File spoon-archives/surrealist.archive/surrealist_1996/96-10-27.153, message 32


From: antonsen-AT-alf.nbi.dk
Subject: Re: ancestral diaphrams  
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 96 17:04:23 +0200


Celine & Pierre,

I'm very happy with your latest responses to me.

Pierre says
>Can be considered as dead for something like a revolutionary cause 
>people who where killed before 1921
>In 1921, what was left of revolutionary workers had been kicked out 
>of the Communist Party of USSR [Alexandra Kollontai] and of the bolchevik State
>or killed fighting the same CP of USSR [Kronstadt]

Point taken. I knew about Kronstadt but not about Kollontai.
I have never heard about Pannekoek, but he was certainly not alone in condeming 
the Russian revolution at an early stage; Rosa Luxemburg did so too, and of 
course the anarchists Emma Goldmann and Alexander Berkmann, who were both 
originally Russian but had emigrated to the US.
Lenin has never been one of my favourites and my relationship with Trotskij is 
very ambivalent. But I accept that some people whom I know and consider to be 
truely revolutionary find something of importance in these two. Probably the 
same could be said for Mao, about whom I know even less....

and
>> You will see, that the machine is build upon christianity and capitalism, 
>
>Frank...
>I am afraid you are getting a bit religious here.
>
>Feudal China was neither capitalist nor christian
>The machine was nevertheless already quite active.

OK, OK. The machine is based on a "commodification" which is most clearly seen 
otherwise in christianity and capitalism, but is not limited to these two 
manifestations. The Danish word for the underlying mechanism is 
"tingsliggoerelse" meaning "turning-into-things", I don't know the correct 
English or French expression.... In the final analysis is the same mechanism 
underlying recuperation, I suppose.


Celine:
>Now this is very interesting. I sit in a box in the dark and you
>sit under a tree in the sun and yet we both share the same sight!
Perhaps you sit in a box under a tree in the sun, whereas I sit under a tree in 
the sun, which is inside a box... (kidding).
More seriously, as you also say later on, we have forced ourselves into 
"antagonistic" positions, which have then become so extreme that we don't 
actually fully believe in them. As Niels Bohr said "the opposites are 
complementary not contradictory".

Your ideas for a personal refusal of the machine I fully support, and I do 
actually myself try to live that way too. The funny thing is, that precisely 
strategies like that have proven rather succesful in Scandinavia in a smaller, 
limited sense: the "official" dairy products, produced trhough intensive 
farming with heavy usage of pesticides, gives very cheap products, but people 
have begun bying more expensive, "ecological" products. For years the 
establishment's economists have been struggling to understand this "irrational" 
behaviour. Unfortunately this "political consumer" has become a clichee now, or 
rather it has been recuperated by the market forces. Still, it has has had some 
beneficial effects on the health of the population and of the land.
To avoid such recuperation it is necessary to adopt a more "nomadic" or 
"guerilla-like" strategy, to be unpredictable, to move all the time. There is a 
certain inertia inherent in the market forces, by constantly changing position 
in this way, one might be able to avoid being crushed by the machine. Besides, 
it is quite good fun too.
I have been thinking about how to develop just such a guerrilla strategy against 
recuperation in the context of art, but it is a much more general problem and 
perhaps we should discuss it in this more general context. During teh week, I'll 
try to get my thoughts on the subject down, and then submit it to the list.

>One of the many powers of art is that in its own "passive" way, it
>can be a slap in the face to the sleeping conscious.

Yes, I completely agree -- this is why I have confidence in art and why I want a 
fusion of art and science, and of dream and action.

>See to me to simply kill the people that fuel the machine is not
>the answer. Is this not the same power play, competitive action that we have
>all admitted we abhor? And I do not believe in evil but only in stupidity. In
>other
>words this machine is even hurting those who think they are
>benefitting from it, they're just too blind to realize it.

With this too I agree. Sorry if it has come across as if I thought that merely 
killing all bosses would make us free, that has never been my intention. What I 
have intended to point, however, is just that when the machine gets sufficiently 
threatened, it is going to respond with violence, and at that point the struggle 
will get bloody and deadly. I am not looking forward to that moment, but I don't 
think it can be avoided ultimately.

>And the means cannot justify the end, because the act,
>in the moment, is the result.  

Again, complete agreement. I'm very pleased, Celine, with that particular 
formulation....    

We seem to be moving into a very interesting field of investigation here, one of 
the utmost importance. Good, very good indeed.
Let's move on.

Frank


   

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