Reactivating the Social Body: Interview with Bifo

In my view, ima­gin­a­tion is the cent­ral field of social trans­form­a­tion in the age of semiocapital.[2] Capitalist dom­in­a­tion is sus­tained by the per­sist­ence of men­tal cages that are struc­tured by the dog­mas of growth, com­pet­i­tion and rent. The epi­stem­o­lo­gical dic­tat­or­ship of this model – its grip on the dif­fer­ent spheres of human know­ledge – is the very ground of power.  So the task of trans­form­a­tion requires us to ima­gine and make sens­ible a dif­fer­ent con­cat­en­a­tion of social forms, know­ledge, and tech­no­logy. Of course, ima­gin­a­tion will never be enough on its own.  We need to build forms of social solid­ar­ity that are cap­able of re-​​activating the social body after the long period of its isol­a­tion and sub­jug­a­tion to com­pet­it­ive aggress­ive­ness.  Solid­ar­ity – in con­trast to this aggress­ive­ness – is based on empathy, on the bod­ily per­cep­tion of the pres­ence of the other...

We con­tinue to use old forms of action but we will have to begin to ima­gine new forms that are cap­able of actu­ally strug­gling against fin­an­cial dic­tat­or­ship. In my opin­ion, the first task – which we have begun to exper­i­ence over the last year – is the react­iv­a­tion of the social body that I have already described. But as I have said, this will not be enough.  We will also have to begin to learn to cre­ate new forms of autonomy from fin­an­cial con­trol and so on.  For instance, in Italy we have been talk­ing increas­ingly of “insolv­ency.” Of course, insolv­ency means the inab­il­ity to pay a debt but we don’t think of it strictly in mon­et­ary terms. There is also a sym­bolic debt that is always implied in power rela­tion­ships. Ima­gin­a­tion might mean the abil­ity to cre­ate the pos­sib­il­ity of insolv­ency – to cre­ate the right to be insolv­ent, the right not to pay a debt – at a semi­otic and a sym­bolic level.  We need to ima­gine forms of social rela­tion­ships that escape mon­et­ary exchange or invent new forms of exchange, like time banks, new forms of cur­rency, com­munity cur­rency and so on. Do you see what I am try­ing to say? The pro­cess of ima­gin­a­tion begins with the react­iv­a­tion of the social body but next this body has to cre­ate new levels of social inter­ac­tion.  Escap­ing fin­an­cial dic­tat­or­ship, in other words, means ima­gin­ing new forms of social exchange.  I don’t know what form eman­cip­a­tion will take in the com­ing years.  I can only pro­pose this little meth­od­o­lo­gical start­ing point from what we already know.

Reblogged  from Critical Legal Thinking 

Alexander Cockburn

A few months ago, on July 21 to be exact, the world of journalism lost one of its bright lights. At the time I was completely unaware, was unaware in fact until a few days ago, that Alexander Cockburn even existed. It is probably a testament to my own erratic reading habits that I discovered Cockburn through Robin Blackburn's obituary of him in the New Left Review. Blackburn attributes to Cockburn the founding of a new kind of radical journalism and says

Alexander saw journalism as a craft or trade and brooked no excuses for those who out of laziness- or cowardice- endorsed the idees recues of the age. (Blackburn NLR 76, p.68) 

The article goes on to tell the story of a challenging and insightful journalist who read the signs of the times with wit and accuracy. Cockburn was the founding editor of a political newsletter CounterPunch, a publication which I had heard of, but never paid any attention to; the loss it turns out was mine. I have since been going back and reading old articles, including some rather vitriolic exchanges with Christopher Hitchens. Vis-a-vis the whole Mother Teresa fiasco Cockburn comments:

Anyway, between the two of them, my sympathies were always with Mother Teresa. If you were sitting in rags in a gutter in Bombay, who would be more likely to give you a bowl of soup? You’d get one from Mother Teresa.  Hitchens was always tight with beggars, just like the snotty Fabians who used to deprecate charity. (CounterPunch) 

Now, maybe everyone else knows who Alexander Cockburn is, but we all almost certainly know about Hitchens. I can't help but feel a little bit sad about that. 

Eulogy for America

I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glory, and awaken 

at dawn's early light. But, much to my surprise, when I 

opened my eyes, I was a victim of the Great Compromise. 

-John Prine 

They said I would always remember where I was on September 11,2001. It was our Pearl Harbour, a day that would change everything. And they were right. New York was wounded and we, awash in freshly minted ideological fervour, were filled with righteous rage. 

Even at the time, however, I was dimly aware that something about the whole scenario was off. The response of the people around me was less one of shocked horror than a kind of perverse delight that manifested itself in the immediacy of the battlecry. The figure of the Muslim radical crystallised before our eyes. I was among Americans and they suddenly knew who to hate, and who to fear. The attacks on the Twin Towers somehow gave them all a sense of justification and legitimacy, at the expense of a few thousand  dead America suddenly experienced a vindication of it rightness. 

I was inoculated, in part, against the more egregious effects of this manufactured absolution by the dual vaccine of petty Canadian nationalism, and a deeply instilled pacifism from an Anabaptist upbringing that made me balk against the adding of horror upon horror. It did not make sense to me because of a great tragedy we should praise the efforts of soldiers going out to make war and kill more people. The whole thing reeked of ideology and conspiracy. Suddenly the United States was given a martyr. It could muscle out and play world-cop, and to any dissent they could invoke the Law of 9/11. The ideological transformation was instant, it was as if planned. In effect the conspiracies theories etched out later, whatever their empirical truth, grasped the essence of what happened. Even if 9/11 was not a conspiracy it functioned like one. 

What I failed to understand, however, was that a deathblow had been dealt to America. Not in the attacks themselves, America could have withstood those. But in the aftermath, when the politicians at the White House raised the rallying cry urging the minions to shop and to hate the (Muslim) other that - that was the severe blow that struck at the heart of American freedom. It was absurd, and continues to be absurd, that Americans accepted the threat of a few Arabs with AK-47s as legitimate threat. The acceptance of this threat, and the subsequent heated rhetoric and escalated hatred, signaled nothing but the death of the freedom. In thrall to a figure of pathetic violence - one which ate at their hearts, even our hearts and brains- we became the abject servants of surveillance and warfare. Mindless we regurgitated the slogans "war on terror" "axis of evil" "Muslim extremists."  And in this regurgitation America was given over into slavery. 

It should never have been accepted. The nation that struggled through the civil rights movement should have ousted those clowns who bled her at the onset. The world should have shook with anger at this appalling destruction. By what right did the Bush government return the home of the free to a new slavery? By what right does the Obama administration continue to turn the wealth of America into technologies of spying and death? A nation afraid of itself, afraid of its own people, afraid of all people. A nation that hunts down women and children in the wretched places of the earth because its leaders, fat from the blood of their own people and of all people, are scared. They hide behind wall street, they hide behind desks. And America lies bleeding, mortally wounded by its own leaders. Dying and numb, is there any hope for America, or has she been wounded unto death? 

Sometimes I suspect that America has already died. That whatever configuration lies south of me, isn't America, but just some unspeakable machine that plugs along stupidly razing down whatever lies in its path. But  I don't want to believe that. Somewhere deep down I harbour a hope. A hope that what was good in America, that a passion for liberty and justice, however misguided it was at times, will return against all odds. That America might cast off the spell of those wizened enchanters who taught her to believe in fear, hatred and moral cowardice,  and become a beacon of light in world of shadows. It will be a miracle, I know, for America to live, but it is my prayer and my hope.

Return, America, from the world of demons and shadows. Do not fear the iron spirits of death that hover over your people, and all people, wreaking the violent magic of corpulent sorcerers. Throw of the chains of hatred. Be entangled in fear no more. The Law of Death is unbecoming to America the beautiful. Cast of your shroud and live. 

Experimental Religion: In Reason and Out

Misty G. Anderson Imagining Methodism in 18th-Century Britain: Enthusiasm,    Belief & the Borders of the Self Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012, 279            

   

I grew up in a place where immediate heartfelt religion -the experience of conversion and being born again - was extremely important. The passing of years, and an education in reading both literature and scripture, have led me to an uncomfortable distancing from that past. Many of my own experiences have become, for me, tainted with the suspicion of charlatanism and theatricality and I struggle to make sense of them. 

In many respects this experience, the struggle to balance emotional immediacy with an appropriately rational approach to life, is mirrored in the experience of eighteenth-century Methodism, and especially its reception in the popular media of the day. Misty G. Anderson's work Imagining Methodism in 18th-Century Britain  paints Methodism as a movement that at once attracted and repelled. John Wesley's literary contemporaries, such as Henry Fielding and Samuel Foote, all had much to say about Methodism, much of it not very nice. Methodism, Anderson argues, inspired the eighteenth-century imagination with admiration and disgust. It was  viewed as on the margins of what was acceptable in modern rational culture, and served as "a sign of sexual, cognitive, and social danger." The language of the Methodists was, often, perceived as too visceral and bodily, lacking the appropriate detachment of civility. Methodist preaching led workers away from their labour, upset gender roles, and was tainted with theatricality and sexuality. 

At the same time Methodism inspired even its harshest critics with a certain admiration for its zeal and commitment. Anderson proceeds through an examination of the perception of Methodism as it passes from virulent satire to lighthearted ridicule. Throughout this passage Methodism, as it is imagined, functions in a conceptual way, interrogating the self and its various fluid relationship. What is the relation between enthusiasm and reason, or religion and literature? The verbal battles fought between actors of the stage and theatrical preachers like George Whitefield make the distinctions between religious and secular less clear. Common desires and struggles inform both the enthusiastic believer and the aesthete. 

The lesson Anderson draws from this history is the necessity to "move beyond the recalcitrant religious and ideological fundamentalisms of a worldview that pits secularism against religion in a deadly contest." (Imagining, 238). For someone who has been at the brink of both fundamentalisms it is an important lesson, and one which Anderson analyzes with humour and a keen eye for detail.