Allan Siegel: Chaos, Utopia & the 60's
I disagree with Michael’s other statement: “Allan speaks of theorization as if that has some great importance in lending opposition to violence. Much as I like theory, the relationship is nonsense.” Perhaps we have a different understanding of what theorization means – certainly it can be purely abstract BUT it can also apply and relate to the real world. On the most immediate, basic, spontaneous level one can intervene to prevent violence; on a larger plane theoretical assumptions can both result in violence OR prevent or diminish it. Quantum physics facilitated the construction of the atomic bomb – Hiroshima. Mass non-violent movements in various parts of the world diminished (quite likely) violence. Did the self-immolation of Buddhist monks prevent violence? Were they based on theorizations?
What is useful about the 60’s in the context of the current discussion relates to the strands of utopianism (on many levels) that motivated different spheres of political activity AND the organizational networks that arose to implement various visions of what might be socially possible. In that “strange days” 60’s surreal way there was some common thread that seemed to link the cultural revolution in China with Paris with Bolivia with anti-war protests in Washington. The link was subliminal yet significantly driven by the potentialities of human liberation OUTSIDE of the dogma of turgid leftist parties. My interest here is not to discuss or dwell on what actually came out of all this (which was actually considerable). My emphasis is on the fact that people created structures suitable to articulating and implementing their goals. In time many of these structures became equally turgid YET without them little could have happened. And, naïve or otherwise most of these structures were built around theoretical assumptions.
Today, as Loretta points out, many of the structures we are drawn to – yearn for? - are ephemeral. The public space of activism is mainly a virtual space. There is a marked absence of a vision of the kind world we imagine or are committed to creating/building. Rosa Parks sitting in the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama was both a political and a visionary statement; The Port Huron Statement (1962) is a point of demarcation between two visions of the world; and, the Vietnam War, after all was a war against colonialism.
“A "chaos" has now completely, and for years to come, replaced the orderly world of the Cold War.
-Alain Joxe
The orderly world of the Cold War produced and orderly, palatable kind of utopianism. Whereas today there is a dystopic whirlwind of change in which:
“The question of territory as a parameter for authority and rights has entered a new phase. State exclusive authority over territory remains the prevalent mode of final authority in the global political economy. But it is less absolute formally than it once was meant to be and prevalence is not to be confused with dominance.”
-Saskia Sassen
AND things look a little like Wim Wender’s THE END OF VIOLENCE. One might venture to say that the ‘materialist’ utopianism of the 60’s has been displaced by a more ethereal ‘evangelical’ form of utopianism – a moral utopia (Christian, Muslim or Jewish) to challenge a changing ethical center of gravity in which, as Alain states, there are:
“zones forming constellations of democracy or free market clusters in circular form, then, further away, zones separated by flexible or ephemeral institutional, economic or military membranes; zones in crisis, zones of barbaric violence, social wastelands and slow or rapid genocide….”
In this kind of landscape what exactly is violence? Is utopia even relevant?
> Allan Siegel
What is useful about the 60’s in the context of the current discussion relates to the strands of utopianism (on many levels) that motivated different spheres of political activity AND the organizational networks that arose to implement various visions of what might be socially possible. In that “strange days” 60’s surreal way there was some common thread that seemed to link the cultural revolution in China with Paris with Bolivia with anti-war protests in Washington. The link was subliminal yet significantly driven by the potentialities of human liberation OUTSIDE of the dogma of turgid leftist parties. My interest here is not to discuss or dwell on what actually came out of all this (which was actually considerable). My emphasis is on the fact that people created structures suitable to articulating and implementing their goals. In time many of these structures became equally turgid YET without them little could have happened. And, naïve or otherwise most of these structures were built around theoretical assumptions.
Today, as Loretta points out, many of the structures we are drawn to – yearn for? - are ephemeral. The public space of activism is mainly a virtual space. There is a marked absence of a vision of the kind world we imagine or are committed to creating/building. Rosa Parks sitting in the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama was both a political and a visionary statement; The Port Huron Statement (1962) is a point of demarcation between two visions of the world; and, the Vietnam War, after all was a war against colonialism.
“A "chaos" has now completely, and for years to come, replaced the orderly world of the Cold War.
-Alain Joxe
The orderly world of the Cold War produced and orderly, palatable kind of utopianism. Whereas today there is a dystopic whirlwind of change in which:
“The question of territory as a parameter for authority and rights has entered a new phase. State exclusive authority over territory remains the prevalent mode of final authority in the global political economy. But it is less absolute formally than it once was meant to be and prevalence is not to be confused with dominance.”
-Saskia Sassen
AND things look a little like Wim Wender’s THE END OF VIOLENCE. One might venture to say that the ‘materialist’ utopianism of the 60’s has been displaced by a more ethereal ‘evangelical’ form of utopianism – a moral utopia (Christian, Muslim or Jewish) to challenge a changing ethical center of gravity in which, as Alain states, there are:
“zones forming constellations of democracy or free market clusters in circular form, then, further away, zones separated by flexible or ephemeral institutional, economic or military membranes; zones in crisis, zones of barbaric violence, social wastelands and slow or rapid genocide….”
In this kind of landscape what exactly is violence? Is utopia even relevant?
> Allan Siegel