General Strike

This paper offers a critical history of the self-proclaimed "Art Strike" as a political tactic, artistic performance, social practice, and philosophical exercise. Artists discussed include Robert Morris, Lee Lozano, Gustav Metzger, Goran Djordjevic, Stewart Home, and Claire Fontaine. Surveys a history of artists going on strike and their shifting political, and artistic, orientations.

O presente livro é resultado de diversas contribuições feitas ao primeiro seminário “Anarquismo: pensamento e práticas insurgentes”, realizado na cidade do Rio Janeiro em 2015[2], bem como de trabalhos de pesquisa do Núcleo de Estudos do Poder.

O seminário discutiu a crise contemporânea do Estado, do capitalismo e as insurgências e resistências anticapitalistas. O objetivo do seminário foi desenvolver uma reflexão crítica sobre as condições objetivas e subjetivas desse processo de crise e insurgência, indicando como saberes e práticas de resistência podem ajudar a descolonizar epistemologicamente as ciências sociais e liberar as vozes subalternas (e sua crítica prático-teórica do capitalismo e dos diferentes tipos de socialismo de Estado). As vozes e práticas que questionam a representação, a organização e a burocratização típicas da sociedade (pós) moderna-industrial (nas suas variantes estatista, neoliberal e socialista de Estado) não foram compreendidas adequadamente, seja a partir da ótica marxista ou liberal (na sua vertente weberiana, durkheimiana, funcionalista e etc.), e é preciso um mergulho na análise de situações concretas, da história em movimento, para alcançarmos uma visão satisfatória.

O seminário pensou as insurgências contemporâneas, bem como a contribuição da teoria anarquista clássica na interpretação e crítica da atual crise do capitalismo, do Estado e dos movimentos sociais. Determinante para isso foi a conjuntura brasileira pós-junho de 2013, que possibilitou a reflexão sobre as revoltas populares no mundo e sobre alternativas antissistêmicas. O presente livro está imerso nas questões e determinações, objetivas e subjetivas, dessa conjuntura, o que fica expresso nas diferentes contribuições aqui reunidas, que dialogam entre si ao refletirem sobre o problema das insurreições, das autonomias e do lugar no anarquismo nesses processos.

[1] O presente livro é o segundo volume da Coleção Pensamento Insurgente.

[2] O seminário foi realizado nos dias 30 de junho, 1, 2 de julho de 2015 na UERJ, organizado pelo Núcleo de Estudos do Poder/NEP-UFRRJ (grupo de pesquisa registrado no CNPq) com apoio: FAPERJ, por meio do edital Apq2/2014; do Departamento de Sociologia do Colégio Pedro II; do Departamento de Sociologia do CEFET; do OTAL-UFRJ. Registramos nosso agradecimento especialmente ao professor Luiz Felipe Bon, do Colégio Pedro II, pelo apoio na organização do evento. O seminário faz parte de uma linha de pesquisa do NEP intitulada “Anarquismo, Pensamento e Práticas Insurgentes”.

O presente livro é resultado de diversas contribuições feitas ao primeiro seminário “Anarquismo: pensamento e práticas insurgentes”, realizado na cidade do Rio Janeiro em 2015[2], bem como de trabalhos de pesquisa do Núcleo de Estudos do Poder.

O seminário discutiu a crise contemporânea do Estado, do capitalismo e as insurgências e resistências anticapitalistas. O objetivo do seminário foi desenvolver uma reflexão crítica sobre as condições objetivas e subjetivas desse processo de crise e insurgência, indicando como saberes e práticas de resistência podem ajudar a descolonizar epistemologicamente as ciências sociais e liberar as vozes subalternas (e sua crítica prático-teórica do capitalismo e dos diferentes tipos de socialismo de Estado). As vozes e práticas que questionam a representação, a organização e a burocratização típicas da sociedade (pós) moderna-industrial (nas suas variantes estatista, neoliberal e socialista de Estado) não foram compreendidas adequadamente, seja a partir da ótica marxista ou liberal (na sua vertente weberiana, durkheimiana, funcionalista e etc.), e é preciso um mergulho na análise de situações concretas, da história em movimento, para alcançarmos uma visão satisfatória.

O seminário pensou as insurgências contemporâneas, bem como a contribuição da teoria anarquista clássica na interpretação e crítica da atual crise do capitalismo, do Estado e dos movimentos sociais. Determinante para isso foi a conjuntura brasileira pós-junho de 2013, que possibilitou a reflexão sobre as revoltas populares no mundo e sobre alternativas antissistêmicas. O presente livro está imerso nas questões e determinações, objetivas e subjetivas, dessa conjuntura, o que fica expresso nas diferentes contribuições aqui reunidas, que dialogam entre si ao refletirem sobre o problema das insurreições, das autonomias e do lugar no anarquismo nesses processos.

[1] O presente livro é o segundo volume da Coleção Pensamento Insurgente.

[2] O seminário foi realizado nos dias 30 de junho, 1, 2 de julho de 2015 na UERJ, organizado pelo Núcleo de Estudos do Poder/NEP-UFRRJ (grupo de pesquisa registrado no CNPq) com apoio: FAPERJ, por meio do edital Apq2/2014; do Departamento de Sociologia do Colégio Pedro II; do Departamento de Sociologia do CEFET; do OTAL-UFRJ. Registramos nosso agradecimento especialmente ao professor Luiz Felipe Bon, do Colégio Pedro II, pelo apoio na organização do evento. O seminário faz parte de uma linha de pesquisa do NEP intitulada “Anarquismo, Pensamento e Práticas Insurgentes”.

While the surge in horizontalist activism of the last few years has drawn upon both Marxist and anarchist traditions, post-Marxist literature offers a useful guide for evaluating the strategic opportunities available to the movements today. Focusing on the camp and the event as its conceptual reference points, this article contrasts the relative merits of the spatial and chronological strategies of the movements, concluding ultimately in favour of a longer-term strategy of withdrawal, or ‘exodus’, for its ability to sustain parallel forms of community and provide longer-term support for radical politics. We conclude with a brief commentary applying these arguments to the predicaments faced today by movements in Spain and Greece.

Discussing their hopes for a horizontalist mode of politics, Hardt and Negri envision a grand, kairotic event that will announce the ‘becoming prince’ of the Multitude. This paper reflects on this idea in light of the strategies and discourses of Ireland’s ‘Occupy Dame Street’ (ODS) activists. Starting with a brief account of the rise and fall of the ODS movement, as it struggled to engage the political imagination of a nation beset by financial crisis, the paper explores the extent to which the actions of the movement conformed to ‘Multitudinal ideals.’ It suggests that, in a way, and quite unconsciously, dominant factions in the movement came to embrace a kind of ‘event politics’ of their own – a turn which posed a barrier to the movement’s success, in a way with which occupy movements elsewhere simply did not have to contend. Taking this story as an opportunity to reflect on the place of the event in Hardt and Negri’s work, the paper then discusses two alternative approaches to horizontal politics. Turning first to Eugene Holland’s concept of the Slow-Motion General Strike, we find a more experimental and piecemeal approach to social transformation. This approach, it is concluded, has the virtue of retaining Hardt and Negri’s enthusiastic rejection of hegemonic thinking while avoiding becoming caught up in a debate over the relative merits of passively waiting for a constitutive event over reform or revolution. That said, in Ireland at least, there is a certain danger that a ‘chronological’ approach can cede too much, especially in a time of general neoliberal expropriation of public space. With this urgency in mind, a second position is staked out. While in some ways reasserting the importance of kairotic time, this position borrows from anarchist understandings of public space, and puts a strong focus on tactics. As the paper concludes, the actions of ODS-affiliated activists to expose the blatantly undemocratic operations of the country’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) by occupying vacant commercial properties in Dublin suggest a continuing relevance for direct action tactics in public space.

Cet article se propose de porter un regard croisé sur les tensions entre mobilisation et participation des publics, dans l’optique de questionner le cadre de la définition des problèmes publics durant une situation de conflit social généralisé – comme ce fut le cas en Guadeloupe en 2009. Interrogeant les effets du travail de coalition et les enjeux de la concurrence organisationnelle dans la mise en capacité stratégique des acteurs contestataires, il se propose de montrer comment des revendications issues de catégories militantes indigènes accèdent au rang de problème public. Il se propose également d’interroger les conditions de diffusion et de circulation des ressources critiques, au travers d’une approche compréhensive de la dimension conflictuelle du processus des négociations.

“Negotiating in order to Fight Better”: Defining Public Problems and Mobilization Strategies in Guadeloupe in 2009
This article aims at to provideproviding a cross-cutting perspective on about tensions between mobilization and public participation, in order to discuss the framework for defining conditions of public problems definition during a situation of generalized social conflict—as it was the case in Guadeloupe in 2009. By questioning the effects of coalition work and the stakes of organizational competition in the strategic self-empowerment of the protestors, we want aim to explain how indigenous activist categories groups may can transform themselves into public problems. We will also question the conditions of the diffusion and circulation of critical resources diffusion and circulation through a conflict-sensitive approach toof the negotiation process.

This call for a global climate strike initiated a series of international conversations through the Global Climate Convergence and other networks, including a series of Earth Day to May Day mobilizations. This call was republished and circulated widely, and is likely to have been the first generally discussed conceptualization of the #ClimateStrike as a means of achieving a Green New Deal.

EXCERPT: "A global climate strike is a next step in the international uprising that insists that another world is possible.  That uprising has taken to the streets in the tens of millions. It has even occupied capitol buildings and the halls of capital. Yet the street demonstrations have yet to work because most global elites are not listening and will not listen. And while the occupations and blockades have succeeded here and there, the bulldozers of profit keep moving everywhere else. It is time to shock the system with a global climate strike."

Panel 30: Great Refusals: Refusing One Dimensionality Today

The Dialectics of Liberation in an Age of Neoliberal Capitalism

International Herbert Marcuse Society

Seventh Biennial Conference

26-28 October 2017

York University

https://marcuseconference.wordpress.com/

Louis MacNeice is increasingly recognised as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, and his work has been a defining influence upon a generation of Irish poets that includes Derek Mahon, Michael Longley and Paul Muldoon. "The Selected Letters" is indispensable as a resource for an understanding of the intellectual culture of the mid-twentieth century. A Classics don, poet, playwright and globetrotting BBC producer, the medley and blend of MacNeice's cultural influences seems exemplary in its modernity. He kept up a significant correspondence with E. R. Dodds, Anthony Blunt and T. S. Eliot, to name but three prominent figures of the time. During his time at the BBC MacNeice witnessed many key events, including the partition of India in 1947 and the independence of the Gold Coast from Britain in 1957, and these are recorded in two long sequences to his wife, the singer Hedli Anderson. His complex relationship to Ireland and to his Irish heritages speak reson...

ABSTRACT Discussing their hopes for a horizontalist mode of politics, Hardt and Negri envision a grand, kairotic event that will announce the ‘becoming prince’ of the multitude. This article reflects on this idea in light of the strategies and discourses of Ireland’s Occupy Dame Street (ODS) activists. Starting with a brief account of the rise and fall of the ODS movement, as it struggled to engage the political imagination of a nation beset by financial crisis, the article explores the extent to which the actions of the movement conformed to ‘multitudinal ideals.’ It suggests that, in a way, and quite unconsciously, dominant factions in the movement came to embrace a kind of ‘event politics’ of their own – a turn which posed a barrier to the movement’s success, in a way with which occupy movements elsewhere simply did not have to contend. Taking this story as an opportunity to reflect on the place of the event in Hardt and Negri’s work, the article then discusses two alternative approaches to horizontal politics. Turning first to Eugene Holland’s concept of the Slow-Motion General Strike, we find a more experimental and piecemeal approach to social transformation. This approach, it is concluded, has the virtue of retaining Hardt and Negri’s enthusiastic rejection of hegemonic thinking while avoiding becoming caught up in a debate over the relative merits of passively waiting for a constitutive event over reform or revolution. That said, in Ireland at least, there is a certain danger that a ‘chronological’ approach can cede too much, especially in a time of general neoliberal expropriation of public space. With this urgency in mind, a second position is staked out. While in some ways reasserting the importance of kairotic time, this position borrows from anarchist understandings of public space, and puts a strong focus on tactics. As the article concludes, the actions of ODS-affiliated activists to expose the blatantly undemocratic operations of the country’s National Asset Management Agency by occupying vacant commercial properties in Dublin suggest a continuing relevance for direct-action tactics in Irish public space.

Auf der Grundlage von Quellen aus gewerkschaftlichen Archiven aus den Kantonen Bern und Aargau thematisiert dieser Beitrag die bisher wenig erforschten Zusammenhänge der Landesstreikbewegung mit den alltäglicheren Lohn- und Streikbewegungen während des Ersten Weltkriegs. Nachdem der Kriegsausbruch zunächst zuerst die Gewerkschaftstätigkeit hemmte, führte die rasante Teuerung ab 1915 zu einer massiven Steigerung der Lohnbewegungen. In den Jahren 1917-1920 kam es zur möglicherweise grössten Streikwelle in der schweizerischen Geschichte. Entgegen der bisher stark auf die Ereignisse in Zürich fixierten Forschung zeigt der Beitrag, dass sowohl zur landesweiten Teuerungsdemonstration vom 30. August 1917, als auch zur Kampagne gegen die Zivildienstpflicht Anfangs 1918, die schliesslich zur Einsetzung des Oltener Aktionskomitees führte, die wesentlichen Anstösse aus der Berner Arbeiterbewegung kamen. In den Kantonen Bern und Aargau wurden die Novemberstreiks von 1918 gut befolgt und an der Gewerkschaftsbasis überwiegend als Erfolg wahrgenommen.