Radical media, politics and culture.

Blogs

...by our old companero Brian Hanley. Just Published by Four Coourts Press. This was originally his PhD thises and recounts the story of the IRA in a time when the armed struggle was dormant and tensions over social policy led to splits to the left in the form of groups such as the Republican Congress.

On Katsiaficas

European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonisation of Everyday

Not the least laudable aspect of this book is the fact that it begins an evaluation of a movement whose existence has gone virtually unacknowledged for thirty years. Indeed it is the first study with general aspirations to convey an impression of what lies at the core of autonomy. Undoubtedly the dearth of commentary is directly related to the fact that it has been primarily continental based, and secondly has been documented almost exclusively in european languages other than english. As a first silo in the reconsideration of rtecent history, and the strategic and tactical knowledged to be derived from it, this certainly a most welcome work.

Katsiaficas has spent much time in the autonomist nodes in northern europe himself, and is naturally at his most insightful and persuausin=ve when analysing events and contexts in those instances.

The definition of autonomy has long been a vexed question, principally because this type of typologisation is precisely what many autonomist activists evade deliberately. The refusal of categorisation also stems from a rejection of ideology, in the sense of attempts to evolve internally consistent metannarratives. This factor has been endlessly misunderstood by legiopns of militants from the traditional leftist cadre organisations, who create their own straw man version of autonomy which unsurprisingly they then disasssemble to display its ‘incoherence’, ‘internal contradiction’ and ‘petit bourgeois essence’!! I say this with some bitterness, the fruit of many futile discussions with such individuals over the years.

Another compelliong reason for the rejection of unified ideology comes from the nature of the organisation and the terrain of operation of autonomist groups. Central to the autonomist vision of politics is the affinity group. Affinity’ is based on friendship, trust and common experience and are as much a reality of periods of quiet as those of intendsive political activity. The election of this organisational form turns on its head the traditional concption of politics, which sees political organisations as spaces whwere strangers feeling a nptional commitment to an abstract idea can come together to act collectively to varying degrees. The affinity structure first demands the evolution of social liens, trust and friendship, and then asks what can be done collecively. Katsiaficas only touches upon these issues - which are crucial in describing the rupture both with the traditional /new left - and explains the organisational changes principally as the consequenvce of the feminist movement, and their introduction of the politics of th first person. In many ways the writer is at his most informative when identifying the importance and influence of feminist movements in the 1970s as layiong the basis for a socialised form of political struggle which would later be generalised throught the refractory population.

Presumably it is the fact that autonomy was synonymous in many minds with autonomia operia in 1970s Italy that has drawn Katsiaficas to dedicate a chapter to the subject, yet as the book unfolds its relevance becomes unclear. Indeed what seems missing from the book as a whole is a sensitivity to the clear regional distinctions which operated within groups calling themselves autonomist. Thus in the Bsque - particularly in Bilbao, Vittora and Gipukoa province - country autonomist seperatists combined strikes against spanish nationalist targets as well as carrying out attacks supporting decisions made in the town assemblies on social and industrial struggles. Meanwhile they also collaborated with armed autonomist elements in the seat factory in Barcelona.

In France autonomy has been a more theoretical tendency, heavily shaped by the influx of refugees from the Italian repression of 1977-80 (such as the group Tout!, those clustered around Oreste Scalzone and Antonio Negri, the autonomist current continues now in the form of CARGO and the review Multitudes), and often in conflict with frnch autonomie which had a more anarchist/situationist hue and was influenced also by the struggles in the Basque country (Action Directe’s first generation are an example of this trend, directly inspired by and in individual cases overllapping with the C.A.A.B).

Italy’s movement remains the most remarkable and the least documented. What distinguishes the Italian situation is the heterogeneous composition of the revolt. At least fourty nine different armed leftwing orgainsations existed in Italy’s 1970s and while these groups cannot be said to be representative of the movement politically, i believe it fair to argue that they are at least demonstrative sociologically. Participants wre drawn from all social classes, from all over the country, but contained a working class and unemplyed component which later autonomist movements interbnationally aspo but never attained.

Both in France and Italy the influence of the Situationist current is sriusly underestimated. Groupds such as Cangaceiros around Turin, a nd Les Fossoyeurs du Vieux Monde constituted a very difeerent interpretation of subversive practices to their counterparts who felt defeated and isolated in the insipid post ‘68 atmosphere. What distinguishes Italian and French autonomy from its Dutch/German variant is its attitude towards the working class. Most German radicals regard ordinary burgerinnen with disdain, treating them as the passive receptacles of reactionary ideas, viz. racism, sexism and homophobia. Few if any efforts are made to target workers in the fighting of political struggles. To a considerable degree this can be ubdertood as the increasing weight of the political culture advanced by the milieu aroun the urban guerilla movements of the 1970s and its incremental increase in significance on a movement which has seen severe numerical diminishment in the late 1980s and 1990s. (See interview with Klein in The German Issue (Semiotext(e)).

Katsiaficas treatment of the autonomous movement in the post reunification period is weaker than his e arlier analysis of the 1970s. Too much time is spent exploring the rise of the new right and in vague descriptions of the new political landscape. He also ignores the residuum of the east german opposition movement such as the demonstration of 100’ooo on the anniversary of Rosa Luxmbourg’s death in 1992, the hunger strike and march against Treuhand Anstalt led by the workers in Bischofferode and the movement of east berlin pensioners against nt rises in the period from 1991 until 1993. These were all significant events for the autonomous movent and crystallised teir impotence in negotiating what could hav been an important alliance with destructured eastern workers. Likewise, and a surprising oversight considering his otherwise excellent account of the developments in feminism, he ignores the struggles of east german women to retain abortion rights and their generally high level of politicisation in the post reunification period. Women in the GDR had significant gains in terms of education and social position , such as the high level of participation at upper levels of management instate owned firms and political apparatus. The PDS, which capitalised on such sentiments developed a relationship with the autonomen similar in nature to that which existed with the Greens/AL in the 1980s, and drew large numbers of squatters into their orbit, as memebrs, sympathisrs and workers on their politial projects such as Junge Welt. The notorious longevity of pro GDR sentiment which was always a tendency within the autonomes sscene. (See Adilkno on other retrogade aspects of scene culture).

The second half of the book repeats the disconnection mentioned earlier, by returning to the work of Toni Negri, an Italian autonomist thoerist who is almost entirely unread in contemporary radical germany. FELS, die Beute, farenheit have remedied this to some degree in the lat 90s, but Negri’s work has not been germane to radical activists since the 1980s. This is another example of the generation gap, which has repreatedly ruptured the German radical tradition since the war. Perhaps a result of the massacring of a whole generation of communists and anarchists, there exists within the movement an almost complete historical discontinuity to the extent that one might be tempted to categorise as a german particularis,; the ritual sluaghter of parents by their children.

Such is the divergence between the movements charcterised in Germany and Italy,autonomes szene and autonomia (a subsumption itself which glosses over the deep fissures), that ultimately I can only assume that they have been subsumed due to what is a lexical confusion bteween autonomist and ‘autonomous’ autonomen. The latter is identified by its technical militancy, its residual form of tradiional communist method and vocabulary, its cultural grammar; autonomists are those who endirse leninism without lenin and have tried to adapt their language to accomadate lexicall the new social subject. The latter by is distinguished by its styles, attitude and cultual codes combined with varying degrees of self organisation.

The two groups strictu sensu share some retrograde aspects aticular to their moral context. Tis is exemplified in their attitude to prisoners. In each instance, so called political prisoners are priveliged for support.

Seamus Deane

Marxism and Nationalism and a few subsequent remarks on the Northern Irish crisis.

I feel it very appropriate that I should be making these remarks and that we should be talking about these issues in Maynooth, one of the institutions which was founded if you like, to ensure the appearance and permanence of sectarianism in Irish political life, that and the Orange Order both dating from 1795, both of whom institutions were part of the British intervention to prevent the enlightenment project of the United Irishmen in the eighteenth century. I think it's worth stressing that sectarianism is not a sort of pathology from which the Northern Irish are particularly prone to suffer. It's not just a pathology which has to do with certain accidental features of Irish History since the reformation. It is part of a longstanding policy which is part and parcel of the act of union, and it is part of the way in which Northern ireland has remained part and parcel of the Act of Union. Sectarianism is structural, it s not a pathology or pathological. It is necessary for the perpetuation of the Northern Irish state in its present form.

This to some extent - g- brings us to one one of the questions which has constantly exercised those on the left both in Britain and in Ireland, but more I think in Britain when we look at the Irish question, because the Irish question whether it's north or south, particularly relevant to the southern state of the twenties and thirties.The Irish question is always seen to be not just one of national identity and the political forms and institutions which could encapsulate or articulate that, it is also seen to be a question which is inevitably and indissolubly bound up with some kind of atavism, some kind of irrationality, some deep irrationality or atavism of which sectarianism is one of the expressions, of which traditional religous belief and various forms of clerical domination, whether it be Protestant in the north or Catholic in the south, seem to me again not accidental but structural features.

Is it the case then that when Irish nationalism - of whatever form - , the Unionist form of Irish or British nationalism, the Catholic form of Irish nationalism which speaks of liberation for the so called 32 counties, is it inevitable that any leftward regard for each or both of those will always find in them some irrational feature which says to them: this is a form of nationalism which unlike many European, many African and many postcolonial nationalisms, I suppose the most articulate of which by now is the Indian nationalism of the great sub-continent, is this a form of nationalism which unlike them, is given to that form of atavism which makes it not only unanalysable but which makes it necessary in order to analyse the situation at all, to repudiate that to its core, to repudiate it from the outset as an agency or a set of agencies which must be removed from the equation so that the situation can in some way be resolved or even understood.

I think that in some the insights of some of the Indian critical theorists, I am thinking here of someone like Chaturgee, when they make the distinction which they say is inherent, an inescapable distinction which comes about in colonised cities between, between what they call the public life and the private life. When they say that in these societies that have been colonised, there is a degree to which, certains kinds of tradition and especially traditions which are regarded by the colonising power as non-rational, non-moral or anti/non progressive, when those types of tradition are maintained, cherished and nourished within an idea of the Indian family or the idea of the Irish family or any other colonised community's notion of the family, Chaturgee says, in effect what that colonised society is attempting to do is actually to say that there is a boundary to colonial invasion, there is a boundary to that kind of imperial penetration which will be maintained even at the cost of retaining belief in things which the retainers recognise to be, from the western point of view or from the modernising point of view as anti/non-progressive or considered irrational or non-rational.

This, I think, is one of the problems which has always afflicted all left-wing analyses of the Irish situation. It is of course standard to say that nationalism can be viewed in a continuum, it can be recognised as an emancipatory movement in many respects, it can be recognised as an incarcerating movement in many other respects, and both those respects have been visible north and south in the last 70-80 years of the so called Irish question. But the problem is, is that kind of, let's take the readiest example the one that I began with, Catholicism, its association with Irish nationalism, its rhetorical and anti-progressive and in many ways profoundly worsened toward matters of private moral judgement like for instance sexuality, that in particular and the way that this has exploded in the church's face in the last ten years or so, maybe even more recently, more powerfully in the last five years when we say there is a relationship in Ireland that has been blind and a damaging relationship between the ir retention, which remeber is the one of long historical grounding, the retention of a specific form of Irish familial life. Irish , the lifeblod of the Irish commmunity, the life that in some way endured colonial oppression, the life that endured various forms of state intervention, the life that endured various forms of derision and what that is in some way connected to, you know we are told, "the deepest and most traditional beliefs" of the people, you get this in Irish discourse from various sides of the political spectrum you get it from Yeats , the Anglo Irish from the Catholics and Catholic Church. But most of all you get it after the Catholic Church after the at least partial triumph of 1922, so there is a specific form of Irish Catholic traditonal life which is attached to the new idea of the state, and the state and that traditional life are, we are told, made coincident even though that coincidence is one that is sustained only by various forms of coercion. Silent coercion in some case, [ ] coercion in almost all cases. Anyone looking from a left-wing point of view at such a nationalism and at such a coercive achievment would say: there in a sense we have a charcteristic example of a European nationalism which turned right, turned towards a kind of a introversion of which of course there were much more frightening examples in Europe, especially in France and Germany prior to, after, and during the second war, but that kind of inversion almost reveals what is at the heart of nationalism in its finest moment, that biological imperium that nationalism can become and that it did become say in Nazi Germany.Against that where is the emancipatory, where is the liberatory movement of Irish nationalism or whateverver liberating movement which comes with the defeat of Irish nationalism as for instance in the Northern State. Where according to the analysis of the what we call the Stickies - the Offical IRA- produced, I'm thinking of the Roy Johnson version of his analysis in the 1960s it was right and proper now for the IRA and the Republican movement in general to begin to support accepting the state, to support the idea of the connection with Britain because given the post-war record of legislation on the British socialist government, the Attlee government, which indeed had introduced free education and the welfare state and all of that, given that it was only by support of this state that any kind of liberal modernity (I heard this phrase pronounced in a damp basement in 29 Mountjoy Squre during those years) would be produced for Ireland that would release it , would emancipate it from that clerical oppression and obfuscation and obscurantism which was not only charcteristic of the south, but was also charcteristic of a south which was sunk in a kind of economic nationalism and economic deliquescence. So a link was established by the , of course they weren't the first to do it, but they were the first to do it who were politically powerful at least within the republican movement, of which I have some knowledge, they made this link between economic delinquency, a kind of pathological nationalism and the need for the introduction of Ireland to modernity which could only be achieved via the British state and despite the clerical aspect of unionism which were of course widespread and continue to be to this very day.

So there in a sense, we begin to see what in some ways those members of the British left who did pay any attention to Ireland at that time tended to take, Paul Wilson and Kevin MacNamara, who actually were in some ways the progenitors of, and the early voices crying in the wilderness especially during the 1950s, the progenitors of the civil rights movement in the North, but the essential British intellectual left-wing notion of Irish nationalism was in some ways, fed into and fed by, that offical IRA version that emerged iin the 1960s and lasted until the fall of Stalinism TAPE ENDS

in fact are terms that deny the real analysis that they have not yet received, and I think that type of analysis is necessary to understand both unionist and nationalist and republican positioons. And I will just say as an aside, I am insistent on making a distinction between nationalist and republican, because a republican position is one which can consume and assume certain aspects of nationalism but is not in any way consumed by it.

But the question that I want to ask is , what is it that we mean when we say that modernity, or modernisation or liberal modernity is something that can be introduced or that was introduced or that the introduction of which is intended to form a certain kind of state relationship? I mean for most peopple I think modernity means one, secularism, or a degree of secularism in this society; that is the taking away from any clerical or institutional clerical guidance within a society the forms of power which once had been theirs. The second thing, I suppose must be economic development but of course here come and especially for the left-wing to a really almost incoherent moment in our attitude towards this. We can go back to stereotype for a moment, it used to be said, certainly after the second war and from the second war until the late seventies, that the superior economic development of the north in relationship to the south was itself founded or to some extent attributable not just to the British connection but to the British connection in that deeper and larger reservoir image of you know Protestantism and the work ethic associated with that, whereas the economic retardation of the south was not only related to the fact that it had cut itself off from the greates post-imperial power but it was also associated with that slothful and feckless habit of work or non-work that is asccociated with or was once associated with catholicism. Of course circumstances have changed so much by now that neither of these sterotypes is nearly as effective as it once had been only still but if the south really has finally managed to join the global market and the help of EU funds has restructured itself to a cosiderable, and some people would even say to an astonishing degree, and it has done that to such an extent that the south, or the Republic could now said to be a more successful economic entity than the north, though of course the North has always pointed out it's not an economic entity, it is part of the UK, and therefore has to be understood in that relation, but even so with the disruption of that stereotype, with the emergence of the "Celtic Tiger" so-called, what have we got now? We have global capitalism absorbing the south or the south absorbing itself into global capitalism and this we are to understand is a great advance, the south is not a common to that which the north once made and through this and the connection with th the EU through all that large step and those sub-steps of economic interdependency which charcterise the modern economic world, we are told that this is one of the ways in which Ireland will in effect finally join the international community and borders which is all very . Now that is a very curious thing for the left to greet solutions or the so called solution to a political problem by saying that is a problem which has been solved by global capitalism and that the triumph of global capitalism in a particular island that have been aching of course to join in that in some way more people than the terms which had ever been offered by the imperial connection with England. On the other hand if we don't think of modernism or modernity or modernisation, these are all slippery words and concepts of course, but if you don't think of them as necessarily having to do with GDP and GNP if you don't think of them as you know a form of a brilliantly sophisticated form of what we were just hearing about a moment ago, constructive unionism, if you don't think in other words that economic dvelopment is the way to, or a satisfactory way of solving a political problem like that which besets us, has beset us on this island for all of this century. Then the problem for most people is in what sense can modernity be defined so it is not understood only as a form of political economy, is political economy really the only science, the only discipline in terms of which these very complex problems can be solved or resolved?

And of course, I'm not going to in any way detail these now, we have to remember that modernity as it was understand for at least half of this century, modernity has been understood by most intellectuals right and left wing as a form of catastrophe, as a catastrophe which of course, and this again is where a kind of relation exposes itself, it is a catastrophe in which some kind connection which was historiacal, some kind of connection with that which was traditional, some kind of connection with that which was specific to a culture, community and even if one dares to use the word, specific to a race. In which in some sense that was lost, was broken, was disrupted, and that as a consequence we have with modernity, and with economic success and the conversion of the citizen into the consumer, with that we have the most profound form of alienation that has ever been known, a form of alienation that Marx did anticipate but probably going further than he even dreamed of, and therefore in some ways there is a connection indeed between modernity as a catastrophe and modernisation as a success story; the two things are interconnected both north and south of the border in this island and of course they are also connected in the neibhouring island and all through the European continent, certainly that part which belongs to the EU. The contrast of course if one tries to mount a critique of modernity/modernistaion in this way, the contrast that one is always offered is if you don't like that then you know the danger is that you will slip into a nostalgic form of traditionalism which will itself lead back into all of those atavistic acreages that always lie and form the hinterland of any kind of attempt to identify a community in the terms which are called national terms.

All right, so let me try to abbreviate this a little further, if the battle is or at least one breast of the battle is between that which is atavistic and and that which is moral... if modernity and the British connection, and atavism and the Irish connection which were once almost stable terms in the dispute have now been dissolved and broken by the changing circumstances of especially the last thirty years of low scale war in northern ireland and economic development in the republic, then how can we now both begin to interpet and analyse our position, and most of all how can we interpret the northern situation. This is a big problem of course for the incoming labour government but again, who could be optimistic, who in Ireland, who from northern ireland, who especially from the minority in Northern Ireland could be optimistic about the arrival of a labour government, given its record in the 70s when it was last in power, given Harold Wilson's collapse in front UWC strike, given the Mervyn Rees policy of criminalisation which led to the hunger strikes, given Roy Mason's introduction of the SAS which led to death squads, the bombing of Dublin and Monaghan and other atrocities, most of which of course will not be released to public view for another 50 or 60 years if at all. But the reason one should be suspicous of a labour government actually has to with precisely the kind of things which I've been speaking of, because why was labour so given to such atrociously coercive policies when it was in power in the north, why did it quiver in front of unionist intransigence, because labour was of course was afraid and always has been afraid, and the english left has always been afraid of English nationalism and especially that form of english nationism which is embodied and embedded in the Tory party, and which has been embodied and embedded also of course in some sections of the Labour party. And David was making the point in the first lecture that it is very difficult, and has traditionally been diffficult, this is true in England, it is true in France and I think it's true at the moment in a much coarser way of the United States. It is very difficult for an imperial power to recognise itself as being really, simply a highly successful form of nationalism, nationalism which thinks of itself as so successful that it deserves to re-duplicate itself all over the globe as fast as possible and hope that people will be grateful for that reduplication and especially with reference to the people within it. The kind of nationalism that we see shared if you like between the Labour and Tory party has some analogies to the kind of American nationalism shared between the republican and the democratic parties and the same sort of thing seems to purtain. In each case that it's the party that is secure in its nationalism, the party that is secure in the belief that it is the possesor and the guardian of the national spirit, that is the party of course that can act in a surgical manner in relation to peripheral problems like for instance Ireland, or in the US case like for instance China , there is a problem within labour and especially within the labour party but I think within all left-wing parties in Britain that they cannot recognise that English nationalism actually moves in the same spectrum as does Irish nationalism, that it moves in that spectrum from various forms of atavism to various forms of triumphant modernity and modernisation and that it recognises, and of course this recognition is going to be reinforced the more established we get I think in future years in Britain by the Scottish Parliament and maybe the Welsh Parliament as well as an Irish one, that the relationship between modernity and atavism, - these are not the happiest terms but they're the only terms in fact available at the moment- the relationship between these is not a relationship of opposition, it's a relationship of intimacy, and that intimacy is like the relationship between development and under-development; it's like the relationship betwen tradition and modernity; it's like the relationship between superstructure and sub-structure; it's like a whole series of relationships which depend on their dichotomous power on precisely the fact that they are inter-related , not seperated, and that this is a political situation, a political problem which for instance is perfectly visible now in Northern Irish Unionism perfectly visible in Drumcree the atavism of Drumcree: to claim this is our tradition, this is our culture, and I'm afraid that at any rate that's true, that is their tradition, that is their culture to march where they want, to go wherever they like to, and at the same time recognising that there is another aspect to Unionist tradition which always prides itself on being free of such atavisms on not being contaminated by them, on being protestant, British, hardworking, industrial and modern. The two things are not as I say, opposites, the two things are so inter-related that one can only be understood by watching the proces by which it becomes very often at certain conjunctures the other and this happens so frequently, say in the last roughly thirty years of strife in `Northern Ireland.

This has happened so frequently on both sides as for instance and I'll give you an example from the IRA side, that the recipe the Offical IRA recipe that emerged from the Roy Johnson group in the 1960s, look at the way that was touted especially right up to their dispute -the war between the two wings of the IRA- how that was referred to as, and in some circles still is referred to as - a modernist analysis of an old problem, just as the provisional IRA were emerging and the Provisional IRA was then characterised as the atavistic dark side of the Stickies, of the officals, the Provisionals were everything that everybody had ever dreamt about militant republicanism because here was a blind irrational force emerging to deny the power of the economic analysis and of course, this is where republicanism is often criticised because of the poverty of its economic critique of the Irish situation. Yet by now having looked at that contrast between one modern and the other atavistic the position is now almost reversed; the Provisional IRA has now transmuted in its political form into Sinn Fein, it is as decently left-wing as one could wish in many respects, whereas the offical IRA are as profoundly stalinist as those if there is a party left anymore in Europe and so they now are almost atavistic in relation to the decent and tired up version of SF (that once was the provisional IRA that once was the atavistic counterpart to the Stickies). What I'm trying to point out here is that a certain process, a process of mutation from one to the other can take place in certain conditions, and it's very difficult not only to control those conditions but to find a ground for understanding what is happening, if in fact one's powers of conceptualisation are limited and restrained by those kinds of contrasts and dichotomies which I've just been speaking of.

Now of course I could say, though I don't know how I'd emerge in saying it, what I could say is that tharefore what one should do is to abandon such dichotomies, to forego that notion of nationalism, to forego that notion of modernity, to forego that notion of atavism, to find some other way of comprehending not only the Northern Irish situation but the whole problem of global capitalism and its relationship with so-called traditional societies. As I say, I don't know anywhere, anywhere in the world where this is effectively being done , except in the sub-continent of India by the Indian theorists. And perhaps it's from them that we'll finally be able to emerge with a somewhat more sophisticated and less limiting series of dichotomies than those that at the moment oppress us.

But I will finish by saying this; given that that is part of the situation that we have inherited, of course it is equally possible when we speak of modernity, to say that these are terms which like materialism and colonialism - here I'm taking the very simple line of view that imperialism is colonialism that has been bureaucratised that has been made systematic, it's much less ramshackle than colonialism, it's much less obviously rapacious than colonialism but nevertheless the two things are of course interconnected if not necessarily in an evolutionary way. But that imperialism, colonialism and nationalism have a terrible complicity one with the other, and that complicity always emerges in those arguments which say, for instance the Irish arguments, the revisionist arguments which I think really were begun, as has been said elsewhere, by of all people Sean O'Faolain in the 1930s. The revisionist arguments that says if you have a decayed society like this, a so-called decayed society 19th century Ireland and along comes a brilliantly energetic society like the then social and political system of England, that the invasion of the dying one by the vibrant one is in fact not only a catalytor for improvement, development and modernisation that would otherwise not have taken place, but that in effect this is something to be welcomed, greeted and to be thankful for, it is something that although it involves a degree of loss nevertheless the gain will always be greater than the loss. Now there again, within that notion of the colonisation of a particular space by a particular power, there is always implicit within that the notion that that space was filled more abundantly and more brilliantly than it otherwise would haver been without that invasion. Therefore finally within the Irish situation it is almost impossible to find a very large number of people, who would agree that whatever model of colonialism that you offer, especially if you offer that benign model of colonialism as the energising power for an otherwise decaying or decadent traditional society, there is still a great difficulty to find any large consensus that Ireland ever was in a proper sense a colony, that it was ever colonised say in the sense that Egypt was, or India was or large tracts of the African continent, because colonisation of course brings all forms of, shadows of atroticy, shadows of disgrace, shadows of calamity, shadows of various forms of brutal rapacity to which Ireland cannot quite belong in the same as the others did because of course Ireland was constitutionally attached to England, and the other two countries Scotland and Wales, in more elaborate ways than were any of the more distant colonies.Therfore it's constitutionally difficult to agree to the colonising argument even though in economic reality it is impossible not to agree that the colonising argument has two persuasive moments, one that it did stimulate Irish economic life and in another way that it did destroy Irish economic life; it did both because it was both rapacious and it was energetic. Yet when one looks at it again it comes down to the same problem, of course, was colonialism a modernising benefical energy or was it a catastrophe for the island; if it was a catastrophe for the island, are those who regarded it as a catastrophe, those who are going back to a defence of traditional specifities, traditional custom and traditional ways of feeling, precisely because that's all they have left, all they have to preserve after that immense modernising catastrophe has passed over them and in doing so, even consciously, are they going to defend something which is material to them: non-modern, regressive, anti-modern and in some ways, in the benign term, traditional and peculiar and specific. And that's the argument that of course in post colonial theory is being elaborated in a number of different directions.

And there we stop, just finally to review that therefore it is almost impossible I think, given, and even if you take, just as an example of all of this . It is almost impossible for a left wing view, British or Irish, of Ireland to excavate, in any comprehend the complexity of the situation, largely because those views are dominated by an attitude towards nationalism which sees it in these dichotomous and those dichotomous ways, although they are very poweful and have become traditional, are actually in the end I think sadly impoverishing.

Donald translated the last one, "Three to Kill", and James Brook this most recent from the french noir writer from the 1980's. Published by City Lights.

The Consul (Contributions to the History of the Situationist International and Its Time, Vol. 2) Ralph Rumney Translated by Malcolm Imrie City Lights

Christmas day begins in dehydration, stomach pains and the agonizing recall of the night before, its fragments layered over one another, incomplete, translucent. * * *

"Even if I was unaware that it was being defined in Paris at the same time, the concept of psychogeography came to me simultaneously. I have often noticed that when an idea germinates in the minds of several people who don't know each other, many are those who will claim paternity." Ralph Rumney, p.18.

This claim of ownership, in diametrical refutation of the social nature of knowledge, constitutes the 'mint' of the basic currency of cultural capital. Wikis and gpl thought can challenge that, documenting contribution, contestation, alternative paths, unexpected offspring. The crux of the matter is Wiki's versioning, its dynamic archival quality. The GPL aspect is but a list of the names of participants and contributors, each of whom can claim partial responsibility and prestige. This detail should massively encourage participation and propagation, as it eliminates caustic effects of jealously and unproductive rivalry.

December appears propitious to new endeavors and treats, as the delights of new york, the ferment of bologna, the splendor of Rome and my success in given up smoking all attest. Thus I have decided that it's not too late to learn something about Unix. So I started today and thrill at every tiny triumph with the command line....

Two actions took place in Rome today to mark the anniversary of the argentinian rebellion, one year old today, and to show solidarity with the striking Fiat workers in Cassino, a small town in Lazio.

At about 4.00 this afternoon a eighty or so ne'er do wells entered the shopping centre 'Auchan' in Casal Albertone. Pro-Palestinian activists were campaigning outside for a boycott Israeli products, but we went inside, closely shadowed by the cops. The Agnelli family have historically controlled Fiat but are immersed in innumerable other ventures including operation of the 'Auchan' franchise in Italy - they are the country's most important dynasty.

Shopping trolleys were filled with merchandise, particularly toys, gigantic cheeses and enormous sides of ham. Some of those present had megaphones and the motivation behind the action was explained to all the shoppers. The management reacted with a mixture, predictably, of consternation and horror. Scores of security guards milled about, anguished, 'assistant managers' normally busy with inventory were inducted into crisis management. Staff gazed away, diffident and somewhat baffled, but not upset or outraged.

Invoking Argentina, people seized frying pans and started an improvided carcelerazo whilst placing stickers stating 'free gift from Agnelli'. Police trampled around the shopping centre, half of them fresh-faced 18 year olds probably doing their military service, wearing helmets and riot shields. And this is the Saturday before Christmas, for fucks sake! It was chaos! The security staff and state agents had no idea what to do.Obviously truncheoning people in the middle of the supermarket wasn't a realistic option, the risk of thrashing an innocent victim of consumer oblivion was obviously too risky.

Eventually a negotiation was conducted over megaphone with representatives from the shopping centre. They offered us some crappy cakes, we demanded the bacon. They prevaricated, we stood firm! Eventually they agreed to 'contribute' the goods to the Fiat workers, and we agreed to leave. In order so as not to provide them with the pretext to arrest us, members of staff had to take the goods out of the shop, so that no-one could be targeted and charged with theft should they decide to renege on the deal. Not one person was arrested in the course of the day.

The location and timing of the action obviously gave it a lot of public exposure and the shopperss reaction was unanimously positive. Scores gathered around the check-out area that constituted the nerve centre of the conflict, laughing and chatting, but also crucially providing us with an area of sympathy that constrained Auchan's response to our action.

Afterwards we made a triumphant procession to Strike SpA (Spazio Publico Autogestito), squatted during the general strike on October 18th, had a celebratory drink and dispatched a couple of cars down to Cassino with the loot.

Simultaneous with the action at Auchan there was a small but boisterously festive demonstration outside the Argentinian embassy. Effigies were battoned, music boomed, the popular dances of the barrios stamped

There should be some pictures later.

[los leyes son sus limpias balas los balas son sus sucios leyes] [laws are their clean bullets bullets are their dirty laws] http://december20.cjb.net/

On hearing 'Bellini' the uptown girls and boys amongst you probably think of champagne (3 oz.), peach schnaps (1 oz.) and grenadine (1 oz.). I now think of something else: trenshcoats, street-fighting and 'A Fistful of Dynamite.'

Yes, one could call it lame-boy bravado, cock-stroking hubris, but the story of the Banda Bellini, a mythical gang of Milanese radicals who held their own against the Stalinist Katanga and police through the period from 1968 to the close of the moivement of '77 is just plain entertaining. Some of the presenters posed the question as to why a younger generation might find some use value in this account. Yep, stumps me as well! And Anrea Bellini has style, in an old-school way - chainsmoking, hard-drinking, chauvinistic with the shrewd calculating eye of soldier. His face has that unnatural glow that is a walking testament to blood pressure out of control. Obvuìiously he practices no rationing of tobacco, alcohol or cholesterol, a walking heart-attack waiting to happen.

His gang drew inspiration and lore from the films of Sergio Leone and the green trenchcoat worn by James Coburn in Giu La Testa constituted their uniform, together with Rayban sunglasses, trophies of successful clashes with bourgeois fascist adversaries, children of the Milane hoi polloi.

On sex, Andrea had this to say: "We knew it was 1968 when after we'd been begging for it for years, suddenly the wommen were giving it away. We didn't expect it and were not prepared."

The charming thing about the evening was that the tale-telling proved contagious, an old-timers from San Lorenzo who normally keep stumm, drink, eat and smoke their pot felt inspired to interject sponateously with their own anecdotes, pithy lines, working up a good rant and laughing at times gone by.

Erri De Luca, writer and former militant with Lotta Continua in Rome described the atmosphere of that time from a Roman perspective, but also underlined the sense of revolutionary ferment. Thosands of people were literally full-time revolutionaries (as they thought themselves) and from 1975 the State passed laws that alolowed searches withpout warrents, the use of live ammunition against crowds even when there was no justification of legitimate defense, and the detention of individuals for 48 hours without even the obligation to inform a magistrate. In this way, the stakes were escalated to the point where the creative section of the movement was driven away and the square became theatre for a battle between two military formations. The logic of militarisation drove many into clandestinity and nomination of tarmed struggle as the only alphabet of political action and the space was closed for those committed to open public agitation. Heroin took some, exotic climes attracted others, some went into exile. De Luca pointed out that there were as many alternatives to the dead end of groupuscular guerilla activity as there were individuals. If the listeners and readers hear De Luca's message then the publication of this book will have served a purpose beyond providing a couple of laughs for the boys.

Anyway, you can find out more about the gang here. The book is published by Shake editions.

"You would wanna start listening to us, you would Coz to you we aren't going to be good forever Yeh maybe even here, in the Dublin Town Things could get turned upside down"

Apple of weeping eyesColoniesGreedy

Busy with other things I must confess to having negelected the unfolding story of Europe's DMCA. Fortunately some of the good folk at the EDRI are maintaining a wik where I can both inform myself and perhaps atone for my sins, at least so far as looking after the Irish entry is concerned.

Meanwhile in France..... http://www.april.org/articles/communiques/pr-20021204.html

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - blogs