[-empyre-] The city as a skin -- Sparta and the helots / retrofitting -- not

[Ana Valdés]

Thanks Simon to add another South to the discussion! I agree full that
nobody can demand from the Occupy movement other things than the movement
already does, create an emotion, a feeling.
Of course all the movements have their own agenda but it's not, as you
said, an unified agenda. "We no longer have a unifying philosophy to
express what we are for and what we are against." Of course we don't.
that's because Lyotard and Baudrillard spoke about the Postmodernity, the
time of the fragment, the time where the Bible, Marxism and Psychoanalys
failed as totalizing models of explanation.
But we still need, crave for explanations and we look for them everywhere.
That's the old advice: "act local and think global".
Ana

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 7:14 AM, simon <swht at clear.net.nz> wrote:

> Johannes schreibt:
>
> "Brian's conclusion is very poignant, and think very true, when he says
> that "The problem is: we no longer have a unifying philosophy to express
> what we are for and what we are against. Crucially, we cannot properly
> define where the powers of government should be limited and how the
> techniques of redistribution should be modified and perfected." This was
> the point that Zizek also tried to make when he argued that the OCCUPY
> movement can only "occupy" public space for a transient time, not knowing
> what it is occupying for."
>
> But isn't it a little bit clearer than this? Do we need to stratify and
> make a dialectic that would ground OCCUPY? (Albeit in the negative.) Isn't
> it a little clearer what the Left have left?
>
> Sentiment. The one trick the Right didn't steal from '68 was how to be a
> bleeding heart. It only learnt how to make a heart bleed: Emotion, that of
> Advertising. How to harness. How to distract by. But not how to do it:
> bleeding heart neoliberal?
>
> Isn't there another way of accounting for OCCUPY? one that takes its cue
> from the network effect - which can argued for or against in its effective
> contribution to popular uprising -, which network effect is affect at a
> distance.
>
> OWS captures the emotion of Tahrir - what else could it possibly be about
> but the occupation of a Simulacrum? The being in the place of it feelingly?
> I.e. a Sensorium which is the Simulacrum from the inside, occupied - and
> (politically) engaged. (Have you heard those rumours OWS started as an
> installation piece? an act of homage to Tahrir and a durational performance
> which turned out to be quite... popular?)
>
> Why complain that OCCUPY doesn't know what it is occupying for? It has no
> political agenda, content?
>
> Perhaps we might refer to a sentimental revolution: a sense of global
> solidarity achieved through sympathy, in turn resting on the technological
> media's ability to carry affect, to promote empathy.
>
> We have not lost or gained a unifying philosophy to express what we are
> for or against. Is this anyway what a philosophy would be good for? against?
>
> Unification can occur as easily through, for example, pressing the 'like'
> button, or turning up at the place where the 90% gather... who? They are
> simply the ones who feel like you.
>
> Milk is too expensive. Bread is poor quality and unaffordable. Nutrition
> is difficult. Work is depressing. In my other south it's a pretty ugly
> scene, Auckland, New Zealand. I won't even start on the suburban
> architectural vernacular.
>
> But I went downtown to Occupy Auckland and I said look behind you at the
> shame of the St. James Theatre being left to fall into so great a state of
> dilapidation it must needs be razed and developed into cheap housing for
> asian students - who pay to keep our tertiary structure alive. Have you
> heard about the Embros in Athens? Occupy the theatres and make yourselves
> useful! The networks, after all, are out of reach.
>
> Respectfully, retrofitting,
>
> Simon Taylor
>
> www.squarewhiteworld.com
>
> PS: checking I find that Tahir طاهر means religious purity:
>  this is apt in some way for the purists who are dead enough to what
> happens to stop you in the street and demand what your agenda is, by what
> philosophy are you unified?!
> ______________________________**_________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre




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