{"id":20126,"date":"2014-03-15T11:27:12","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T17:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=20126"},"modified":"2014-03-15T11:27:12","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T17:27:12","slug":"poetic-terrorism-waiting-for-the-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=20126","title":{"rendered":"Poetic Terrorism: Waiting for the Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waiting for the Revolution
\n<\/strong>
\nHow is it that \u201cthe world turned upside-down\u201d always manages to Right itself? Why does reaction always follow revolution, like seasons in Hell?<\/p>\n

Uprising, or the Latin form insurrection, are words used by historians to label failed revolutions \u2014 movements which do not match the expected curve, the consensus-approved trajectory: revolution, reaction, betrayal, the founding of a stronger and even more oppressive State \u2014 the turning of the wheel, the return of history again and again to its highest form: jackboot on the face of humanity forever.<\/p>\n

By failing to follow this curve, the up-rising suggests the possibility of a movement outside and beyond the Hegelian spiral of that \u201cprogress\u201d which is secretly nothing more than a vicious circle. Surgo \u2014 rise up, surge. Insurgo \u2014 rise up, raise oneself up. A bootstrap operation. A goodbye to that wretched parody of the karmic round, historical revolutionary futility. The slogan \u201cRevolution!\u201d has mutated from tocsin to toxin, a malign pseudo-Gnostic fate-trap, a nightmare where no matter how we struggle we never escape that evil Aeon, that incubus the State, one State after another, every \u201cheaven\u201d ruled by yet one more evil angel.<\/p>\n

If History IS \u201cTime,\u201d as it claims to be, then the uprising is a moment that springs up and out of Time, violates the \u201claw\u201d of History. If the State IS History, as it claims to be, then the insurrection is the forbidden moment, an unforgivable denial of the dialectic \u2014 shimmying up the pole and out of the smokehole, a shaman\u2019s maneuver carried out at an \u201cimpossible angle\u201d to the universe. History says the Revolution attains \u201cpermanence,\u201d or at least duration, while the uprising is \u201ctemporary.\u201d In this sense an uprising is like a \u201cpeak experience\u201d as opposed to the standard of \u201cordinary\u201d consciousness and experience. Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen every day \u2014 otherwise they would not be \u201cnonordinary.\u201d But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. The shaman returns \u2014 you can\u2019t stay up on the roof forever \u2014 but things have changed, shifts and integrations have occurred \u2014 a difference is made.<\/p>\n

You will argue that this is a counsel of despair. What of the anarchist dream, the Stateless state, the Commune, the autonomous zone with duration, a free society, a free culture? Are we to abandon that hope in return for some existentialist acte gratuit? The point is not to change consciousness but to change the world.<\/p>\n

I accept this as a fair criticism. I\u2019d make two rejoinders nevertheless; first, revolution has never yet resulted in achieving this dream. The vision comes to life in the moment of uprising \u2014 but as soon as \u201cthe Revolution\u201d triumphs and the State returns, the dream and the ideal are already betrayed. I have not given up hope or even expectation of change \u2014 but I distrust the word Revolution. Second, even if we replace the revolutionary approach with a concept of insurrection blossoming spontaneously into anarchist culture, our own particular historical situation is not propitious for such a vast undertaking. Absolutely nothing but a futile martyrdom could possibly result now from a head-on collision with the terminal State, the megacorporate information State, the empire of Spectacle and Simulation. Its guns are all pointed at us, while our meager weaponry finds nothing to aim at but a hysteresis, a rigid vacuity, a Spook capable of smothering every spark in an ectoplasm of information, a society of capitulation ruled by the image of the Cop and the absorbant eye of the TV screen.<\/p>\n

In short, we\u2019re not touting the TAZ as an exclusive end in itself, replacing all other forms of organization, tactics, and goals. We recommend it because it can provide the quality of enhancement associated with the uprising without necessarily leading to violence and martyrdom. The TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere\/elsewhen, before the State can crush it. Because the State is concerned primarily with Simulation rather than substance, the TAZ can \u201coccupy\u201d these areas clandestinely and carry on its festal purposes for quite a while in relative peace. Perhaps certain small TAZs have lasted whole lifetimes because they went unnoticed, like hillbilly enclaves \u2014 because they never intersected with the Spectacle, never appeared outside that real life which is invisible to the agents of Simulation.<\/p>\n

Babylon takes its abstractions for realities; precisely within this margin of error the TAZ can come into existence. Getting the TAZ started may involve tactics of violence and defense, but its greatest strength lies in its invisibility \u2014 the State cannot recognize it because History has no definition of it. As soon as the TAZ is named (represented, mediated), it must vanish, it will vanish, leaving behind it an empty husk, only to spring up again somewhere else, once again invisible because undefinable in terms of the Spectacle. The TAZ is thus a perfect tactic for an era in which the State is omnipresent and all-powerful and yet simultaneously riddled with cracks and vacancies. And because the TAZ is a microcosm of that \u201canarchist dream\u201d of a free culture, I can think of no better tactic by which to work toward that goal while at the same time experiencing some of its benefits here and now.<\/p>\n

In sum, realism demands not only that we give up waiting for \u201cthe Revolution\u201d but also that we give up wanting it. \u201cUprising,\u201d yes \u2014 as often as possible and even at the risk of violence. The spasming of the Simulated State will be \u201cspectacular,\u201d but in most cases the best and most radical tactic will be to refuse to engage in spectacular violence, to withdraw from the area of simulation, to disappear.<\/p>\n

The TAZ is an encampment of guerilla ontologists: strike and run away. Keep moving the entire tribe, even if it\u2019s only data in the Web. The TAZ must be capable of defense; but both the \u201cstrike\u201d and the \u201cdefense\u201d should, if possible, evade the violence of the State, which is no longer a meaningful violence. The strike is made at structures of control, essentially at ideas; the defense is \u201cinvisibility,\u201d a martial art, and \u201cinvulnerability\u201d \u2014 an \u201coccult\u201d art within the martial arts. The \u201cnomadic war machine\u201d conquers without being noticed and moves on before the map can be adjusted. As to the future \u2014 Only the autonomous can plan autonomy, organize for it, create it. It\u2019s a bootstrap operation. The first step is somewhat akin to satori \u2014 the realization that the TAZ begins with a simple act of realization.<\/p>\n

…source<\/a><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Waiting for the Revolution How is it that \u201cthe world turned upside-down\u201d always manages to Right itself? Why does reaction always follow revolution, like seasons in Hell? Uprising, or the Latin form insurrection, are words used by historians to label failed revolutions \u2014 movements which do not match the expected curve, the consensus-approved trajectory: revolution, more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[4294],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20127,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20126\/revisions\/20127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}