Date: Wed, 20 Apr 94 19:11:29 EDT
From: ma-AT-dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas)
Subject: Re:  waging metaphor


Ben Friedlander wrote:

> it strikes me that much of what *TAZ* proposes could easily be 
> characterized as "defeatism," ordinarily a term of contempt:  the emphasis 
> on the "temporary," on a "zone" of freedom or autonomy, on acts whose 
> "terror" strikes from an imaginary dimension, from the imagination anyway, 
> as if the so-called "real" world had been ceded.  "who speaks of victory, 
> survival is all" (rilke, quoted by gottfried benn.)

But if it speaks at once of _survival_ and _autonomy_, then in what
sense is it defeatist?  I guess this is what I have been trying to
ask: if one is _truly_ going for a moment of complete autonomy with
no regard to permanence, the celebrate-then-die paradigm seems to
be the only real TAZ.  Much of Bey's mythology seems to go in that
direction (the Munich Soviet, the Fiume republic); but on the other 
side is the metaphor of the rat, of disappearance, of invisibility
to the State.

As one brought up in Poland, I have a good measure of distrust for the
romanticism of the Uprising, and a good measure of respect for
rat-like survival.  To me, the former seems defeatist, while the
latter does not.  I am having trouble understanding why Bey sees fit
to blend them together.  Is it only me who perceives them to be in
such sharp disharmony?


- malgosia