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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[Audiobook] Daniel W Smith – Deleuze’s Politics: Psychoanalysis, Anthropology, and Nomadology in Anti-Oedipus & A Thousand Plateaus (2009)

I just uploaded these lectures, which I listened to a couple years ago. They are perhaps the best introduction to the politics of Deleuze and Guattari but is also rewarding for more advanced scholars. I’m sorry for the quality – I tried to clean them up, but they’re not perfect. awc

Also available here.

Daniel W Smith discussed Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s works Anti-Oedipus & A Thousand Plateaus at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum 2009. Smith, a professor of philosophy at Purdue University, is a leading expert of Deleuze and Guattari’s work. In these lectures, he lucidly outlines the theories and implications of the most political sections of Deleuze and Guattari’s work while giving special attention to the primary source materials and philosophical arguments that the authors utilized to make their argument.

Day 1: Anti-Oedipus & Desire
In this talk, Smith discusses Deleuze and Guattari’s ambitious reworking of psychoanalysis, especially with their notions of desire and the unconscious.

Day 2: Anti-Oedipus & The Human (missing part 2)
On this day of talks, Smith describes the anthropology chapter of Anti-Oedipus. In the first lecture, Smith covers the Savage and Despotic formations. Unfortunately, the second lecture, in which Smith described the Capitalism formation, was not recorded.

Day 3: A Thousand Plateaus & Nomadology
On this day, Smith presents Deleuze and Guattari’s nomadology from A Thousand Plateaus, with an eye to their description of society without a state. The second lecture is dedicated to question & answer.

The reading materials for the lectures was
– Deleuze & Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, “Savages, Barbarians, Civilized Men,” 139 – 271 Continuum Version, 141 – 164 Minnesota Version.
– Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, “1227: Treatise on Nomadology–The War Machine,” & “7000 B.C.: Apparatus of Capture,” 387 – 522 Continuum Version, 351- 473 Minnesota Version.

DISCLAIMER:
The original recordings picked up substantial feedback that punctuated the lecture with high-pitched pinging noises that made it nearly unlistenable. I tried to eliminate as much of the feedback as possible, but ended up thinning out Smith’s voice.

I have uploaded the originals as well, but would not suggest trying to listen to them.

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Escape: A Talk

This following talk was presented last week at the 2012 North American Anarchist Studies Network conference. The Q/A period was perhaps more interesting than my talk. If you look around, you’ll find the videos.

Today, I will do three things:
1) Sketch a model of the State
2) Outline our terrain of struggle
and 3) Fill your arsenal with a few political weapons

This paper is a gloss of my current writing project, which is entitled Escape. Like many, I love stories of leaving it all behind, whether those are tales of fed-up employees quitting their jobs, restless romantics hitting the road, or the enraged laying waste to the civilization around them. Yet my thinking about escape originated from an academic interest that began after reading a curious comment early on in the popular book on “running to the hills,” James C Scott’s “The Art of Not Being Governed.”

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The Modern State (edited)

The machine emitted strange buzzing, whirring, and clicking sounds. The noises unsettled casual observers, but to the technician, it made beautiful music. She had listened to its movements so many times that she did not have to look at the monitor to pick out the slow set of clicks that marked the beginning of each cycle. Tck… Tck… Tck… Tck…

 The machines had been a triumph over the archaic technology that came before it. It took the dreams of stargazers and a few steady hands to crank out the first prototypes. Even the wildly imperfect geometry of the early models still hypnotized onlookers.

She was charged with maintaining a machine from a newer line. The introduction of this version of the machines had ushered in a new era. In her land, authorities were crushed under the feet of rebelling peasants. As nobles bickered with the monarchy, a new class claiming to “represent the people” had seized power. But instead of quelling the waters, wars became more bloody. And there are still dissident factions trying to destroy the machines through sabotage or even cruder methods.

It is her task to keep the machine running. The rules are clear. Polarize the field. Alternate poles. Keep everything in orbit. She had been trained in basic geometric correction, which usually entailed resetting the aperture but sometimes required redacting elements. While no one told her how to control for the creeping tide of noise, she had come up with some makeshift bypasses. But if a long-term solution was eluding her, her fellow technicians were probably in just as much trouble…

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Prelude (edited)

Escape is the oldest story of freedom. It is among the simplest.

Half a century ago, an anarchist scholar decided to write a heroic story of peasants.[1] When bodies were piling up in Vietnam, he thought that people actually cared about peasants for once. Even then, his task had not been easy, given that peasants serve as the stage upon which more dramatic disputes between nationalists and colonizers are performed. But in the archives he uncovered books and records to wield against those who had discounted his lowly peasants.

The heroic peasants were a good start for the scholar. But, after national liberation struggles began claiming that the heart of the nation beat within the peasant, the scholar found an even more elusive class of people: hill peoples, those who buck authorities with a run to the hills. Through diligent scholarship, he was able to bring together an impressive array of theories and terms to describe why certain peoples are poor materials for state-making.

The scholar loved the hill people’s slash-and-burn culture the most. Dismissed by others as hillbilly backwardness, he knew that their whole way of life was an elaborate trick that they used to be left alone. But everything is different now, he reluctantly admitted: it had all changed after World War II. Most States used technologies, both mechanical and human, to eliminate their “dark twins” hiding in the mountains. Space was spanned and the hill sanctuaries were found, he said. The peoples still in the hills were the last ones to escape, and they are on the verge on disappearing, he lamented.

Not far away, a similar discovery was made.

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Ghost Stories & Nightmares Published

Please check out this wonderful new publication, Three Word Chant, by the folks at Giles Corey Press.

If you like what you see, please consider donating some startup funds to get the print version of their summer catalogue off the ground.

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Modern State, complete

The machine emitted strange buzzing, whirring, and clicking sounds. The noises unsettled casual observers, but to the technician, it made beautiful music. She had listened to its movements so many times that she did not have to look at the monitor to pick out the slow set of clicks that marked the beginning of each cycle. Tck… Tck… Tck… Tck…

The machines had been a triumph over the archaic technology that came before it. It took the dreams of stargazers and a few steady hands to crank out the first prototypes. Even the wildly imperfect geometry of the early models still hypnotized onlookers.

She was charged with maintaining a machine from a newer line. The introduction of this version of the machines had ushered in a new era. In her land, authorities were crushed under the feet of rebelling peasants. As nobles bickered with the monarchy, a new class claiming to “represent the people” had seized power. But instead of quelling the waters, wars became more bloody. And there are still dissident factions trying to destroy the machines through sabotage or even cruder methods.

It is her task to keep the machine running. The rules are clear. Polarize the field. Alternate poles. Keep everything in orbit. She had been trained in basic geometric correction, which usually entailed resetting the aperture but required redacting elements. While no one told her how to control for the creeping tide of noise, she had come up with some makeshift bypasses. But if a longterm solution was eluding her, her fellow technicians were probably in just as much trouble…

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Modern State: Counter-Conducts & Barbarian Insurgency

A number of mechanisms prevent the Modern State form accomplishing full totalization of the forces that surround it. From within the Modern State, there there paths of resistance always available by virtue of the mechanisms that keep it operating. The first internal resistance is revolutionary eschatology. The plodding history that underwrites the Modern State is short-circuited by the notion that one is living in the “end times.” Such a disruption dreams of the end of politics, the withering of the State, and a perpetual peace. This approach produces resistance by opposing the State with civil society. (STP 453). The second internal resistance is the right to revolution. While the Modern State does away with demanding allegiance, it requires obedience to the law. But those rules of obedience are occasionally broken. To change the law, some rise up and break the law. This approach produces resistance by opposing the State with the population (453-4). And the third internal resistance is partisan knowledge. The Police and Publicity of the Modern State act as if they hold the truth of what is happening, and what must be done. But some come to feel that every nation within the phenomenal republic of interests possesses their own truth and are entitled to their own knowledge. This approach produces resistance by opposing the State with nations (454). The intertwining of each of these three forms of resistance is incorporated into the Modern State even as they oppose the State, and therefore constitute its genetic makeup. Opposition to any particular Modern State through these mechanisms therefore ends with the incorporation of another. But the Modern State is not monolithic, rather, its escape routes are simply found elsewhere.

Decisive disruptions to the expansive geometry of the Modern State come from the outside.

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A Prelude to Escape

Escape is the oldest story of freedom. It is also the simplest.

Half a century ago, an anarchic scholar struck out to write a heroic story of peasants. It was when bodies were piling up in Vietnam, indicating to him that people actually cared about peasants for once. Even then, his task had not been easy, given that peasants serve as the stage upon which more dramatic disputes between nationalists and colonizers are performed. But in the archives he uncovered books and records to wield against those who had discounted his lowly peasants.

The heroic peasants were a good start for the anarchic scholar. But, after national liberation struggles began claiming that the heart of the nation beat within the peasant, the scholar found an even more elusive class of people: hill peoples, those who buck authorities with a run to the hills. Through diligent scholarship, he was able to bring together an impressive array of theories and terms to describe how people transformed themselves into poor materials for state-making.

What anarchic scholar loved most about the hill peoples’ was their slash-and-burn culture. Most dismiss it as hillbilly backwardness, yet he knew their whole way of life was an elaborate trick to be left alone. But everything is different now, he reluctantly admitted. It all changed after World War II. Most States used technologies, both mechanical and human, to eliminated their “dark twins” in the hills. Space was spanned, he said. The peoples still in the hills were the last ones to escape, and they are on the verge on disappearing, he lamented.

Not far away, a similar discovery was made.

A young college student was tired of the usual posturing of campus activism. The daily barrage of manufactured urgency and its subsequent oppression Olympics asphyxiated most of us long ago. But he had a plan to fight Reagan’s imperialist interventions in Latin America. So, after gaining a little know-how in engineering, with a focus on alternative energy, he headed south to make a real contribution to ‘people who could use help.’

But after he got there, the student felt out of place, as if that struggle was not his struggle. The projects he worked on were practical, no doubt. Computer donations from the States were not hurting the people of El Salvador, but they were not really helping that much either. When he looked for guidance, they were kind but blunt. War torn El Salvador did not need engineering solutions to political problems.

Look, just go to the mountains, the comrade later said to the student. The student shot back an incredulous glance. Look, you have mountains here. Just go to the mountains. That’s what we do, get some guns, go to the mountains, and wage a revolution. The student responded thoughtfully, suggesting that, yes, there were mountains in Seattle, but that does not make any sense. A few moments later, with an embarrassed grin, he admitted that it simply does not correspond to his reality at all.

Where the anarchic scholar and the student of revolution agree, we may have silently come to the same conclusion long ago: there is no sense in running to the hills. Before, the hills may have made sense; they were once a place without history, void of space and time. In this non-place, a u-topia, there existed a people without a history. And while it is said that the history of people is the history of class struggle, it would be at least as truthful to say that the history of peoples without history is the history of the struggle for escape. But with the great latticework of surveillance and control that now spans most of the developed world, the veil of spatial isolation has been pierced. So today, the hills cannot make class struggle or freedom a reality.

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The Jurist-Priest, and the Priestly State (of Contract)

Just then, one of the group burst in. Bored, and forgotten by the rest, he had wandered off for a stroll. Concerned by something and seeking assistance, he hurried them out of the cave and into the bright daylight. Next, he nudged them onto the well-kept path that he had left only moments ago. A few paces later, the group overheard a man’s hoots and hollers. One of the group tilted her ear toward the sky and raised her finger to her lips in a gesture of silence. Another took command, coordinating the others to storm through the overgrowth. The wildman, hearing their speedy advance, took off. But rather than chasing him down, the group was halted by what they saw in the clearing. Its magnificence alone shown through nature’s failing attempt at reclamation. A huge pool of water stretched across the clearing. Most of the group was in awe, transfixed by the glow that emanated from the pool. Even more striking, its stunning blue color pierced the shadow cast by a short rock face. Slowly, each of them separated to discover the place’s features. One found sure footing as she took a few tentative steps in the shallow side of the pool. Another disappeared behind the greenery that had overtaken the rocky wall, only to return a few moments later up top. The rest of the group was soon to follow. Eager to view the still too confusing situation from a new angle, they clambered up and to the edge of the rock wall.

Suddenly, a rowdy crowd swarmed the clearing. At the front was a procession made up of an official-looking man flanked by two others, one of which walking with a slight limp. The whole clearing was soon packed with the jubilant crowd, with some clambering up trees, others dangling their feed in the pond, and still others elbowing their way to the front. Concern spread among the group on the top of the rocks as they exchanged worried glances, but, after one shot an especially icy glance at the rest, they kept watch from their hidden perch. The noise below rose to an unbearable height and then abruptly ceased. The eerie silence was broken when the limping man winced, which caused the other man to launch a volley of screeching words in a foreign tongue. The crowd jeered loudly in approval. The attack continued, pausing only for a moment as the man reached over to the official-looking man to snatch his sword and taunt the victim with it. Matching the rising crescendo of his rapt audience, the man raised the sword, drew blood from his prey with a light strike to the face, and brought the weapon around to his side as if preparing to deliver a lethal blow. But then the official slowly raised a handless arm and interrupted the scene with a few curt words. The crowd, somehow expecting the official’s intervention but still displeased with his actions, let out of a few collective bellows before swiftly leaving. Soon afterward, the three-man procession left as well.

Emerging from their shock, the unwitting spectators began debating about the festival of cruelty. The first to speak up proposed that it was an elaborate ceremony – the man’s limp was too exaggerated, the crowd’s reactions too predictable. Another, visibly upset, dismissed it as a disgusting ritual of a twisted cult or an uncivilized band of primitives. And so it continued until the same calm voice from the cave cut through the chatter. He spoke with a sure voice, trying to hide his obvious amusement. This is it! he softly exclaimed. This is the other pole of sovereignty… It’s all to perfect, but really, this… is… it! And this is how he began his explanation.

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