One congress less (a summit instead) by Nicolas Siepen

One congress less (a summit instead)

There is a sentence by Brian Massumi I like and which fits quit well into this context:

„An individual live is a serialized, capitalistic mini-crisis, a desaster that bears your name.“

Let me make a general remark – If we speak about non-aligned initiatives in education culture, what we need is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. The challenge is to be able to define more than one difference at once. In terms of Education it could mean that the experiences which are made within the framework of Institutions and the experiences which are made in so called self-organization are maybe very different, but at the same time they are already mingled together in peoples live. When Institutions offers structural frameworks and therewith a kind of stability and secureness, self-organization offers the possibility to define and experiment with the framework itself but under the condition of a constant lack of organization and secureness. This two qualities are very rarely seen in a mixed form. To work on this task could be called a non-aligned initiative.

If one takes a closer look on the conditions where this possible mixture could take place, both on the macro and on the micro level, two things are especially striking: capitalism is not a single thing or a single logic, which simply asserts itself, but a specific way of production, which must constantly branch off, re-establish itself, and adapt in order to find a footing and eventually assert itself in completely different social formations. In other words, one can never see capitalism in its pure form and the word is therefore only conditionally suitable as a term in political struggle, its use being necessarily implicated in antinomies and performative contradictions, which ultimately cannot be solved within the »system«. In a certain way, it is precisely the »free« markets and the global macro-structures of the capitalist way of production that even provoke micro-structural resistances – that is, forms of self-organisation – on the social, technological, and cultural levels; and once they are put into motion, they can be rather dangerous for particular areas of the »system«. At the same time, these »deviations« materialize and articulate themselves on the very matrix of capitalism and draw their entire material, which they are trying to turn against »the System«, from this world. Only this can explain why such »small escapes« mostly reach their miserable end so soon, either pinned down and suppressed or turned into merchandize themselves. Between the macro-level of existing powers and hegemonies on one side and forms of self-organisation, there is a constant exchange of means of production and investments, which do not have the same origin, but are still intertwined so closely as to have become indistinguishable. This makes all retrospective political reference so difficult and eventually turns it into a complicated archaeological and genealogical task of reading semiotic and material traces, which again lead to other traces. However, this logic does not stop at the macro-level of large units, but is valid also for the convolutions, subsystems, and micro-vacuoles that self-organized groups and spaces are made of. Here also borders are drawn and »we« created, identities and essences are generated for a while and subject to a specific division of transparency and opaqueness, while in their interior power relationships are created that not only mark and structure the way they function, but also lead to the immediate vicinity of structures to be fought, which are often repeated. Each difference is tied to a specific form of repetition. In order to be able to dissolve oneself from traditional forms, conventions, or normality, one need not only see through or deconstruct their fetishist structure, but also prevent it permanently from functioning further, on a more abstract level. It happens rather often that the »art of reason« is beaten to the bone by the arts of power. As a matter of fact, it was various agents trying from various directions, in a sort of archaeological investigation, to reconstruct carefully the splitters of a political practice that had suffered painful defeats even at the time of its boom, since it was not capable or willing to allow political and social realities to come close to it in their entire complexity and insisting stubbornness. If one wants to get any further in retrospective or actual analysis of what self-organisation consists of, one must direct one’s attention to the fact that problems of power, which have been presumed to stand »outside«, reappear also here in a manifold way, However, this should never be done for its own sake, firstly because criticism of particular forms of power can turn itself into an instrument of power, secondly because there can be no »outside« with respect to power, and thirdly because political radicalism could be left behind: the adversary likes nothing better than to see leftist groups being hopelessly caught in their sectarianism or tear each other apart. That belongs to the numerous lessons learned from the experiences and conflicts of the 60s and 70s.

The time when a particular code and its attendant lines were enough to define a political project are maybe over. Strictly speaking, there never was such an opportunity. Maybe it's possible to learn how to operate between fundamentally different and untranslatable codes. We are already right in the middle; that's one condition that we initially share.