A New Political Subject?

Three new reports on the Greek revolts, an excellent account in the Guardian(!) and two reports in the latest RP (not yet up on the website). In all cases the writers agree that the struggle is as much against precarity as against state violence, that a new 'transversal' political subjectivity has emerged outside and against the usual coordinates of mediation, and the difficult struggle to articulate that subjectivity against the political channels which, it appears, are thoroughly corrupted. A key question is the way in which the revolt depends on contextual specificities - the history of repression and violence, the precarity of the €700 generation, the failures of the Greek state, the strength of political resistance - and how much it might be generalisable. This was obviously the fear in France, although it's depressing to say not in the UK (which certainly has seen a wave of occupations).

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Most unexpected of all was the occupation of a call centre operated by the Altec telecoms group by employees threatened with redundancy without compensation. Altec was part of the recent break-up into the private sector of Greece's formerly state-run telecommunications system.

"There was a complete lack of political culture in the place," says Giorgos Sotiropoulos, who worked as part of the technical support team. "A call centre is as alienated as you can get. It's insidious. You're pitched against your co-worker by the fact that the supervisor is counting how many sales you make in how many calls and minutes. So it really mattered that it was a call centre we occupied, because the kind of enemy this insurrection in Greece is fighting is typified by this work. The enemy is amorphous, it is virtual, and that makes fighting it far more challenging than fighting a junta of colonels. Our enemy is a society which offers procedural freedom, and perceived freedom, but no physical, substantive freedom. But this situation is not irreversible, and we demonstrate this by finding a way of being free through uprising.

(From the Ed Vuillamy and Helena Smith piece in the Guardian, my italics)

Apokatastasis

I want to propose that the Greek revolts, in their true immediacy, their generality, their break with the constraints of a securitised life, their destruction directed towards the state/power, instantiate Benjaminian divine violence - "a pure immediate violence" - that halts mythic, law-making violence. If mythic violence is "bloody", then divine violence is "lethal without spilling blood". The violence of the Greek revolt is immediate, it lacks bloodshed, it defies "mere life" - it is a "pure power over all life for the sake of the living". It involves destruction because "in the secular world, [divine violence] breathes destruction", whereas "in the world to come divine powerlessness is higher than divine violence."

Stripped of Dreams

A report from Greece, via Socialism and / or Barbarism. In confirmation, via a friend of the Institute, its true that radicalisation is very much from the young, and very much outside all the usual channels - including 'radicals'. The other interesting facts was the immediacy and geographic spread of the protests, which emerged everywhere at once. This is also discussed here, where Nikos Raptis writes 'The uprising was carried out by the students and the teenagers, especially the teenagers!'. He also notes that the main weapons were seville oranges (more often used here for marmalade) and the main targets police stations - as well as the usual tactic of provocation and 'plants' (police / police agents masquerading as anarchists).

Perhaps it is foolish to link these points together, but in discussion with the Institute yesterday we were reflecting on the relation between micro-regulation and a visceral biopolitical resistance. It seems that the capillary penetration of capital (which of course has always been there) is producing new immediate effects of resistance. Of course, the usual difficulty comes in linking and articulating these points. Although the Greek revolts are (at least in terms of 'immediate' cause) a result of extreme State violence, the immediacy that resulted there suggests an 'event'. In fact, what's interesting is the immediacy of the translation between the act of violence and the de-legitimation of the state.

Slogans to be Spread By Every Means

Poetry on the Barricades

Let's Be Realists We Seek the Impossible

Philosophy in the Streets

Courtesy of Moses Boudourides