Strategies for the Subversion of the Metropolis (draft chapter)

This is a draft of the fifth chapter. I need to do more summary work & pull insinuation through sections 2 & 3. -awc

THE INCOHERENT OF INSINUATION

Radicalism’s tame but dignified existence in the early parts of nineteenth century America was a triumph for well-reasoned order. Immigrant intellectuals spread the heady ideals of socialism across the newly-opened frontier, founding mutualist or collectivist factory towns across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana and establishing revolutionary societies and educational clubs in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Allergic to lawbreaking and violence, the communalists set out to foster the best-ordered and most-moral dimensions of utopian society. But as corruption and industry grew inseparable, a new radical energy gathered in the darker corners of society. While the socialists kept outrunning the company mines and industrial looms, a growing underclass either unwilling or unable to escape the greed of indecent men toiled away.
 
Only a short decade after the Great War, the polite pretensions of American radicalism fell away. This shift was due to two things: first, the Panic of 1873, which threw hundreds of thousands of workers into destitution, which unleashed their fury; and second, the arrival of anarchists. But to takes the entrance of a protagonist, Johann Most, a fiery German anarchist, to give shape to the turbulence. Inspired by Most, a persuasive orator with scorching rhetoric, anarchists and other radicals brought ‘propaganda by the deed’ to America. ‘Propaganda by the deed,’ an idea on the lips of the European radicals of the time, is derived from the earlier Italian socialist Carlo Pisacane, who argues that “Ideas spring from deeds and not the other way around,” so that “conspiracies, plots, and attempted uprisings” are more effective propaganda “than a thousand volumes penned by doctrinarians who are the real blight upon our country and the entire world” (Anarchism, 68).
 
A determined Most found propaganda by the deed straightforward and published fiery celebrations of the growing practice of anarchist regicide – and these writings often landed in him jail. After a year and a half stay in an English jail for praising the assassination of Alexander II of Russia, Most immigrated to the United States and soon published a pamphlet entitled Science of Revolutionary Warfare–A Manual of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitroglycerine, Dynamite, Gun-Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, etc, etc. Among these tools of destruction, he had a clear weapon of choice: dynamite. Writing in the Parsons’s Alarm, Most declared his love: “Dynamite! Of all the good stuff, that is the stuff! Stuff several pounds of this sublime stuff into an inch pipe (gas or water pipe), plug up both ends, insert a cap with a fuse attached, place this in the immediate vicinity of a lot of rich loafers who live by the sweat of other people’s brows, and light the fuse. A most cheerful and gratifying result will follow. … It is a genuine boon for the disinherited, while it brings terror and fear to the robbers. A pound of this good stuff beats a bushel of ballots all hollow – and don’t you forget it!” So with the arrival of Most, his dynamite, and propaganda by the deed, the anarchist siege against robber barons and the forces of the State commenced.
 
Striking fear in hearts of the three enemies of classical anarchism – The Church, The State, and Capital – radicals committed a remarkable number regicides and other assassinations from the late 1870s through the early twentieth century. Yet the practice was not universally accepted in radical circles: pacifists, social democrats, and pragmatists hotly debated the principles and effectiveness of attacks on power.  Paul Rousse, French socialist and the first to coin the phrase propaganda by the deed, plays down violence when describing the concept’s realization. “Propaganda by the deed is a mighty means of rousing the popular consciousness,” he writes, because it serves as the pragmatism of the possible: as the masses are naturally skeptical of any idea as long it remains abstract, one must actually start a commune or a factory and “let the instruments of production be placed in the hands of the workers, let the workers and their families move into salubrious accommodation and the idlers be tossed into the streets,” after which the idea will “spring to life” and “march, in flesh and blood, at the head of the people” (Anarchism, 151). Echoing Rousse’s possibilism, Gustav Landauer argues that “no language can be loud and decisive enough for the uplifting of our compatriots, so that they may be incited out of their engrained daily drudgery,” and thus the seeds of a new society must be prefigured in actual reality to entice others the join (139). Propaganda by the deed thus has two intentionally distinct valences as either creative violence or persuasive prefiguration.
 
Our contemporary times are replete with radicals preaching about the non-threatening virtues of propaganda by the deed. Anarchists such as David Graeber speak about a new generation of activists that came of age during the anti-globalization movement who practice propaganda by prefiguration that ‘builds a new society in the shell of the old’ (as the popular IWW phrase goes). These ‘New Anarchists,’ as they are called, practice social justice and deep democracy although they cannot hum even a bar of The Internationale. Yet missing from this description are many radical tendencies that draw on the first valence of propaganda by the deed – to name a few, there are civilization-hating anarcho-primitivists, destruction-loving anarcho-queers, democracy-averse nihilists, and anti-organizational insurrectionists. There are many reasons why those elements are often disavowed or even denied by their radical relatives but one is obvious: these dissident tendencies draw their power from a dangerous source. Rather than constructing their propagandistic appeals on images of a well-ordered society constituted by a moral majority, these hidden elements draw on deeper and darker desires. But I am dissatisfied by the stale repetition of this opposition – the reasonable proposals of social anarchists and the excesses of their darker offspring – but perhaps there is a way to break through.

Is there a power of truth that is not just the truth of power? asks Gilles Deleuze (Foucault, 94-95). Written alternately in the language of anarchism: what is the propaganda by the deed if it is not just the deed of propaganda? The answer is found in a mode of communication whereby actions ‘speak for themselves’ – actions that need not be owned, named, or explained. Actions as expression without speaking subjects. Expressions that speak reason but do not prefigure. Expressions that speak passion but are not feelings. This is what I understand propaganda by the deed to be.

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Glitch, Oversaturation, and Noise

Just as the guerrilla makes use of contingency, the glitch introduces accidents into the heart of the Metropolis. The glitch is an unexpected moment where a passing fault disrupts a system but fails to crash it. These transitory events are irritating nuisances but common enough that they are routinely ignored. Yet glitches are still a deviation from the predetermined outcome – in short, an error. And although not immediately catastrophic, these errors indicate the possibility of a deeper problem beneath, whether it be incorrect software, invalid inputs, or hardware malfunction. Thus there are those who choose not to ignore glitches. For developers, chasing glitches is motivated by the desire to clear the bugs out of the system. But for others, the glitch signals the potential for an exploit. In general, an exploit models the guerrilla strategy of turning something to one’s advantage and hints at “a resonant flaw designed to resist, threaten, and ultimately desert the dominant political diagram” (The Exploit, 21). But more specifically, the exploit is a hole generated by the hypercomplexity of technical systems that makes such systems vulnerable to penetration and change. And most importantly, the exploit turns already existing power differentials to its advantage so it does not have to introduce its own (21). The search for new antagonisms in the digital life of the Metropolis must then begin with tracking down glitches and other traces of exploits.

The struggle continues with the hunt for a new terrain of struggle.

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The Digital Politics of the Metropolis

The Metropolis is not a representation abstracted from contemporary media technologies; but if “history progresses at the speed of its weapons systems,” then it is no doubt structured by informatization, which is the biopolitical medium through which Empire wages its war of movement (Speed and Politics, 90). And it is for this reason that the Metropolis should be described in the same terms of network culture, which is characterized by “an unprecedented abundance of information output and by an acceleration of informational dynamics” that treats that information in three ways, as “the relation of signal to noise,” “a measure of the uncertainty or entropy of a system,” and “a nonlinear and nondeterministic relationship between the microscopic and the macroscopic levels of a physical system” – all of which find corollaries in culture (Network Culture, 1;9). Moreover, revolutionary politics also shifts within such a network culture, as the luddite dream of sabotaging or crippling infrastructure on a mass scale is unthinkable, and cyberterrorism by political-motivated radicals is rare (Noise Channels, 49-51). Instead, network culture has motivated digital actions that gain cultural expression through a tactical use of media that “signifies the intervention and disruption of a dominant semiotic regime, the temporary creation of a situation in which signs, messages, and narratives are set into play and critical thinking becomes possible” (Tactical Media, 6). Yet such an approach plays with digital expressions and does not struggle within information itself, which causes tactical media to fails where the guerrilla failed as well – ”confusing tactics and strategy” (The Philosophy of the Guerrilla, 257). For politics to rise to the level of strategy that creates successful interventions in network culture, it must consider how “the content of any medium is always another medium” and thus wrestle with the technologies of the Metropolis (Understanding Media, 8). Such a path has been opened by media and literary theory as they have cross-pollenated and demonstrated how speech, writing, and code operate differently even if they are entangled. And if anything, “the Net is a medium not for propaganda, but for conspiracy,” as the sheer volume of participants and incredible speed of information accumulation means that in the time it takes to put one conspiratorial theory to bed, the raw material for many more will have already begun circulating (“End of the Official Story,” 20). The struggle against the Metropolis must ultimately take note and initiate a shift: from signs to signals and from semiotics to physics.

The strategic principles of guerrilla theory can thus be resurrected even if guerrilla warfare cannot.

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Guerrilla Summary

In summary, guerrilla theory outlines the strategic principles for a politics built around the concept of escape. The sober, strategic character of guerrilla theory also distinguishes its potential from more spontaneous protests, such as punks and runaways who simply ‘go it alone’ to refuse assimilation, as well as the politics of compromise, such as power brokers and activists who articulate their demands in the already-existing halls of power. Moreover, escape is not an abstract ideal in guerrilla theory, for it learns from Guy Debord who once insisted that “I am not a philosopher, I am a strategist” (“Metropolis”). And in turn, guerrilla theory establishes escape as a strategic principle for inclusion in any planning, process, and procedure – ‘escape must be guaranteed’ means determining ‘how does escape ensure victory?,’ ‘what are the available tactics for escape?,’ and ‘which escape route will be taken?.’

But to be clear: this is not an enjoinment to practice guerrilla warfare.

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The Necessity of Camouflage (for guerrilla action)

The necessity of camouflage. The guerrilla demonstrates the importance of selective engagement, which affirms the strategic importance of visibility. In contrast to its enemy, who strains to defend occupied territory, the guerrilla is born in the shadows and grows under the cover of secrecy (Revolution in the Revolution?, 41). And while the guerrilla in part relies on its enemy for arms and ammunition, it does not draw its political force from the same coherent identity but instead produces a temporary consistency: the flash an image that swiftly appears with an explosive force only to immediately recede. The guerrilla thus substantiates the potential of difference, whose singular acts must only be produced once, in contrast to authoritarian power, which expands by means of a coherent identity that is reproduced over and again. This difference was amplified during Italy’s Years of Lead, whereby numerous armed guerrillas simply imitated the state while others disseminated “in a multiplicity of foci, like so many rifts in the capitalist whole” (This Is Not A Program, 84). These rifts opened up “radio stations, bands, celebration, riots, and squats” that did not exist as occupations but as an empty architecture of indistinction, informality, and semi-secrecy that became anonymous, that is “signed with fake names, a different one each time,” and thus “unattributable, soluble in the sea of Autonomia” (84-85). [Note: Tiqqun suggests that such spaces worked best when they were abandoned when they either stopped emitting lines of becoming or became too costly to maintain.] These operations did not speak with the coherence of a subject, but rather, they formed their own consistency through frequency and intensity, “like so many marks etched in the half-light” that leave only traces of authorship or militancy, to constitute an offensive “more formidable” than their hardened counterparts in the Brigate Rosse or Prima Linea (85). The non-coherence of the autonomous elements thus outlined the struggle, which was not simply between revolutionary and conservative forces, but a way of politics. On one side was the coherence of Italian state “derived from popular Italian perceptions that the authority of the state was genuine and effective and that it used morally correct means for reasonable and fair purposes,” and on the other was a diffusion of fragmented appearances that formed “a certain intensity in the circulation of bodies between all of [its] points” (Shadows of Things Past, 7; This is Not a Program, 85).

Controlling terrain in the city is difficult for the guerrilla.

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The Decisiveness of Terrain (for the Urban Guerrilla)

The decisiveness of terrain. The guerrilla is mobile and avoids direct conflict. This is because the guerrilla cannot afford the narcissism of political activists who only fight for moral victories and thus flaunt their weaknesses. The theory of guerrilla, in contrast, pinpoints a decisive advantage in weakness and otherwise compensates for the rest. In particular, the guerrilla uses mobility and the avoidance of direct conflict to engage the enemy at a time and place where success is guaranteed. The popular tactic of the minuet ‘dance’ demonstrates this concept: a guerrilla force encircles an advancing column from the four points of a compass but far enough away to avoid encirclement or to suffer casualties; the couple begins their dance when one of the guerrilla points attacks and draws out the enemy, after which the guerrilla then falls back to attack from a new safe point – and thus the guerrilla leads by escape (Guerrilla Warfare). And it is with knowledge of the terrain that the guerrilla dances the movements of life itself. Imaginatively creating new combinations of dispersion, concentration, and the constant change of position, the guerrilla dances to the cadence of organic life’s encounter with its milieu; as an emergent response to its milieu, life’s rhythmic expansion and contraction of difference leads to the internalization of its surroundings, which encourages it to leave and explore new environments. The choreography of escape is then what distinguishes guerrilla warfare from “armed self-defense,” which immobilizes life rather than setting it free, and thus suffers from “a profusion of admirable sacrifices,” “of wasted heroism leading nowhere” – that is, “leading anywhere except to the conquest of political power” (Revolution in the Revolution?, 29). [FN: Bergson on vitalism, D and D&G on "life", and Colebrook on "queer vitalism"/passive vitalism] Instead, the guerrilla is an offensive force, as it strikes at difficult to defend positions but is not equipped to defend or occupy space. Moreover, the environment is the most powerful offensive weapon, for the guerrilla uses it to exact a military cost from any occupying force – ”if the enemy is concentrated, it loses ground; if it is scattered, it loses strength” (49). At its absolute limit, the guerrilla force becomes fully realized when all territory is indefensible and the emergence of a new power is thus inevitable.

The terrain of the Metropolis requires strategic innovation as it is not like the countryside.

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Contingency and the Guerrilla Way of Life

The guerrilla way of life. The success of the guerrilla depends on transforming anthropology into a weapon unto itself – “in revolutionary war the human is always superior to military hardware” (Philosophy of the Urban Guerrilla, 279; modified). Guerrilla theorists depict this transformation in various mixtures of conservative and progressive forces. On the one hand, there are the conservative theorists, such as Mao, who imagine the guerrilla to spring from souls of an oppressed people like a natural reactive force to an exterior threat when a nation “inferior in army and military equipment” turns their “conditions of terrain, climate, and society in general” against an imperialist oppressor as “obstacles to his progress” and used “to advantage by those who oppose him” (On Guerrilla Warfare, 42). On on the other, there are progressivists, such as Che, who see the guerrilla as an agent not of solidarity but creative evolution in the human condition where the guerrilla is a “guiding angel” whose shared “longing of the people for liberation” directs their conversion into an “ascetic” soldier and “social reformer” that fights for a revolutionary new humanity (Guerrilla Warfare). But regardless of the origin of power – whether from conserving life or liberating it – the theory puts forth the guerrilla as the effect of discipline. Furthermore, the theory proposes that it is discipline alone that separates the guerrilla from the mere criminal. The criminal selfishly preys on oppressors and the oppressed alike without the only goal being their own profit. And alternatively, the guerrilla lives simply and expropriates from the rich and powerful in order to build up the forces that distract, demoralized, and drive away the enemy (Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla, 4). The guerrilla thus shares the fruits of expropriation with allies, which teaches those not directly engaged in the struggle to enjoy it nonetheless.

Yet in the Metropolis, it is difficult to maintain the hardness necessary to remain a guerrilla.

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Toward A Guerrilla Analysis of the Metropolis

The basic requirement for a guerrilla war is a rural population, or at least according to the theory. Following a line from Mao through the classic texts on the guerrilla, we find that it is a rural population’s semi-autonomy from the politics of the metropole that holds the key to organizational and military victory. As one Maoist maxim goes, ‘the guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.’ But to clarify, the guerrilla neither takes lead from the peasants nor develops them into a revolutionary force – though both remain a strategic option – but uses rural areas and their residents for material support. What the rural enables is an autonomous way of life from which the guerrilla constructs a base. And because the base is independent, it provides a reliable means of subsistence and draws the enemy out into the countryside where the guerrilla’s use terrain is at its greatest advantage. Lastly, because the guerrilla blends in with the rural population, the enemy is left with few options for identifying, containing, or eliminating the guerrilla. At their most drastic, commanders often resort to ‘draining the pond to catch the fish.’ It is thus by leveraging these three strategic principles – an autonomous way of life, the advantage of terrain, and indistinguishability – that many guerrilla wars have been won.

The conditions present in the middle of the 20th century have shifted as Empire abolishes the boundary between the urban and the rural to form the Metropolis.

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Consistent Communication (Insinuations About Empire’s Impending Death)

Insinuation is anything but clear, which delineates it from the Spectacle’s mode of communication and hence poses a problem for most forms of thought. In particular, political projects premised on clear demands, ‘best practices,’ and rational rules of government have little use for the murkiness of insinuation. The triumph of liberalism, and in turn the Social State, was the result of governance becoming purely presentist. By casting history aside, the Social State declared that the government that rules best is the government with the greatest capacity to extend the present (Society Must Be Defended, 217-223). And while liberalism allows seemingly incommensurate approaches and world-views to coexist, it does so by requiring a minimum degree of coherence. Insinuation may thus be the raw material for a politics detached from or even contrary to the State;

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Insinuation as Intensity

Insinuation is communication stripped of its rational kernel. But that does not keep things from hitching along, yet whatever becomes associated with insinuations exist only in an external relation. Images, for instance, resist signification in order to remain receptive, which allows them to shed layers of interpretation almost as easily as they accumulate them. The force of insinuation therefore lies in capacity to communicate intensity.

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