McKenzie Wark interviewed by Alexander R. Galloway

“AG: Provisionality, tactical intervention, tinkering and recombination, intellectual creativity, but also impurity–although I can never tell if you are a pragmatist or an idealist! Can you comment on the fascinating mixture that constitutes low theory?
MW: I was formed by the labor movement, and I remain in solidarity with it even though it is in a sense a god that died. So how does one keep living and working after defeat? There’s something to be said for knowing one is of a defeated people. One is free from the silly chatter of optimism. And one knows who one’s real comrades are. They are the ones you still have after the defeat.I still retain that side, which for me is a kind of decision that can’t be revoked, a picket line never to cross.”