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the key aspect of *real* anarchist activity is *direct action* self-activity, self-help, self-liberation and solidarity . Such activity may be done by individuals (for
have left something out. However,
example, propaganda work), but usually anarchists emphasis collective activity. This is because most of our problems are of a social
this, it's *fun* to get together with other people and work with them, it's fulfilling and empowering.
Anarchists do not ask those in power to give up that power . No, they promote forms
of activity and organisation by which all the oppressed can liberate themselves by
their own hands. In other words, we do not think that those in power will altruistically
give up that power or their privileges. Instead, the oppressed must take the power *back*
into their own hands by their own actions. We must free ourselves, no one else can do it for [us] use.
As we have noted before, anarchism is more than just a critique of statism and capitalism or a vision of a freer,
better way of life. It is first and foremost a movement, the movement of working class people attempting to change
the world. Therefore the kind of activity we discuss in this section of the FAQ forms the bridge between capitalism
and anarchy. By self-activity and direct action, people can change both themselves and their surroundings. They
develop within themselves the mental, ethical and spiritual qualities which can make an anarchist society a viable
option. As Noam Chomsky argues, "Only
Without standing up for yourself and what you believe is right, nothing will
change. Therefore anarchists would agree whole-heartedly with Frederick Douglass (an Abolitionist) who stated
that:
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom and yet deprecate agitation are
people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. That struggle
might be a moral one; it might be a physical one; it might be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will. People might not get all that they work for in
this world, but they must certainly work for all they get."
In this section of the FAQ we will discuss anarchist ideas on struggle, what anarchists actually (and, almost as
importantly, do not) do in the here and now and the sort of alternatives anarchists try to build within statism and
capitalism in order to destroy them. As well as a struggle against oppression, anarchist activity is also struggle for
By resisting
hierarchy we emphasis the importance of *living* and of *life as art.* By proclaiming
"Neither Master nor Slave" we urge an ethical transformation, a transformation that
will help create the possibility of a truly free society .
freedom. As well as fighting against material poverty, anarchists combat spiritual poverty.
This point was argued by Emma Goldman after she saw the defeat of the Russian Revolution by a combination of
Leninist politics and capitalist armed intervention:
revolutionary activities. . .
can only serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life if built of
the same material as the life to be achieved " [_My Further Disillusionment in Russia_] In other
words, anarchist activity is more than creating libertarian alternatives and resisting
hierarchy, it is about building the new world in the shell of the old not only with
regards to organisations and self-activity, but also within the individual. It is about
transforming yourself while transforming the world - both processes obviously
interacting and supporting each other - "the first aim of Anarchism is to assert and
make the dignity of the individual human being ." [Charlotte Wilson, _Three Essays on Anarchism_,
"the ethical values which the revolution is to establish must be initiated with the
The latter
p. 17]
surveillance and showed how individuals were being placed under surveillance
despite there being no reasonable suspicion of their involvement in criminal
activity.1 All of those named as targets were prominent Muslim Americans. The following month,
Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux published another story for The Intercept, which revealed that under the Obama
administration the number of people on the National Counterterrorism Centers no-fly list had
increased tenfold to 47,000. Leaked classified documents showed that the NCC maintains a database of terrorism
suspects worldwidethe Terrorist Identities Datamart Environmentwhich contained a million names by 2013, double the number
major news stories that ought to have attracted as much attention as the earlier revelations. Yet the stories barely registered in the
corporate media landscape. The tech community, which had earlier expressed outrage at the NSAs mass digital surveillance,
seemed to be indifferent when details emerged of the targeted surveillance of Muslims. The explanation for this reaction is not hard
Arab American Institute found that 42 percent of Americans think it is justifiable for law enforcement agencies to profile Arab
making sense of it and organizing opposition. This is as true today as it has been historically: race and state surveillance are
intertwined in the history of US capitalism. Likewise, we argue that the history of national security surveillance in the United States
is inseparable from the history of US colonialism and empire.
innumerable individual cells of transmission , that is, into "antimedia" (pirate radio, etc.). Or information has
nothing to do with signification. It is something else, an operational model of another order,
outside meaning and of the circulation of meaning strictly speaking . This is Shannon's
hypothesis: a sphere of information that is purely functional , a technical medium
that does not imply any finality of meaning, and thus should also not be implicated
in a value judgment. A kind of code, like the genetic code: it is what it is, it functions as it does, meaning is something else that in a
sense comes after the fact, as it does for Monod in Chance and Necessity. In this case, there would simply be no significant relation between the
inflation of information and the deflation of meaning. Or, very much on the contrary, there is a rigorous and necessary correlation between the
two, to the extent that information is directly destructive of meaning and signification, or that it neutralizes them. The loss of meaning is directly
linked to the dissolving, dissuasive action of information, the media, and the mass media. The third hypothesis is the most interesting but flies in
the face of every commonly held opinion. Everywhere socialization is measured by the exposure to media messages. Whoever is underexposed to
the media is desocialized or virtually asocial. Everywhere information is thought to produce an accelerated circulation of meaning, a plus value of
meaning homologous to the economic one that results from the accelerated rotation of capital. Information is thought to
arrangement through which one stages the desire of the audience, the antitheater
of communication, which, as one knows, is never anything but the recycling in the
negative of the traditional institution, the integrated circuit of the negative . Immense
energies are deployed to hold this simulacrum at bay, to avoid the brutal desimulation that would confront us in the face of the obvious reality of a
radical loss of meaning. It is useless to ask if it is the loss of communication that produces this escalation in the simulacrum, or whether it is the
simulacrum that is there first for dissuasive ends, to short-circuit in advance any possibility of communication (precession of the model that calls
an end to the real). Useless to ask which is the first term, there is none, it is a circular process - that of simulation, that of the hyperreal. The
hyperreality of communication and of meaning. More real than the real, that is how the real is abolished. Thus not only
communication but the social functions in a closed circuit, as a lure - to which the
force of myth is attached. Belief, faith in information attach themselves to this
tautological proof that the system gives of itself by doubling the signs of an
unlocatable reality. But one can believe that this belief is as ambiguous as that which was attached to myths in ancient societies.
One both believes and doesn't. One does not ask oneself, "I know very well, but still." A sort of inverse simulation in the masses, in each one of
us, corresponds to this simulation of meaning and of communication in which this system encloses us. To this tautology of the system the masses
respond with ambivalence, to deterrence they respond with disaffection, or with an always enigmatic belief. Myth exists, but one must guard
against thinking that people believe in it: this is the trap of critical thinking that can only be exercised if it presupposes the naivete and stupidity
of the masses. 2. Behind this exacerbated mise-en-scne of communication, the mass media, the pressure of information pursues an irresistible
destructuration of the social. Thus information dissolves meaning and dissolves the social, in a
sort of nebulous state dedicated not to a surplus of innovation, but, on the contrary,
to total entropy.*1 Thus the media are producers not of socialization, but of exactly the opposite, of the implosion of the social in the
masses. And this is only the macroscopic extension of the implosion of meaning at the microscopic level of the sign. This implosion should be
analyzed according to McLuhan's formula, the medium is the message, the consequences of which have yet to be exhausted. That means that all
contents of meaning are absorbed in the only dominant form of the medium. Only the medium can make an event - whatever the contents,
whether they are conformist or subversive. A serious problem for all counterinformation, pirate radios, antimedia, etc. But there is something
even more serious, which McLuhan himself did not see. Because beyond this neutralization of all content, one could still expect to manipulate the
medium in its form and to transform the real by using the impact of the medium as form. If all the content is wiped out, there is perhaps still a
subversive, revolutionary use value of the medium as such. That is - and this is where McLuhan's formula leads, pushed to its limit - there is not
only an implosion of the message in the medium, there is, in the same movement, the implosion of the medium itself in the real, the implosion of
the medium and of the real in a sort of hyperreal nebula, in which even the definition and distinct action of the medium can no longer be
determined. Even the "traditional" status of the media themselves, characteristic of
modernity, is put in question . McLuhan's formula, the medium is the message, which is the key formula of the era of
simulation (the medium is the message - the sender is the receiver - the circularity of all poles - the end of panoptic and perspectival space - such
is the alpha and omega of our modernity), this very formula must be imagined at its limit where, after all the contents and messages have been
volatilized in the medium, it is the medium itself that is volatilized as such. Fundamentally, it is still the message that lends credibility to the
medium, that gives the medium its determined, distinct status as the intermediary of communication. Without a message, the medium also falls
into the indefinite state characteristic of all our great systems of judgment and value. A single model, whose efficacy is immediate,
simultaneously generates the message, the medium, and the "real." Finally, the medium is the message not only signifies the end of the message,
but also the end of the medium. There are no more media in the literal sense of the word (I'm speaking particularly of electronic mass media) that is, of a mediating power between one reality and another, between one state of the real and another. Neither in content, nor in form. Strictly,
this is what implosion signifies. The absorption of one pole into another, the short-circuiting
between poles of every differential system of meaning, the erasure of distinct terms
and oppositions, including that of the medium and of the real - thus the impossibility
of any mediation, of any dialectical intervention between the two or from one to the
other. Circularity of all media effects. Hence the impossibility of meaning in the
literal sense of a unilateral vector that goes from one pole to another. One must
envisage this critical but original situation at its very limit: it is the only one left to
us. It is useless to dream of revolution through content, useless to dream of a revelation through form, because the medium and the real are now
in a single nebula whose truth is indecipherable. The fact of this implosion of contents, of the absorption
of meaning, of the evanescence of the medium itself, of the reabsorption of every
dialectic of communication in a total circularity of the model, of the implosion of the
social in the masses, may seem catastrophic and desperate . But this is only the case in light of the
idealism that dominates our whole view of information. We all live by a passionate idealism of meaning and of communication, by an idealism of
communication through meaning, and, from this perspective, it is truly the catastrophe of meaning that lies in wait for us. But one must
realize that "catastrophe" has this "catastrophic" meaning of end and annihilation
only in relation to a linear vision of accumulation , of productive finality, is imposed
on us by the system. Etymologically, the term itself only signifies the curvature, the winding down to the bottom of a cycle that
leads to what one could call the "horizon of the event," to an impassable horizon of meaning: beyond that nothing takes place that has meaning
for us - but it suffices to get out of this ultimatum of meaning in order for the catastrophe itself to no longer seem like a final and nihilistic day of
reckoning, such as it functions in our contemporary imaginary. Beyond meaning, there is the fascination that results from the neutralization and
the implosion of meaning. Beyond the horizon of the social, there are the masses, which result from the neutralization and the implosion of the
social. What is essential today is to evaluate this double challenge the challenge of the masses to meaning and their silence (which is not at all a
passive resistance) - the challenge to meaning that comes from the media and its fascination. All the marginal, alternative efforts to revive
meaning are secondary in relation to that challenge. Evidently, there is a paradox in this inextricable conjunction of the masses and the media: do
the media neutralize meaning and produce unformed [informe] or informed [informe] masses, or is it the masses who victoriously resist the
media by directing or absorbing all the messages that the media produce without responding to them? Sometime ago, in "Requiem for the
Media," I analyzed and condemned the media as the institution of an irreversible model of communication without a response. But today? This
absence of a response can no longer be understood at all as a strategy of power, but as a counterstrategy of the masses themselves when they
encounter power. What then? Are the mass media on the side of power in the manipulation of the masses, or are they on the side of the masses in
the liquidation of meaning, in the violence perpetrated on meaning, and in fascination? Is it the media that induce fascination in the masses, or is
it the masses who direct the media into the spectacle? Mogadishu-Stammheim: the media make themselves into the
vehicle of the moral condemnation of terrorism and of the exploitation of fear for
political ends, but simultaneously, in the most complete ambiguity, they propagate
the brutal charm of the terrorist act, they are themselves terrorists, insofar as they
themselves march to the tune of seduction (cf. Umberto Eco on this eternal moral dilemma: how can one not
speak of terrorism, how can one find a good use of the media - there is none). The media carry meaning and countermeaning, they manipulate in
all directions at once, nothing can control this process, they are the vehicle for the simulation internal to the system and the simulation that
destroys the system, according to an absolutely Mobian and circular logic - and it is exactly like this. There is no alternative to this, no logical
resolution. Only a logical exacerbation and a catastrophic resolution. With one caution. We are face to face with this system in a double situation
and insoluble double bind - exactly like children faced with the demands of the adult world. Children are simultaneously required to constitute
themselves as autonomous subjects, responsible, free and conscious, and to constitute themselves as submissive, inert, obedient, conforming
objects. The child resists on all levels, and to a contradictory demand he responds with a double strategy. To the demand of being an object, he
opposes all the practices of disobedience, of revolt, of emancipation; in short, a total claim to subjecthood. To the demand of being a subject he
opposes, just as obstinately and efficaciously, an object's resistance, that is to say, exactly the opposite: childishness, hyperconformism, total
dependence, passivity, idiocy. Neither strategy has more objective value than the other. The subject-resistance is today unilaterally valorized and
viewed as positive - just as in the political sphere only the practices of freedom, emancipation, expression, and the constitution of a political
subject are seen as valuable and subversive. But this is to ignore the equal, and without a doubt superior, impact of all the object practices, of the
renunciation of the subject position and of meaning - precisely the practices of the masses - that we bury under the derisory
terms of alienation and passivity. The liberating practices respond to one of the
aspects of the system, to the constant ultimatum we are given to constitute
ourselves as pure objects, but they do not respond at all to the other demand , that
of constituting ourselves as subjects, of liberating ourselves, expressing ourselves
at whatever cost, of voting, producing, deciding, speaking, participating, playing the
game - a form of blackmail and ultimatum just as serious as the other, even more
serious today. To a system whose argument is oppression and repression, the
strategic resistance is the liberating claim of subjecthood . But this strategy is more reflective of the
earlier phase of the system, and even if we are still confronted with it, it is no longer the strategic terrain: the current argument of the system is to
maximize speech, the maximum production of meaning. Thus the strategic resistance is that of the refusal of meaning and of the spoken word - or
of the hyperconformist simulation of the very mechanisms of the system, which is a form of refusal and of non-reception. It is the strategy of the
masses: it is equivalent to returning to the system its own logic by doubling it, to reflecting meaning, like a mirror, without absorbing it. This
strategy (if one can still speak of strategy) prevails today, because it was ushered in by that phase of the system which prevails. To choose the
wrong strategy is a serious matter. All the movements that only play on liberation, emancipation,
language indeed, our whole conceptual scheme is grounded in the assumption that there is such a stable order. Why? . . . die
Annahme des seienden ist nthig, um denken und schliessen zu knnen : die Logik handhabt nur Formeln fr Gleichbleibendes
deshalb wre diese Annahme noch ohne Beweiskraft fr die Realitt: das Seiende" gehrt zu unserer Optik 48 . This can perhaps be
Even if reality is a chaos of powerquanta, about which any statement is already an interpretation and "falsification,"
we nevertheless must assume some sort of order and continuity in order to function
at all. But the assumption of order and continuity even if it is a necessary
assumption is certainly not any sort of proof. We ourselves, as will to power, gain
control over our environment by "interpreting" it, by simplifying and adapting it to
our requirements. Life itself is an ongoing process of interpretation, a process of
imposing a superficial order upon a chaotic reality. In Wahrheit ist Interpretation ein Mittel selbst, um
best clarified by anticipating our discussion of Nietzsche's perspectivism.
Herr ber etwas zu werden. (Der organische Prozess setzt fortwhrendes Interpretieren voraus 42 . Thus we create for ourselves a
von lebendigen Wesen nicht leben knnte. Der Werth fr das Leben entscheidet zuletzt 48 . Thus the "truth" about reality is simply a
variety of error, a convenient fiction which is nevertheless necessary for our maintenance. In the last analysis it is not a question of
"truth" at all, but rather, a matter of which "fiction," which interpretation of reality best enables me to survive and increase my
power. In an absolute sense, the traditional standard of unchanging truth is no more true or false than Nietzsche's own. But on the
our power. The notion that truth is unchanging is the interpretation of a comparatively weak will to power, which demands that the
world be simple, reliable, predictable, i. e. "true." Constant change, ambiguity, contradiction, paradox, etc. are much more difficult
to cope with, and require a comparatively high degree of will to power to be organized (i. e. interpreted) into a manageable
environment. The ambiguous and contradictory the unknown is frightening and threatening. Therefore we have constructed for
ourselves a model of reality which is eminently "knowable," and consequently subject to our control. Pain and suffering have
traditionally been held to stem from "ignorance" about the way the world "really" is: the more predictable and reliable the world is,
the less our chances are of suffering through error, of being unpleasandy surprised. However, " . . . darin drckt sich eine gedrckte
Seele aus, voller Mitrauen und schlimmer Erfahrung . . . M . " The demand that reality and truth be stable, reliable, predictable, and
conveniently at our disposal is a symptom of weakness. The glossing over of the chaotic, contradictory, changing aspect of reality is
the sign of a will to power which must reduce the conflict and competition in the world to a minimum. Yet resistance and competition
are the very factors which enable any particular power-constellation to express itself and grow in power. As we saw earlier, the will
to power can only express itself by meeting resistance, and any interpretation of reality which attempts to minimize these factors is
possible in order to survive, Nietzsche says . . . (eine umgekehrte Art Mensch wrde diesen Wechsel zum Reiz rechnen) Eine mit
Kraft berladene und spielende Art Wesen wrde gerade die Affekte, die Unvernunft und den Wechsel in eudmonistischem Sinne
gutheissen, sammt ihren Consequenzen, Gefahr, Contrast, Zu-Grunde-gehn usw 45 . A large part of the intellectual energy of the
West has been spent in trying to discover "facts," "laws of nature," etc., all of which are conceived to be "truths" and which,
gedrckte Seele aus, voller Mitrauen und schlimmer Erfahrung . . . M . " The demand that reality and truth be stable, reliable,
predictable, and conveniently at our disposal is a symptom of weakness. The glossing over of the chaotic, contradictory, changing
aspect of reality is the sign of a will to power which must reduce the conflict and competition in the world to a minimum. Yet
resistance and competition are the very factors which enable any particular power-constellation to express itself and grow in power.
As we saw earlier, the will to power can only express itself by meeting resistance, and any interpretation of reality which attempts to
minimize these factors is profoundly anti-life (since life is will to power). Furthermore, a person embodying a strong and vigorous will
to power will "interpret" the "threatening" aspect of the world the chaos, ambiguity, contradiction, danger, etc. as
stimuli, which continually offer him a high degree of resistance which he must meet and overcome if he is to survive and grow.
Rather than negate change and make the world predictable, a "strong" person would, according to Nietzsche, welcome the threat
and challenge of a constantly changing world. Referring to those who require a world as changeless as possible in order to survive,
Nietzsche says . . . (eine umgekehrte Art Mensch wrde diesen Wechsel zum Reiz rechnen) Eine mit Kraft berladene und spielende
Art Wesen wrde gerade die Affekte, die Unvernunft und den Wechsel in eudmonistischem Sinne gutheissen, sammt ihren
Consequenzen, Gefahr, Contrast, Zu-Grunde-gehn usw 45 . A large part of the intellectual energy of the West has been spent in
trying to discover "facts," "laws of nature," etc., all of which are conceived to be "truths" and which, therefore, do not change. For
Nietzsche, this conceptualization of our experience is tantamount to a "mummification" : when an experience is conceptualized, it is
wrenched from the everchanging stream of becoming which is the world. B y turning our experiences into facts, concepts, truths,
statistics, etc. we " k i l l " them, rob them of their immediacy and vitality and embalm them, thus transforming them into the
convenient bits of knowledge which furnish our comfortable, predictable, smug existences 46 . Der Mensch sucht die Wahrheit":
eine Welt, die nicht sich widerspricht, nicht tuscht, nicht wechselt, eine wahre Welt, eine Welt, in der man nicht leidet:
Widerspruch, Tuschung, Wechsel Ursachen des LeidensI For Nietzsche, this whole tendency to negate change which is so
intimately connected with the presupposition that "truth" always means "unchanging, eternal truth," is a symptom of decadence, a
symptom of the weakening and disruption of the will to power. This outlook says, in effect, "This far shall you go, and this much shall
you learn, but no more than this . . . ." In the absence of any fixed and ultimate standard for truth, of course, this outlook is no more
true or false than Nietzsche's own. Yet it is not a question here of rightness or wrongness, but a question of power. More specifically,
it is a matter of vital power. "Der Werth fr das Leben entscheidet zuletzt 48 ." Nietzsche's conclusion is that this static
worldinterpretation has a negative, depressing effect on a person's vital energies (will to power). It constricts growth, it sets limits
and hampers the selfassertion of the will to power. The strong individual, whom Nietzsche so much admires, flourishes only in an
environment of change, ambiguity, contradiction, and danger. The chaotic and threatening aspect of the world is a stimulus for
Alles Geschehen, alle Bewegung, alles Werden als ein Feststellen von Gradund Kraftverhltnissen, als ein Kampf . . . 50
affiliated to the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ), University of
Nottingham, April 14, 2012, Jean Baudrillard: Critique of Alienation Draft 1,
http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-3/
Baudrillard also sees communication and sociality being corrupted into sign-values to be consumed. This occurs through the consumption of
services based on sociability. The
dimension) is covered up by the standardised production of signs of social warmth and participation . As with the
smile of the salesman, receptionist or PR executive, or the have a nice day of McDonalds, it simulates intimacy. These simulated signs are
what now counts as abstract interpersonal skills. In practice, Baudrillard observes,
The disappearance of
altruistic forms of integration leads to an expanded role for state repression. Atomisation leads to bureaucratic
control, disguised as freedom. Credit is used to condition people into capitalistic forms of action. The people or consumers are glorified as long
as they do not try to exercise their putative sovereignty on a political or social stage, and instead stick to consuming. Consumer goods are
experienced as miraculous, because their production is concealed. They seem as if they come from technology, progress or growth. In fact we
have only the signs of affluence, coexisting with ever more impoverished social relations. Competition, generalised across social life as
consumption as well as production is ranked, leads to generalised fatigue. Such fatigue is really a resistance, akin to a slowdown by workers or
boredom in school. Such resistance, as the only resistance available, becomes habitual and grows into peoples bodies. It is a partial revolt
necessary to prevent total breakdown, which is also instantly available as a source of discontent in crisis situations. The
psychologically dependent on gaining approval, and lose individual transcendental aspirations. This in
turn leads to a new social morality. Ideology and individual values are replaced in this morality with
relativity, receptivity, agreement and anxious communication, all of which render people programmable.
Baudrillards critique also extends to politics. The contradiction between services and democratic ideology leads to an entire simulation of
absent reciprocity. A superficial layer of minimal communication is used to paper over the hostility and social distance which are everywhere.
This layer is functional enough to personalise and pacify power, but is stripped of every affective and psychological aspect. Instead it is
constructed from the calculated model of an ideal relationship. People can no longer trust themselves or each other. It is for this reason that they
demand signs of sociability and sincerity. But the signs only reproduce the mistrust. They have become empty signs in a closed system, which no
longer convey real trust. The welfare state is criticised as a way to portray an exchange society as if it were a service society, giving back what it
takes from workers. Equality and democracy conceal the real system of discrimination, based on whether or not one can decode consumer goods.
Furthermore, the system conditions people to constantly want a little more than they have. The system produces the needs it satisfies (through
advertising and demand management), produces only for its own needs, and hides behind the alibi of individual needs (inventing an idea of
economic man to prop itself up). It rests on real needs being misrecognised. And it
more "attractive" or "entertaining" to students. The aim should be to reveal the playful features of societal
Consider a game where the boundaries of the magic circle are not yet
clearly defined, and its rules not yet finalized; the game itself would consist in the
tentative and risky process of negotiating these rules and boundaries. A competition could also
institutions.
be held without a referee, so that all or most decisions have to be reached by the negotiated consensus of all
players. This competition may even take place in a public space, without a precise starting or ending time. Whereas
both Huizinga and Caillois argue that the boundaries of the magic circle and the rules of the game must always be
fixed in advance of the start of play, this type of game would make both elements contingent on the decisions and
responses of players. It remains an open question whether this approach would lead to a sort of Hobbesian state of
suspicion and aggression, or whether new forms of creative association would arise through trial and error.
Players could also explore how different resources, such as the internet, help to
sustain or impede these emerging forms of community. The experimental emergence,
sustenance and transformation of a community would thus become the core subject
and aim of the game. Students would then write reports, keep research documents or conduct
seminars based on their design experience, and perhaps modify their design ideas iteratively on the
basis of successive runs of the game, leading to theoretical conclusions about the
interpersonal process of community formation. The magic circle offers many opportunities for
game designers to address aspects of human society. A familiar example is Eric Zimmerman's Suspicion, a
conspiratorial game played in an everyday office environment where each player started out not knowing the
identity of the other players (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004). Game designers aiming to highlight trust and suspicion
sometimes take the radical step of rendering the boundaries of the magic circle deliberately ambiguous. Phone calls
or text messages received in the middle of the night may be real calls for help from a friend or part of the game's
conspiracy. Well-known examples include the Electronic Arts game Majestic and the plot of David Fincher's 1997 film
The Game. This uncertainty can generate experiences that resemble philosophical scepticism about reality. The
designer becomes the equivalent of a Cartesian evil genius capable of controlling, and potentially deceiving, our
sense of the distinction between reality and make-believe. From the designer's standpoint, the players become toys
to be played with; the game designer is the only player who for sure knows where the boundaries of the magic
circle are. Sceptical uncertainty may well become a central topic in experimental game design. The experiential
correlate of this technique, in many cases, is paranoia. I am not here using this term in a strictly clinical sense.
Paranoia is a mode of perception that actively seeks out potential threats or secret plots.
The perceiver is always ready to turn any movement into a warning signal, and to respond by fleeing, attacking, or
9. T is not a voter. Teams run non-traditional affs all the time, theyve even won
the NDTs, our aff links sufficiently to the resolution.
Resolutional
Our aff is about the topic, we are decreasing surveillance,
specifically the surveillance about faciality, specifically faciality
itself, we are targeting surveillance at its route cause
Predictable
Our aff is predictable. Faciality and racism are central topics to
surveillance in the squo. The fact that our aff chooses to
address these should not be a surprise, it doesnt mean they
shouldnt be able to predict it. Race issues are central in the
world today.
expansion without check or convention. It was shown that such corruption is produced in identical ways. It
that are disproportionate to the simple overflow of one of the play instincts out of the domain in which it can spread
without irreparable harm. In contrast, the superstitions engendered by deviation from alea seem benign. Even
when the spirit of competition freed from rules of equilibrium and loyalty is
added to unchecked ambition, it seems to be profitable for the daring one who is abandoned to
it. Moreover, the temptation to guide ones behavior by resort to remote powers and
magic symbols in automatically applying a system of imaginary correspondences
does not aid man to exploit his basic abilities more efficiently. He becomes fatalistic.
He becomes incapable of deep appreciation of relationships between phenomena.
Perseverance and trying to succeed despite unfavorable circumstances are
discouraged.
more,
Transposed to reality, the only goal of agon is success. The rules of courteous rivalry
are forgotten and scorned. They seem merely irksome and hypocritical conventions. Implacable
competition becomes the rule. Winning even justifies foul blows. If the individual remains
inhibited by fear of the law or public opinion, it nonetheless seems permissible, if not meritorious,
for nations to wage unlimited ruthless warfare .
Various restrictions on violence fall into disuse. Operations are no longer limited to frontier
provinces, strongholds, and military objectives. They are no longer conducted according to a
strategy that once made war itself resemble a game. War is far removed from the
tournament or duel, i.e. from regulated combat in an enclosure, and now finds its
fulfillment in massive destruction and the massacre of entire populations .
Any corruption of the principles of play means the abandonment of those precarious
and doubtful conventions that it is always permissible, if not profitable, to deny, but
the arduous adoption of which is a milestone in the development of civilization . If
the principles of play in effect correspond to powerful instincts (competition, chance,
simulation, vertigo), it is readily understood that they can be positively and creatively gratified
only under ideal and circumscribed conditions, which in every case prevail in the
rules of play. Left to themselves, destructive and frantic as are all instincts, these
basic impulses can hardly lead to any but disastrous consequences. Games
discipline instincts and institutionalize them. For the time that they afford formal
and limited satisfaction, they educate, enrich, and immunize the mind against their
virulence. At the same time, they are made fit to contribute usefully to the enrichment and the establishment of
various patterns of culture.
government must promise secrecy to a vast range of people taxpayers, inventors, whistle-blowers, informers,
hospital patients, foreign diplomats, entrepreneurs, contractors, data suppliers and many others. But that means
that the basis of government action, which relies on information from these people, must be kept secret from the
public. Economic policy is thought to be open, but we saw during the financial crisis that government officials
needed to deceive the public about the health of the financial system to prevent self-fulfilling runs on banks. Then
there are countless programs that are not secret but that are too complicated and
numerous for the public to pay attention to from E.P.A. regulation to quantitative easing. N.S.A.
surveillance blends into this incessant, largely invisible background buzz of
government activity; there is nothing exceptional about it .
And this puts even more pressure on the first prong of the paradox. If much (most?) of government activity remains
political
accountability in modern, large-scale democracies rarely takes place through informed public
monitoring of specific government programs and policies . A few discrete issues (abortion,
same-sex marriage) aside, and not counting political scandals, the public largely votes on the basis of
its pocketbook and its feeling of security . The political consequences of war, terrorist attacks and
invisible to the public, how can democratic accountability work? The answer, I think, is that
economic distress all of which are publicly observable keep officeholders in line, but they retain vast discretion
Think of the N.S.A. program as the security equivalent of the Affordable Care Act (which will unavoidably involve
government monitoring of peoples medical care on the basis of bureaucratic procedures that no one understands):
in both cases, we must prepare ourselves for the inevitable abuses that accompany a large, unwieldy, hard-tomonitor program, in order to obtain the (promised) benefits.
Objections to the secrecy of the N.S.A. program are thus really objections to our
political system itself, and, for all its flaws, there are no obviously superior alternatives.
It is hard to think of
another period so full of robust political debate since the late 1960s another era
of government surveillance.
to one of the very small number of communist bookstores around the country.
feeling from George Bataille, who orients the Nietzschean impulse of will to power alongside a quote from Nietzsche
Through the shutters into my window comes an infinite wind, carrying with it
unleashed struggles, raging disasters of the ages. And dont I too carry within me a
blood rage, a blindness satisfied by the hunger to mete out blows? How I would
enjoy being a pure snarl of hatred, demanding death: the upshot being no prettier
than two dogs going at it tooth and nail! Though I am tired and feverish . . . Now
the air all around is alive with the heat, earth breathing a fiery breath. Now
everyone walks naked, the good and bad, side by side. And for those in love with
knowledge, its a celebration. (The Will to Power) (4). Will to power can be the outgrowth
of debate that challenges existing structures. Bataille and Nietzsche desire a wild emancipation
from traditional structures, far beyond conventional morality. Coupling Nietzsches theorizing with
the practice of debate something new can emerge, but only if we free ourselves
from the shackles of conventional debate, including gaming . How to break these
chains? How do we get beyond that which has brought us so far ? To help, I want to turn to
himself:
more "attractive" or "entertaining" to students. The aim should be to reveal the playful features of societal
Consider a game where the boundaries of the magic circle are not yet
clearly defined, and its rules not yet finalized; the game itself would consist in the
tentative and risky process of negotiating these rules and boundaries. A competition could also
institutions.
be held without a referee, so that all or most decisions have to be reached by the negotiated consensus of all
players. This competition may even take place in a public space, without a precise starting or ending time. Whereas
both Huizinga and Caillois argue that the boundaries of the magic circle and the rules of the game must always be
fixed in advance of the start of play, this type of game would make both elements contingent on the decisions and
responses of players. It remains an open question whether this approach would lead to a sort of Hobbesian state of
suspicion and aggression, or whether new forms of creative association would arise through trial and error.
Players could also explore how different resources, such as the internet, help to
sustain or impede these emerging forms of community. The experimental emergence,
sustenance and transformation of a community would thus become the core subject
and aim of the game. Students would then write reports, keep research documents or conduct
seminars based on their design experience, and perhaps modify their design ideas iteratively on the
basis of successive runs of the game, leading to theoretical conclusions about the
interpersonal process of community formation. The magic circle offers many opportunities for
game designers to address aspects of human society. A familiar example is Eric Zimmerman's Suspicion, a
conspiratorial game played in an everyday office environment where each player started out not knowing the
identity of the other players (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004). Game designers aiming to highlight trust and suspicion
sometimes take the radical step of rendering the boundaries of the magic circle deliberately ambiguous. Phone calls
or text messages received in the middle of the night may be real calls for help from a friend or part of the game's
conspiracy. Well-known examples include the Electronic Arts game Majestic and the plot of David Fincher's 1997 film
The Game. This uncertainty can generate experiences that resemble philosophical scepticism about reality. The
designer becomes the equivalent of a Cartesian evil genius capable of controlling, and potentially deceiving, our
sense of the distinction between reality and make-believe. From the designer's standpoint, the players become toys
to be played with; the game designer is the only player who for sure knows where the boundaries of the magic
circle are. Sceptical uncertainty may well become a central topic in experimental game design. The experiential
correlate of this technique, in many cases, is paranoia. I am not here using this term in a strictly clinical sense.
Paranoia is a mode of perception that actively seeks out potential threats or secret plots.
The perceiver is always ready to turn any movement into a warning signal, and to respond by fleeing, attacking, or
Rather than having an external enemy like the State in opposition to which
ones political identity is formed, we must work on ourselves. As political subjects we
must overcome ressentiment by transforming our relationship with power. One can only
do this, according to Nietzsche, through eternal return. To affirm eternal return is to acknowledge
and indeed positively affirm the continual return of same life with its harsh
realities. Because it is an active willing of nihilism, it is at the same time a transcendence of nihilism. Perhaps in
the same way, eternal return refers to power. We must acknowledge and affirm the return of
power, the fact that it will always be with us. To overcome ressentiment we must, in
other words, will power. We must affirm a will to power in the form of creative,
life-affirming values, according to Nietzsche.[56] This is to accept the notion of self-overcoming.[57] To
overcome oneself in this sense, would mean an overcoming of the essentialist
identities and categories that limit us. As Foucault has shown, we are constructed as essential
political subjects in ways that that dominate us this is what he calls subjectification.[58] We hide behind
essentialist identities that deny power, and produce through this denial, a
Manichean politics of absolute opposition that only reflects and reaffirms the very
domination it claims to oppose. This we have seen in the case of anarchism. In order to avoid this
Manichean logic, anarchism must no longer rely on essentialist identities and concepts, and instead positively affirm
the eternal return of power. This is not a grim realization but rather a happy positivism. It is characterized by
political strategies aimed at minimizing the possibilities of domination, and increasing the possibilities for freedom.
If one rejects essentialist identities, what is one left with? Can one have a notion of
radical politics and resistance without an essential subject ? One might, however, ask the
opposite question: how can radical politics continue without overcoming essentialist
identities, without, in Nietzsches terms, overcoming man ? Nietzsche says: The most
cautious people ask today: How may man still be preserved? Zarathustra, however, asks as the sole and first one
to do so: How
hero of a new type who still has not been created by our culture, but one whose
creation is absolutely necessary if our time is going to live up to its most radical and
exhilarating possibilities.[62]
Fairness
If the state isnt fair, we shouldnt have to be either
Toledo 2015 (Tamara, co-founder and Visual Arts Director of the Salvador
Allende Arts Festival for Peace. Toledo is currently a recipient of the Culturally
Diverse Curators grant of the Canada Council for the Arts and is in residence at A
Space Gallery. Her critical writing has been published in Fuse Magazine, ARM Journal
and C Magazine. Tamara Toledo is the Public Programs Manager at Prefix Institute of
Contemporary Art and Executive Director of LACAP (Latin American Canadian Art
Projects). She has organized the Latin American Speakers Series, and has invited
Gerardo Mosquera to Canada for a series of tutorials and lectures at various
educational institutions,Sportsmanship under Surveillance // Latin AmericanCanadian Art Projects." Sportsmanship under Surveillance // Latin AmericanCanadian Art Projects. N.p., 27 June 2015. Web. 04 July 2015. http://lacap.ca/surgallery/schedule-of-eventsexhibitions/sportsmanship-under-surveillance/, LB)
when governments use
scrutinized surveillance in the name of national security . The artists Jota Castro (Peru/Belgium),
The exhibition exposes various points of view of what it means for individuals
Minerva Cuevas (Mexico), Juan Ortiz-Apuy (Costa Rica/Canada), Marcos Ramirez ERRE (Mexico), and Regina Silveira
(Brazil) will offer insights on how to adapt, control, rebel and live under surveillance . All
eyes are on us today, as Toronto hosts the 2015 Pan Am and Parapan Am Games in the City of Toronto, offering a
dilemma of having to negotiate the terms of the game, they provide guides to demonstrate, they create alternative