[-empyre-] Resilience and Resistance

[Ana Valdés]

Dear Leo, as someone been living in Stockholm since 1978 and relocating to
Montevideo last year, 2011, I am quite familiar with the situation in
Stockholm and in the rest of Sweden. I was myself a part of Sweden's small
but active anarchist movement. It was some small occupations and squatting
but the socialdemocratic government was relentless, no occupation or
squatting was allowed, the police acted against us squatters with the whole
battery of an antiterrorist operation, antiriot soldiers, gas canisters,
beatings...
I think the cause is Sweden being one of the oldest national states in
Europe and the citizens live in a very consensual society where all actions
are negotiated by corporations or tradeunions or political parties.
The architect Ana Betancourt, who worked with Teddy Cruz in Tijuana/San
Diego, helped a group young people to build a cultural house in containers
in squatted mark from the county, but the house was burned out by the
neonazis.
Ana


On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 2:21 AM, Leon Tan <tanleon at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Ethel and others,
>
> Thanks for starting up an interesting debate. I think that the two
> concepts may be related, which is not to say they are identical but that
> they overlap.
>
> Resilience, at least in the context of the wellbeing of social wholes of
> various kinds, assemblages if you like, refers to a capacity to survive
> through the vicissitudes of current political-economic struggles.
> Resistance, if we conceive of it in terms of immunology, may similarly
> relate to this capacity, as in, becoming resistant, or immune, to certain
> undesirable phenomenon. It is not necessarily dialectically opposed to a
> 'power,' but relates to complex relations within a milieu.
>
> Regarding Olav Westphalen, one must ask if resistance, or 'recalcitrance'
> as the recent series was called is really feasible within the confines of
> the Royal Art Academy in Stockholm. Also, there ARE in fact various
> occupations, even if they are small, in Sweden. For example, in Nordstan in
> Gothenburg.
>
> There are also occupations in the form of 'squatting' in a number of
> places in Sweden, which is to my mind a useful shift away from mindless
> conformity with the law, at least in Sweden. The group Prekariatet are
> doing some very interesting work in Stockholm and are worth checking out.
> http://prekariatet.se/
>
> Then, there is also the excellent movement called Planka
> http://planka.nu/eng/ a group of citizens bent on reclaiming public
> transport, who refuse to pay fares.
>
> Leon Tan
> http://www.leontan.info/
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>



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