barriomulas.com - The Electronic Disturbance

I love modern anarchist texts. They're crazy and obscure. At first you don't understand what your reading but within a matter of minutes everything seems to fall into place.

One group of writers that I especially enjoy is the Critical Art Ensemble. I first read "Electronic Civil Disobedience" and was so pleased with it that I hunted down an electronic copy of another one their books, "The Electronic Disturbance" and actually printed and binded the whole thing.

Here are a few quotes and notes, divided into sections of interest:

I. Against Power
"The French revolutions from 1789 to 1968 never stemmed the obscene tide of the commodity (they seem to have helped pave the way), while the Russian and Cuban revolutions merely replaced the commodity with the totalizing anachronism of the bureaucracy".

Quite true. Traditional revolutions, as noted by another anarchist text that I am quite fond of, simply changed power from one set of hands to another. In fact, most political struggles are simply a fight over who wields the power. Business or government? Federal governments or states? But rarely do they question power in general.

II. Against Centralization
"In the Persian Wars, Herodotus describes a feared people known as the Scythians... With no fixed cities or territories, this "wandering horde" could never really be located.. Consequently, they could never be put on the defensive and conquered... they were always present and poised for attach even when absent.... power was not a matter of spatial occupation for the Scythians."

Entirely decentralized and sporadic forces are always necessary, I believe, especially during moments of a revolution. The Spanish resistance during the Iberian War with France, for example, was a random conglomeration of guerrillas, militiamen, and common citizens opposing French occupation. The French army often complained of the impossibility of striking opposition forces for they were nowhere and everywhere at once. There was no flag to lower, no land to conquer, no king to shoot, and no generals to jail. Sporadic rebellion and opposition is much more efficient than the planned revolutions of Blanquism and Lenin. Not only are they more democratic, but they are less subjected to the bureaucratic and hierarchal power structure of traditional organization.

III. Occupation
"In the US itself, the genocide of Native Americans was well underway, justified in part by the belief that since the native tribes did not own the land, all territories were open, and once occupied (invested with sedentary value), they could be "defended". Occupation theory has been more bitter than heroic."

"Typically, the retreat is to the most culturally negating rural areas, or to deterritorialized urban neighborhoods. The basic principal is to achieve autonomy by hiding from social authority. As in band societies whose culture cannot be touched because it cannot be found, freedom is enhanced for those participating in the project."

I would say that that is one of the reasons why shanties and rural areas have always fascinated me so much. They are far from the grasps of the centralized power structure, and thus allow its member a larger degree of freedom and autonomy from the techno-structure. This autonomy in thought and lifestyle is often traded in for the cheap thrills of city lights, sugar coated entertainment, and consumer goods.

"Wherever an economic frontier is opening, so is McDonalds'. Travel where you might, that same hamburger and coke are waiting."

IV. Temptations
"In most cases sedentary populations submit to the obscenity of spectacle, and contently pay the tribute demanded, in the form of labor, material, and profit... into the role of its service workers - into caretakers of the cyberelite."

"The promise of safety and familiarity lures hordes of the unsuspecting into privatized public spaces such as malls."

"In line with the feudal tradition of the fortress mentality, the bunker guarantees safety and familiarity in exchange for the relinquishment of individual sovereignty."

"...the economy of desire..."

"...mass consumption necessitates self consumption, just for the fun of it. Just for the fun of it auto-cannibalism is the material signifier of excess consumption, just for the fun of it."

"Consumption is concerned with the internalization of objects, just for the fun of it... We are dos in love with our own vomit."

V. Against Work
"The belief that the key to resistance is to have an organized body of workers stop production... what is called a union is no more than a labor bureaucracy... All should quit work... in the end it did little damage to the global machine..."

True. The "labor struggle" has it wrong. I know I sound too much like Bob Black when I say this, but instead of struggling for the stability and depth of their labor, they should be fighting against the concept of labor in general. Would it not be nice if instead of fighting technology or global economics in the name of saving jobs, they fought the centralized power structures that so jealously hoard the same technology that can liberate man from the shackles of the 40 hour week?