authorship and pleasure and inquiring through method the possibility of a practice of power that goes beyond the problematic of paternalism (see: the family, patriarchy), and that puts to use the power asymmetry of authorship and readership as this possible method. This text will deal both with the questions of discursive models of sovereignty and with potentially different models of anonymity and incoherent subjectivities (props J Lo).

4. A yet un-named collection of theses on experiment and ritual that will develop the concept of Plan B more coherently. Looking at the ways practices are linked as frequencies of subversion, this text will explore a theory for a parallel and adversarial structure and the concepts of civil war, social war and insurrection, with the friendly contributions of Benjamin and Agamben' theories on violence and sovereignty.

5. A yet un-named collection of fragments regarding patriarchy, feminism and post-patriarchal practices.

6. Easily replicable commodities, T-shirt and Button Designs, to be posted at a central online location and then decentralized in production and profit.

* I have been thinking of ways to best make use of my skills and resources—particualry to communize my faculties and to encourage others to do so as well. The specific idea that the IEF and friends will be working on is a subtly (or overtly) subversive t-shirt using enormous type, and you know, hip style to share with other nodes of subversion. This would be done as a practice of the small-scale venture capitalism thing with the least amount of investment capital and the most amount of immediate even-breaks and profit. The intent here is not to encourage everyone to sell stuff, but to make small-scale capitalism the object of our surviving-bodies in a way that produces for us more quality objects and relationships with time. Which is to say, perhaps the people who would most likely download the graphics and use them to make objects to sell, want to make objects and engage creatively with symbols already; but if we were to try and constitute that desire a “pure art” outside of capitalist relations, we would at best be kidding ourselves and at worst be “working for fascism”. So putting that desire to use and communizing our faculties is one of the best options we can think of.

The obvious problem is that of branding and brand-recognition. And again, to that we simply prefer not to pretend we are outside of capitalism, and instead engage in these obvious problems with the same conflictuality of desire that we engage in when we are at work.

We want to find practices that immediately improve our conditions, that develop the survival habits of scamming, cunning and theft, that get our rents paid, and that gets the capital that can produce more potentiality—for the particular action and the continuity of a project.

7. Politics is Not a Banana | What are you doing after the orgy or insurrection or whatever?

If you don't know what PNB is have a look. Some say it was an image from the future. But we'd dare to say the future may be without images.

If you liked what you saw, then you should know the second issue of Politics is Not a Banana is an orifice and an edge that desires to be filled; that desires to scratch itself on your mildewy surfaces—won't you oblige?

About Submissions:

PNB is not a democracy. We have no illusions about the power we wield as those who pose the questions—and we love it. Nonetheless if you want to submit to the crack of our whip or you feel a charge and a potency to expose your content to us, feel free. However—as to maintain our own composure—we can make no promise that any contributions we receive will be printed, but we think it could be cool for you to show us a 'lil something, a seam, a hipbone perhaps.

We want so badly to desecrate glossy surfaces with the following forms of text that reflect our thematics of desire and power from a perspective that makes material the zone of indistinction between the vulgar and the exquisite.

1. theory

2. cultural criticism

3. pornographic text

4. high resolution photography and illustrations

5. textual mashups (think 1-3 and maybe some prose or something)

It could be cool if the second issue of Politics is Not a Banana came out sooner than later, so here's last point. There have been many emails we've simply failed to satisfy, inquiring into where and how one could grab a copy of PNB. It is our intent to produce a few more (say, totaling 500-1000 copies of full color joints) but it would be nice not to be held hostage by the past and focus our energies on what new things we make. Similarly, some have waged there shaming fingers at us for producing a piece of print that is not easily reproducible, and that objects being strange sizes and full color is more problematic than say, a copy of the previous fire to the prisons and or a crimethinc PDF. Being that as it were, for the most part the only way to get a copy of PNB #1 was, and remains, to cross paths with us, usually at a book fair or gathering of some sort. Many apologies, but we're simply not that kind of distribution. Nonetheless, it would be nice see people's comments on the questions of Black and White print VS. Color print, and if people want a second issue of PNB by the anarchist book fair in April, or would prefer more copies of PNB: the first of many issues we have to be available by that time. As many of you well know, getting copies, what with the economy and all, can be a difficult endeavor—especially when all we have to offer is skills most 20-something already practice. PS: While, we're on the topic, if anyone has access to resources that would make printing a full color journal of vulgarity armed easy and wants design work in exchange or an abstract “favor,” send an email immediately to: ief-southeast(at)riseup(dot)net

For some, we hope to cross paths in April, for others, a bit sooner.

From my cold, cold house,

-Liam Sionnach IEF, nearing the next excuses for why rent isn't on time '09

Reprint | Society of The Spectacle | Impressive use of Akzidenz Grotesk

2009-01-24T17:25:00.000-08:00

Study groups rejoice!

The Institute is making available a reprint of Society of The Spectacle (1994 Zone books translation by the naughty purged situationist, Donald Nicholson-Smithin) in PDF form so we no longer have to lie about having read it. Enjoy, and feel free to share your thoughts on the design and layout.

Preparing my self to stop the oh-so-hurtful lie.
From a flat part of the South,

Liam Sionnach 09

Pretty Objects of Revolt

2008-12-25T00:27:00.000-08:00

“What you feel as the intimate estrangement of corporeal need is what I feel as the estranged intimacy of desire: your need is my want; my want is your need”
- Sade

The cradle of democracy is burning. It may change its frequency, its duration and its specific location, but I want to be clear about this: the interruptions that strike at the thresholds of the state-form and that press against the fleshy anterior of capital are en route.

I risk speaking in terms of slogans when I say this but I want to go to where the fires are—where everything enables the desire to reduce monoliths and dialectics to ashes. I think this is why there are these riots; because we can’t afford to go to where the riots are, because the people in Greece are at home with their perverse desire and are at home with their endurance. Alexandros Grigoropoulos, who was murdered by the functionaries of the state, for fifteen years inhabited this fact and his friends, comrades and so called genre, continue to inhabit this fact. I see my self in Alexandros, as I see my self each time the state exposes its function—when police act by grace of sovereignty to erase bodies with an “accidental” just violence. The libidinal economy of death acts as a force to produce human bodies as subjects. By the 6^th century this originary biopolitical imperative is already clear in Pindar’s Platonic proverb:

The nomos, sovereign of all mortals and immortals

Leads with the strongest hand

Doing violence to the most just.

Today, there is only a zone of indistinction between the force of law of the ancients and the force of law of the modern states.

The Greek riots trace a seam directly through our bodies—dividing me and then dividing me again. At once, I am interrupted from my habit of producing pretty espresso drinks and culture; feeling the seam of the Greek riots cut through me, pulling me to the shadow of my historicity—recalling different riots I’ve experienced, watched on TV, read about in books and recalling my relationships with different people; the abuses I’ve dealt and suffered; the ways police and managers and doctors have acted on my body, the separations they’ve made. I think about watching that terrible movie The Dreamers just for the scandalous parts and for the money shot at the end and I try to distinguish whose body part was in what orifice and whose desire reigned with so-called impunity.

The media speaks of the “seven hundred euro generation”—it is they who riot, who have been let down by the Greek government in particular. Yet this month I will struggle to make a rent of three hundred dollars and my roommates will struggle as well. Tomorrow, we will go out on an odyssey to find cheap enough cigarettes. Tonight we trade roles of support; I have the pack that is not empty and my roommate the bottle of whiskey and the bag of coffee seized form work.

None of this new and those rioting in Greece know this. Certainly we could work more; two, three, maybe four jobs. Certainly that would keep us busy but we would prefer not to. I’ve learned to endure so much and what those of us who work for shit jobs and produce nothing material know is our conditions is more than mere poverty. It’s historically constructed, and it’s not necessarily of our choosing but we wouldn’t keep doing it if we didn’t like certain aspects of it. Maybe it’s the power to wield subcultural capital, maybe it’s the potential of not-work every so often—while on the job or on holiday (because all aspects of our lives are colonized by work); maybe we want to be in systems of asymmetrical power where we can be pretty and ugly objects. Whatever it is, we kind of like it. What is it at stake and what makes my skin so raw when I feel my empathy surface from the image of people gleefully demolishing temples of capitalism is the desire to interrupt functionality with play, with pleasure that is prefers not to reproduce, with violence that is bored with death.

I fear saying this out right because the psychologists of all the sciences want to know it; because they will sell it to public relations firms and they will employ me or my friends to mystify this fact and make it into more jobs. Furthermore because the state will put to a specific function the things we say over drinks that cause us to recognize each other. They will include us the way the Jewish religious hierarchy was included to make the ghettos and gas chambers function—the way black leaders are employed to neutralize the potentiality of rebellion every time what happened in Athens happens in every urban epicenter in the US.

Already in the US, the political class of simulations and the petite Leninists who paint themselves in red and black are getting organized; attempting to reconstitute the Left at Obama’s Inauguration. If it were not for the tactics they wish to employ, I would care less, but how matters and their desire for sovereignty is only loosely veiled. The advocates for the popular power bloc demand nothing less than recognition for their rightful inheritance of sovereignty and thus the state-form. When they say they wish to celebrate the victory of the “grassroots movement” of organizers that got Obama elected, they are clarifying this: a desire to celebrate management and discipline of a constituting (or so-called constituent) power. The horror of recognition prefers a site of pleasure in whatever singularities, not the banality of reproducing management and discipline of subjects.

I want to be vulnerable to you because I know you and you already recognize me and because you are always, and above all, anonymous—a quality that makes you potent. You, the unknown and the known, reading this text are a force and an orifice, a face and a chair. And yet so many managers; so many police are present here. At a party, in a bar, at a grocery store, we might cross paths; and I would want to share with you the simple pleasures of my existence but my desires conflict and our inclinations are veiled because my simple pleasures are criminal. I imagine yours are as well but what if you tell my boss or the grocery store owner about my proclivities?

It is this surveillance that causes our emotional poverty—a surveillance that congruently silences our brittle lips from talking about abuse and that disables the force of our limbs to make gestures of care.

I know it seems absurd but it is in the spaces where I can feel anonymous—where I can lose my sense of individualism and even my sense of dividuality, where I can feel my singularity; my point in time and space that is attached to all that matters—that the force of kindness and my desire are proven to be potent. It is these spaces—where the party’s shared joy overwhelms our fear of foolishness, where our circumstances incline us to support each other—that I can be vulnerable, powerful and happy. I want to meet you there and I want to extend these spaces with more duration and with different frequencies.

So I’m going to put on a black mask or I’m going to transform the meaning of a t-shirt by wearing it on my face as such. There is no other zone of desire that is pleasurable. The t-shirt, the sneakers, the bottle, the car, all our commodities have proven they are bankrupt if they remain as property—they must be profaned and put to use in the sphere of human desire lest they end up in museums. I want to put everything to use to prove the fact of its potentiality and to locate that it is my gestures that inscribe meaning; that pull, stretch and interrupt the continuum of time.

There is an insurrection coming because there is always an insurrection coming; because there is always in-surrection. It is in place because it is in practice; always exposing the seam of power and desire of function and potential. Those rioting across the sea are sending to us this subtle communiqué: we are running faster, evading the social sciences’ force of recognition, of identification; running across borders; throwing rocks, burning arcades and prisons and kicking at the thresholds of the state.

The insurrection in practice draws us closer and whispers, “It is possible, it is in practice and you, these bodies that you are, are potent with its possibility; the secret is to really begin”.

Liam Sionnach, The ass-end of December 08

How is it to be Doing?

2008-08-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

There is this question with a haunting tune of skepticism that has found an instrument in both the hopeful (1., 2.) and the jaded who leave their mark on the anarchist milieu. It is an important question, one not to be merely gestured away with a flick of the wrist. It begs our attention to remember, and it demands we leave behind our immediate plans. It is ubiquitous, and we will likely encounter it whenever we succumb to the pleasures of sociality. Today, it has positioned its bony fingers at the national conventions of the Democrats and the Republicans and like always it sits us upon its knees, smiles and says, “This is all well and good and I hope you destroy as much as possible, but what do you intend to do next? I mean, what will all of this organization you young people have been doing amount to?”

We wish to answer this question but first a little about our selves and the tragicomedy of summit activism.

The Institute for Experimental Freedom (IEF) has contributed little in the way of material changes in the world. We are a couple of friends and a small network of more friends. We do not have the capacity to add to the existing desire that programs the human species—as mentioned in my recent piece Earth First Means Social War, that is capitalism, not us. We knew this from the beginning. However, we feel we have contributed to the existing discourses of anarchist/anti-authoritarian theory, aesthetics and creativity. The ideas, styles and forms that we have been appropriated by are now more visible throughout the US milieu. We consider this a success. Furthermore, the IEF can now be lost in the turbulent waves on the fringes of radical subcultures. We can pass for grad students, train hoppers, young urban professionals, hardcore kids, hipsters, squatters, almost anything people can buy into. It is from this acknowledgment that we begin out next journey, from going towards the light to positioning it our selves.

Subcultural and political identity have little to offer. We're going to the conventions because we lack the power to attack material manifestations of capitalism—to produce or amplify social conflict—everywhere else in our lives. There is this strange opportunity once or twice a year where we can feel powerful, and we can attempt to edit the universe as a social-cohesion, albeit with limitations. We know this is not enough, and this knowledge conjures a profound sadness. It's the feeling we encounter when we return to our homes, and those who feared for our safety are weeks later upset with us for hanging out with their old friend who is now their new enemy. When we return to our work and there is no one who's got our back. The tragedy reveals a kink in our system of lack-protest-power-lack-protest-power, and we question its sustainability. Our sadness is compounded by the inevitable defeat. Soon we can no longer justify our actions, and we revert to performing subcultural identity, make the transition from “those who specialize in social change outside of electoral politics” to “those who specialize in social change inside of electoral politics” or we are swept away by capitalism's compelling arguments. We understand the critique of these events.

However, we have a counter-narrative.

Some say, “On the one hand we wish to live communism and on the other hand, to spread anarchy.”

We translate: On the one hand we wish to live the dance of contradictions, variables and coincidences that reveal knowledge—to partake in our own scientific methods.

And on the other hand to spread a destabilizing, de-hirearchicalizing turbulence of emotional wealth—to sprinkle affect wherever desire takes us.

These events—the protests, the gatherings, the counter-summits—are not the result of our political or subcultural identities becoming empowered. They are the happenings of our real selves, produced and exploited by capitalism searching for a sense of we and a direction towards which to position our creative (and destructive) urge. We have made conflict our object because we have been crossed. The trick to surviving the seduction of politics is to simply tinker with why, how and where we attack.

A couple of hypotheses: The only victory we need is the one we set out; the only hastiness we need to employ is in the quickness of our strike and our exit. If we refuse the political identity of the protest and instead engage it as a petri dish for us to play and experiment with, the psychological and emotional crisis experienced by the activist who failed to do what they never could will soon pass. What will remain is the social cohesion, the customs and rituals of food, play and romance, and the power of wildin out together. The next step is developing our form and technique. We understand the use, the meaning and the desire, but what is the anatomy and geography of these encounters? What will it take for us to produce ourselves as more than mere moths seeking out a beacon of peak experience and instead as those with the capacity to strike anywhere? To our frowning anti-activist peers we propose this endeavor: to experiment with power and capacity, map our findings and develop our forms and techniques.

“Projecting our selves into the future,” and then some.

The IEF would like to continue our contributions in the way of theory, print and aesthetics of course, but we would also appreciate meeting you and the chance to share stories and notes. We've accumulated strange successes, pleasures and Other narratives that we'd love to make common. We feel it is a circulation of these stories and their affective potential that will produce for us the necessary basis of our conspiracy. And so this is the answer we dole out to our pessimistic haunting: we see clearly now. We know that it is power and dehirearchicalization that we seek. Thus we have only bad intentions. We intend to contribute to the founding of a parallel and adversarial structure—to develop the current subcultures and their practices beyond their limitations and strike a rhythm between our ideas and our current experience as exploited, emotionally impoverished and alienated individuals in the service and culture producing industries. This structure will likely have no name or political identity, but it should achieve for us the survival mechanisms of the late radical labor movement, the existential clarity produced through feminist consciousness raising groups and the culture producing capacity of the current party, design and music scenes.

The task of those who find one another in the attacks against capitalism is to reveal their experience to their friends and co-workers and to transform affinity groups for protests into subversive nodes in this developing structure. We intend to contaminate all portions of society and at all levels of human development—set up Jr. high through high-school consciousness raising groups, university clubs and alternative fraternities, workers’ organizations and social centers. Our undertaking is to make these organizations into nodes and to develop our circuits of information, desire and affect, to open our circuits, produce portals to our worlds and accumulate resources and money to share with each other. To achieve these endeavors, the question of “how?” constantly must be approached and answered with experimentation. Our human creativity can achieve anything; let nothing be too decadent for us. It is from these material solidarities, these circuits of power and desire that the basis to make a real counter-offensive will become possible.

The strategy to achieve revolution does not require the accumulation of more people with a political identity nor does performing as an anarchist require one to equate freedom and choice and simply make ethical decisions. We are intent on producing this structure as proof of this contrary direction. We are swept away by the movement to make human utopia; we contribute only to its foundations. Thus we would propose that the current gateway drugs are lacking. There should be no more Food Not Bombs chapters set up to seduce young do-gooders. Instead, a better gateway drug might by something that is also materially beneficial but that releases its self from the tugging hands of liberalism—weekly potlucks or shoplifting gangs perhaps? There should be no more bike shops under the influence of two wheels is better than four. Two is just another market option, but a reasonable way to get around—let’s start from there. If we wish to get our hands dirty, let’s simply squat and produce beautiful social centers—brush our fingers through the dust and liberate our human creativity. If we are interested in acting in a way that confronts the roots of climate change visibly, then let’s not play around anymore and simply attack cars and produce a custom of car-burning, and let's not stop there. We will have to seize the means to produce and distribute all that currently threatens life on the planet and denies us from resources. Let's remember this and act accordingly.

To dance in our own myths, to produce our selves as our own protagonists and to, as they say, become an autonomous social force, is our modest enterprise.

We caress the face of our omnipresent skeptic, kiss their brittle lips and feel their wisdom enter us. We are fucking serious. Join us in this living delusion of grandeur.

After the convention events in particular, there will be small gatherings (15-25 people) to mark the beginning of different ways to do conferences. Perhaps you should gather your own close friends and those with similar ideas. The purpose of these will be to develop a different social cohesion of those who wish to totally transform society as a social project. The question of, “how do we get organized and with whom?” should be a useful axiom to begin from. We will continue these encounters until their expiration date is reached.