Brian Holmes on Mon, 23 Apr 2001 19:08:47 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> counterpowers - after Quebec |
How to create new forms of expression, exchange, debate and decision? How to maintain them over time? How and where - at what scale - to take and institute new spheres of popular sovereignty, and how to link those spheres together in the planetary society? You think about these kinds of questions, after... After the "legislative theater" of the Peoples' Summit and the street theater of the Peoples' March, orchestrated on a vast scale, blending new democratic procedures and old, raising echoes in the press and elsewhere, creating spinoffs and facing parallels in the city, the province, the nation, and across the the hemisphere. After the Carnaval against Capital, where so many individuals - from the blackest clad anarchists to teachers, local residents, intellectuals, artists, children, average folks if there were such a thing - all felt the need to touch the violence of the state, to feel and shake the wall it builds around corporate interests, to taste the tear gas it spits out into the faces of the crowd. We are not the only ones. Think back on the recent decades: How many anti-IMF riots in Latin America, Africa, Asia? How many local commitees, social movements, single-issue and electoral campaigns, how many formal victories for democracy that brought back the police with other explanations? The ethics, the intelligence, the analysis, the openness, the energy, the creativity, the disruptiveness and the violence of this dissidence are changing my life, changing the lives of everyone touched by it, from near or far. The stakes are the autonomy and coexistence of all the varieties of human time, against the clock and grid of market exchanges. When we reflect, read and debate for years, not as experts but as passionate amateurs, it's a very different kind of time. When we dance all night around a huge fire beneath a freeway bridge, drumming with rocks and sticks, it's a different kind of time. When we talk between the bursts of tear gas and the intense work on out own projects, we open up an infinite well of freedom. We are fighting for another time, each other's time. For anyone who went to greet the IMF in Prague, or who took part somewhere in June 18th, Quebec could come as a kind of revelation. Here, the city gave protestors the warmest welcome - because it was mobilized first, long months ago. And support poured in from across the country. All the complexity and agency of a highly articulated political society was with us. Tactical debates nothwithstanding - "civil" disobedience, or just plain disobedience - the movement in its different facets showed a coherency that will affect the province of Quebec and the nation of Canada in enduring ways, while serving as a model and an inspiration to the worldwide effort that made these revolutionary days possible. The neoliberal project is being torpedoed by those who were to be its "beneficiaries" - the citizens. Its rhetoric is proving as weak as the absurd wall that fell at the first blows of the crowd. Brian Holmes # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net