Re: <nettime> 10 Preliminary Theses on Resistance

[Ian Alan Paul <ianalanpaul@gmail.com>]

   Hello Brian,

   I understand the criticism very well (it's one that's been made quite
   often by various groups, especially during the 2011 wave of struggles,
   as I'm sure you're well aware), but I also think that we have for a
   good while now been without clear or obvious ways forward and to act as
   if it were otherwise is counterproductive.

   I'm in principal not opposed to the establishment/formation of new
   kinds of territory, new kinds of order, new kinds of society, but at
   the same time I think we can't pretend that anyone knows precicely how
   to get there, nor should they. I obviously have my own perspective on
   potential routes to follow, but as I said at the end of this short text
   I would hesitate to claim that any promises or guarantees are attached
   to these approaches.

   You say we need to "propagate a new common sense" and produce that
   which can "be translated pragmatically into productive action," and I
   would respond by saying that if it we already knew what pragmatic or
   commonsensical steps we could take to get rid of capitalism we would
   certainly have already took them. Whatever specificities define your
   tendency, I think it's unquestionable that what we need are more kinds
   of experimentation in every direction to see what takes hold, more de-
   *and* reterritorialization in a thousand different contexts.

   In solidarity,

              ~i

   P.s. - I don't think my theses are necessarily opposed to the formation
   of "counter power," but rather perhaps what we imagine "counter power"
   being may be very different in form.

   On Wed, Feb 1, 2017, 15:56 Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com> wrote:

     On 01/31/2017 09:38 AM, Ian Alan Paul wrote:

     > To not know
     >    precisely where we are headed is to remain open to the possibility of
     >    arriving where we couldn�t possibly have planned to, and in refusing
     >    the present we also invite what cannot presently exist within it.

     The refusal to confront a complex society produces no results. The
     discourse above was repeated hundreds of times in 1999-2011 and then
     again in in 2011-2012. It demonstrated no grip on the real course of
     events. What can stop the coming fascism is not the romantic exaltation
     of revolution. Rather we have to create and propagate a new common sense
     that can traverse multiple classes, generations, religions, language
     groups, professional sectors, philosophical schools and religious
     faiths. The political-economic appeal to defend inherited privileges
     has to be replaced with a new and yet workable formula of societal
     development, which can be translated pragmatically into productive
     action. A little virtuoso rhetoric is not going to do the trick.
 <...>

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