Category Archives: agonism

Temps Critiques: “The envy of the French Revolution of the Yellow Vests”

Posted on February 18, 2019 by

“Spontaneously, the reference to the French Revolution constituted for the Yellow Vests the only historical reference, because only it carries the collective memory of a social and political upheaval with which they can identify.”

Posted in agonism, emergency, Nota Bene, power, revolt, the common, the Left

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Samuel Hayat: “The Gilets Jaunes and the Democratic Question”

Posted on February 13, 2019 by

“A new emancipatory politics, which remains to be invented, should be based on making the ensemble of relations of domination visible, without hierarchy and by remaining open and responsive to new antagonisms which will inevitably come to light. As it is, the Gilets Jaunes movement, anchored in a citizenist conception of politics, does not seem to be taking this path toward the visibilization of these antagonisms, even as it opens up new democratic possibilities. A renewal of an emancipatory politics must therefore think both with and against this movement, for democracy and against oligarchy, but also for the expression of conflict and against consensus – whether it be technocratic or citizenist.”

Posted in agonism, democracy, freedom, Nota Bene, power, resistance, revolt

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CrimethInc.: “Between the Reaction and the Referendum”

Posted on January 10, 2019 by

“Several questions remain. How can we make sure that the ways we participate in the yellow vest movement and others like it won’t be simply perceived as an “apolitical” expression of anger, giving nationalists a platform to take credit for our efforts? When we act to create a crisis, how do we prevent far right parties from capitalizing on it by promising a return to normal? How do we confront legalist and reactionary ideas within the movement? How should we prepare for the next round, in which we will either face a stronger repressive and authoritarian state or a massive nationalist and reactionary wave? But also—how can we reinforce our connections with everyone else in the streets and traffic circles?”

Posted in agonism, anarchism, emergency, law, melancholy, Nota Bene, power, revolt, the Left

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lundimatin: “The specter of chaos”

Posted on January 4, 2019 by

“The specter of chaos or anarchy is brandished by those who rule the world and benefit from it. Anarchy and chaos are identified and this identification is an illusion that the negation of order leads to chaos. What is denied by revolt or revolution is not order in general but this particular order.”

Posted in agonism, autonomy, hubris, justice, Nota Bene, power, revolt, violence

Dilar Dirik: “Women’s Internationalism against Global Patriarchy”

Posted on September 29, 2018 by

“From the earliest rebellions in history to the first organized women’s strikes, protests and movements, struggling women have always acted in the consciousness that their resistance is linked to wider issues of injustice and oppression in society.  Whether in the fight against colonialism, religious dogma, militarism, industrialism, state authority or capitalist modernity, historically women’s movements have mobilized the experience of different aspects of oppression and the need for a fight on multiple fronts.”

Posted in agonism, ethics, fraternity, gender, Nota Bene, power, resistance, revolt, rights, tyranny

Susan Buck-Morss: “Global Civil War: Solidarity by Proxy”

Posted on January 2, 2018 by

“In the twenty-first century any world war is a civil war, and any civil war affects the world. Does this mean the end of the Age of Revolutions, or a whole new understanding of what revolution entails?” (video)

Posted in agonism, Nota Bene, power, revolution, violence

Harrison Fluss: “Behemoth and Leviathan: The Fascist Bestiary of the Alt-Right”

Posted on December 25, 2017 by

“The alt-right imagination … is torn between two opposing ‘animal spirits’. These are Behemoth and Leviathan. Originating in the Bible, these beasts gained philosophical meaning in Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy, and entered fascist thought through the writings of the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. … These beasts are a pair of opposites: Behemoth is autochthonous, representing the stable order of earth-bound peoples. Leviathan is thalassocratic, embodying the fluid dynamism of seafaring peoples. Behemoth signifies terrestrial empires, while Leviathan suggests commercial trade and exploration. The former stands for traditional, divinely sanctioned state authority, the latter for the spirit of pirate-capitalist enterprise (what Schmitt calls ‘corsair capitalism’). … Today, the ‘Traditionalist’ philosopher Aleksandr Dugin and the ‘neoreactionary’ philosopher Nick Land are the standard bearers of Behemoth and Leviathan, respectively. “

Posted in agonism, anarchism, Nota Bene, power, revolt, Schmidt

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“How do people excluded from political life achieve political agency?”

Posted on November 27, 2017 by

Martin Breaugh:  The Plebeian Experience: A Discontinuous History of Political Freedom (Columbia, 2013) “identifies fleeting yet decisive instances of emancipation in which people took it upon themselves to become political subjects.”

Posted in agonism, Blog, freedom, resistance

Jacques Rancière: “Democracy, Equality, Emancipation in a Changing World”

Posted on September 16, 2017 by

“A free social space … is a space where assemblies can practice forms of direct democracy intended … to make collective decisions on concrete matters. In such a way a form of political action tends to be at the same time the cell of another form of life. It is no longer a tool for preparing a future emancipation but a process of invention of forms of life and modes of thinking in which equality furthers equality.”

Posted in agonism, anarchism, autonomy, democracy, founding, freedom, governance, Nota Bene, power

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Alberto Toscano: “Notes on Late Fascism”

Posted on April 2, 2017 by

10 Preliminary Theses:
‘T1: late fascism is bereft of non-contemporaneity or non-synchronousness;
T2: the psychic structure of fascism operates through a form of mass narcissism;
T3: it operates through a performance of fanaticism devoid of inner conviction;
T4: late fascism is a conservative politics of antagonistic reproduction;
T5: it is not the politics of a class, a group or a mass, but of a manipulated series;
T6: the racialized signifier of class functions as a spectre, a screen, a supplement;
T7: late fascism is driven by a desire for the state and a hatred of government;
T8: it reacts against a liberal reaction, it is not primarily counter-revolutionary;
T9: it is an offshoot of an endogenous protracted crisis of legitimacy of capital;
T10: it is a symptom of the toxic obsolescence of the modern figure of the political, namely a “national and social state” in which citizenship is organised across axes of ethno-racial and gender identity, and articulated to labour.’

Posted in agonism, governance, Nota Bene, power, the Left, Uncategorized

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