[Nettime-bold] Yann Moulier Boutang: Apocalyp[se Genoa/New York

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

Apocalyps Genoa/New York
by Yann Moulier Boutang, Paris
(Q&D translation from the French original)


The ongoing debate about (the aftermath of) Genoa gets now remarkably 
overdetermined by the New York Apocalypse (henceforth : NYC 911, tr), the 
destruction of the World Trade Center.

I had earlier stated on this list ('Multitudes', a French Quarterly 
Review, tr) on the subject of Genoa, that the concept of a militarisation 
of the Empire's power as was perceived in Genoa is singularly unsubtle. 
Unless one would like to develop the very paranoid idea that the United 
States, as mandatories of the Imperial Power, would stage up terrorism on 
a world scale in order to legitimise military repression and an 
anti-terrorism style of controlling the emerging (global) movement, one 
must consider that another structure is operating, and this in view of 
this war (being simulated for real, ie of hyper-terrorism against the 
hyper power).
But what is this structure?

My idea runs as follows:

The resurgence of a world wide movement in 1999 in Seattle completely 
disrupted the neo-liberal scenario of a lineary assimilation of the Second 
and Third Worlds after the disapearance of real existing socialism as a 
global alternative to globalisation.

The anti corporate globalisation movement then developed at a very great 
speed, within a complete absence of ideological or conceptual alternative, 
I would even say in the absence of a 'true body', that is of something 
that can be brought down by hitting an essential organ.

The 'No' opposed to (corporate) globalisation shares with the 
environmental movement  an actual (operative) alternative project, but it 
is not articulated within a (party)  political or institutional force ( - 
in France, and other countries in Europe - one sees however the rise of 
the 'Greens')

Out of this arises a tricky situation, akin to the one which had already 
occured in  Italy and (other parts of Western) Europe towards the end of 
the seventies.

I say tricky - or dangerous - because whereas the movement is able to 
disrupt the 'shifting of gears' that the new capitalism tries to impose on 
society, it is not able by itself to achieve its own 'gear-shift' towards 
augmenting its proper constituting power.

Now, since the last two 'summits', the forward push of the movement has 
continued to gain both in scope and in ability to hit hard at the 
strategic goals of cognitive  capitalism - especially with regards to its 
opposition to the new enclosures - but the violence of the power (of the 
empire) calls it an 'attractor'.

With 'attractor' I mean reducing of the concept of imperial power to 
rechurning the thesis of American imperialist superpower, and reducing 
also the measure of the  movement's radicality or power to its ability to 
react to the global capitalist might.

These are precisely the phases at which terrorist overdetermination occurs 
almost by necessity.

Everytime the movement expresses the potential power of the multitudes - 
and the virtual (sphere) is the mirror of this (possible) future - a 
blackmail occurs forcing it towards immediate expression of power, and 
pushes back into limbo the actualisation of the power of multiplicity.

NYC 911 registers in a catastrophic mode the huge contrarian push against 
the imperial  power (this as in Hollywood films, which now are happening 
live/ for real, as opposed, in a mind-boggling way, to the Gulf War, which 
according to Baudrillard-the-Prophet, never took place at all). But this 
recording happens in a totally perverted way, in 
the sense that Palestinian suddenly become Talibans, and the opposition to 
(corporate) globalisation, which hates the World Trade Centre and the 
Pentagons - as symbols of the market and of the sword - finds itself 
forcibly enjoined to associate itself with this realisation of 
destruction.

The most serious (impending) catastrophe does not only impiges on the 
consequences that will come out of terrorism upgraded to the 
(nation)state-Empire level in terms of 'military' supression of contrarian 
movements. (More seriously,) the movement risks being crushed between 
submitting to an anti-terrorist consensus (with expressions of  repent, of 
disavowing previous affiliations, etc), and tumbling into an absolute 
rebellion, of devilish and subsequently devilished nature. In concrete 
terms, (this would entail) a huge diminishing and narrowing of all what 
the movement had regained after the winter years.

More particularly, the catastrophe is linked to this projection at the 
highest level, this massive trap, about which one no longer can simply 
state - as in Genoa - that only the police is engineering provocation.

NZC 911 is a forceful overdetermination of Genoa, it is a (take over!) bid 
on all possible Black Blocks. What weight does then a proposal for a Tobin 
Tax carry in the
face of an opportunity to physically anihilate the HQ and symbol of 
globalising capital and its armed arm the world's policeman? In both case 
the metaphor is a wrong
one. These are much more than mere symbols, yet at the same time they are 
not the true  centres of power of world capitalism, since that has no 
divisions, is burried somewhere under Nebraska, and most of all is 
abstract and intangible.

The true provocation hence - in comparison to which the police violence 
and the  shenanigans of the Italian State in Genoa are mere amuses - is 
this over-determination.

This is a much more dangerous enemy. Behaving like a virus, it threatens 
to clone (infiltrate? tr) the anti (corporate) globalisation movement.(And 
before soon, we will have demos against the Kabul bombings.)

And thus, as we are facing this first major even in the XXIst century, we 
can no longer satisfy ourselves with rehashing old complaints about 
provocation and  manipulations.

What politics will serve the multitudes on this world stage that is half 
cartoon and half reality, with special effects and a super-production that 
would make the  Roman Empire proud, and with plenty of real dead bodies?



----------------

Yann Moulier Boutang <yann.m.boutang@wanadoo.fr> is philosopher,
sociologist, professor in economics, and editor of the French quarterly
Multitudes. This is a contribution to its internal mailing-list.

Reposted with permission of the author.
Q&D translation by yours truly.


  


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