All entries for Wednesday 03 February 2010

Dissident Warwick Issue 8

Welcome to issue 8 of Dissident Warwick. Below are all the articles from the print version of the zine, along with their sources. Feel free to comment/debate, but please keep contributions relevant and respectful.

Anarcho-feminism: Patriarchy, Power and Emancipation by Beth Smith

Avatar: Window to the Soul by Chris Browne

One Nation Under CCTV by Brendan Donegan

What Keeps Mankind Not Alive by Ezgi Basak

De te fabula narratur by Burc Kostem

The Zapatista Rebellion and Autonomous Governance by Puneet Dhaliwal

Emancipating Women Through Autonomous Education by Sarah Reader

The Health of Democracy by Chris Zacharia

Christopher Rossdale : 03 Feb 2010 17:48 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Anarcho–feminism: Patriarchy, Power and Emancipation

by Beth Smith

‘Feminism doesn’t mean female corporate power or a woman President; it means no corporate power and no Presidents.’[i]

Anarchism fundamentally involves a belief that all power-relations based upon illegitimate hierarchy should be abolished.[ii] The most significant hierarchies for anarchists have traditionally been relations of capital, the state, and religion, although patriarchal relations are much more central to anarcho-feminist analysis. Anarchists place emphasis on the individual, but situate the individual within a collectivity, believing that participatory, horizontal forms of organization best enable the individual expression of all participants.[iii] There is nothing inherent to anarchism which does not support a revolutionary, feminist emancipation. However, the anarcho-feminist project is important because feminist concerns have not always been addressed by anarchists in practice.[iv] This concern continues to this day, with a recent anarchist conference in London seeing a stage-invasion by a group of anarcho-feminists calling for increased self-reflexivity about sexism, homophobia and racism within the movement.[v]

A growing awareness of the classed and racialised nature of much mainstream feminist theory has led to an increasing focus on how to incorporate or include ‘difference’ within feminism. However, these debates have often struggled to find a constructive approach that sits between the two extremes of structural reductionism and some post-modern depoliticisation.[vi] Ang argues that often the desire to include ‘difference’ within feminism represents an attempt merely to ‘resolve’ difference by absorbing other feminisms without changing the fundamental structures of feminist theory leaving questions of the compatibility of different feminisms essentially unaddressed.[vii] At the other extreme, certain post-modern analyses that emphasise difference and fragmented identities can hinder attempts to formulate a structural analysis of why different women are affected in different ways. However, an anarcho-feminist analysis of power proves useful when negotiating a path between these two extremes. Anarchists believe that societies and groups should be organized at the most local level possible, an approach compatible with a deep sensitivity to the importance of context specific experiences and knowledge. However, a focus on illegitimate hierarchies provides a point of solidarity and commonality between different groups of women, and different groups of people who are exploited by such hierarchies. Mohanty believes that solidarity can be developed through a focus on ‘common differences’ and focuses on links between the local and the global. She uses the concept of ‘epistemic privilege’ to argue that by looking ‘upward’ through the power-relations that exist we can develop an ‘inclusive viewing of systemic power’.[viii] ‘We know what a boot looks like when seen from underneath, we know the philosophy of boots…’.[ix]

Many feminist organizations already practice their feminism on broadly anarchistic terms; Farrow argues that, ‘Feminism practices what anarchism preaches’.[x] Many have rejected what they perceive to be masculinist forms of organization, those based on competition and hierarchy, instead creating non-hierarchical groups. However, it is important to make these connections much more explicit in order to enable the extension of such an analysis of hierarchy to external structures such as the state and capitalism. Kornegger argues that making the anarchism-feminism link might ‘springboard women out of reformism’, prevent feminists getting trapped in ‘ye olde male political rut’ and is vital if revolution is to happen.[xi]

Emma Goldman’s analysis of women’s oppression and her visions of their emancipation suggest some directions that a revolutionary anarcho-feminist analysis and practice could consider. Goldman believed in relationships based upon freedom. She believed in a free love that needed no sanction from the state.[xii] There is some ambiguity, however, over the extent to which she agreed with anarcho-feminists who claimed that jealousy and emotional possessiveness in relationships signified a ‘claim to private property’.[xiii] She did, however, believe that a woman’s supposed desire to mother large numbers of children had been greatly exaggerated by men, and instead sought emancipation in terms of ‘free motherhood’.[xiv] Goldman’s conception of women’s emancipation lends itself to a belief in diversity because she did not prescribe what such emancipation should look like. She believed that freedom from patriarchal restraints would lead to the discovery and development of new forms of sexual self-expression.[xv] Marso writes,

‘Reframing the struggle for women’s (and indeed, human) emancipation in terms that spoke to our needs for freedom, Goldman was able to put forward the absolute necessity of freeing women on their own terms without having to sacrifice love or varieties of sexual expression, and without reference to male-defined and state-centred notions of equality as the measure by which to judge progress.’.[xvi]

Emma Goldman is able to combine a theory of patriarchy with an open, women-led view of female emancipation.

Anarcho-feminism is important for both anarchism and feminism. As long as patriarchal practices exist within the anarchist movement, an explicit emphasis on the importance of feminism remains vital. For feminism, an anarchist analysis enables an understanding of power-relations and hierarchies that provides both a powerful critique of patriarchy and a strong impetus to action.

[i] Kornegger, P., (2002) ‘Anarchism: the Feminist Connection.’ in Dark Star Collective Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-feminist Reader. Edinburgh, AK Press, 21 – 31.

[ii] Ibid

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Jose, J., (2003) “‘Nowhere At Home”: Not Even in Theory.’ Paper at Australasian Political Studies Association Conference, University of Tasmania, Hobart.

(http://www.utas.edu.au/government/APSA/JJosefinal.pdf)

[v] Hukku, C., (2009) ‘Some thoughts on Anarcha-Feminism.’ Shift Magazine 7.

http://shiftmag.co.uk/?p=319 (Accessed October 26, 2009).

[vi] I do not seek to ‘straw-man’ either position here, just to suggest the two extremes to which theorists may tend towards to a lesser or greater extent.

[vii] Ang, I., (1995) ‘I’m a feminist but… ‘Other’ women and postnational feminism,’ in B Caine and R Pringle (Eds) Transitions: New Australian Feminisms. Sydney, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 57 – 73.

[viii] Mohanty, C. T., (2003) ‘‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity Through Anti-Capitalist Struggles.’ Signs, 28:2, P. 511.

[ix] Atwood, 1974 in Kornegger, 2002

[x] Farrow, L., ‘Feminism as Anarchism.’ in Dark Star Collective Quiet Rumours: An Anarcha-feminist Reader. Edinburgh, AK Press, 15 – 20.

[xi] Kornegger, 2002, p. 27

[xii] Jose, J., (2003)

[xiii] Marso, L (2002) ‘Emma Goldman on the Politics of Marriage, Love, Sexuality, and the Feminine.’ Paper at American Political Studies Assocation, Boston, MA.

[xiv] Goldman, 1975 in Marso, 2002

[xv] Marso, 2002

[xvi] Ibid, p. 24

Christopher Rossdale : 03 Feb 2010 17:43 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Avatar: Window to the Soul

by Chris Browne

There’s nothing sadder than seeing humanity’s deepest yearning imprisoned in fiction. Even James Cameron’s colossal Avatar, in all its three-dimensional glory, cannot transcend the film reel and shake us out of our paralysis. What we have in that narrative, aside from gratuitous stock villainy and flashy CGI, is the embodiment of everything humanity craves: a society based on an almost spiritual affinity between every constituent member and its environment. The quasi-biological explanation in the film reinforces this link, and blurs the qualitative distinction between the people and the forest in which they live. Indeed, the individual is subsumed into the richer collective identity. Conversation, almost literally, is held between the present and the past, adding another layer of interaction, this time a temporal one. The tribal society is easily paralleled with African and Native American culture, though arguably the link is merely made to anchor it into our frame of reference, and through the baggage of our post-colonial guilt, aid the allegory’s effectiveness.

The desire and need for something deeper, that extra bit of meaning and connection in life is in evidence in our conjuring of ‘God’. This feeling is age old, and has found voluminous expression in the number of adherents to religions around the world. People’s baffling propensity to believe in séances and mediums is merely the ludicrous conclusion to a spectrum of dissatisfaction that affects us all.

So why mention Avatar? The film is far from unique, but it provides something of a window into our unhappiness, in its unadulterated escapism. Film, music and literature have always done this. Now, however, in a world where the only alternative to the capitalist value of individualistic consumerism has been corrupted beyond recognition in the form of Soviet ‘socialism’, the poignancy of a communalistic, pragmatic, and generally content society becomes unbearable. That is not to say that no alternative principles or ideologies to those of capitalism now exist –the persistence of Dissident Warwick disproves that in a heartbeat- but rather that the mass popular consciousness required to conceive of a radical alternative, and to actually challenge the prevailing systems of exploitation is rare. Not since July 1936 in Spain, or perhaps May 1968 in France, has such an atmosphere of predominant radicalism been felt in the West.

Our subconscious yearning –and it is by and large never articulated in coherent analysis and clear methods of resistance; if it were then presumably by now we would be living in a post-capitalist world- finds comfort in the native society of Avatar. However, it does somewhat prove the point that we are devoid of revolutionary ideals: whilst we desire something more wholesome than the vacuous and unsustainable consumer culture that exacerbates both planetary destruction and proliferates depression, we fail to see precisely what it is that we find so unsatisfying about our own lives, and, in turn, what it is we truly desire. Avatar shows us a glimpse into a vaguely recognisable human past –the tribalism, spirituality, and rudimentary technology are all akin to our conceptions of African culture. Yet even if the kinds of structures we associate with African or Indigenous American societies are entirely invented through our own arrogant misunderstanding and sloppy process of ‘othering’, they still hark back to a romanticised, pre-capitalist era. It is atavistic, and also unattainable.

The ethos then, rather than the tribal society itself, is what we truly crave. It is just that we no longer have the collective linguistic and semiotic tools, here in the West in the twenty-first century to articulate our desire for a future without capitalism. That political and social conceptualisation doesn’t have the same degree of embeddedness within us as the ‘tribal’ culture does -no matter how mythological and far removed from our own culture it may be.

Rather than arguing that an indigenous, tribal society is depicted in the film because a technologically advanced anarchist collective would be incongruous in the jungle, and would therefore do some serious damage to the plot (both true), we should instead address ourselves to the need to instil the ethos of connectedness and solidarity that our own society seems to lack. Prefigurative action to this end seems both desirable and efficacious. Of course, we should stress the importance of individual freedom as the means and ends to any (desirable) societal structure. Criticisms of close-knit tribal communities as being conservative and often inimical to the free expression of the individual are clearly warranted. For the sake of our analysis then, it is important to reiterate how Avatarshows us only a rough approximation of what we truly desire. The tribe as conceptual vehicle must necessarily fall short of the normative standards that we espouse as anarchists.

The bitter irony is of course that dissatisfaction with the commoditisation of every aspect of life has in turn been absorbed by that very same system, commoditised in the form of Avatar, and sold back to us for £6.99 and the price of a bag of popcorn. The ongoing struggle for social justice and a better society is by definition no easy feat, but the latent desire is seemingly shared, even among apolitical elements of society –it is simply that such desire has not yet found expression outside the realms of fiction.

Christopher Rossdale : 03 Feb 2010 17:42 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

One Nation Under CCTV

by Brendan Donegan

In recent years there has been frequent media coverage of the UK’s position as the “world leader in video and digital surveillance” [1], with more CCTV cameras per citizen than any other country [2]. Some of you may have seen a news item that came out in many newspapers a week or so before Christmas. This item was the announcement of a new report on CCTV in the Great Britain by Big Brother Watch [3]. More specifically, this report brought together the various arguments against CCTV with a “definitive list of the number of CCTV cameras operated by Britain’s 428 local authorities” [4] obtained through Freedom of Information requests sent to every single local council in Great Britain. The report did not include “the many cameras controlled by private individuals and companies, by central government, on our nation’s motorways, or those controlled solely by Transport for London and situated on the bus, tube and tram network” [5].

Perhaps inevitably, the Big Brother Watch report has already inspired responses critical of its methodology and sceptical about its figures [6]. There have been similar responses to earlier widely circulated figures of 14 cameras per citizen in the UK [7], and 300 being the number of times a Londoner appears on camera on a daily basis [8]. While it is right that these commentators should draw attention to the questionable accuracy of these statistics, in a sense their responses miss the point. Whether there are 14 cameras per citizen or perhaps only 10, the UK remains a world leader in CCTV surveillance. It was reported earlier this year that “over 6000 officials from 30 countries have come to learn lessons” from the underground CCTV room at Piccadilly Circus in central London [9], where “trained staff view more than a billion images taken on 100 cameras in a typical 12-hour shift” and are able to “manually manipulate cameras set high above storefronts, zooming in on a person’s face or a car’s license plate from well over 100 feet away” [10]. Presumably these 6000 officials were impressed neither by the figure 14 nor by the figure 300, but rather by the fact that the existence of this room is a concrete demonstration of both the capacity of the UK government to watch its people, and its eagerness to do so.

Apologists for CCTV surveillance often argue that it is an efficient and cost-effective way of reducing crime. However, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that this is not the case. A 2002 report by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders noted that

“Three quarters of the Home Office Crime Prevention budget was spent on CCTV between 1996 and 1998, yet a comprehensive review has revealed the overall reduction in crime was only five per cent. A parallel systematic review carried out by the Home Office that looked at street lighting, however, found a highly significant reduction in crime of 20 per cent.” [11]

In 2005 a review of 13 CCTV projects by the Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate reported that in the areas covered by these projects, “CCTV had a negligible effect on crime rates” [12].

The arguments against CCTV primarily revolve around privacy issues. Although cameras are not always switched on (they are often used merely as a deterrent rather than to record), there is always the possibility that ordinary, law-abiding citizens are being recorded carrying out innocent activities. More significantly though, CCTV has the potential to do more than merely record events in a space; CCTV can be used in discriminatory ways to track specific individuals. In 2006 the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) reported that several British cities were already moving towards digital CCTV systems that “use computer algorithms to search automatically for stipulated people or behaviours” [13]. In this sense, Banksy’s maxim ‘One Nation Under CCTV’ [14] is misleading. We are not all equally subjected to CCTV surveillance; rather, the advent of systems such as those described by SSN provide a new mechanism for categorising people into ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ populations and treating those that fall into the latter category differently. It is often argued that ‘innocent (i.e. normal) people have nothing to fear’, but the fact is that in a time of global ‘War on Terror’ the definition of the normal and the deviant can change rapidly and in directions that many of us would not agree with. In addition, besides being used to track people of colour, Muslims, youths wearing hoodies, and so on, CCTV can and has been used to spy on young women, for example by pointing the camera through their bedroom window [15-18].

With these points in mind we could perhaps think of CCTV as an affront to liberal democracy, on the basis that the entire raison d’etre for liberal democracy is the protection of the private property of the individual including the individual’s right to privacy. Alternatively we could draw parallels between CCTV and Foucault’s discussion of the Panopticon, a system of social control in which the very awareness of being under surveillance leads the individual to change his or her behaviour, to conform to the norms of society, to manage the self [19]. We could see CCTV as part of the shift from disciplinary societies to societies of control [20], in which “mobility goes hand-in-hand with traceability” such that you can move as long as you leave traces of your position and of what you are doing, whether it be licit or illicit [21]. Whichever way you look at it, we seem to be sleep-walking into a system that nobody has voted for, that does not seem to achieve what the government tell us it will achieve, and that raises important questions about real and ideal relationships between public and private, individual and society, the people and the state.

It would seem that it is time to wake up, to take action. What can you do? 1. For all its limitations, looking at the methodology of the Big Brother Watch report is a start. You can submit Freedom of Information requests. However, Freedom of Information won’t help if you want to approach particular private individuals and companies about their usage of CCTV. Here there are other laws which may be usefully deployed; for example, the Data Protection Act 1998 [22] and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 [23]. 2. CCTV cameras can be destroyed, although this would of course be regarded as a criminal act and consequently this author cannot condone such action. A website exists to provide information on how to do this most effectively and without being caught [24], and Mike Davis offers encouragement [25]. 3. ‘Video sniffing’ is a term used to describe a methodology of legally hacking CCTV footage [26, 27]. 4. Subvert the cameras by playing to them [28]. 5. We need to initiate a public debate on CCTV. That doesn’t mean another review by a government committee, another report by a watchdog organisation like Big Brother Watch, or another newspaper article reacting or responding to one of these reviews or reports. Unless we can start an engagement with the issue that is deeper and more sustained than our Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity-Disorder media will allow, we are going to keep heading in the same direction we are currently going. One step in the direction of such an engagement would be to organise a public meeting on the issue [29]. 6. Here’s another: I have set up a CCTV wiki to build up information and photos on CCTV, and anyone who wants to add to this is most welcome [Link; I haven’t set it up yet]. 7. There is a protest organised by No Borders Network in January. [Details]

References:

1. Liberty (undated) “Closed Circuit Television – CCTV”, http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/issues/3-privacy/32-cctv/index.shtml

2. Paul Lewis (2009) “Every step you take”, The Guardian, 2 March 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/02/westminster-cctv-system-privacy

3. Sky News (2009) “‘Big Brother’ Councils Treble CCTV Cameras”, Sky News, 18 December 2009, http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20091218/tuk-big-brother-councils-treble-cctv-cam-45dbed5.html

4. Big Brother Watch (2009) Big Brother Is Watching: The first comprehensive analysis of the number of CCTV cameras controlled by local authorities in Britain in 2009, http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/cctvreport.pdf, page 1

5. Big Brother Watch, Big Brother Is Watching, page 1

6. Tom Reeve (2009) “The real cost – and value – of CCTV”, The Guardian, 22 December 2009, http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/factcheck+how+many+cctv+cameras/2291167

7. Channel 4 News (2008) “FactCheck: how many CCTV cameras?”, http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/factcheck+how+many+cctv+cameras/2291167

8. David Aaronovitch (2009) “The strange case of the surveillance cameras”, The Times, March 3 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article5834725.ece

9. Paul Lewis, Every step you take

10. Jennifer Carlile (2004) “In Britain, somebody is watching you”, 14 September 2004, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5942513

11. R. Armitage (2002) To CCTV or not to CCTV? National Association for the Care and Resettlemnt of Offenders (NACRO), May 2002, page 6

12. Gill and Spriggs (2005) Assessing the Impact of CCTV London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, cited in Big Brother Watch, Big Brother Is Watching, page 4

13. Surveillance Studies Network (2006) A Report on the Surveillance Society, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_11_06_surveillance.pdf, page 24

14. Mail Online (2008) “Graffiti artist Banksy pulls off most audacious stunt to date – despite being watched by CCTV”, The Daily Mail, 14 April 2008, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-559547/Graffiti-artist-Banksy-pulls-audacious-stunt-date—despite-watched-CCTV.html

15. BBC News (2006) “Peeping Tom CCTV Workers Jailed”, Friday 13 January 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/4609746.stm

16. Big Brother Watch (2009) “Are you being watched?”, 16 Dec 09, http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2009/12/are-you-being-watched.html

17. Big Brother Watch, Big Brother Is Watching, pages 8-9

18. Big Brother Watch (2009) “Another example of CCTV abuse”, 18 Dec 09, http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/home/2009/12/another-example-of-cctv-abuse.html

19. Michel Foucault (1979) Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books

20. Gilles Deleuze (1990) “Postscript on the Society of Control”, October 59, Winter 1992, MIT Press, Cambridge, pages 3-7, http://www.n5m.org/n5m2/media/texts/deleuze.htm

21. Olga P Massanet (2009) “How do we move beyond ‘I’m being watched’?”, Mute Magazine, January 2009, http://thisisnotagateway.squarespace.com/storage/How%20Do%20We%20Move%20Beyond%20I%20Am%20Being%20Watched.pdf, pages 1-2

22. Camera Watch (2008) “February 2008 Forum – Minutes Extract: CCTV Compliance – Legal Perspective”, http://www.camerawatch.org.uk/media/2163/cctv-legal-perspective.pdf

23. Liberty (undated) “Targeted Surveillance”, http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/issues/3-privacy/targeted-surveillance/index.shtml

24. Schnews (undated) “Guide to Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) destruction”, http://www.schnews.org.uk/diyguide/guidetoclosedcircuittelevisioncctvdestruction.htm

25. Mike Davis (2007) “‘Resisting, Subverting and Destroying the Apparatus of Surveillance and Control’: An Interview with Mike Davis”, Voices of Resistance from Occupied London, March 2007, pages 16-19, http://zinelibrary.info/files/4138-resisting_subverting_and_destroying_0.pdf

26. Christopher Werth (2008) “To Watch The Watchers”, Newsweek, 10 October 2008, http://www.newsweek.com/id/163113/output/print

27. Ambient Information Systems (undated) “DIY tool kit”, http://www.ambienttv.net/content/?q=node/389

28. Surveillance Camera Players (2008) “Someone to watch over me”, Youtube video uploaded 5 June 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkjuy6WVYD0

29. Olga P Massanet, “How do we move beyond ‘I’m being watched’?”

Christopher Rossdale : 03 Feb 2010 17:41 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What Keeps Mankind Not Alive?

by Ezgi Basak

The largest contemporary art event of Turkey took place in Istanbul under the name of “11th International Istanbul Biennial” for two months since its opening in September. This biennial distinguished itself from the previous Istanbul biennials, claiming to be “the most politically engaged” of all. The curator was a socialist-feminist artists’ collective from Croatia called ‘What, How & for Whom’ and they came up with a controversial title. They took the name of the song‘What Keeps Mankind Alive?’ which closed the second act of the play The Threepenny Opera, written by Bertolt Brecht. The play was based on Brecht’s assertion that ‘a criminal is a bourgeois and a bourgeois is a criminal.’ In the conceptual framework, ‘What, How & for Whom’ proposed the urgency of the question posed by Brecht for us living under the neoliberal hegemony and investigated the role of art in instigating social change against global capitalism. It was a large-scale event. We could see the posters proclaiming “Socialism or Barbarism” and “What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?” everywhere in the Istanbul streets.

Despite its glory in the international arena, the entire biennial was a huge irony. First of all, they targeted solely the middle-class intellectuals. It’s very common in Istanbul biennials, but this time I would have expected from them to make an effort to engage the “others”, those who are outside of the bourgeoisie, in the biennial not just as art objects but as real audience. Wasn’t that supposed to be the point? They could at least have made some public performances or street exhibitions. But they did nothing other than putting those posters on the walls, calling people to rob banks, which clearly did not attract them at all. Moreover, the biennial was sponsored by Koc Holding, one of the biggest corporations in Turkey involved in arms dealing. And yet it was not the worst part. Somehow, nobody seemed to remember the letter written by the father of Koc Holding’s CEO to the generals of the 1980 military coup, in order to congratulate them and to give them advice. When confronted with this fact, the curators said: “A society that discusses Brecht is better than a society that doesn’t discuss Brecht at all.” For me it was nothing but a striking example of how opposition and resistance were appropriated by the neoliberal system and being marketed as art in closed spaces. Should we learn how to resist from the ones whom we should resist, and on top of all, pay them to teach us?

We, the anti-authoritarians who gathered together under the name of Resistanbul against the International Monetary Fund-World Bank visit to Istanbul, added another question: “What Keeps Mankind Not Alive?” Our conceptual framework said: “We acknowledge the urgency in these times when we do not get free healthcare and education, our right to our cities, our squares and streets are taken by corporations, our land, our seeds and water are stolen, we are driven into precarity and a life without security, when we are killed crossing their borders and left alone to live an uncertain future with their potential crises. But we fight. And we resist in the streets not in corporate spaces reserved for tolerated institutional critique so as to help them clear their conscience.”[1]

Since the curators claim to be radical, we should ask them whether they would ever dare to put that letter in the exhibition. The answer would probably be negative, because then they wouldn’t be sponsored. On the other hand, I’m sure they would again say that it is better to make this biennial without the letter than not making it at all. But doesn’t that amount to sheer cynicism if the limit of “the radical” is drawn by CEOs? I think we should give credit to Slavoj Zizek who says that “cynicism” is a form of ideology. He says: “Cynicism is the answer of the ruling culture to this kynical subversion: it recognizes, it takes into account, the particular interest behind the ideological universality, the distance between the ideological mask and the reality, but it still finds reasons to retain the mask. This cynicism is not a direct position of immorality; it is more like morality itself put in the service of immorality.”[2] And I believe that, above all, it is this cynical discourse that keeps mankind not alive.

[1] For more information on Resistanbul: http://resistanbul.wordpress.com/

[2] The Sublime Object of Ideology, Slavoj Zizek.

Christopher Rossdale : 03 Feb 2010 17:40 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Emancipating Women Through Autonomous Education

by Sarah Reader

A year ago I wrote an article for Dissident about women in the Zapatista movement which provided an introduction to the issue and reflected how the Zapatistas are a movement which has always placed women as equal alongside men. However, it is easy to question the extent to which this remains at the rhetorical level and is reserved for Marcos’ communiqués or whether a growing respect for women is being manifested in practice. Although spending two months in Chiapas is far from sufficient to garner a deep understanding of the movement or build the relationships necessary to know how people truly feel and act, one thing that was made clear during our time there was how progressive the autonomous schools are and how far they had come since they first were set up in 1990. Although gender issues are far from resolved and the Zapatista schools are very much dealing with women’s rights as opposed to engaging with other sexualities and gender relations, the movement is constantly questioning itself and embracing new issues.

Given the neoliberalisation of higher education which is taking place across Europe, the Zapatista project of autonomous education should provide us with some inspiration and demonstrate the power of grassroots social movements to challenge an oppressive system and set up an inclusive and autonomous alternative. The schools are not defined by the demands of the labour market or the Mexican government’s neoliberal agenda, but rather determine their education in terms of the direct needs of the communities that are served by them. This has enabled them to challenge traditions and norms which are ingrained in the rest of the country and promote a newfound respect for women.

The general aim of the autonomous education system is to promote indigenous culture, history and language and to counteract the racism towards the indigenous population which characterises the state system. It also emphasises the importance of equality, community and collective learning and labour; something very much absent from our schools and colleges. One of the ways in which the successes of the autonomous alternative are made clear is by the way in which it is challenging gender relations and the machismo which dominates Mexico.

The Zapatistas are constructing a system in which education is based on mutual learning and respect. They are redefining the relationship between teachers and students and providing an alternative to the racist and inaccessible Mexican state system. They view education as a fundamental tool of resistance against the state and the capitalist system and as an important means of being able to defend their communities and reclaim their history, their culture and their lives. The importance given by the Zapatistas to inclusivity, dignity and respect is reflected in their autonomous education and this has had an impact on the way women are treated. The autonomous schools welcome children from all backgrounds regardless of their race, class or gender. In contrast to this, state schools are rife with racism and sexism. We heard first-hand accounts from students at the secondary school in Oventic about the ways in which they regularly suffered physical and verbal abuse from the mestizo teachers at the state schools and this abuse was disproportionately aimed at the girls. One girl spoke of how some girls had been forced to urinate in the classroom as they were denied permission to go to the toilet. These teachers have little to no understanding of, or concern for, indigenous communities, their culture or their needs and are directly perpetuating a racist and sexist culture.

The Zapatista schools, however, place great importance on gender equality, which partly explains why there is a growing respect for women’s rights and the challenging of traditional gender roles amongst younger generations. Unlike in the state system where girls had no choice in the subjects they studied and were excluded from many which were reserved for the boys, in the Zapatista schools boys and girls take part in the same classes and there are no restrictions according to gender. Whereas girls were previously forbidden from playing sports, in the Zapatista schools they can be seen alongside boys on the basketball courts and football fields. Furthermore, there is an effort to emphasise that household tasks and childrearing are not just women’s roles and boys are also being taught how to weave and make tortillas. The Zapatistas are even challenging Castilian grammar rules by using the feminine form of ‘we’ when there are more women in the group than men (as opposed to the masculine form which is the standard practice).

The autonomous schools are also beginning to engage and promote issues that are contextually radical such as abortion and the freedom to decide when to have children and how many to have. Although the continued influence of Catholicism amongst the indigenous population presents significant obstacles to surmount, the autonomous schools endeavour to ensure that girls are aware of their rights and have control over their bodies and choices.

Through their autonomous schools the Zapatistas are actively overcoming problems of marginalisation and prejudice with respect to race, class and gender. By providing a non-hierarchical and inclusive education which does not discriminate or position people above one another they are promoting the respect of women’s rights and challenging their traditional roles as housewives and child-bearers. Although there is still far to go, this provides us with an example of how alternatives can be constructed and these can be instrumental in combating inequalities and prejudice.

Christopher Rossdale : 03 Feb 2010 17:40 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Health of Democracy

by Chris Zacharia

For those who believed, back in late 2008, that the victory secured by Barack Obama in the Presidential elections signalled how far America had come as a nation in loosening their obstinate prejudices, the fierce rebellion against the President’s healthcare reform programme must have come as a nasty shock. Rarely can a single disagreement over welfare have uniquely displayed the huge dichotomy that forms the heart of American society and threatens to extinguish it as a functioning entity. Protestors against Obama’s welfare plan have rallied behind public figures such as Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter and Michele Bachman (a director’s cut version of Palin), rising up across the nation to defeat what these social conservatives consider to be a Draconian encroachment of their personal liberties. Bachman, a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, demanded that all conservative activists who wanted to stop Obama’s dark intentions should descend upon the capital and make their voices heard. One Republican supporter at the protest in Washington D.C. held aloft a horrific photograph of Jewish corpses in Dachau concentration camp with the caption, “National Socialist Healthcare”[1]. Evidently, these pundits of the extreme right are a dab hand at rabble-rousing.

What strikes me as most disappointing is the fundamental paradox that lies at the heart of every Republican assertion. They claim Obama will create a ‘big brother’ state – despite the fact that the Republicans seem solely interested in intensifying that very process, having organised the COINTELPRO operation in the 1960 and 1970s which gave the FBI extra-constitutional powers to criminalise non-mainstream groups, not to mention founding the Guantanamo Bay prison and initialising the micro-chip revolution, which saw the first American implanted with a sophisticated piece of technology which tracks each movement². Republicans claim that the healthcare system will impinge on their freedom – despite the 35 million people who have no healthcare insurance and thus cannot be labelled as ‘free’ – for how can you be free if you cannot even afford the most basic healthcare procedures for you and your family? They claim to want small government and individual freedom – but refuse to accept the validity of personal choice in morally contetious issues such as abortion. They claim that a healthcare system would be too expensive – when various Republican governments have spent in excess of £300bn a year on military investment³.

Yet this is only the surface-level observation; it merely indicates the level to which right-wing media organisations have mastered the ‘doublethink’ propaganda that George Orwell frightfully foresaw before the mid-twentieth century. The healthcare ‘debate’ also tells us a great deal about the state of democracy in America, and the value of democracy as an agent of change. When Obama was elected President in November 2008, he summarised why people should vote for him in his manifesto – a manifesto which made his supporters several pledges, one of which was to reform the healthcare system in the United States to help the disadvantaged. The democratic system of elections relies on this ideal⁴. Rational voters examine each manifesto carefully, deciding which one they believe to be most advantageous to themselves and the nation and cast their vote correspondingly. If a voter’s preferred candidate does not succeed, and all procedures were followed correctly, then he or she must accept the defeat and wait until the next election; the democratic system relies on this principle.

What democracies ask us to do, in short, is to place our belief in our personal moralities and ethical judgements below a belief in democracy. We must hold the democratic ideal – rule by the majority as the only just method of government – above our ‘subjective’ moral views and face the consequences if our candidate is defeated. For instance, if I believe in the depths of my soul that going to war with Iran is morally wrong, but a candidate who wants such a war to go ahead is elected by my peers, I must accept this for the democratic system to function⁵. Unfortunately, people do not work in this way. You only have to have a discussion about religion, or politics, or war, even with just a small group of individuals to gain an understanding of how important these issues are to people. Asking a populace to submit these cherished beliefs that guide our souls and edify our minds to a managerialist practicality to favour democracy is wholly foolish.

What we see in America is not just a disagreement over healthcare policy, but a faltering of the democratic system. Upon the victory of Obama, the Republicans had to accept that although they did not (for whatever confused reason) believe in healthcare reform, the majority of American voters wanted not only Obama but his policies. Yet despite this, grassroots conservatives have if anything become even more emboldened against such a development, pressurising the ruling party to abandon a crucial portion of its election manifesto and thus let down the majority of voters, an outcome that would surely diminish belief in the democratic process itself. Now, I’m not claiming that civil disobedience or protest is wrong or counter-productive. Instead, it is the democratic system which relies on this fundamentally flawed conception of human nature which fails to engender a harmony that is conducive to good government⁶. Democracy, in its current representative guise, is flawed in its demands of human beings, and undermines itself as societal goods become more and more incommensurable. And as the democratic system chokes and slowly falls, the alliance of corporate unfreedom and vested interests, those dealers of war and suffering, seeps back into the public domain.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/15/michele-bachmann-president-sarah-palin

[2] http://www.icdc.com/%7Epaulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm

[4] Bhikhu Parekh, “Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity & Political Theory”, 2002

[5] Michael Freeden, “Liberal Languages”, 2005

[6] Herbert Marcuse, “One-Dimensional Man”, 1964

Christopher Rossdale : 03 Feb 2010 17:37 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

De te fabula narratur!

by Burc Kostem

“We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation…Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!”1

This excerpt from Lenin’s “What is to be done?” is an excellent summary of the democratic centralism that dominated the early years of the revolution in Russia. Our current predicament is interestingly relevant to Lenin’s description: with the absence of a strong left, many parties have called for a “unity among the left” around the world. Indeed as Lenin has described, social democrats not only have “socialist ministers charm the whole bourgeois world by orations on class collaboration” but they also admit that their main aim is merely reform. The Left, especially in the developed world, not only supports the current political system but sees it vital for its existence. Again as Lenin expected most of these parties now are merely advocates of introducing a strand of bourgeois opportunism into the socialist movement. The best example in England has been New Labour, although most people would not even call them Social Democrats anymore. Be it in France where the moderate socialists are retreating to the leadership of the centre right party, UMP, or in Italy, where the centre-left Democratic Party, has dropped down by 6 points in the European elections, the political left in Europe and other parts of the developed world have spectacularly failed to gain support amidst one of the biggest economic crisis of capitalism.2

Going hand in hand with this political movement has also been the academic rejection of Marx’s theory of historical materialism. Revisionists from Bernstien to Hobsbawm have come to reject Marxist conceptions of class struggle and revolution (and sometimes with very convincing reasons too). Most academics and revolutionaries in Turkey have dismantled altogether after the 90’s. Those who were not assassinated, or are not in jail, have changed direction completely and are bosses in big corporations. The story is not that different in other parts of the world. Even the most popular scholars such as Chomsky have described Lenin as “the worst thing that has ever happened to socialism”3. Marxism is almost always seen as a premature or idealistic conception of the world while Leninism is a “no-no” everywhere. Many people around the world, feel that the emphasis on Marxism and the working class is much too narrow and therefore feel more sympathetic towards other strands of radical thought.

This shift has not been motivated by the complete collapse of Marxist analysis. For example Callinicos argues that “socialist revolution is an imperative in a world where 30 million rot on Western dole queues and 800 million people go hungry in the Third World.”4 Neither has wage-labour perished or class-war ended. Rather people have come to accept the well popularized view that capitalism somehow “works” while the failure of Soviet Russia has been largely promoted as the failure of Marxism altogether.

Is Marx, then, still relevant to our modern lives? Is there anything that can be preserved in Marxism and if so, how can we do this without falling in to dogmatism? To the likes of Tony Blair who have simply dismissed Marxism because it is somehow written too long ago, Mark Steel, a British comedian, asks this question: “Does Tony Blair then, after having eaten his dinner say: ‘No, no! Just throw the plates up in the air, why are you talking about Newton and gravity? That was ages ago. The plates won’t fly, they won’t fall, they’ll find a third way in to the washing machine.’?”

Although it is not a good argument to dismiss a political system simply because of its age, whether its analysis is futile or not remains another question. Yet to make sense of the answer, one first has to make sense of the question. Maybe as Zizek described in his speech at Marxism 2009 asking the question “So what is really still relevant in Marx?” assumes the position of a historical judge who can by himself determine what is new and what is old. Maybe this reduces the theory in to an abstract system of logic with a life of its own, completely isolated from the social reality that surrounds it so that we can compare this abstract theory with the reality of our world to determine what is relevant or not. Maybe as Zizek describes what is really universal and still relevant in Marxism, is the concrete way in which it recreates itself through its analysis of the real world at each historical moment. Therefore we must, to understand what is new in Marxism, ask the opposite question. We must recreate Marxism, look at the world through the eyes of Marxism and then ask, “So what is new with the world today from the lenses of Marx?” If we accept that ideologies are not abstract, isolated ideas, then this analysis is inevitable.

This goes hand in hand with Althusser’s analysis of Marx in his essay Marxism and Humanism. If Marxism is an ideology that can recreate itself in each historical moment, then it can’t, as its starting point accept an idealised universal “essence of man”. Neither can it, as most sciences do today, completely ignore all political influences and claim to practice an empiricism of man. (Indeed Althusser argues that empiricism of man and the idealism of the essence of mankind are practically the same. One curious example here, can be continuous empirical researches in biology, to somehow justify capitalism in an idealist way, saying it is a part of human nature.) Instead Marx based his theory on “the given historical period” and “the different levels of human practice articulated by these periods”. Because of this, historical and ideological movements are not separated from material ones in Marxism but they are seen as a result of each other.

As Marx himself puts it “The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself”. By holding this position Marx changes the way in which theory and practice relate to each other. For Marx the way in which we interpret history creates the potential to change it. Then to understand Marxism today, we must not look for its secret essence. Neither must we play at empiricism comparing the GDP figures of Soviet Russia with those of the United States, claiming this to be the ultimate failure of Marxism. We must instead understand the social and economic relations of our historical period, through a Marxist outlook.

A good demonstration of the application of such a theory is Marx’s view of equality. It appears to be one of the prejudices of liberal thought, that Marx assumes everyone is equal. This would lead to the idealism of an essence of mankind, which would completely go against the theory was just described. On the contrary Marx’s view is very different. In his “Critique of the Gotha Programme” Marx says that workers are born in to different material conditions and come from different backgrounds. Therefore the bourgeois equality given to them, which holds them to the single same identity merely as workers and nothing else, can only be an inequality. In a Hegelian way a pure conception of equality understood in this abstract bourgeois way leads only to its opposite: an unequal standard to which workers living in different conditions are held to. Instead Marx’s conception of equality is dedicated to the material conditions and political tendencies that create the current, so called, equality and how these can be employed to increase equality.

Therefore if there is anything to preserve in Marxism it is the legacy of dialectical materialism. It is not enough to focus on humanitarian issues and ignore the historical and ideological landscape that surrounds them. As a Turk, for example, it is not enough to appreciate the re-emergence of radical Islam, without understanding the systematic decline of the Turkish left. These two are impotent and blind without each other. When asked which deviation from Marx was better, to the left, or to the right Stalin answered: both are worse. On this rare example, I can agree with him. The curse of revisionism has once again shown its head, as there is a mood of despair for the left in Europe. In such moments of despair, revisionist movements have almost always lost sight of this core aspect of Marxism.5 Now as history repeats itself as a farce one can only look at how relevant Lenin’s answer remains and tell these people what Marx told the German workers who would dismiss the condition of the English working class as not being relevant: De te fabula narratur! (Of you the tale is told.)

1 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/index.htm
2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/17/left-politics-capitalism-recession
3 http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/rbr/noamrbr2.html
4 The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx – Alex Callinicos
5 Eric Hobsbawm’s most recent article in the Guardian is an interesting example of this:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/financial-crisis-capitalism-socialism-alternatives

All other quotes are taken from www.marxists.org

Christopher Rossdale : 03 Feb 2010 17:37 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem