From: "Chris McMahon" <pharmakeus-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Music and revolution
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 08:45:15 +0000


Dear Oleg,

Thankyou for your very thoughtful response. :)

Counterargument: If I masturbate with a watermelon in a haystack does it 
foster the revolution? ... That's the short version.

>How may we improve our understanding of social processes through a
>development of the movements and rhythm of events, as laid out for example
>in Logique du sens and Le pli?

The rhythm of events is subjective and sujectivising. Insofar as we are 
imaginative anarchists who would like to see all subjctivities valorized, 
then fine. That's the intensity of life, and art, but it is also nothing 
necessarily political. In totalitarian regimes it is the subject vs the 
state. In liberal capitlist regimes it is the subjectas the state. In such 
latter cases crime is revolution. But that's contra the ethicopolitical 
tradtion that says if I want to do *Justine* then bad boy. Say I have an 
evil rhythm? What then? Or are you saying all beats are cool? If so, then we 
part ways, insorfar as we are utopians.

>how can it be that our playing music must be interpretated in terms of
>autonomy and other romantic art-related terms, holding the sphere of "art"
>out of the sphere of "politics",

Art is at its heart both political and apoliticval. It coms out of who we 
have been created as, and hence os political, but it is also - often - 
subjectivized, etc. Thus art must be violently stripped out of politics. 
When art is stripped out of politics, art becomes 'decadent" (a waste of 
time, etc.). When everything becomes political, then you risk the 
idiocy/tyranny of something like the Chinese *Cultural Revolution*. Art is 
not ipso facto apolitical, it has to be made apolitical if art is to be 
joyous (i.e. the ambition of art is to be decadent).

the latter being social and the former
>being the meeting of the individual artist with the abstract sublime of 
>art?

I am not ascribing the sublime to art. Not yet, in any case. Art can be 
sublime, but not all art is sublime. The sublime is a big thing. Nothing you 
or I have written so far can lay a claim to the sublime. For starter's, 
however, can we accept the premise that art is verging on pointless? "A 
wank"? I have never before had to defend my music from charges of 
usefulness. I imagine that I could write rousing sing battle songs for our 
guys in the middle east ... but would they be more valuable than a bullet? 
... The shortfall of modern art. Once art (e.g. the Celtic Bards) was more 
valuable than any bullet. Now we have television. In any case, I have been 
told on many occasions that, since I am not making any money with my music, 
I should stop. My writing, on the contrary, I have had to justify - to my 
markers - in that way; that it is making some sort of "contribution" to the 
field. It sucks. What, indeed, is the point of what I am writing here? can I 
argue that it fosters the revolution? Perhaps, but only because it is 
*significatory*. My music is *asignificatory*: and thus can serve any 
political protocol; even more then my writing (which remains open to 
cooption by any and all political agenda - presuming it was interesting 
enmough to catch anyone's eye (which it is not), thanks to the ambiguitiy of 
semiosis (by which I mean a system where y stands in for x). In short, it is 
not making any more contribution to the revolution than it is to the 
counterrevolution, since it is largely a matter of interpretation as to what 
purpose it is put.

>True, as long as you keep it within these terms, you can keep up the
>structural scheme of expenditure/utility -

Absolutely, see my comments on the forcible extraction of x from the 
"political".

but as far as I can see, you do
>not need to receed to the utility//expenditure in order to understand music
>as an event - and as an event, it is pre-individual, but also thereby,
>pre-social and thus not less social than the individual experience,

So what? You are presuming, I expect, that "subject" = slave and therefore 
we should all de/postsubjectivise. Let's presume I am already so stuffed up 
that I can barely fit into the "system" anymore? Does that make my stuffing 
around with electrical appliances a social activity? I'm telling you, it 
don't; and in so telling you am agreeing with you. It is ... 
desubjectivising ... and so what? The system remains the same; more so since 
my guitar is worth $700(US) and hence a luxury appliance. Yes, I have joined 
the 1st Church of Appliantology (for those who finally admit that sexual 
gratification can only be achived by the use of machines). What has the 
revolution got to do with it? Spending money in order to desubectivise is a 
worthy occupation in the Society of Control that demands 10% unemployment in 
the interests of productivity.

whether
>you throw fitting doses of neuro-biology into this explanation or not..

The point being that if I was a heroin-junkie I'd be admirable? But yeah. 
It's got nothing to do with it; or rather it does not affect the essential 
equations whether it is neurochemical or sociosemantic, yep.

>now, if we try to understand "playing music" from the event point of view,
>it seems to be that the distinction moves somewhat - from
>[expenditure]//[utility], to [expenditure/utility]//becoming-event:

Which would make playing muic an "event" of pure joy? In which case it would 
neither be expenditure or utility, that is apolitical, i.e. pure 
expenditure. There is nothing beyond pure expenditure. It's the black hole.

Look. X, Y and Z write: "Art serves the social function of A, B and C" top 
which D&G say, nope. Art is not aimed at A, B or C. In other words, D&G tend 
to make art a resubjectivising sort of therapeutic thingie; which I say is 
still to A, B and C, whereas Bataille had it right: the ambition of art is 
plethora (the funky juiced up spin preceding death, i.e. life per se).

your
>example beautifully shows the conservative perspective of the economic
>revolution - being born out of desire-structure, it does nothing but
>reiterate this desire-structure into the present,

Of course, of course, obviously. And what do you replace this grand 
ethicopolitical tradtition of thought with? Two contraditcory things:
1. The becoming event
2. The total generality of political sphere.
The former is nothing but mystification insofar as it is not the creation of 
a restricted economy in which the subject is celebrated and explored (a move 
I approve) and the latter is s recipe for tyranny. In any case, you cannot 
have both.

Now art as subjectivized and de/resubjetivising expression, yes, yes, yes. 
But align that with some sort of revision of the generalized mode of 
production and the means of distribution, you cannot. And the reason is that 
the capitalist system does not work by overcoding but be decoding. I cannot 
emphasize this point sufficiently. De/resubjectivize all you want; it won't 
promote the revolution. "That's just what they want you top do" [sic].

Coke IS life.

Give money to the Cancer Foundation.

unless, of course, we
>develop the thoughts of events to dig into this unbelievably rigid and
>longevital mystery called "econommy".

Have you the strength? This, in fact, is what I say we must do if we are to 
create a City of Earth; yes, delve into this impossible dance of capital. 
Try to follow the flows of capital; try to understand that money is not 
capital at all! but merely a simulcra of capital - otherwise we are already, 
as we long have been, obsolete. Frankly I, me myself, have not the strength 
anymore. At least not today, apologies :(

The savages were right. The Full Body is the Earth.

but to return to music fo a second,
>we can of course choose to take on a subjectivity-art perspective

Well I sure as hell hope we will!

and talk
>of the becoming of autonomous truth-beauty

That does not follow, at all. Wrong move. If we subjective art we are 
contesting the Ideal of art. I hope.

This would mean deny extratextual symbolism in favor of infratextual 
leitmotif.

as in the old search by Nietzsche
>and others - but the event is hardly explained by this one formula - as CD
>says, "multitude is all", and the multitude of the event is best understood
>in the terms of rhythm.. explaining music with hormones is still too 
>little,
>too much reduction and too little event..

I have no idea what you are talking about except that when the revolution 
comes the machine guns will stutter to the tune of "Whoops I did it again" 
by Britney Spears. As if. And that's the point. Machine guns should just 
spurt. Making them play music is a damn waste - something like a ceremonial 
sword. In any case, as long as people only like 4/4/ pop, we are fine. Music 
is big capitalism. Play in 9/8? Nopbody will even listen. 4/4 is 4 beats per 
bar, which all rock and dance, etc., is written in. 9/8 is an irregular beat 
which nobody writes in or listens to. But even if you managed to sell 9/8, 
well so what? Does a pop song in 9/8 cease being a luxury? I can very easily 
imagine the industry making as much money out of 9/8 as it presently does 
out of 4/4 and the third world still starving - except that 9/8 is a smidgen 
too demanding.

Instead of seeking a semotic/philosophical solution to domination, how about 
seeking a practical way of creating utopia? In my opinion this will involve 
a confrontation with capital in its classical configuration a la Marx.

I believe, despite the arguments of Hardt and Negri, in the need for third 
world communities to establish themselves as restricted economies. It is 
only in so doing that the people of the third world can create 
self-sustaning/autonomous systems capable of meeting the generalized economy 
on their own terms.

>So, anyway, would it not be more interesting to pursue the thought of how
>"your" "experience" of being part of an event of what I would call rhythm,
>relates to this ambition of marxism, insisting that we can explain 
>sociality
>and social processes through "desire", "utility" etc..

Yes and no. I could say that when I played for the Army of the Liberation 
they took 5 mountains in 2 days, but that would be a lie. In any case, why 
is the absense of me and my work from history less interesting that any 
spurious contribution you might graciously assign to it?

As to the ambition of Marxism, I take it to be this: that all human beings 
should have the luxury of wasting their time as I do.

rather than drawing
>the social apart by insisting upon a division which, once installed, tends
>to  separate everything in a tautological reduction?

Reduction, yes. Tautology, no. Division does not equal tautology. Lack of 
division incurs tautology.

Please forgive my abrasive manner.

:) Chris

_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com