cross currents in culture variant number 43 spring 2012 free

Kat Gollock The Filth, and the Fury Mark Pawson Comic & Zine Reviews Jorge Ribalta Towards a New Documentalism Emma Louise Briant If... On Martial Values and Britishness Tom Coles “Organise your mourning” Ellen Feiss Santiago Sierra... Ethics and the political efficacy of citationTom Jennings The Poverty of Imagination Rosemary Meade “Our country’s calling card”Joanne Laws Generation Bailout Friendofzanetti The Housing Monster 2 | variant 43 | spring 2012

Variant 43 Spring 2012 Variant engages in the Editorial Group contents examination and critique of The Filth, and the Fury editor/ administration: society and culture, drawing Leigh French Kat Gollock from knowledge across the 3 arts, social sciences and co-editors: humanities, as an approach to Gordon Asher Comic & Zine Reviews creative cultural practice and John Beagles as something distinct from Lisa Bradley Mark Pawson 7 promotional culture. Neil Gray It is an engagement of Gesa Helms practice which seeks to publicly Daniel Jewesbury Towards a New Documentalism participate in and understand Owen Logan Jorge Ribalta 10 culture ‘in the round’. That is, Advisory Group in the many and various ways Monika Vykoukal culture exemplifies, illuminates Simon Yuill If.... and engages with larger societal Kirsten Forkert On Martial Values and Britishness processes. 12 We contend it is constructive Design Kevin Hobbs Emma Louise Briant and essential to place articles which address the multiple ISSN: 09548815 facets of culture alongside ‘Organise your mourning’ Printers articles on issues that inform Spectator Newspapers, Bangor, Tom Coles or have consequences for 19 Co. Down, N. Ireland BT20 4AF the very production and subject of knowledge and its Contribute Ethics and the political efficacy of communication. Contributors’ guidelines are available on the Variant website. citation in the work of Santiago Sierra Variant is a constituted cultural 25 organisation that functions with Contact Ellen Feiss the assistance of public support, Variant donations, subscriptions and 1/2, 189b Maryhill Road, advertising. Glasgow, Scotland, UK G20 7XJ The Poverty of Imagination Opinions expressed in Variant t. +44 (0)141 333 9522 Tom Jennings e. [email protected] 28 are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the editors or Variant. All material www.variant.org.uk “Our country’s calling card” is copyright (unless stated Culture as the Brand in Recessionary Ireland otherwise) the authors or 33 Variant. Rosemary Meade Generation Bailout Art, Psycho-Geography, and ‘The Irish Mind’ debate 36 Joanne Laws The Housing Monster Variant needs Friendofzanetti 41 Cover your support! Illustration from ‘The Housing Monster’, available at: www.prole.info Variant is made possible through public support, work‑in‑kind and the good will of many individuals Back Cover and organisations. kennardphillipps Subscribe Occupy Poster by kennardphillipps, distributed To receive three issues of the newsprint magazine: with The Occupied Times € UK £15 • EC 21.50 • Elsewhere £20.00 www.kennardphillipps.com www.theoccupiedtimes.co.uk Donate Financial support towards the continuance of Occupy Everything, An exhibition of new Variant is very much appreciated. work by kennardphillipps, is at Hales Gallery, London, 19 April-26 May Advertise 10,000 copies are freely distributed each issue with the help of over 420 arts, cultural, and educational spaces throughout the UK & Ireland. Contact Variant, 1/2 189b Maryhill Road, Glasgow, G20 7XJ Scotland, UK +44 (0)141 333 9522 [email protected] Cheques payable to ‘Variant’ Payment through PayPal to: [email protected] variant.org.uk variant 43 | spring 2012 | 3 The Filth, and the Fury Kat Gollock More than 60% of those charged in the 2011 medium in Britain. Community London riots were reported to be under the age of The Rear View photographers were proactive in twenty-four.1 This raises all too obvious questions By the 1970s many photographers had grown their response to the issues of about what society is offering young people in tired of the continual demands of a competitive the time and wrote prolifically terms of educational and social support. In the and commercially driven practice. The falsifying on the subjects of photography midst of a double-dip recession (if indeed we ever of truth and the empty stylisations of pseudo- theory, education reform, and left it), with government funding cuts affecting realism, as well as the emphatic use of stereotypes visual representation. Their work most areas of education, social and cultural – all predominantly for commercial gain – were provided the basis for these provision, the political debates of the 1970s have a becoming highly disputed. Some photographers expanded photographic debates renewed prominence in Britain. were prepared to sacrifice financial gain for a and appeared as a challenge 7 Although media and political reactions to the more fulfilling, socially useful practice. The to a disinterested aestheticism riots in England sparked discussions about the newly appointed photography department within within photography and in the underlying social and economic causes, it was the the Arts Council of Great Britain, created in arts more broadly. The surge of outpouring of rage in damage against property 1973, also meant that funding opportunities alternative press organisations that warranted the greatest media attention. were much more readily available. As the Arts also facilitated the publication Among those angered by the riots we can include Council encouraged practice at a grass roots of a great deal of this work and the broom wielding, riot clean-up gentrifiers who level, community orientated projects were set to helped to establish a national wanted to reclaim the “real London from those benefit the most. This guarantee of funding from a network of community art based who are scum”.2 Evidently, many of these people recognised government body allowed established workshops. relished wielding self-righteousness more than practitioners some emancipation from the highly Since the early 1900s, socially their brooms. Upping the mood of moral outrage commercialised work which had previously and politically progressive still further was the e-petition demanding that been one of the few avenues that offered most organisations had maintained looters, rioters, their flatmates and families3 photographers any form of financial support. an organisational relationship lose their homes. Clearly the second part of New Although they weren’t necessarily making money, with the printed press and self- Labour’s sanctimonious mantra “tough on crime, with government funding and a programme of in- publishing.14 Produced and tough on the causes of crime” never made an house fund-raising events, projects could generate distributed cheaply and easily, impression on this virtual constituency. enough income to sustain themselves and for photography, in this context, Such backlash to the civil unrest calls to mind some they provided the only viable alternative to was the fitting vehicle for the cautionary remark of a Parisian train driver unemployment. “It was a time of idealism; those dissemination of political ideas in 1995, quoted by French sociologist Pierre involved gave their time freely to a movement they by and for the working class – 8 Bourdieu. Following a terrorist attack on his thought exciting and important.” for the communist groupings, it train, the driver warned against any want to take was essential the proletariat, as revenge on the Algerian community. “‘They are’, he ‘the one revolutionary class’, be said, ‘simply people like us’.”4 Bourdieu elaborated reached in order to advance the on the driver’s point; “It is infinitely easier to take necessary political uprising.15 up a position of for or against an idea, a value, a Leap forward more than half person, an institution or a situation than it is to a century of political agitation analyse what it truly is, in all its complexity.”5 – including achievements of The question has to be asked, had the mass women’s suffrage and the of young people who rioted in London had a ‘end of Empire’ – during the more ‘affirmative’ political message would they 1970s marginalised groups be viewed by UK politicians and media with continued to use ephemeral the same esteem they profess to hold for the material to ensure widespread recent uprisings across the Middle East? Is it availability of their work really merely a supposed lack of a clear political and garner mass support for objective that has made the London and other their causes. The start of the riots so objectionable? After all, what could be The majority of the practitioners involved with decade saw the publication clearer than ‘Not This!’, in all their multiple, these new community projects were, perhaps of the first issue ofSuburban 9 overlapping contexts? Beatrix Campbell’s 1993 obviously at the time , politically and socially Press, an anarchistic political book Goliath, which looks at the 1991 and 1992 ‘left-leaning’. Continual reference to the work magazine, and continued 10 suburban riots in England, attests to their of the Mass Observation movement , The Film with influential ‘minority’ 11 disavowal, thus: and Photo League , and Worker-Photography publications such as Spare Rib 12 Movement in contemporary and subsequent and Gay News. Publications like “These extravagant events were an enigma. They made journals and exhibitions outlined how important Camerawork, Ten:8, and Creative worldwide news and yet they seemed to be powered the early decades of the twentieth century were Camera helped showcase and by no particular protest, no just cause, no fantasy of among many community photographers. The disseminate the work that grew the future. However, even in their political emptiness social documentary genre that had developed from community workshops. they were telling us something about what Britain in the 1930s greatly influenced the work that These publications also served had become; the message in the medium of riotous was produced at this time. Many photographers as an important platform for assemblies showed us how the authorities and the adopted the paradigm of the worker-photographer, discussion. angry young men were communicating with each using photography to expose social issues relating The inclusion of reader other.”6 to poverty, housing and education, and energised views and responses facilitated Yet if such a reductive view contains some the working class to try wrest control of their own debate amongst readers validity, then how, if at all, can this situation 13 situation. Through collaborative workshops and and contributors alike, and become otherwise? To make a more genuine start events, a social network of groups formed that was created an arena for full- than the broom wielders and their draconian allies, open to everyone and anyone who had an interest blooded political discussions. I suggest we look first to the 1970s. What follows in getting involved. Aided by the Civil Rights In Camerawork, one reader’s is a development of my graduate dissertation, movements of the 1960s, and the continued push criticism of Jo Spence’s leftist which explores the changing face of photography for widespread race, gender and sexual equality, values and the “boring religion in Britain in that period. By taking a retrospective the belief that change could come from below was of Marxism” inspired Spence look at the community photographers, their stronger than ever. to write another full article in political successes and failures during the ’70s, An important hub in the UK in all of this was response.16 The publication of I think we can begin to understand more about The Photography Workshop established by Jo ‘The Unpolitical Photograph’ the situation we find ourselves in today, while Spence and Terry Dennett in 1974, which brought was a clear indication of the acknowledging the political foreclosures that have with it the promise of a more inclusive and freely interaction between reader and happened since. accessible photographic practice, marking a editor and the shared belief renewed sense of the social purpose within the in the importance of debate. 4 | variant 43 | spring 2012

It is interesting to also reflect that following the marketplace”.21 By encouraging ordinary people Right, top: riots of 1981 – grown out of racial tension, police to occupy the role of professional photographer, Half Moon confrontation, and inner city deprivation17 – they were showing that they were more than workshop, late portraits of some of the rioters were printed in just consumers. The removal of the commercial 1970s, taken papers like the Daily Mail and The People but also middleman ensured a more accurate account during meeting in Camerawork and Ten:8. The latter magazines of the situation by “keeping the least possible of squatting offered a rather different platform and viewpoint distance between those who produce and those photo project. from which to understand the causes and the who consume the images”22. Right, below: motives for the riots. Of course we can find similar The majority of these groups’ core interests ‘Lost At School’, discussions on the internet today but community were the issues that faced the socially and Half Moon photography was, very importantly, a way whereby politically marginalised: The Hackney Flashers exhibition people developed face-to-face relationships based were feminist in theory, The Blackfriars Settlement poster, 1979. on trust. were solely concerned with youth and education Photographs by Part of a broader political tradition of workers’ reform, and the major concerns of MINDA were George Plemper. education18 and history-from-below movements, with race and an increased focus on fascist the intellectual roots of the organising in Britain, to name but a few. To community workshops can maintain a unified presence, most worked under in part be traced back to these monikers and very little work was accredited Raphael Samuel, a socialist to individuals, thus inspiring a group congeniality and lecturer at Ruskin and sense of belonging. These workshops, for College, Oxford, where in and by marginalised, discriminated and working 1967 he embarked on a class groups, opened up a forum for debate and programme of history based discussion on the principals of photography workshops that were ‘open otherwise absent. They not only taught the to all’. According to Samuel, practicalities of photography but explored a the study and writing of purpose for taking photographs within the context history were reserved for of their reception. Through subsequent discussions specialist groups and those about their images, participants were encouraged within the ranks of academic to be reflective of themselves and their actions history. The premise of these and were taught to recognise what was implicit in workshops was to counteract the images.23 By combining theory and practical this continued elitism and work many people learned how to create work that instil the idea that history encouraged them to see themselves outwith the belonged to everyone. It confines of stereotypes. In keeping with the whole was Samuel’s belief that history of the socialist project of working class teaching and research had self-representation, by taking control of how they, Gallery in Newcastle, Stills Gallery in Edinburgh, “become increasingly themselves, were documented, they were also (in to name but a few. And of course the rise in divided, and both divorced theory) able to influence how others viewed them. available gallery space also meant a rise in the from wider or explicit social Such a critical politics of representation chances to exhibit on a more wide spread basis. It purposes”.19 By adopting the inspired sophisticated theoretical development, was this collaborative nature of the workshops that form of a workshop, a more none more so than Jo Spence’s self reflexive was central to their success. collaborative process was project Beyond the Family Album. As she writes, nurtured in which debate, “There is no way I could have understood fully the argument and exploration political implications of trying to represent other Opportunities and Fault Lines into the theoretical principals people (however well intentioned) if I had not first Although in many ways the workshops were of the subject was encouraged of all begun to explore how I had built a view of succeeding, internal conflicts about political rather than the simple myself through people’s representation of me”.24 standpoints and the direction in which these acceptance of dominant Spence acknowledged that her previous work projects should progress were starting to create a arguments. It, too, had its own had been produced within a fixed ideology that fractious environment. The underlying principles publication, History Workshop was not always in the best interests of many that had shaped the activities of the Workshop Journal, released in 1976, people, including those in her images. However, movement had been, by their very nature, and like many of the other the benefits of what Spence tried to achieve ‘left-leaning’ but more specifically towards the independent journals, was to far out weighed any reservations she may old Left(s) of the 1930s. Britain had changed act as a study aid and aimed have had about the method. The Photography dramatically since then and the nostalgia for for their readers to be both Workshop movement explored representation and the tenets of a traditional Left was becoming contributors and critics of the endeavoured to inform young people, and others, outmoded with rises in more white-collar and issues at hand.20 how to understand themselves outwith media media based jobs. By 1974 less than half the Much like the History stereotypes and through the lens of ‘class conflict population were employed in manual labour, 26 Workshop, the more art-based theory’ – drawing attention to power differentials compared to 75% in 1900. During the ’70s the Above: workshops set out to encourage people to explore in society, emphasising social, political and changing nature of the British labour market Jo Spence & the issues of identity and representation within material inequalities – in the days before that sort continued to fuel cultural aspirations that had The Hackney their own lives but through the use of photography. of thinking was officially ditched by New Labour. been fatefully implanted by the ethics of ‘the Flashers. Through image making, archival research, In addition to the practical and theoretical opportunity state’ and so the rise of upward Exhibition and theoretical education in visual literacy, teachings which workshops provided, most were mobility, in place of the rise of class equality, Panels from photographers felt they could engage people in able to offer a platform to exhibit the work ensured the reduction of a socialist-orientated ‘Who’s Holding gaining a fuller understanding of themselves, the produced, and this added a further incentive demographic and the destabilisation of the the Baby?’, 1977- communities in which they lived, and the problems to be involved. As well as providing a platform traditional (male) support base of a working class 1978. within those spheres. Don Slater indicates for showing work, Andrew Dewdney, who was a left politics. Within the space of hardly more the movement’s apparent success in an essay founding member of The Cockpit Gallery, felt that than a decade, the working class traditions of published in issue 20 of Camerawork: “Community exhibitions focused the participants and provided employment and, indirectly, identity were all but photography was the outcome of a specific form of a legitimate avenue for audience development. extinguished. production and consumption which overruled the It was his opinion that “the exhibition was a In addition to these fault lines, which were to powerful medium for output”25. Rather than have a decisive impact on the electoral strategies relying on external institutions for the space and of the Labour Party to gain power at the expense funding to facilitate exhibitions, participants of advancing socialism, the failures and crises of sought their own solution. Devised in this context consciousness (as before and since) among the by the Half Moon Gallery, the portable exhibition ‘Peace and Love’ generation of the 1960s saw was quickly adopted by several community art the formation of a much more antagonistic and groups. By providing a travel-friendly package that disenfranchised generation in the next decade. could easily be delivered by post, photography Massive cuts to education, mass unemployment could be exhibited in a variety of locations and an increasing divide between old and young ranging from community art centres and schools in the 1970s instilled a sense of animosity within to foyers and corridors of offices and town halls. the youth (in part, a continuation of struggle with This form of exhibition gave many community patriarchal power) and a rising disillusionment photographers freedom outwith the constraints of towards all aspects of the parent and dominant the art establishments and patronage control and cultures. The significance of youth responses allowed their work to be seen by the people it was to social and cultural events became a much most relevant to. The nationwide demand for such researched area of study in the 1970s, not least exhibitions facilitated the establishment of several with the rise of Cultural Studies, and helped to independent photography galleries during the secure the importance of the education and race 1970s: the Cockpit Gallery in Holborn, The Side debates of the time. Adapting a more anarchistic variant 43 | spring 2012 | 5

attitudinal outlook, such as the rejection of electoral politics, many young people of Britain in the 1970s had their own ideas about social reform; ideas which would lead to the formation of the Punk phenomenon. Although the proliferation of Punk’s uttermost oppositionality was short-lived27, it still helped to spread more enduring facets of anarchistic thought. Rather than adopt mainstream political means to agitate for social reform, Punk promoted a ‘Do It Yourself’ ethos which inspired a whole generation of young and creative people to take matters into their own hands, and was the vehicle through which many became politicised. Although ‘purists’ despised Punk’s rise to the level of Zeitgeist by the end of the decade, some basic features of the movement remained, to be adopted and adapted by successive generations. Establishment reaction towards Punk, as with previous ‘moral panics’, helped to distinguish a clear British youth culture, one marked by a Epitomising the Thatcher era, The Face was a self- education, the welfare state – all the big ‘safe’ rising rejection of mainstream politics within the funded ‘street style’ magazine which encapsulated institutions up against the wall, there’s nothing younger generation – a rejection which would go everything that Camerawork and Ten:8 were not; good or clever or heroic about going under. When on to inspire, amongst others, the animal rights, ‘a visual-orientated youth culture magazine’ all is said and done, why bother to think ‘deeply’ 35 rave, squat, anti-road, and climate change ‘social whose circulation figures reflected its then when you’re not paid to think ‘deeply’.” More justice movements’. market success (selling 88,000 copies a month). recently, incidents like Cindy Sherman shooting Jo Spence and Terry Dennett, from the Half For whatever reason, it captured the imagination for M.A.C makeup, the commissioning of Banksy Moon Photography Workshop collaboration, of what a significant enough number of young graffiti for the Swiss embassy in London, the had always been concerned with the continued people with disposable income were looking for inclusion of King Mob propaganda in a Tate 36 working through of a Left politics within their at that moment, and that, clearly, was not highly Britain exhibition in 2008 , along with so many work, emphasising the importance of change from politicised wordy journals. The landslide victory of other examples, ‘cool capitalism’ has proven that below. The edging out of both Spence and Dennett Thatcher in 1979 marked the symbolic demise of even the most ardent expressions of cultural after only seven issues of Camerawork was an the Left in party politics, just as the publication dissent can, eventually, be absorbed into the indicator that people were becoming wary of being of The Face in 1980 marked the demise of the dominant culture they seemingly once fought 37 thought of as out-of-date and wanted to inhabit politicised ‘history-from-below’ photography against. Whatever the flaws of the community a more populist space.28 Following these events, magazines that had driven and engaged debates of workshops at that time, or the political weaknesses Camerawork began to adopt a different tack; they the 1970s. in their wider networks of support, this generation published their last serious article on community Both these ‘defeats’ signalled the decline of ‘the of community photographers did take equality Below, top: art in 1980 and underwent a physical change Left’ in enacting any successful mass alternative seriously. Linder Sterling in format. It made a conscious effort to include to neo-liberalism throughout the ’80s, and beyond. What is essential, now, is that we move against & Jon Savage: work about more mainstream media culture and Despite their best intentions, it was clear that the the real world positioning of working class youth The Secret Public. 38 practitioners who were more concerned with community workshops were finding it increasingly as an underclass – or, the ‘forgotten ones’ . Punk Montages, a gallery audience. A similar fate awaited the difficult to connect with some of the people Instead, like the community workshop ethos, they Photography original members of MINDA. What started as they were intended to support. The harshening need to be accepted as equals in what would be and Collages creative disagreements over the layout of their conditions of mass unemployment, rising poverty a more inclusive society. This is not an argument 1976-1981 accompanying publication, Campaign Against and poor housing – many seeing housing estates I can make here but if Racism and Fascism (CARF), soon became more fall to a standard well below the poverty line – examples are needed deep-rooted political feuds, which resulted in the coupled with sensationalist media reporting and of not doing so, we disbanding of the original organisation.29 exploitation by politicians, combined to produce a need look no further An indispensable guide to the fault lines of the general perception of a rise in criminality. These than the glorification ‘opportunity state’ at this time is Dick Hebdige’s increasingly degraded conditions, with community of CHAV culture or the article ‘The Bottom Line on Planet One: Squaring projects also suffering cuts, saw those most likely apotheosised reception of Up to The Face’ (Ten:8, 1985), which explores the to contribute and benefit move further beyond parody personas such as 32 success of The Face magazine, first published in reach. Vikki Polard, to start to 1980. When asked why they didn’t read Ten:8, understand some of the visual communications students at West Midlands Society’s Child current problems facing College gave answers such as; “It’s not like The the self-perception of The final, and perhaps most significant, way in Face…It’s too political… It looks too heavy… It’s young people. Moreover, which workshop based practice began to falter got the ratio of image to text wrong…I don’t like to magnify the problem, was the increasing acceptance of photography into the layout…It depresses me…you never see it as I pointed out at the the contemporary fine art market by the end of anywhere…It doesn’t relate to anything I know or outset, many of those the decade. By the 1980s, the arts and education anything I’m interested in…It’s too left wing… charged with offences were being more fully positioned as aspirant What use is it to someone like me?”30 in the 2011 riots were, entrepreneurial enterprise, and a boom in the Hebdige goes on to comment, “For them in fact, over the age art market directed interest towards perceived Ten:8 is the profane text – its subject matter of twenty-four (up profitable forms. The growing financial interest dull, verbose and prolix; its tone earnest and to 40%) but the real in photographic work meant that community teacherly; its contributors obsessed with arcane establishment outrage arts, and its infrastructure, became increasingly genealogies and inflated theoretical concerns”31 was directed at youth. marginalised as a practice. (Thatcher’s infamous As Hebdige observed, “there is no such thing as society” statement being “youth is present only 33 delivered in 1987. ) The success of the workshops when its presence is a was the more even playing field on which work was problem or is regarded as developed and presented; participants working a problem.”39 If there was and debating together with no apparent hierarchy, ever a need for education the seeming opposite of the competitive and towards positive self- 34 increasingly marketised art school culture. representation of Yet, whether by choice or by default, community youth, one embedded photographers began to find their work being in attaining structural placed in contexts it was never intended for and equality across society, which tended to distance the genre from the surely the time is now. communities where it was created. The closing Otherwise, one way to chapter of this period was the Three Perspectives consider the perceived exhibition that took place at the Hayward negative effects of Gallery in London in 1979. Although it signified increased low self-esteem the growing influence that photography had – as an inextricable factor within the art world, it also saw those involved of structural inequality40 relinquish their critical stance regarding the fine – is to, again, look at art establishment and marked the continued Beatrix Campbell’s not departure from more community orientated work. unproblematic and not By 1985 the time of idealism had passed, as unchallanged description Hebdige points out, “with the public sector, of the (male) youth 6 | variant 43 | spring 2012

community in Blackbird Leys in 1991: in Britain’, Institute of Historical Research, University of London School of Advanced “Economically they were spare; surplus; Studies, http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/ personally dependent on someone resources/articles/HWJ.html Right: else; socially they were fugitives whose 21 Slater, Don, ‘Community Photography’, Peter Dunn and lawlessness kept them inside and yet Camerawork, no. 20 (Dec 1980) pp.9-10 Loraine Leeson, outside of their own communities. They had 22 ibid. Health Cuts Can no job, no incomes, no property, no cars, no 23 Andrew Dewdney, interviewed by Kill. Campaign responsibilities... What they did have was a Shirley Read Part 10 - 12, British Library to Save Bethnal reputation.”41 Sound Archives (April 2000). http://sounds. bl.uk/SearchResults.aspx?query=Andrew%20 Green Hospital, Society, as increasingly more fully Dewdney&category=All categories&publicdoma 1978. A2 poster incorporated into the operations of inonly=false produced and the market, has become more about 24 Spence, Jo, Putting Myself in the Picture, distributed individuals than community; more Avon: Camden Press Ltd, 1986, p.83 through the about supposed entrepreneurs than 25 Andrew Dewdney, interviewed by hospital co-operatives. At the very least the Shirley Read Part 10-12, British Library Sound campaign workshops of the 1970s facilitated Archives (April 2000). committee. tangible artistic and creative 26 Black, Jeremy, Modern British History since 1900, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 2000, development and opened up the 3 ‘Westminster vows to evict social tenants involved in p.125 riots’, Kate McCann, The Guardian, 10 August 2011: hegemony of history writing to the working class 27 With exceptions!, see e.g.: http://ianbone.wordpress.com/ – a ‘history from below’ increasingly willing to http://www.guardian.co.uk/housing-network/2011/aug/10/ council-seeks-eviction-for-looters 28 Spence and Dennett, ‘A Statment from Photography incorporate women, workers, and subalterns of Workshop,’ in Photography/Politics 1, ii. various kinds as historical agents. 4 Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘A Train Driver’s Remark’ in Acts of Resistance, Polity Press and The New Press, 1998, p.21 29 Minda, ‘Minda,’ in Photography/ Politics 1, p.139 The question remains, how do young people 5 Ibib., p.22 30 Hebdige, Dick ‘The Bottom Line on Planet One: politically engage with a system that seeks and Squaring Up to The Face’, in Hebdige, Dick, Hiding in the 6 This extract of Campbell’s (1993) book Goliath is in succeeds to disenfranchise them? As Simon Light, Routledge, London, 1988, p.156 Jim McGuigan’s (1996) Culture and the Public Sphere, Critchely notes in his 2008 text, Infinitely London: Routledge 31 ibib. Demanding, “there is increased talk of a 7 Spence, Jo, ‘The Politics of Photography’, in Camerawork, 32 Pinnington, ‘Art in Action’ in Ten:8, no 20: 20 democratic deficit, a feeling of irrelevance of no.1 (February 1976): pp.1-3 33 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, talking to traditional electoral politics to the lives of citizens 8 Hebdige, Dick, ‘Well Maybe’ Women’s Own magazine, 31 October 1987: http://www. margaretthatcher.org/document/106689 [...] where citizens experience the governmental 9 For a critique of the later, new Labour developments of norms that rule contemporary society as externally engaging members of ‘excluded groups’ in historically 34 The Face publishing a ‘Shock report’ on Thatcher’s art binding but not internally compelling.”42 Contrary privileged cultural arenas, see: ‘Beyond Social Inclusion: school budget cuts. to Hebdige’s notion, ‘cool’ was not the key. As Towards Cultural Democracy’, The Cultural Policy 35 Hebdige, Dick ‘The Bottom Line on Planet One: someone who was a teenager in the mid-1990s, Collective: Squaring Up to The Face’, in Hebdige, Dick, Hiding in the http://www.variant.org.uk/20texts/CultDemo.txt Light, Routledge, London, 1988, p.166 coupled with a distinct lack of general political 10 The Mass Observation movement started in the 1930s - 36 An archive of King Mob’s printed materials was acquired teaching, the patronising displays of camaraderie the population was encouraged to keep a record of their by Tate Britain, and several anti-art collage works by between Tony Blair and Noel Gallagher et al were lives and then submit transcripts to the movement’s the King Mob collective included in the Tate Britain’s enough that I remained politically inactive until editors for analysis and storage. The aim was to obtain Collage Montage Assemblage exhibit in July 2008. my late twenties – success?! Young people don’t an ‘intimate’ record of peoples’ day-to-day lives. Writers 37 See McGuigan, Jim, Cool Capitalism, London: Pluto, 2010 want politicians to come ‘down’ to their level – a recorded conversations overheard on buses or in pubs, their views on current affairs or technological advances 38 In a society where currently you must be over 35 to be false generosity and litmus of the imbalance. They of the day, the food they ate, how they spent their fully eligible for Housing Benefit; where under 25s are want to be respected enough to be allowed to Sunday afternoons and domestic issues. bracketed for a lower level of living ‘allowance’ Benefits; engage their own decision making and make their where the much lower minimum wage for under-21s 11 The Workers Film and Photo League in the United is alone frozen; where if you’re under 18 you’re likely own inquiry. States (known as the Film and Photo League after 1933) not entitled to Jobseeker’s Allowance; yet the age of The workshops of the 1970s may have been was part of an extensive cultural movement sponsored full criminal responsibility is between 10 to 12 years. flawed, nonetheless, they did foster political by the Communist International and its affiliated As we see from proposals to further increase the age of national parties in the interwar period. ideals that strived to achieve a class-based history retirement, ‘youth’ is a flexible, arbitrary, benchmark 12 Starting in Germany and the USSR - and spreading according to who’s counting and for what purposes. as part of an oppositional engagement – aiming across Europe, and to the United States, central to “attack vigorously those types of historical 39 Hebdige, Dick, ‘Youth surveillance and display’, in America and beyond - the movement promoted the Hiding in the light: On images and things (chapter 1), enquiries which reinforce the structures of power depiction of proletarian working conditions and London: Routledge, 1988 43 everyday life. Communist-affiliated groups of amateur and inequality in our society” . By embedding 40 “As Nancy Fraser has argued, cultural domination, non- these ideals within photographic and educational worker-photographers were exhorted to lay bare, in a “hard and merciless light”, the iniquities and social ills recognition and disrespect invariably involve economic practices they were able to encourage and enact of capitalism: “Photography has become an outstanding and political inequities.” See: Fraser, Nancy, ‘Justice a more socially conscious and collaborative way and indispensable means of propaganda in the Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Postsocialist of working. As Richard Sennett, author of The revolutionary class struggle.” Condition (London: Routledge, 1997) p. 15, cited in ‘Beyond Social Inclusion: Towards Cultural Democracy’, Craftsmen, says, “the head and the hand are not 13 W. Korner and J.Stuber, ‘Germany:Arbeiter - Fotografie’, Cultural Policy Collective: http://www.variant.org. simply separated intellectually but socially”.44 trans. David Evans and Sylia Gohl in Photography/ uk/20texts/CultDemo.txt Politics 1, p.73 41 Campbell, Beatrix, Goliath: Britain’s Dangerous Places, 14 See, for instance, Guy Aldred (1886-1963): http://www. Michigan, US, Methuen, 1993, p.29 Notes gcu.ac.uk/radicalglasgow/chapters/aldred.html 1 ‘UK riots: suspects, statistics and cases mapped and 42 Critchley, Simon, Infinitely Demanding, Pennsylvania, listed’, Conrad Quilty-Harper, Amy Willis, Martin 15 Judt, Tony, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, U.S.A, Merso, 2008, p.7 Suffolk: Pimlico 2005, p.406 Beckford and Edward Malnick, The Telegraph, 12 43 History Workshop Journal: http://www.history.ac.uk/ Aug 2011: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ 16 Spence, Jo, Cultural Snipings: The Art of Transgression, makinghistory/resources/articles/HWJ.html crime/8698443/UK-riots-suspected-looters-statistics-and- London: Routledge, 1995, p.37 court-cases.html 44 Sennett, Richard, The Craftsmen, London, Penguin 17 See ‘1981 Brixton riot’: http://en.wikipedia.org/ Books, 2008, p.45 2 ‘A few quick clarifications on the recent riots’, A group, wiki/1981_Brixton_riot London, Libcom, 28 Aug 2011: http://libcom.org/forums/ 18 See e.g. ‘The Working Class Self-Education Movement: news/few-quick-clarifications-recent-riots-28082011 The League of the Plebs’, Colin Waugh, Workers’ Other contemporary articles relating to these and Liberty, 16 January 2009: http://www.workersliberty.org/ related issues include: story/2009/01/16/league-plebs ‘Riot Polit-Econ - A Joint Report of the Khalid Qureshi Foundation and Chelsea Ives Youth Centre’, avalable at 19 Editorial Collective, ‘Editorial’, History Workshop metamute.org, 22 August 2011: http://www.metamute.org/ Journal, no. 1 Issue 1 (Spring 1976): http://hwj. community/your-posts/riot-polit-econ oxfordjournals.org/content/1/1.toc ‘An open letter to those who condemn looting (Part 20 ‘Making History: The Changing Face of the Profession one)’, avalable at Libcom,12 Aug 2011: http://libcom. org/news/open-letter-those-who-condemn-looting-part- one-11082011 ‘Detest and Survive: self-deregulation and asset reallocation in England, August 2011’ by Clinical Wasteman, avalable at metamute.org, 17 August 2011: http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/detest-and- survive-self-deregulation-and-asset-reallocation-england- august-2011 ‘Unlimited Liability or Nothing to Lose?’ by Clinical Wasteman, avalable at metamute.org, 16 August 2011: http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/unlimited- liability-or-nothing-to-lose ‘The August 2011 Riots in Britain’, Ricardo Reis, Right: Revolt Against Plenty, 23 August 2011: http://www. Jamie Reid, revoltagainstplenty.com/index.php/recent/1-recent/183- Keep Warm ricardo-reis This Winter. Also, for a more recent overview, see: Mute Vol3 Lithoprint on #2 (Winter 2011/12) ‘Politics My Arse’: http://www. metamute.org/editorial/magazine/mute-vol.-3-no.-2- paper, 1975. politics-my-arse variant 43 | spring 2012 | 7 Comic & Zine Reviews Mark Pawson Fan/Zines have been getting a lot of coverage these publications to a theory of Craftivism seems over the last year, they were featured in the Loud spurious, few of the examples shown back it up. Flash: British Punk on Paper exhibition at Haunch Craft values can tend to emphasise materials and of Venison gallery; were showcased at Dazed & construction over content, shifting the resulting Confused magazine’s Dazed Live extravaganza; publication away from any useful definition of anarcho-punk band Crass’s collection of several ZINES or Fanzines. hundred Fan/Zines was exhibited recently at ‘100 Fanzines/10 Years Of British Punk: 1976–1985’ Boo-Hooray gallery in New York; Verso have just features 100 publications from Toby Mott’s published a 480 page complete collection of Laura seemingly endless collection of Punk ephemera. Oldfield Ford’s Fan/Zine Savage Messiah; and there’s The title tells you exactly what to expect: a short, even a specialist vintage Fan/Zine store, Goteblud, sharp, shock of 100 Fanzine covers reproduced in San Francisco. At the New York Art Bookfair it full size in chronological order. This format seemed that just about any Fan/Zine produced in lends itself readily to flicking back and forth, the last 40 years had been bagged up and priced comparing and contrasting. It’s notable that many up. And there’re three books which examine covers are entirely hand drawn, the total cost different areas of all this Fan/Zine publishing of materials used would be just a few pennies. activity that deserve your attention: ‘Fanzines’, ‘100 Several covers are hand drawn and augmented Fanzines/10 Years Of British Punk: 1976–1985’, and with sparingly used rub-down lettering – I can’t ‘Behind The Zines: Self-Publishing Culture’. remember how much Letraset cost in the mid But first we need to get a couple of things ’80s; it was expensive, priced for professional use straight, apologies for inflicting Fan/Zines‘ ’ on you, at something like £2.95 a sheet, but W H Smith I won’t do it again. Now let’s work at establishing a transfer lettering was just 25p a pack and Decadry practical working definition of aFanzine . Fanzine, a was 75p. Only two magazines, both from 1976, are term in use since the 1930s, refers to an amateur, professionally typeset, featuring The Crusaders and autonomous, self-produced publication, made Steve Hillage on their covers! At this time – years using readily accessible production tools and before the availability of home computers and printing methods, sold at an affordable price and good quality, affordable printers – typesetting not primarily intended as a profit-making venture. was expensive and largely inaccessible to self- A Fanzine’s subject matter is usually a specific authors), ‘E-zines 1998-2009’, and ‘The Crafting publishers unless you were lucky enough to have genre of entertainment or popular culture – for of Contemporary Fanzines’. Each chapter is friend who worked in the industry. As well as example, science fiction, comics, music, or sport. introduced with a 3-page essay. Altogether, 550 punk rock Fanzines, mod, new wave, skinhead, Zine, a term popularised in the mid-late ’80s, publications are included, predominantly from Oi, and anarcho-punk Fanzines are included – the simply drops the word Fan and jettisons the last the UK and USA, this large selection of titles first anarchy sign appeared in 1981, followed by a sentence of the above definition, thus escaping allows lots of oddball, one-off and generally British Movement symbol in 1985. Several of the fandom and gaining the freedom to be about uncategorisable zines to be included, many of Fanzines illustrated are free, proudly proclaiming anything whatsoever it chooses as its subject which are unlikely to be given coverage elsewhere. this fact on their covers; a small attempt to combat matter. This column has always used the term capitalism, or maybe the makers were just able to Zine All the Fanzine covers are accompanied with short in its title. descriptions, which are useful but sometimes rip off hundreds of photocopies at work. The cover ‘Fanzines’, by design historian Teal Triggs, is the perfunctory, as readers only see cover images. images are accompanied by Toby Mott’s memories largest and has the widest viewpoint of the three Considering the extreme difficulty of accessing of making Raw Power Fanzine as a teenager, and books under consideration. Published by Thames original copies, slightly longer descriptions would an essay by Vic Brand which makes the insightful & Hudson, it’s designed as a companion volume be useful. I enjoyed slowly working my way point that “The zine-makers...generally...represent to ‘200 Trips from the Counter Culture: Graphics through FANZINES, as someone who for the last the consumers of punk culture, rather than its ’ producers”; rather than . But then and Stories from the Underground Press Syndicate 30 years has Fanzine, sold, collected, contributed Fanzines Zines (2006). This oversized volume sensibly calls itself lapses into the tired cliché of lionising the to, distributed, curated and reviewed Zines and Brand ‘a’ history of rather than pretending power of the photocopier. Copiers have always Fanzines Fanzines. This book parallels a large part of my to be a definitive textbook on the subject. It been powerful creative tools, but the life and interests. Approaching Fanzines from a Fanzine looks at Fanzine activity as far back as the 1930s, design history perspective is interesting but has its covers shown in 100 Fanzines are printed using 6 with its main focus on the late 1970s right up to limitations. In The City (1977-1980) is commented different techniques – most of the slightly more 2009. Most of the book is taken up with colour upon as “being notable for its... standardised logo”, proficient-looking examples, with multi-colour images of Fanzine covers grouped into thematic, but to someone involved in creating publications covers, were printed offset litho by Joly at Better roughly chronological chapters: ‘A Do-It-Yourself at the same time its easy to see that they just Badges. Revolution: Definitions and Early Days’, ‘Its as cut the title off the artwork of the last issue ‘Behind the Zines: Self-Publishing Culture’ from easy as 1-2-3: The Graphic Language of Punk 1975- and stuck it onto the paste-up of the next one! German publishers Gestalten is a survey of recent 1983’, ‘Liberated Spaces: Subcultures, Protest The final chapter, covering 2000-09, seems a bit European self-publishing and small publishers. and Consumer Culture 1980s-1990s’, ‘Girl Power scrappy, but accurately reflects the disparity of The publications included are primarily and Personal Politics’ (a particular interest of the concerned with art, design, graphic design, Zines and Fanzines made in this period. Linking 8 | variant 43 | spring 2012

drawing, illustration, photography, and art writing. Each title is given an entire page, showing the cover and several page spreads – giving a good overall impression – and accompanied by a brief description and information on the creators, edition size, frequency and printing methods used – Risograph stencil printers are very much in evidence – but cover prices are omitted. Websites, e-mails and countries of origin are all listed in the index. Compared with the publications shown in Fanzines and 100 Fanzines/10 Years, these are more colourful with carefully composed layouts, but there’s little of the passion, politics, urgency, engagement and excitement demonstrated in the other two books. A particular strongpoint is that Behind the Zines’ contemporaneity allows for the inclusion of interviews with publishers and some interesting behind-the-scenes photographs. The image showing Dot Dot Dot #15 underway is instructive, showing simultaneously, in the same locations, which are all within walking or bus proposes using the grassed areas room, an editorial meeting, designers working Mikey Tomkins hopping distance of each other. These include a surrounding the local authority housing blocks for on computers shading the adverts and preparing bookshop with its own curiosities museum in the vegetable growing, empty garages for mushroom files ready to be sent direct to the adjacent digital basement and there’s also details of weekly market farms, and plenty of beehives on the roofs of stencil printers, and a printer changing ink colours. stalls selling books. Both these bookshop maps are taller buildings. He backs up these proposals by Most of the publications in seem Behind the Zines independent initiatives. They’re the result of lots measuring the available growing spaces, suggesting much more insular and inward-looking than those of hard work by people who’ve had the vision and suitable, easy to grow fruit and vegetables, and in the other two books; some fit our definition of a energy to go ahead and get their projects off the working out the potential annual yield of these ZINE but most would be more usefully described ground. Hopefully it isn’t a thankless task. They’re crops. What may initially seem like a fantasy could as artzines, illzines, pamphlets, drawing books, both funded mainly by the bookshops listed and only be a few steps away from the ad hoc planting compendiums or maybe just picture books. are refreshingly free of funding body logo clutter. and growing already taking place. Showing so much of the publications featured is a You Are Hungry – Both are intended as ongoing projects and invite An Edible Map of South Hackney & Environs overlaps users to send in suggestions and recommendations with the area covered by Booksellers In Shoreditch for future issues – it will be interesting to see how & Hackney. Mikey Tomkins imagines a near future they evolve and grow. A bookshop map is a fairly when fresh local sweetcorn and tomatoes will be simple idea and could be easily replicated in other sold at the Saturday market on Broadway Market, locations. on the same day they’ve been picked, with zero Books are important, but feeding your brain food miles, processing or storage. I don’t know if and amusing your eyeballs is not quite as vital to any booksellers in the area are already growing survival as food. You Are Hungry – An Edible Map of herbs in window boxes or composting unsold South Hackney & Environs by Mikey Tomkins focuses magazines, but I suspect a few of them would be on public space in a small corner of East London very interested in planting some grape vines. and maps the locations of actual and imagined food Okay, three London maps is enough – I do growing activities alongside each other. Examples realise that not everyone lives in London, but thrift of current food production include beehives is omnipresent. On a recent trip to Edinburgh on top of the Space gallery and studio complex, I luckily stumbled across Raeburn Place, with Bangladeshi families creating small ad hoc gardens its rich seam of Charity shops and specialist outside their windows to grow runner beans and Charity Bookshops, where I picked up a copy of dodis (marrows), and there’s even some grapevines The Edinburgh Charity Shop And Reuse Map. It’s an growing in the back yard and up the walls of a cafe impressive resource covering the whole city. The planted by the Urban Wine Company who collect map shows 112 charity shops, furniture projects the ripe grapes and make local wine from them. and a string of Community Recycling Centre Reuse To complement this existing food growing activity Cabins, all with detailed information on the items/ laudable approach, but almost reveals too much – services they specialise in, what they sell and the there’s only two books shown that I’m tempted to type of donations they’ll accept. The main function get hold of. of this map, published by Changeworks Waste Everybody’s mapping nowadays. I can’t Prevention Team, is to actively encourage people remember reviewing maps previously in this to reuse and repair consumer goods; prioritising column, but a small stack of them have built reuse and repair over the less intelligent route of up which deserve a closer look. First up is the simply recycling things back into raw materials. elegantly designed The London Bookshop Map: 87 There’s plenty more information on the back of . This foldout map covers Independent Bookshops the map – they’re almost trying to squeeze too an enormous area; from Wood Green in North much in. There’s a resource list of other places London to Streatham in the South, and from to buy and sell secondhand goods: carboot sales, Hackney in the East to Ladbroke Grove out West. auction houses, gumtree and eBay. There’s also a The 87 independent bookshops are all listed disappointingly small section about simply giving with contact information, opening hours and a stuff away to other people, which strangely doesn’t brief description. They encompass specialists and mention the active Edinburgh freecycle group generalists, new and secondhand, antiquarian, or Free Stuff events. I’d really like to see direct occult and anarchist, with a strong showing of art, unmediated giving, without third parties regulating design and photography, but curiously there’re no or profiting from the exchange, publicised as much pornographers. You’ll discover a bookshop/reading as other reuse schemes. The Free Stuff Stores must room inside an operating railway station – open happen. I’ve never seen anything quite like The at peak commuting hours – and there’s even a Edinburgh Charity Shop And Reuse Map before: bookshop inside a greenhouse. More modest in it’s a unique, broadminded publication useful scope and utilitarian in design is Booksellers In for cheapskates, bargain hunters, declutterers, , a pocket sized map compiled Shoreditch & Hackney booklovers, and more importantly those in genuine by the and printed locally by Bookartbookshop need and trying to survive on very limited incomes. . Covering an East London triangle Ditto Press If there was a bookshop map for Edinburgh, which spans from Old Street up to Broadway Analogue Books would definitely be included, in Market and down to Whitechapel, it includes 17 variant 43 | spring 2012 | 9

Links Fanzines, Teal Triggs, Thames & Hudson, London, 2010. 100 Fanzines/10 Years of British Punk: 1976-1985, Toby Mott, Andrew Roth Inc., New York, 2011. Behind the Zines: Self-Publishing Culture, R. Klaten, A. Mollard, M. Hübner, S. Commentz, Gestalten, Berlin, 2011. Panel Discussion about 100 Fanzines at NYABF 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEVQvfAh42o 750+ fanzines from the Joly/Better Badges archive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jYQ2dTLeO0 The London Bookshop Map http://www.thelondonbookshopmap.org bookartbookshop http://www.bookartbookshop.com Mikey Tomkins: Research on food growing http://www.mikeytomkins.co.uk Changeworks http://www.changeworks.org fact they’d probably be the instigators of such Haunch of Venison ‑ ‘Loud Flash: British Punk on Paper’ a project. This compact shop offers a precisely http://haunchofvenison.com/exhibitions/past/2010/loud_flash/ curated selection of books and magazines focussing on illustration, design, graphic design Boo‑hooray and the visual arts, together with screenprints http://boo‑hooray.com by local designers and their own publications, Savage Messiah including several books by Nigel Peake. Analogue http://www.versobooks.com/books/1022‑savage‑messiah Books have a policy of displaying everything in their shop with the full cover on show. There’s no goteblud overlapping magazines or rows of book spines http://goteblud.livejournal.com which you have to bend your neck to look through. Urban Wine Company In retailing this is an approach that takes a lot of http://www.urbanwineco.com conviction and is very rarely seen. (December 2011) 10 | variant 43 | spring 2012 Towards a New Documentalism Jorge Ribalta Tagg, John. The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths both documentary and social and the Capture of Meaning. Minneapolis: University of democracy in the United Minnesota Press, 2009. (9780816642885) States, determined not only by the completion of the FSA Azoulay, Ariella. The Civil Contract of Photography. project and the participation Cambridge, MA.: Zone Books, 2008. (9781890951887) of the United States in Since John Tagg published his first book,The World War II, but also by the Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies structural transformations in and Histories (Amherst: University of the composition of the working Massachusetts Press, 1988), he has been one of the class and the new public role of most recognised figures in photographic theory. He minorities (here Tagg refers to is part of a brilliant generation of Anglo-American women, African American, and authors who emerged from the 1968 political Latino movements) throughout movement, appeared in the public arena in the the 1940s. By examining context of the 1970s New Art History, and whose practices related to those social contribution to a theorisation of photography groups, Tagg argues that the using the tools of Marxism, poststructuralism, rhetoric of transparency, which Gramscian cultural studies, feminism, and characterised the New Deal psychoanalysis remains unsurpassed. Tagg himself documentary contract, lost its recently formulated the project of this group in historical conditions. The New these terms: “we half believed that this State Deal logic of universal social stems from the fact that he limits his discussion could be smashed and that the first brick could inclusion, in other words, had reached its limit. of documentary culture to the Anglo-American be thrown by photographic theory” (John Tagg, The last two chapters are shorter and of a Griersonian-FSA mode, which is (for good reason) “Mindless Photography,” in J. J. Long, Andrea different nature; they break the historical focus the hegemonic model of the twentieth century. Noble, and Edward Welch, eds., Photography: and sequence of the previous chapters and take But he should be aware that such a focus excludes Theoretical Snapshots, New York: Routledge, 2009, on the “disciplinary mechanisms of history other practices that may question or invalidate 29). Tagg’s Disciplinary Frame continues the project and art history” (209). By referring to Roland his own conclusions. In this respect, it would be of a cultural history of photography critically Barthes’s statement in Camera Lucida (New interesting to see Tagg’s brilliant scholarship inscribed in the discourses and institutions of York: Hill and Wang, 1981) that the inventions applied to the American Photo League as part of modern culture that he initiated with his first of Photography and History were simultaneous, the international worker-photography movement book. However, Tagg’s strong investment in chapter 5 attempts to write a pre-history of the of the 1930s, which is the other (and still rather a Foucauldian framework (noticeable in the documentary discourse in photography. In this way, repressed) side of the 1930s documentary and book’s title) account’s for certain of the project’s it problematises the limits and conditions of the political dilemmas. The Photo League constitutes epistemic (and political) limitations. discursive field of documentary photography and a possible counter-model to FSA documentary, The first chapter ofDisciplinary Frame traces the photographic archive, and it exposes some of and it is part of the many successful attempts the role of the photographic archive and the the exclusions that they produce. The final chapter in the 1930s to constitute a proletarian public socially regulatory uses of photography in the is articulated as thematic flashes on terms such sphere. One wonders to what extent Tagg’s constitution of the modern liberal State. According as “the image,” “the frame,” and “the apparatus” theoretical framework simply does not allow him to Tagg, this State is characterised by two and their attempts to formulate possible directions to study anything but hegemonic practices and factors: an implicit war logic, which determines for the continuation of the project of the 1970’s discourses, or the ways in which the bourgeois the coercive force and the violence inherent to New Art History, which Tagg calls an “endless State co-opts, “recruits and mobilises” rather the State logic; and the instrumentalisation of metacommentary,” where the discursive practice is than the deviations, ruptures, and moments of culture as a means of producing social inclusion not detached from the realm of the social and the indeterminacy or resistance. Tagg’s method also and constructing citizenship, a process he calls political. seems to predetermine his melancholic defeatism, “recruitment and mobilisation” (49). Tagg’s major contribution in this book which we might associate with his decision not The central chapters deal with the 1930s, the seems, quite paradoxically, to occur in its most to read documentary photography after 1945 or key period when documentary discourse was “traditional” aspects, such as its political- to think beyond the genealogical and intervene constituted according to technocratic-liberal New genealogical reading of the constitution of the politically in current debates. Deal policies. In claiming that Farm Security documentary paradigm as an expression of New So, what if what is politically needed today Administration (FSA) documentary photography Deal policies. It is very important (and Tagg is precisely what Tagg seeks to avoid – namely, represented the “first and only true art form does this exceedingly well) to understand how “the reconstitution of a new archivism or of a produced by social democracy” (61), Tagg follows documentary rhetoric has been historically new documentalism” (233)? What if, in other the work of John Grierson, the recognised founder built upon such notions of universalism and words, we need to reinvent some equivalent (but of the reformist documentary film movement in transparency, which are inherent not only to not identical) conditions of universality and the late 1920s. The second chapter studies FSA and New Deal’s social democracy but to liberal transparency associated with the classic forms Griersonian discourse as constituting documentary representative democracy technologies for public of New Deal documentary, precisely because the photography as a specific cultural form for social address and communication. By focusing on the documentary social function continues to exist “recruitment and mobilisation” within the specific Griersonian-FSA paradigm, Tagg illuminates the and operate publicly and hegemonically in spite historical conditions of the 1930s. The ethical structural link between the documentary approach of declarations from academia that it is obsolete? contract between the citizen and the paternalistic and the liberal democratic public sphere. But Documentary is everywhere today, since it is State as a form of collective participation was this important and necessary discourse is hardly structurally linked to democratic discourse and based on an ethics of transparency and expressed new. Maren Stange’s, Symbols of Ideal Life: Social to the ideological conditions of the liberal public in documentary tropes such as “truth,” “dignity Documentary Photography in America, 1890–1950 sphere in which we live, as Tagg himself has of fact,” or the “innate decency of the ordinary” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) worked to illuminate. That said, we also need to (93). The third chapter focuses on Walker Evans and John Roberts’s The Art of Interruption: Realism, recognise that documentary practices will continue as a specific and problematic case study inside of Photography and the Everyday (Manchester: to exist as long as liberal democracy does. What do the hegemonic documentary paradigm in 1930s Manchester University Press, 1998) are two good we do with that? America (emblematised by Life magazine). Tagg examples of other theoretical photographic studies We can look for a possible and productive argues that Evans’s “melancholic lassitude,” or emerging from the New Art History approach that answer to that question in Ariella Azoulay’s book, his characteristic ambiguity and resistance to have traced that lineage before; we might also The Civil Contract of Photography. Azoulay lives meaning, determines “an impossible internal point to the work of artists like Martha Rosler and works in Israel and her study of photography, distance from the very discursive frame in which it or Allan Sekula, whose political readings of particularly in this book, is very much informed is produced as subject” (177), and would introduce photographic modernism since the mid-1970s on by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This means that a degree of self-critique to that “documentary many levels coincide with and precede those of the book’s theoretical elaborations are rooted in style” of which he has been canonised as Tagg. the empirical observation of and participation in “father.” Chapter 4 focuses on the dissolution of My main dissatisfaction with Tagg’s approach the photographic practices related to that conflict, variant 43 | spring 2012 | 11

which produces well-known conditions of exclusion What makes this book important is the way the photographic document. They do so, moreover, of political rights and citizenship to a large it changes the conditions for thinking about the in a period when photographic theory has not been number of people. In such a context, photography public life of the photographic document and particularly productive on that front, trapped as has demonstrated that it continues to be a key opens up a fertile new space to be explored in it has been in metaphysical dilemmas concerning political instrument of emancipation in current the future. Bringing together modern philosophy the indexicality of the photographic sign, which social struggles. and her own observations of Palestinian includes the debates on post-photography and the Azoulay’s theoretical tools are grounded in political struggles, Azoulay reinserts micro- impact of digital technologies on photography’s feminism, postcolonial theory, and political political practices into discursive production and nature. Paradigmatic of this state of the field is philosophy. She draws from the work of Ettiene reactivates the social potential of the photographic the recent anthology edited by James Elkins, Balibar, Giorgio Agamben, and Judith Butler, document. Contrary to photographic theory Photography Theory (New York: Routledge, 2007), as well as Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, produced in the context of the New Art History, which continues to foreground somewhat sterile and Martin Heidegger. Her book is an unusual Azoulay’s book displays neither a theoretical nor debates about indexicality above all others, combination of photographic theory and political a political hesitation to reintroduce notions of one can hope for the last time. The appearance philosophy which reconceives citizenship as universality and transparency into her discussion of these new books by Tagg and Azoulay, along based on the “relations between the governed” of documentary photography. Here it is useful with other recent studies by authors like Blake in ways not limited to the conditions of the to compare Azoulay with Tagg, whose discursive Stimson (The Pivot of The World: Photography and State. This notion of citizenship is based on a process challenges the positivistic universalism its Nation, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), may “new ontological-political understanding of of modern political philosophy, based on a be symptomatic of a welcomed turning point. photography” (23) that considers the many universal classless-genderless-raceless citizen. What these authors do is particularly important, different agents involved in the production and Post-1968 theory (what has been variously labelled since they also fundamentally challenge Michael circulation of photographic discourse (the camera, poststructuralism and postcolonialism) introduced Fried’s claim that today “photography matters as the photographer, the photographed subject, and micro-politics, or a politics of minorities not art as never before” (Why Photography Matters as the spectator), with none of these granted the predetermined by State logic, as the site of Art as Never Before, New Haven and London: Yale power to control meaning alone. Azoulay’s notion political struggles in new social movements, at University Press, 2008). Together they offer a very of photography as a civil contract is, moreover, a the same time that it de-centered the myth of the different conclusion: if photography can return to reference to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social universal citizen. Tagg also expresses the limits or a polemical documentary status today, then it will Contract (1760). She thus theorises photography failure of a micro-political scope by stopping short come back to life. What is more, photography may as a non-essentialist secular agreement amongst of bringing micro-politics into a transformative be useful for throwing bricks against the State, citizens, as defined by modern political philosophy. logic – that is, into a practice able to overcome but it can also transcend and surpass the State. The book is divided into nine chapters, as a the repressive macro-political machine of the It can produce what we might call a “citizenry of “progression of different, but related topics,” and State. By internalising the theoretical legacy of photography,” or a de-territorialised restoration of combines a theoretical elaboration on and analysis both modernity and postmodernity, on the other citizenship in the global era. of practices primarily concerning the Middle East hand, Azoulay addresses the fact that micro- politics needs to generate forms of universalism, conflict. In the introduction, Azoulay explains that Jorge Ribalta, artist, freelance curator and writer, or somehow deal with the macro-political scale, in her project is to analyse how photography may Barcelona, Spain contribute to a public and collective space that order to produce transformative and emancipatory creates conditions of citizenship and participation effects. It is precisely in the photographic beyond the regulation of governing powers. She documentary contract that she finds space for writes: “The Civil Contract of Photography is an such an operation: “photography remains part of attempt to anchor spectatorship in civic duty the res publica of the citizenry,” she writes, “and is toward the photographed persons who haven’t or can become one of the last lines of defense in stopped being ‘there’, towards dispossessed the battle over citizenship for those who still see citizens who, in turn, enable the rethinking of the citizenship as something worth fighting for” (131). concept and practice of citizenship.... An emphasis It is meaningful in this respect to see how on the dimension of being governed allows a Azoulay’s book liquidates simply and quickly rethinking of the political sphere as a space questions concerning the photographic index between the governed, whose political duty is first and photographic realism, which have been and foremost a duty toward one another, rather so determining in postmodern approaches to than toward the ruling power” (16-17). She goes the medium precisely because the index has on to explain that her use of the term “contract” functioned as an emblem of positivism and thus replaces others like “shame” or “compassion.” As of the (false) universalism and transparency a result, it is grounded in an understanding of the of the photographic sign. By examining how relations established through photography and its “indexical” documentary photography continues modes of public circulation, which produces a de- to circulate and function socially in the media territorialised public sphere that offers a general in spite of philosophical debates about the and equally shared condition of citizenship. death of photographic realism, she observes that The first chapter is a reading of theDeclaration “critical discussions seeking to challenge the of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen from the truth of photography, or argue that ‘photography French Revolution of 1789 as a constitutive lies’, remain anecdotal and marginal to the document for modern (male and female) citizens. institutionalised practices of exhibiting and The second chapter explains the civil contract publishing photographs. Only a glance at of photography itself and constitutes the core of a newspaper kiosk is needed to realise the the book’s argument. Chapters 3 and 7 contribute enduring power of the news photo. Photography’s to an understanding of the conditions of consent critics tend to forget that despite the fact that among partners and the figure of the spectator as photography speaks falsely, it also speaks the an effect of photography. Chapter 4 analyses the truth” (126–27). This is not a negation or refusal image of horror as a case study for understanding of postmodernism, but a change of emphasis, a what the author calls the production of an new focus. While a critique on the level of artistic “emergency claim” in photography, drawing mediation or representation is fundamental, it examples from the second intifada. Chapters 5 cannot stop there; the theoretical tools Azoulay and 9 deal with representations of women and offers have powerful ethical implications and sexual violence, while chapters 6 and 8 present suggest new ways to reconnect discursive the “living conditions of Palestinians as existence production with social struggles. on the threshold of catastrophe,” as well as the The Disciplinary Frame and The Civil Contract of photographic methods of managing and oppressing Photography are thus complementary books insofar the Palestinian population. as they update the cultural and political space of 12 | variant 43 | spring 2012 On Martial Values and Britishness Emma Louise Briant of moral panic to prevail; fuelling a reactionary hierarchy with lower-ability children held back thrust of public anger used to justify the in lower grades regardless of increasing age; a continuity of significant state restructuring. One demoralising teaching structure that reflects petition calling for rioters’ benefits to be revoked the pyramid society itself, ensuring children gained at least 60,000 signatures in the 24 hours become familiar with their place in its structure.18 after the riots.12 Such malice and demagoguery ResPublica calls the schools a MoD and DfE may be startling, but isn’t all that new. Successive “partnership in the delivery of education”.19 governments have emphasised vigilance to This despite criticism during MoD governance threats at home and abroad, creating scapegoats of privatisations (QinetiQ was undervalued to distract from domestic and foreign policy and leading to massive profits for its executives20 drum up support. The solution to Gove’s redefined and losses for the public).21 The Phoenix school’s problem is now, as before, being presented to the ‘zero-tolerance’ approach is presented as a direct public as a return to old-fashioned discipline and response to the riots, seeking to halt ‘indiscipline’, martial values, starting with the ‘moral decay’ of instilling martial values such as “self-discipline, the imagined nation’s amassed children. respect and an ability to listen”.22 Unmentioned Shaking the Pyramid goes the need to develop enquiring minds. The Back in 2008, the now Foreign Secretary William initiative is directed at those in poverty, and Hague assured the US that he, “David Cameron claims to be “tackling disadvantage” and “social and George Osborne were ‘children of Thatcher’ ills”.23 Effectively, it seeks to mould the poor and 1 and staunch Atlanticists”. Hague said while oppressed into a more compliant population. he recognised this was at odds with British The question remains, what ‘opportunities’ will public opinion, politicians “sit at the top of the be offered to young people in disadvantaged 2 pyramid”. This autocratic approach extends areas, many of whom already see few choices beyond foreign policy and, it seems, among those beyond ‘economic conscription’ into the military? being ‘sat on’ at the bottom are thousands of – the creation of another captive market for the people who rioted in England last August, 2011. privateers. These disturbances were ultimately seen to Increasing authoritarian discipline is in reality result from marginalisation and resentment felt a political trajectory of the last few decades. in communities experiencing joblessness and The Guardian criticised the harsh policies of 3 aggressive policing. 66% of those charged with New Labour and its “immediate predecessors”, related offences were from neighbourhoods that revealing that “between 1992 and 2001, the 4 got poorer between 2007 and 2010. Discipline the Youth number of children being jailed every year It is perhaps unsurprising that the Tories are ‘Citizenship’ has been securing the foundations soared by 90% […] The number of children feeling their pyramid rather unstable. Worsening of this pyramid in schools in England since 2002. under 15 sent to custody increased by 800%” and economic deprivation and lack of opportunity are These compulsory classes set out to nurture despite “around 80%” of these having “at least the foundations of young people’s alienation in cohesion through socialisation, implicitly two mental disorders”, this course continued.24 Britain, paucities exacerbated by policy measures minimising any questioning of societies’ Furthermore, the sort of ‘preventative’ repression including, but not limited to, the scrapping institutions. That pupils did gain a more complex we’re now seeing actually began under Labour, of Education Maintenance Allowances; the understanding of contemporary laws and political when they announced that through surveillance 5 arbitrary suspensions of benefits ; and ‘workfare’ systems from such classes is something clearly they could predict which children would become programmes demanding the free labour of benefit undesirable to the Coalition. In favour of more criminals.25 Since 2004, police have added the recipients in return for their continued state subtly-integrated propaganda delivered through DNA of children over 10 to a database identifying welfare provisions.6 Two years into Coalition history teaching Gove’s curriculum review has government, PM Cameron’s brand of Thatcherite7 scrapped these compulsory classes. Gove has said ‘there is no alternative’ government has had the emphasis will now be on “our island story”, quite the impact. And yet somewhat ironically, the value of ‘Britishness’, national pride and the government diagnose the resulting riots as cohesion.13 It’s the return of the ‘Kings and Queens’ symptomatic of behavioural issues, weak morality, approach, the rote boredom of yesteryear. Under poor schooling8, criminality and gangs.9 advice from ‘Better History Group’ think-tank Autocratic martial values and a deepening and ‘history tsar’, Simon Schama, British-centred militarisation of state and civil society are the history will strengthen our “national memory”.14 mortars used in an attempt to patch-up the now- Elsewhere Gove’s policies have been criticised Tory pyramid – a neoliberal system of governance, by Cambridge History Professor, Richard Evans, after all, spanning all the dominant political who said they would deliver “self-congratulatory parties. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, is narrow myths of history” to schoolchildren.15 currently polarising the population into a “hard- Quintessentially English myths of ‘Britishness’ on working majority” and a “vicious, lawless, immoral which martial values can be better built. minority” – reconstructing the problem of the riots Coalition plans sunk lower still in August, when as one of culture, rather than one of inequality and Cameron announced his goal to militarise schools unbounded capitalism.10 In so doing he appeals to in England and Wales. Initiating a wider project a fear and populism that turns humanity against for 10 state-run military academies, the ‘Phoenix’ itself, instead of against government policies. school opens in September 2013.16 Conservative As the theorist Slavoj Zizek argues “the cause Party think-tank ResPublica recommended “a of the troubles is ultimately never the system as chain of academies sponsored by the Armed such, but the intruder who corrupted it (financial Forces” and “using their practical experience manipulators, not capitalists as such, etc.); not a and existing governance support”.17 They will fatal flaw inscribed into the structure as such, but institutionalise militarism; the schools will be an element that doesn’t play its role within the entirely operated using ex-military personnel, or structure properly”.11 Following Zizek’s analysis, ‘civilian teachers’ “recruited with an intention and in this case: the rioters. The lack of real media of joining the Reserves”. The priority will be for debate during the period allowed the favoured ‘vertical grouping’ of children. This will instill a variant 43 | spring 2012 | 13

preferential state-backed employment at the lead in extending police powers further.47 The expense of existing professional teachers? media role has been crucial in framing protest After the public was, and continues to be, to justify this build-up of domestic ‘security repeatedly lied to about consecutive illegal measures’, extending the rhetoric of ‘terrorism’ invasions and occupations – from the Balkans into their coverage of what are largely ‘crimes to Iraq, from Afghanistan to Libya – why are against property’, e.g. trespass (by refusing to On Martial we allowing this government to further embed leave a department store) which is being further the military into our lives, our schools and our criminalised. During the public sector cuts culture with such little resistance? They argue it is protest back in March 2011, one Daily Mail byline positive to instil the culture of the military in our read “extremists hijack anti-government cuts children. But, according to a former Army Officer, demonstration” [my emphasis]. 48 The Mail leapt the culture nurtured within the British Armed on a group of protestors in “the Queen’s Grocer” Values and Forces holds that “they are good at Colonial Fortnum and Mason, arguing they “terrorised warfare, [...] at turning out in Nyasaland, talking staff and customers” [my emphasis], though 109 to the Chiefs, getting the natives in line, lining charges were dismissed by the Crown Prosecution people up with a picture of Queen Victoria, and Service.49 The Mail of course doesn’t mention giving them all a Martini-Henry rifle”.34 This was that five months before this article, the police reflected in the conduct of British Officers in Iraq. had already admitted misleading protesters into Britishness Human rights lawyer Phil Shiner claims British thinking they would let them leave Fortnum’s abuse of Iraqis could not be dismissed as “one- peacefully, before detaining all 150 in custody (five offs” but was “colonial savagery” reflective of a minors were in cells overnight).50 Less peaceful wider systemic problem.35 It is a problem in the attacks on property came with the London riots in way Britain is constructed and propagandised, at August and Cameron then promised to abandon home and abroad, as a nation. Eminent US critic restraint completely, “Whatever resources the of the militarisation of education, Henry A. Giroux police need they will get. Whatever tactics they argues that, “as an educational force, military feel they need they will have legal backing to do power produces identities, goods, institutions, so.”51 knowledge, modes of communication and affective Eager attempts to bring in US ‘zero-tolerance’ investments – in short, it now bears down on expert William Bratton as Commissioner at all aspects of social life and the social order.”36 London’s Metropolitan Police followed.52 There’s The fabrication of the British pyramid is being been a gradual militarisation in approach with reinforced through intimidation or force, and the ministers saying (despite the debacle of the ‘War intended and unintended impacts of this across on Terror’), that Army officers having served in our whole culture cannot be underestimated. Afghanistan should be fast-tracked into high- Police at War ranking police positions. Support for a Sandhurst- After the London riots, Affan Burki claimed style police training college was also suggested, that, “...before we put troops on the streets we mixing former soldiers and intelligence officials should consider putting them in our schools” – with police in Theresa May’s vision of a British yet, militarisation does not stop at the pyramid’s FBI.53 (A rolling out of Special Branch, British foundations.37 The attempt to insert martial Army, and Security Services’ actions in Northern values into the psychology of how public space Ireland more widely?) Then, in February 2012 is to function as a site for political encounter the government ordered a police crackdown is reinforced by the militarisation of domestic on protests and demonstrations against its policing and harsh social control methods on controversial ‘workfare’ scheme. Police and streets throughout the UK. Images of police intelligence are to further target “extreme ‘kettling’ protesters (including children and left-wing activity”.54 Furthermore, the media, young people) in 2010 and charging at students particularly the BBC, are facing government attack resisting education cuts shocked many.38 And for having voiced the concerns of those opposing yet the state-corporate media opted to rage at workfare, and other authoritarian policies. Critics those ‘at-risk’ of becoming criminals with 87,459 the (surely unsurprising) response of a group have been dismissed as “hard-left militants”, samples taken from 10-16 year olds in 2005-2006 of protesters when a car carried flustered echoing Thatcherite rhetoric.55 Even critics, it alone, and the DNA of 24,000 youngsters aged royals travelled through their midst, whilst the seems, are the new terrorists. As the ‘War on Terror’ 10-18 who had not even been convicted of an reporting of protestors trapped without food in fades from dominant media memory, if not the offence remaining held in 2010.26 Hundreds of horrendous conditions for 10 hours remained day-to-day realities of millions across the globe, these young people were arrested in Camden, scant in comparison. Cameron, of course, called the ‘War on Critics’ escalates; the infrastructure only for it to be revealed in 2009 that police were for the “full force” of law against the group of counter-terrorism becomes an infrastructure of arresting these young people, who had committed (the individual now held to be collectively counter-criticism, an anti-politics, and our streets no crime, just to get them on the database. The responsible39) and the police denied kettling and our culture are battlefields on which it’s being purpose of this blatant harassment was said to contributed to the frustrated actions.40 This fought. be to deter future crime, and to make it easier to supposedly ‘violent’ incident (only property was In the wake of riots brought on in large part catch them if they did do something.27 Perhaps actually damaged) was used to distract public by massive austerity measures and oppressive unsurprisingly, Camden and Tottenham were areas and media attention from actual injuries to 43 policing, it is unsurprising the government has in which the riots kicked off, in part triggered by protestors – Alfie Meadows required brain surgery been jittery about the run up to the London increasingly oppressive policing. Phoenix School after being hit by a police baton.41 Since the Olympics. Militarisation strategies and martial head-teacher, Captain Affan Burki, told The August 2011 riots, the focus of, and resistance values are strongly influencing Olympic planning. Telegraph, without intended irony, that “All the to, government policies and imperatives has Philip Hammond MP promised us a “peaceful old remedies for poverty, underachievement and shifted from the social advancement appeals of celebration of sporting achievement and a alienation have been tested to destruction. The young people wanting access to education, to cultural celebration – not a security event”.56 consequences were starkly before us on the streets the disenfranchised of our cities – even easier to It’s depressing to observe that the Government’s of Tottenham and Croydon”.28 And the subsequent dismiss as a “vicious lawless, immoral minority”.42 vision of ‘cultural celebration’ in London takes the Government response? A military approach to It was a smooth transition of narrative, barely form of an intimidating 13,500-strong uniformed educational discipline (Camden was flagged as a noticed in our media, but we see the same rhetoric military presence.57 We are brazenly told there priority military academy location29), nationwide used to justify the extension of ‘counter-terrorism’ will be surface to air missiles, a large number of surveillance and still more aggressive policing. measures; ever-harsher actions against the new aircraft, and SAS units floating on the Thames In fact, Burki argues that Army discipline, ‘enemy to stability’ in Britain. ready to deploy.58 In addition to pulling in what integrated into teaching, will instil “selfless It’s not just rhetoric. ‘Anti-Terror’ legislation is, according to The Guardian, more uniformed commitment”.30 Upping the pressure, Michael was used against protesters in England and Wales military than deployed in Afghanistan, the Navy’s Gove recently scrapped the requirement for as early as 2003, with extended stop and search largest ship will be based in Greenwich throughout teachers in England to record all instances of powers (ruled illegal by the European Court of the games, though it was ‘accidentally’ airbrushed ‘physical restraint’, and effectively welcomed Human Rights by 2010) used against protestors from posters displayed throughout the London harsher disciplinary measures in all schools.31 He’s demonstrating outside an arms fair.43 The Tories Underground network. Expectedly, The Daily keen to be seen as deploying discipline in and out in opposition were posturing on ending state Mail decried this as organisers ashamed of our of schools across England; extending headteachers’ intrusion – Tony Blair’s Labour government having “proud military history” 59 whereas this “history” powers to punish children for any public created more than 3,000 new offences44 – while the as a carrier of martial values is being promoted misdemeanour, and employing former-military then Labour government’s Policing and Security at every opportunity, down to Tower of London- male personnel as ‘mentors’.32 Conceivably, Minister, David Hanson, justified it saying: “Stop inspired Olympic uniforms.60 Gove needs to explain why “former soldiers and and search [...] is an important tool in a package of Unsurprisingly the FBI have stated that they military personnel are the highest single former measures in the ongoing fight against terrorism.”45 have established a “close working relationship” occupational group serving sentences in British Police have faced continued pressure to subdue with the UK’s Olympic security.61 Most reports prisons”33? And also, to explain whether these public protests, while portraying them as a public put the FBI numbers at 500 agents, who may or troubling statistics are part of the reason why this threat. The tactic of ‘kettling’ “also attempts to may not be armed.62 To a large extent heightened growing former occupational group are securing incite the crowd”.46 The Coalition has taken a security is an attempt to justify responses to 14 | variant 43 | spring 2012 public protest being portrayed as counter- interventions’ in Sierra Leone and Kosovo. The financial profit even though it claims to be a terrorism in a domestic context. This all has a UK leadership continues to use this international ‘not for profit’ organisation – having lucrative horrible resonance with the 2008 Olympic Games. role to maintain its interests and power on the subsidiary commercial companies, some of which The Chinese authorities similarly increased world stage (with Blair’s ongoing prominent have either an unfair advantage or a complete security and deployed its Navy during their involvement ). Actually, the UK Government has monopoly over their market. In addition, local hosting of the Games, also in fear of their own been repeatedly criticised for unethical policies; authorities are inviting ‘security’ bids for “a people’s mass protests. The UK government in its dealings with China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, wide range of services, including criminal similarly wants to prevent the Games being used Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Libya, amongst investigations, patrolling neighbourhoods and as an opportunity for public protest, and it is others.69 After Robin Cook said Labour would detaining suspects”.80 Brian Paddick, the former prepared to do this through a demonstration of build an ‘ethical’ foreign policy, the Foreign Office Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner, told power. If anything, such measures would appear scrambled to cover themselves; its then minister The Guardian, “The British tradition of policing more likely to guarantee unrest. Peter Hain said “we don’t live in an ethical by consent, rather than by force and weight of Giroux argues that, “what appears new about world” and it was a “mistake” to allow “policy to numbers, is being eroded” and these plans “will the amplified militarization of the post-9/11 be presented as if we could have perfection”.70 accelerate that process.”81 The Police Federation world is that it has become normalized, serving In 2011 the depth of Foreign Office involvement also called this radical shift towards private as a powerful educational force that shapes our in UK citizens’ torture in Guantanamo Bay was policing “an extremely dangerous road to take”.82 lives, memories and daily experiences.”63 In one revealed.71 But having normalised contracting in Those benefiting from the lucrative business recent worrying development in militarisation, ‘ethical interventions’ abroad it was not hard to of police militarisation, are manufacturers – the government has been trying to exploit a extend this practise back home, increasing private supplying armoured vehicles, body scanners and loophole in the Chemical Weapons Convention sector deployment for domestic ‘interventions’. surveillance equipment, including unmanned to sanction the use of nerve-agents for “domestic British experience in imperial policing, according spy drones proposed for covert surveillance law enforcement”, or riot-control.64 There to Cassidy, a major in the U.S. Army, has “made throughout UK airspace during future protests.83 was international criticism when, in 2002, internal security the norm and conventional war Steel cordons designed for chemical, biological, 115 hostages died from a mystery gas used the exception” for Britain, and ‘creating stability radiological and nuclear emergencies have been by Russian Special Forces to end the Moscow within’ has long been seen as a crucial part of bought in; they kept parliament ‘uninfected’ by Theatre Siege.65 But a group of neuroscientists, British security strategy.72 This is a permanent war protest in London.84 This equipment, designed for commissioned by the Royal Society, concluded in which Britain is engaged. It invokes a climate of extreme quarantine situations, was used to keep that the UK Government’s position on the use of fear in which martial values are seen as ‘of value politicians distant from those wanting to question “incapacitating chemical agents” for domestic to the nation’, our culture comes to emphasise them. Boxing-in protest with 10ft high steel walls use has been relaxed in recent years, allowing security and conformity against ‘political is as much a statement about state weakness and development of nerve-agents of the kind used extremists’ who dare to question. Terming it “the distancing us from decision-making as it is about during Russian sieges.66 China has also been shock doctrine”, Naomi Klein argues through explicit control over the public. It physicalises criticized for use of nerve agents against its numerous examples that the disorientation that the divides of inequality on which the pyramid own people and it is terrifying that the public follows natural and man-made crises has been society’s layers are constructed. are not more active in holding to account a systematically exploited for political and economic With so much investment in new security UK government that would consider similar gain.73 We’re seeing an accelerating encroachment technologies, security contractors will be authoritarian tactics.67 There is a degree of public of the private sector (of its interest, narratives, showcased throughout the Olympic Games, complacency or ‘selective inattention’68, one even and imperatives) into the area of public control celebrating industry’s role in the militarisation of tinged with imperial superiority, concerning the (boosting private interests of politicians and UK society. Ray Mey, from the UN International voyeurism of repression elsewhere – be it Tahrir or their hangers-on). Indeed, former Conservative Permanent Observatory on Security for Major Tiananmen Square – and it not happening here. At party treasurer Peter Cruddas recently showed Events, recommended ‘lessons’ be drawn from times of emergent dissent a narrative of embattled that political influence is being sold to the China for London Olympic security resource continuity in taking a ‘great nation’ with a ‘rich highest bidder.74 Offerings are made at the top planning.85 US-based Security Industry Association past’ into the future is often engaged, and this is of Cameron’s pyramid to the gods of commerce, regarded the 2008 Olympics a great opportunity as clearly being used today to reinforce the edifice impoverishing the lives of those at its base, who they “not only showcase world-class athletes, they of Cameron’s pyramid, through an even more still must respect its traditional command. The showcase world-class security technologies and compliant culture. party of ‘law and order’ is now regularly caught services from our industry”.86 Showcasing British being cavalier with its uneven application – a ‘security’ will be “twice the number” of media disdain that might be described as neo-feudalist. as athletes, and the focus is Chinese investment, Great swathes of British defence are moving encouraged through a ‘China Business Day’ during into the hands of profit-seeking companies, the Games and £25m spent on international including Trident. Despite criticism of Lockhead investment campaigns.87 Minister for the Olympics Martin’s record managing large-scale U.S. public Hugh Robertson said Olympic ceremonies projects, it will lead a consortium responsible represent a “once-in-a-generation opportunity for missile “processing, handling and storage”; to showcase the very best of our country to four “radiological safety” and “nuclear emergency billion people around the world and have a response”.75 AWE, its partner within the potential advertising value of £2-5 billion”.88 But consortium, has been criticised on safety, and MSP British power is what’s being demonstrated and Michael Russell has called the plans “foolhardy here it seems, for the Government, “the best of our and reckless”.76 With other privatisations including country” is social control and security technology. explosives, ammunitions, small arms, air search Britain’s ‘security showcase’ will occur and rescue, aircraft maintenance and weapons in a London where business confidence was procurement, data collection and processing, recently shaken by mass public protest, and the martial interests can be seen to have an immense Government have promised to ensure London hold in public and private sectors, consolidating is a ‘clean city’ during the games – one free of the ‘value’ of ‘security’ in society. Society is coming any product or advertisement rivalling Olympic to function as a means to invest and expand this sponsors. Volunteers will target anyone wearing a lucrative system. Research by The International T-shirt with a corporate logo; putting masking tape Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons recently over it or forcing them to remove their clothes. demonstrated that “teachers’ pension funds [...] Apparently, “sponsors pay a lot of money for the invest heavily in companies involved in the nuclear Olympics and they are entitled to protect their weapons industry” including BAE Systems and investment”.89 In many ways, Cameron is also Babcock International through Barclays, HSBC, protecting his own investment, bringing in a ‘clean Lloyds and Royal Bank.77 The UK Universities city’ for marketing his vision of Britain; a ‘clean Superannuation Scheme, the “principal pension city’ free of alternative political messages provided scheme” of University and College employees by protesters. Helping re-package the city for also invests in war production.78 As Michael Gayer international consumption are G4 Security, whose observes, with militarisation, civil society comes contract shot from 10,000 to 23,700 personnel in to support and organise itself behind this new December.90 Police powers were extended ahead Contracting in Control driving force “for the production of violence”, of the games, including “the right to enter private 91 Beyond controlling mass unrest, there are political resulting in a steady erosion of civil liberties and homes and seize political posters”. There will be and commercial interests that benefit from the encroachment of defence on other aspects of fast-track removal of un-approved protests, with 79 92 criminalising dissent and manipulating fear. The national life. Privatisation and militarisation ‘exclusion zones’, probably utilising steel cordons. rhetoric of an ‘ethical foreign policy’ and public together create vested interests in continuing And, protecting Cameron’s investment, the Met fear were manipulated throughout the ongoing threats alongside fear of, and actual, unrest and has acknowledged the UK will spend whatever it 93 ‘War on Terror’ to make defence contracting at violence. takes to keep the Olympic venues ‘secure’. The home and abroad seem acceptable; another part The contracting trend has brought the gradual Olympic budget was doubled in December, with 94 of normal governance. An ‘ethical foreign policy’ blurring of public and private in policing. ACPO, a ‘security’ rise to £553m expected. The London never emerges in reality, but it justifies martial set up as a PLC in 1997 and replacing an informal Olympics are being used as a manufacturing and values among our new generation, people raised network of police chiefs, decides on national investment opportunity – where the private sector in a country in a state of continuous war since policing strategies and consequently both is reliant on significant public outlay – one that before Desert Storm. Of course, Blair made ‘liberal influences and shapes government policy. ACPO helps instil compliant values in British culture. has grown in power, influence and snowballing Indeed security trade organisations use contacts in variant 43 | spring 2012 | 15 the media to emphasise the existence of a threat, country and risking your life for us. It must have martial values out of our cultural fabric. and stress the value of contractors in maintaining been very scary and a difficult task to do. I’m Returning to the case study of the London order.95 sure it was hard to leave your friends and family Olympics, we can see how efforts stretch beyond Now at the University of Bath, following the behind. You were very brave.”110 The Legion draws physical military presence, into representations of University of Strathclyde’s closure of its Sociology on public sympathy for the millions injured or wider national culture that associate ‘Britishness’ department due to its “too critical”96 stance, David killed by war, without questioning its causes. It with conservative values and militarism. There will, Miller and Tom Mills have charted the rise of the frowns on any criticism of military institutions or for example, be the usual Adidas-clad volunteers ‘terrologist’; a community of security ‘experts’ policy. One soldier spokesman calls the programme and staff. But this is no ordinary sportswear; the with backgrounds in government or contracting “a great way to get youngsters to connect with 76,000 organisers will be sporting military-style who dominate our media. Having few academic what the military has done. Anything which brings uniform. Adidas have based the Olympic uniform credentials, 73% of these ‘experts’ were found to civilians and the military close together is a good style upon the Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’ uniforms. reproduce ‘orthodox’ statements supportive of thing and these cards do that.”111 This iconic image from popular culture, now official rhetoric and focused on violence directed detached from its original context, makes the at states, not state-sponsored violence.97 The authority of military-wear seem more palatable study cited Paul Wilkerson from the University for the event. Uniforms had great significance in of St. Andrews ‘Centre for the Study of Terrorism ’60s counterculture; their popularity rooted in and Political Violence’98 whose counter-terrorism the shock value of a “parody of treasured cultural expertise helped the Government rationalise icons” or “conservative values”.120 Such items permanent anti-terror legislation.99 A trend were not manufactured by Adidas, but genuine toward close supportive relationships between symbols of power, used in protest – Carnaby Street academics and government or industry is being shop ‘I was Lord Kitchener’s Valet’ fed a growing imported from the US. America has a strong demand for genuine military paraphernalia. The tradition of ‘think-tanks’ producing politically- challenge to mainstream values inspired attempts skewed ‘research’ with conclusions that reflect to make military wear look ‘effeminate’ (as day- their political or commercial sympathies. Conflicts glo Beatles uniforms would have appeared).121 The of interest result from increasing ties between Olympic uniforms, in contrast, disassociate the academic institutions and the Government or use of uniforms from counterculture. Indeed, 2012 security industry. Olympic chief executive Paul Deighton stated their Influential military experts Maj. Gen. Mackay intent was to be “traditional” and “non-divisive” and Commander Tatham have argued that this – a ‘regal’ purple and Grenadier Guard “poppy networking of “civilian and military” in the red”.122 With nostalgia, the popularity remains, but US is “urgently required” in Britain. 100 In the meaning is reassigned to conservative social values US, academics assist in, among other things, in our collective memory. psychological warfare101 and concern has been More widely, the military/royal iconography raised over the affects of military-sponsored of ’60s counterculture, is being referenced research on academic freedom and curriculum.102 throughout mainstream culture, but redefined The father of PR, Edward Bernays, once said, in contemporary marketing. Memorabilia has “If you can influence the leaders, either with swamped UK stores. A flurry of press attention or without their conscious co-operation, you celebrated Kate Middleton’s taste in choosing automatically influence the group which they a vintage McQueen wedding dress. But there sway”.103 Anthropological writings were used to was no discussion about the way her and Will’s engineer oppression, blackmail and psychological nuptials were marketed as a logical extension of techniques in Abu Ghraib.104 The US ‘Network of Manufacturing Martial Culture the ‘Vintage’ movement in the UK. What has been Concerned Anthropologists’ has therefore been This brings us to the cultural consequences; interesting is that manufactured regalia is being encouraging the discipline to pledge against the ripples throughout our day-to-day lives. aggressively associated with the past through its attempts to “militarize anthropology in a way that Militarism has gone commercial with the use of very design. The bunting that went on sale in Tesco undermines the integrity of the discipline and contractors now barely questioned in domestic Superstores ahead of the Royal wedding – ‘pre- returns anthropology to its sad roots as a tool of or international contexts. And British popular crumpled’, faded and aged – should be making a colonial occupation, oppression, and violence”.105 culture is being carefully adapted to support this reappearance for the Queen’s upcoming jubilee. Efforts are similarly threatening UK academia; policy through its culture industry. The idea of a Those seeking to capitalise on the Royal Wedding proposals have included bringing social scientists ‘Culture Industry’, first introduced by Theodore attempted to sidestep the outright jingoism and into counter-terrorism and intelligence. Due Adorno and Max Horkheimer, was popularised uncomfortable connotations that have commonly to criticism, this strategy entitled ‘Combating in the 1960s and ’70s as a way of thinking about become associated with the Union Jack flag. Terrorism by Countering Radicalisation’ failed the rising industries of mass-produced culture, Instead, we are to buy into an invented past of 112 to have the impact of similar US programmes.106 and its ability to create conformity. Guided by the cricket green and garden parties – the same But since it was withdrawn in 2006, the ESRC Government policy, the media have an increasingly implicit England, ironically, of unapologetic (“the UK’s largest funder of [academic] research dominant role in marketing militarism and war, imperialism.123 113 on economic and social issues”) has channelled as apparent through the ‘War on Terror’. Robin The Vintage movement was borne out of funding into studies of ‘security threats’ and “new Beste at Stop the War Coalition claims that Rupert ‘pop-up shops’; an effort of culture in resisting security challenges”, incentivising research that Murdoch’s media “supported all the US-UK wars dominant retail monopolies, reacting against contributes to security policy107 – PhDs producing over the past 30 years, from Margaret Thatcher overconsumption and disposability through militarised knowledge for the war industries. More and the Falklands war in 1982... [right] up to the an ethic to reuse. But increasingly vintage is direct efforts are also still under active pursuit. present, with Barack Obama continuing the wars becoming another mass-produced commodity. Mackay and Tatham, both influential figures in this in Afghanistan and Iraq and now adding Libya The Royal Wedding and Olympics demonstrate 114 area, recommended that plans to put researchers to his tally of seven wars.” The British Legion how ‘Vintage’ has gone full circle, moving at the employ of defence be adapted for trial by also nurtures strong media partnerships, building beyond simple appropriation to the promotion of the MoD.108 support by populist appeals for ‘our boys’. We Some charities are also used to socialise war are now targeted across television during poppy into notions of ‘Britishness’, through reinforcing appeals in a way unprecedented before 9/11. The war as a noble institution in itself, and making X-Factor has become a particular vehicle for this ‘sacrifice’ something to be worshipped. They with 2011’s bling-factor poppies; finalists covering sustain a system in which, the 112 years since the first Mariah Cary’s ‘Hero’ in 2008, then a cover of 20th Century began have seen only one in which David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ in 2010, which sold 100,000 115 no British military personnel were killed in action copies in three days. War charities’ abilities (1968).109 In praising what veterans have ‘given’ to fundraise rest on their promoting martial rather than criticising what was taken from them, values and the concept that war, and ‘defence’ groups, like the ‘British Legion’ and ‘Help for expenditure, are ‘necessary’. This media power is Heroes’, conceptualise military intervention as also used to target economic or political ‘problems’ an always necessary sacrifice. The British Legion, at home, through a collaboration of different being devoid of critique of any of ‘our’ wars, government agencies from MI5 to Downing Street’s 116 serves to mediate and even excuse the impact of Press Office. The modern era of this began this system. Past meaning of the poppy emblem with Margaret Thatcher, Bernard Ingham and the 117 largely forgotten, fundraising drives support the Miners’ Strike , accelerated throughout ‘The 118 notion that the costs of war in general are sad but Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, and continued 119 legitimate and acceptable. They conflate images to gather pace through Blair’s ‘spin Britain’. of recent wars with those of WWI and WWII which Now, a veteran and adaptive culture industry is saturate the TV viewing schedule. All war, viewed increasingly seductive for those with million-pound as ‘sacrifice’, is seen as the same. A dangerous PR budgets – a process facilitated by the revolving education promoted through the military’s door between government, the PR industry and expanding engagement in British schools. Since the media. It is playing an important role in 2009 the British Legion has organised a drive for presenting the Government’s latest ‘crisis’ to each children to send postcards to soldiers bearing level of the pyramid; facilitating the Government messages such as, “Thank you for fighting for our response to dissent by manufacturing an edifice of 16 | variant 43 | spring 2012 conservatism. Overpriced vintage shops seized on will be the pageantry of the Queen’s Diamond year’”.146 As in Thatcher’s time, the Falklands the wedding with gusto, filling shelves with mis- Jubilee134, a fitting vehicle for engendering martial episode for Cameron offers a media opportunity matched tea sets and 3-tier china cake stands that values and overlaying cohesion onto an uneasy to distract attention from austerity and persistent granny would love. Vintage Shop ‘Beyond Retro’ population. Jubilee merchandise was available unease in Britain; focussing martial values behind staged a ‘Royal Wedding Party’ as a marketing to buy in the stores months ago.135 Moreover, the a distant ‘defence of British subjects’, so attacks scheme unquestioningly embracing images of Queen will be marketing herself in person – we can be made on civil liberties on the home front. ‘royalty’ within a readily accepted aesthetic of are told a lead-up royal tour of Britain is planned; The martial values seeking further purchase ‘retro’ products. Apparently, the event was “Right and more sprightly members of the family will on popular culture talk of ‘interventions’ rather royal fun, whether you’re a monarchist or an be reminding the Commonwealth of her eternal than war in a misrepresentation of its permanency anarchist”.124 reign.136 Indeed, we’ve already had Prince and its principal aggressor, yet seek justification Interestingly, the largest-selling item at ‘I William’s heavily publicised military tour of the with reference to WWII and a partial, heavily was Lord Kitchener’s Valet’ was the WWII Lord Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) in a run up to romanticised national narrative. They extend Kitchener poster that read ‘Your Country Needs celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Falklands’ beyond foreign ‘interventions’ into civil society; You’. These yesteryear public information posters war, just having had ‘major celebrations’ to mark commercial interventions, interventions in were brought back into mass manufacture in the 25th anniversary.137 childhood, in academia, in culture, in debate and recent years. But no longer do such items represent By creating objects of nostalgia, such as democratic process... The experience of young an attempt to “subvert conventional ideas”,125 as uniforms for the Olympics, in our culture we people in Britain today is of a country that’s been their former ’60s counterculture appropriation did. commodify, glamorise and romanticise power. continuously at war, conduct which sets out to Those reproducing the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ For immediate political reasons, conservative seize ‘information space’ too; they have witnessed poster say it represents “nostalgia for a certain forces are adjusting our perspective on the past, an increase in oppressive domestic policing, and British character, an outlook”; an idea of ‘national sanitising our real-world associations through are now to be aggressively trained not to question character’ as ‘not making a fuss’ over austerity.126 the manufacture of nostalgic folk memory. With authority. Evidently the youth of Britain must The recession hit in 2009, and their sales soared. careful attention to image, the Royal family know their place, if they are to be the reproductive The slogan even appeared on ‘environmentally has undergone a complete turnaround from the force of an authoritarian pyramid. It’s a pyramid friendly’ shopping bags – a must-have student status of (according to The Guardian) a “repressed that may be weighing greatly on our backs, but shopping accessory. In a mood of ‘keep your chin memory” at the end of the 1990s, to the reborn one suspects it will continue to be resisted, shaken up’ the ‘Nectar’ loyalty scheme even urged us to popular figureheads being celebrated in 2012.138 from its foundations... ‘Keep Calm and Carry One’.127 Psychologist Lesley The Coalition’s history tsar Simon Schama claims Prince claimed that “people have been sold a lie the Royals can “be a cheer-up panacea for our Notes since the 1970s. They were promised the earth and tough times, an emblem of Britishness, optimism 1 LeBaron, R. (1st April 2008) ‘William Hague Says “Near now they’re worried about everything [...] This is and the community coming together”.139 Or, as it’s Death Experience” Has Improved Tory Chances’ Leaked saying, [...] it’ll be all right”.128 In contrast to the otherwise been described, “an attempt to promote Cable in Wikileaks, Available from: http://213.251.145.96/ cable/2008/04/08LONDON930.html, Accessed on: 10th sentimental British stereotype through which ‘dreamlike constructions’ of earlier ‘golden February 2011. it’s seen now, Lewis points out that the ‘Keep ages’ by recourse to an invented past of imperial 2 Ibid. Calm’ poster was never released during WWII, greatness when ‘Britannia ruled the waves’ and 3 Lewis, P (5th February 2012) ‘Joblessness and “toxic because one with a similar message caused quite the English were not ‘beaten at their own game’ relations” with police are blamed for Tottenham riot’ a “fuss” of public opposition, it being seen as of cricket” as “a way of managing ‘contemporary in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/ “condescending” and “authoritarian”.129 political, economic and social problems’”.140 feb/05/tottenham-citizens-inquiry-toxic-relations-police. In invoking a mythical and nostalgic notion of 4 Taylor, M; Rogers, S & Lewis, P (18th August 2011) what is, essentially, an affected Englishness, the ‘England Rioters: young, poor and unemployed’ in The Shaking the Foundations Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/18/ Olympics, according to organisers, is unashamedly england-rioters-young-poor-unemployed making a tribute to “Britian’s Royal, military and Back in 2006 a Nordic festival of art and social 5 See: Domokos, J (1st April 2011) ‘Claimants “tricked” 130 criticism voiced a warning (now poignant, in sporting history”. Technical staff uniforms, out of benefits, says Jobcentre whistleblower – video’ an even more formal ‘flannel, blazer and trilby’ the wake of Breivik’s Utoeya killings) that if we in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/ affair, nods at the Henley Regatta. 131 According try to forget or romanticise our colonial past video/2011/apr/01/jobcentre-whistleblower-targe to organisers they represent “heritage with a this “continues to reproduce itself as waves of 6 See: http://www.boycottworkfare.org/ 141 modern twist”132 – but whose heritage exactly? The intolerance, xenophobia, and nationalism”. 7 Although we might be careful about using the word ‘British’ sporting heritage used in the design is the Simon Jenkins has critically pointed to the huge ‘Thatcherism’ since it runs the danger of personalising exclusive, conservative style of the Henley Regatta representation of WWII imagery saturating British a set of global material dynamics. and Wimbledon. But then the tickets have mostly institutional culture, arguing that only “insecure 8 Wintour, Patrick and Mulholland, Hélène (23 March 2012) ‘Boris Johnson says poor schools helped cause gone to bureaucrats, politicians and corporate nations” would need the psychological support of clinging to stories of themselves as victors.142 riots’ in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ sponsors. Maybe blazers with Big Ben buttons are politics/2012/mar/23/boris-johnson-bad-schools-london- a consolation to Londoners, who pay 38p a week Britain’s island and colonial histories are of course riots more than the rest of us through their council more complex than this, but so much of the state 9 Sparrow, Andrew (7 August 2011) ‘Politicians condemn tax for the Games despite unavailable tickets.133 that has been and remains violently exploitative is Tottenham riots’ in The Guardian: http://www.guardian. It is no coincidence that organisers have chosen gradually being erased from representations of the co.uk/politics/2011/aug/07/politicians-condemn- tottenham-riots.& De Castella, T (16th August 2011) to celebrate ‘royal’ heritage, with its inferred institutions responsible. The racism of empire is rewritten and fed back to us in the more palatable ‘England Riots: What’s the Evidence Gangs were behind deference. Immediately prior to the Olympics the Riots?’ in BBC Magazine: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ forms of entrepreneurialism and ‘national news/magazine-14540796. security’. Paul Gilroy argues that, “without the 10 Vasagar, J (1st September 2011) ‘Michael Gove removal of the cultural and psychological screens slackens rules on use of physical force in schools’ in that block access to [the past], Europe has no The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/ chance”.143 Martial values are becoming the mortar sep/01/michael-gove-physical-force-schools of unthinking cohesion; infiltrating the meaning 11 Zizek, Slavoj ‘Against the Populist Temptation’ in Lacan of the habitual and familiar, and prioritising dot com: http://www.lacan.com/zizpopulism.htm superficial reactions over complex understandings 12 D’Arcy, M (10th August 2011) ‘Riot Criminals Should in our culture. Lose Benefits Say Thousands’ inPublic Service: http:// www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=17131. Furthermore, they are used to justify 13 Kelly, Tom (16th November 2011) David Starkey – authoritarian repression a full 18 years after ‘Britain is a white mono-culture and schools should Margaret Thatcher waved her fist at “the enemy focus on our own history’ in The Daily Mail: http://www. without” (in the Falklands) and the “enemies dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2061809/David-Starkey- within” (protesting miners and trades unions).144 row-British-history.html We can see the Coalition government engaged 14 Rahim, Sameer (20th November 2010) ‘Simon Schama in an internationally provocative talking-up of Interview’ in The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ culture/8148273/Simon-Schama-interview-history-is- a militarisation of the Falklands, and Cameron dangerous-teachers-need-to-be-brave.html readying to crush any opportunity for protest in 15 Kelly, Tom (16th November 2011) ‘David Starkey – a constitutionally unravelling Britain. The period Britain is a white mono-culture and schools should of the Falklands War propelled the public image focus on our own history’ in The Daily Mail: http://www. of Thatcher from “inexperienced young girl” to dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2061809/David-Starkey- “formidable leader”. At a time of unrest, David row-British-history.html Cameron similarly seeks to appear decisive, and 16 http://phoenixfreeschool.org.uk/ bolster his own strength by reawakening populist 17 ‘Network of military schools could help to tackle images of colonial power – this, remember, educational failure in deprived areas’ - New ResPublica Green Paper, ‘Military Academies: Tackling when only in 2003 a million marched in London disadvantage, improving ethos and changing outcome’: expressing opposition to the then-imminent http://respublica.org.uk/item/Network-of-military- war against Iraq. When Prince William took up schools-could-help-to-tackle-educational-failure-in- an ‘entirely routine’ posting to the Falkland deprived-areas Islands the political build-up made for a strong 18 See: http://phoenixfreeschool.org.uk/about-the-school/ vertical-grouping/ statement.145 MP Penny Mordaunt told parliament she approved of William delivering the message 19 Smith, L (8th February 2012) ‘UK Government Supports Plans for Military Schools’ in World Socialist Website: of ownership and that “his destiny as the future http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/feb2012/mili-f08. king” to whom “the islanders will owe their shtml allegiance should not go unnoticed in this jubilee 20 Particularly investor Carlyle Group, who have variant 43 | spring 2012 | 17

substantial links to government in the US and the UK. amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/conservatives_tell_ 21 See ‘Geeks with Guns’, Corporate Watch: http://www. photographers_we_will_end_stop_and_search_abuse_ corporatewatch.org/?lid=2065 update_news_296966.html 22 The Telegraph (2nd September 2011) ‘New Free School 46 “…Aiming to control the crowd, kettling also attempts to be run by Ex-Soldiers’ in The Telegraph: http://www. to incite the crowd. By creating difficult and unpleasant telegraph.co.uk/education/8736789/New-free-school-to- conditions (sub-zero or warm temperatures without be-run-by-ex-soldiers.html food, water, toilets, or freedom of movement) and by preventing people from leaving the demonstration, 23 Smith, L (8th February 2012) ‘UK Government Supports the police aims to provoke the crowd into action. What Plans for Military Schools’ in World Socialist Website: appears to be targeted is the possibility of a violent http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/feb2012/mili-f08. act to the police. The logic which underwrites this is shtml rather simple: by provoking the crowd, violence is 24 Davies, Nick (8th December 2004) ‘Special inflamed by kettling itself. The exercise of kettling is Investigation: Wasted Lives of the Young let down by therefore incitatory in that it creates the threat in order Jail System; Concluding his investigation into mentally to deal with the threat. In colonizing the imaginary of disordered prisoners; Nick Davies looks at the number the protester, kettling strives to make this imaginary of children in prisons which cannot deal with their real. Thus the crowd is addressed affectively as it is mental health problems’ in The Guardian, p12. & rendered controllable and manageable for the stable Solomon, E & Garside, R (2008) ‘Ten Years of Labour’s unity of the order. What is at work here is a mutation Youth Justice Reforms: an independent audit’ in Centre of control/neoliberal governance as a referent object: for Crime and Justice: http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/ the affective subject of ‘action’ is rendered governable opus647/youthjusticeaudit.pdf and manageable.” Taskale, Ali Riza (23rd March 25 Johnston, P (27th March 2007) ‘New Child Checks to 2012) ‘Kettling and the Fear of Revolution’ in Critical Identify Future Criminals’ in The Telegraph: http:// Legal Thinking: http://www.criticallegalthinking. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1546779/New-child- com/2012/03/23/kettling-and-the-fear-of-revolution/ checks-to-identify-future-criminals.html 47 Allen, A (11th August 2011) ‘We will use water cannons 26 ‘Juveniles’ DNA Recording Defended’ in BBC News: on them: At last Cameron orders police to come down http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4633918.stm & hard on the looters (some aged as young as NINE)’ Penna, S & Kirby,S (2009) ‘Children and the “new The Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ biopolitics of control”: identification, identity and article-2024203/UK-RIOTS-2011-David-Cameron-orders- social order’ in Youth Justice. An International Journal, police-come-hard-looters.html 2009, vol 9 (2). 48 Gallagher, I & Arbuthnot, G (27th March 2011) “200 27 Wardrop, M (4th June 2009) ‘Police Arrest Innocent arrested as hardcore anarchists fight police long into Youths for their DNA Officer Claims’ inThe Telegraph: night in Battle of Trafalgar Square after 500,000 march http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and- against the cut” in The Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail. order/5444332/Police-arrest-innocent-youths-for-their- co.uk/news/article-1370053/TUC-anti-spending-cuts- DNA-officer-claims.html protest-200-arrested-500k-march-cut.html 28 The Telegraph (2nd September 2011) ‘New Free School 49 Greenwood, C (18th November 2011) ‘Outcry as judge to be run by Ex-Soldiers’ in The Telegraph: http://www. praises protesters who invaded Fortums’ in The Daily telegraph.co.uk/education/8736789/New-free-school-to- Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062805/ be-run-by-ex-soldiers.html UK-Uncut-protesters-occupied-luxury-store-Fortnum- 64 Connor, Steve (7th February 2012) ‘Government “may Mason-guilty-aggravated-trespass.html 29 ResPublica (2012) Military Academies: http://respublica. sanction nerve-agent use on rioters”, scientists fear’ in org.uk/documents/ead_ResPublica%20Military%20 50 Malik, S (18th July 2011) ‘Fortnum & Mason protest: The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ Schools%20Green%20Paper%20FINAL.pdf. CPS drops charges against 109 UK Uncut activists’ in uk/crime/government-may-sanction-nerveagent-use-on- The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/18/ rioters-scientists-fear-6612084.html 30 Smith, L (8th February 2012) ‘UK Government Supports fortnum-mason-uk-uncut-charges-dropped Plans for Military Schools’ in World Socialist Website: 65 Strauss, J & Aris, B (28th October 2002) ‘Rage at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/feb2012/mili-f08. 51 Allen, A (11th August 2011) ‘We will use water cannons Secrecy as Gas Kills 115 Hostages’ The Telegraph: shtml on them: At last Cameron orders police to come down http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ hard on the looters (some aged as young as NINE)’ russia/1411531/Rage-at-secrecy-as-gas-kills-115- 31 Vasagar, J (1st September 2011) ‘Michael Gove in The Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ hostages.html slackens rules on use of physical force in schools’ in article-2024203/UK-RIOTS-2011-David-Cameron-orders- The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/ 66 Connor, Steve (7th February 2012) ‘Government “may police-come-hard-looters.html sep/01/michael-gove-physical-force-schools sanction nerve-agent use on rioters”, scientists fear’ in 52 Dodd, V & Wintour, P (12th August 2011) ‘Cameron The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ 32 Ibid. faces obstacles in bringing in US police chief to head uk/crime/government-may-sanction-nerveagent-use-on- 33 Treadwell, James (Part of Howard League for Penal Met’ in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ rioters-scientists-fear-6612084.html Reform ‘Inquiry into ex-military personnel in custody’) uk/2011/aug/12/david-cameron-bill-bratton-met 67 Wong, G (23rd January 2011) ‘Haimen, China, Protests: Ex-soldiers in Prison: http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/ 53 Daily Mail (24th July 2011) ‘Army Colonels who have Nerve Gas Fired at Protesters’ in Huffington Post: http:// criminology/research/current-projects/jt146soldiers served in Afghanistan should be parachuted in to run www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/23/haimen-china- 34 Briant, Emma (Manuscript for Forthcoming police’ in The Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ protests-tea_n_1168460.html Publication) Special Relationships: How Britain Tweaked news/article-2018190/Army-colonels-Afghanistan-line- 68 ‘Postcard From The Precipice - An Appeal For Support’, the Propaganda Machine, US-UK Coordination during the run-police-government-shake-up.html Media Lens, 29 March 2012: http://www.medialens.org/ Information ‘War on Terror’. 54 Asthana, A, Townsend, M &Helm, T (13th November 69 Mark Curtis, M. Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with 35 Cusick, J (24th October 2010) ‘Wikileaks fall-out 2012) ‘NUS starts campaign to oust leading Lib Radical Islam, Serpent’s Tail, 2012: http://markcurtis. reaches UK’ in Sunday Herald: p6. Dems’ in The Observer: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ files.wordpress.com/2012/03/secret-affairs-introduction. 36 Giroux, H, A (20th November 2008) ‘Against the education/2010/nov/13/nus-campaign-oust-lib-dems pdf Militarised Academy’ in Truthout: http://archive. 55 Philip Davies quoted in Walters, S & Owen, G (26th 70 MacAskill, E (31st March 2000) ‘Hain Backtracks truthout.org/112008J February 2012) ‘Tories order police to halt workfare on Ethical Foreign Policy’ in The Guardian: 37 Captain Affan Burki quoted in The Telegraph (2nd demos as MP makes formal protest to BBC over bias in http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2000/mar/31/ September 2011) ‘New Free School to be run by Ex- favour of hard-Left militants’ in The Daily Mail: http:// ethicalforeignpolicy.politicalnews, Accessed on: 12th Soldiers’ in The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2106601/Tories-order- February 2011. education/8736789/New-free-school-to-be-run-by-ex- police-halt-workfare-demos-MP-makes-formal-protest- 71 Bowcott, O (13th July 2011) ‘Secret Files that Revealed soldiers.html BBC-bias-favour-hard-Left-militants.html the Government’s role in Torture’ in The Guardian: 38 Gabbatt, A & Lewis, P (26th November 2010) ‘Student 56 Gibson, Owen (15th December 2011) ‘London Olympics http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/jul/13/secret-files- Protests: video shows police charging crowd’ in The security to be boosted by 13,500 troops ‘ in The government-role-torture Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/26/ Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/dec/15/ 72 Cassidy, Robert M. (2004) Peacekeeping in the Abyss: police-student-protests-horses-charge london-olympics-security-boosted-troops. British and American Peacekeeping Doctrine and Practice 39 Regarding the peaceful Fortnum and Mason sit-in, 57 Gibson, Owen (15th December 2011) ‘London Olympics After the Cold War, Westport: Praeger: p59. “The prosecution case is that each defendant did take security to be boosted by 13,500 troops ‘ in The 73 Klein, N (2008) The Shock Doctrine, London: Penguin. part by encouraging others with his or her presence”. Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/dec/15/ Malik, Shiv (17th November 2011) ‘Fortnum & Mason london-olympics-security-boosted-troops. 74 (25th March 2012) ‘Tory Peter Cruddas quits after donor protesters convicted of aggravated trespass’ in The 58 MoD ‘Defence Secretary Observes Olympic Air access claims’ in BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/17/ Exercise’ in Defence IQ: http://www.defenceiq.com/ uk-politics-17503116 fortnum-mason-protesters-convicted-trespass air-forces-and-military-aircraft/articles/defence- 75 Edwards, R (28th May 2011) ‘Anger as US Arms Dealer 40 Meikle, J & Dodd, V (10th December 2010) ‘Royal Car secretary-observes-olympic-air-security-ex/ & Sky News, Takes Over Running of Scottish Nuclear Bomb Base’ Attack: Cameron calls for “Full Force of Law”’ in The (15th November 2011) ‘Surface-to-air missiles for in The Herald: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/ Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/ Olympic Games’: http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/ home-news/anger-as-us-arms-dealer-takes-over-running- dec/10/royal-car-attack-cameron-charles article/16110377. of-scottish-nuclear-bomb-base.13864732 41 Meikle, J (10th December 2010) ‘Student Protester 59 Eccles, Louise (10th November 2011) ‘Are Olympics 76 Newsroom (29th May 2011) ‘UK Government intend Operated on after being “Hit by Police Baton”’ in The chiefs ashamed of our proud military history? Just to privatise handling of nuclear weapons at Coulport: Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/10/ days before Remembrance Sunday, HMS Belfast Michael Russell MSP says No’ in Argyle News: http:// student-operation-tuition-fees-protest is airbrushed from poster’ The Daily Mail: http:// www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/anger-as- www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059193/London- us-arms-dealer-takes-over-running-of-scottish-nuclear- 42 Gove, M in Vasagar, J (1st September 2011) ‘Michael 2012-Olympics-poster-HMS-Belfast-airbrushed-days- bomb-base.13864732 Gove slackens rules on use of physical force in Remembrance-Sunday.html schools’ in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ 77 Stanton, J (9th March 2012) ‘Banking on the Bomb’ in politics/2011/sep/01/michael-gove-physical-force-schools 60 Shortcuts Blog (23rd November 2011) ‘The 2012 Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/09/ Olympics uniform deconstructed; Thumbs up for the banking-on-the-bomb/ & Also See: http://www. 43 Travis, A (12th January 2010) ‘Stop and Search Powers Beefeater red cuffs – but golfer beige trousers?’ in dontbankonthebomb.com/ Illegal European Court Rules’ in The Guardian: http:// The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/2011/ www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/12/stop-and-search- 78 International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear nov/23/2012-olympics-uniform-deconstructed ruled-illegal Weapons, ‘Don’t Bank on the Bomb’: http://www. 61 Thomas-Peter, Hannah (15th November 2011) ‘US dontbankonthebomb.com/whos-financing-them/ 44 Morris, Nigel. ‘Blair’s “frenzied law making”: a new working closely on Olympic Security’ in Sky News: offence for every day spent in office’,The Independent, 79 Quoted in: Giroux, H, A (20th November 2008) ‘Against http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16110377. 16 August 2006: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ the Militarised Academy’ in Truthout: http://archive. politics/blairs-frenzied-law-making--a-new-offence-for- 62 Thomas-Peter, Hannah (15th November 2011) ‘US truthout.org/112008J every-day-spent-in-office-412072.html working closely on Olympic Security’ in Sky News: 80 Travis, Alan & Jowitt, Juliet (4th March 2012) ‘Police http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16110377. 45 Cheesman, Chris (15th April 2010) ‘Conservatives Privatisation Plans Defended by Senior Officers’ inThe tell photographers: We will end stop and search 63 Giroux, H, A (20th November 2008) ‘Against the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/04/ “abuse” (update)’, Amateur Photographer: http://www. Militarised Academy’ in Truthout: http://archive. police-privatisation-plans-defend-acpo truthout.org/112008J 18 | variant 43 | spring 2012

81 Travis, Alan & Jowitt, Juliet (4th March 2012) ‘Police Coordination during the Information ‘War on Terror’. magazine/05FOB-consumed-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine Privatisation Plans Defended by Senior Officers’ inThe 102 Kirby, Jane. (7th September 2009) ‘Military Ties at 130 Beard, M (22nd November 2011) ‘A touch of the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/04/ Dalhousie’s Centre for Foreign Policy Studies’ in Halifax guardsman’s tunic to make 2012 volunteers stand out’ police-privatisation-plans-defend-acpo Media Co-op: http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/story/1874, in Evening Standard: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/ 82 Travis, Alan & Jowitt, Juliet (4th March 2012) ‘Police Accessed on 25th February 2010. standard-olympics/article-24012641-a-touch-of-the- Privatisation Plans Defended by Senior Officers’ inThe 103 Bernays, Edward (2004) Propaganda, Brooklin: Ig guardsmans-tunic-to-make-2012-volunteers-stand-out.do. Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/04/ Publishing. 131 Sportsbeat (22nd November 2011) ‘LONDON 2012: police-privatisation-plans-defend-acpo 104 McFate, Montgomery (March/April 2005) ‘Anthropology Military feel for Olympic volunteer and officials 83 Asthana, A, Townsend, M &Helm, T (13th November and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of their uniform’: http://www.morethanthegames.co.uk/london- 2012) ‘NUS starts campaign to oust leading Lib Curious Relationship’ in Military Review, pp24-38. 2012/2215838-london-2012-military-feel-olympic- Dems’ in The Observer: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ volunteer-and-officials-uniforms education/2010/nov/13/nus-campaign-oust-lib-dems 105 Network of Concerned Anthropologists: http://sites. google.com/site/concernedanthropologists/faq 132 Paul Deighton in Gibson, Owen (15th December 2011) 84 Hancox, D (7th December 2011) ‘Kettling 2.0: The ‘London Olympics security to be boosted by 13,500 Olympic State of Exception and TSG Action Figures’ in 106 Marrades, Addaia (2006-7) ‘Anthropology and the “War troops ‘ in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ Games Monitor: http://gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/1456 on Terror”: Analysis of a Complex Relationship’ in sport/2011/dec/15/london-olympics-security-boosted- University of Sussex Theses: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/ troops. 85 Zellen, B (15th February 2009) ‘Securing the Olympics: anthropology/documents/marrades.pdf Lessons of Beijing: China’s huge investment in time, 133 Waugh, P (13th May 2010) ‘Cost of the 2012 Olympics resources and manpower pays off’ in Security Innovator: 107 Ibid. could soar’ in This is London: http://www.thisislondon. http://securityinnovator.com/index.php?articleID=15848 108 Mackay, A & Tatham, S (December 2009) ‘Behavioural co.uk/standard/article-23833665-cost-of-the-2012- §ionID=31 Conflict – From Generic to Strategic Corporal: olympic-games-could-soar.do 86 Bristow, M (12th March 2008) ‘China’s Olympic Security complexity, adaptation and influence’ inThe 134 See: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/ Dilemma’ in BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia- Shrivenham Papers, No 9. Features/DG_WP200687 pacific/7292025.stm 109 ‘Timeline of the British Army’ in Wikipedia: http:// 135 See: http://www.justforfun.co.uk/theme/Diamond- 87 May, Theresa (21st November 2011) Olympic Security en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_British_Army Jubilee/ & http://www.fancydressball.co.uk/funny- Conference Speech: Prisk, (1st February 2012) Hansard: 110 See, The Royal British Legion (4th November 2009) costumes/novelty-costumes/rule-britannia-diamond- http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201212/ ‘School children send postcards to the Armed Forces jubilee-costume-38845.htm cmhansrd/cm120201/text/120201w0001.htm community’: http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/about-us/ 136 Bates, S (26th December 2011) ‘How the Royal Wedding 88 BBC News ‘London 2012 Olympic Budget Doubled’ : media-centre/news/general/school-children-send- Boosted the Monarchy’ in The Guardian: http://www. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16030785 postcards-to-the-armed-forces-community guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/26/royal-wedding-monarchy- 89 Bose, M (19th February 2010) ‘Why Perrier will be off 111 Ibid. william-kate limits in the 2012 Olympics’ in This is London: http:// 112 Adorno, T. W., with Horkheimer, Max. - Trans. Jephcott, 137 Press Association (26th June 2006) ‘Major celebration’ www.thisislondon.co.uk/business/markets/why-perrier- E (2002) Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford to mark Falklands war anniversary’ in The Guardian: will-be-off-limits-in-the-2012-olympics-6706464.html University Press. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/jun/26/ 90 BBC News ‘London 2012 Olympic Budget Doubled’ : 113 Briant, Emma (Manuscript for Forthcoming immigrationpolicy.military http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16030785 Publication) Special Relationships: How Britain Tweaked 138 Bates, S (26th December 2011) ‘How the Royal Wedding the Propaganda Machine, US-UK Coordination during the Boosted the Monarchy’ in The Guardian: http://www. Information ‘War on Terror’. guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/26/royal-wedding-monarchy- 114 Beste, R (12th July 2011) ‘Rupert Murdoch: Gotcha!’ in william-kate Stop the War Coalition: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index. 139 Rahim, Sameer (20th November 2010) ‘Simon Schama php/iraq/621-rupert-murdoch-gotcha Interview’ in The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ 115 Duncan, A (24th November 2010) ‘X-Factor Charity culture/8148273/Simon-Schama-interview-history-is- Single Set for Number One Chart Glory’ in The Metro: dangerous-teachers-need-to-be-brave.html http://www.metro.co.uk/music/848276-x-factor-charity- 140 Wagg, Stephen (ed.) Cricket and national identity in single-set-for-number-one-glory the postcolonial age: Following on, quoting Carrington, 116 See: Briant, Emma (Manuscript for Forthcoming B. (1998) ‘“Football’s coming home” but whose home? Publication) Special Relationships: How Britain Tweaked And do we want it? Nation, football, and the politics of the Propaganda Machine, US-UK Coordination during the exclusion’ (in A. Brown (ed.) Fanatics: Power, Identity Information ‘War on Terror’. and Fandom in Football. London: Routledge) 117 Jones, N (11th March 2009) ‘Miner’s Strike Anniversary: 141 Rethinking Nordic Colonialism: http://www.rethinking- Freedom of Information Exposes Margaret Thatcher’s nordic-colonialism.org/ Secrets’ in Spinwatch: http://www.spinwatch.org/reviews- 142 Jenkins, S (22nd September 2012) ‘Britain’s Nazi mainmenu-24/book-reviews-mainmenu-23/5263-miners- Obsession Betrays our Insecurity – It’s Time We Moved strike-anniversary-freedom-of-information-exposes- On’ in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ margaret-thatchers-secrets- commentisfree/2011/sep/22/britain-nazi-obsession- 118 Miller, D (1994) Don’t Mention The War, London: Pluto insecurity-history. Press. 143 Gilroy, P ‘Colonial Crimes and Convivial Cultures’, in 119 Jones, N (2002) The Control Freaks, London: Politico & Rethinking Nordic Colonialism: http://www.rethinking- Jones, N (2000) Sultans of Spin, London: Gollancz. nordic-colonialism.org/files/pdf/ACT2/ESSAYS/Gilroy. pdf 91 Brady, B (20th November 2011) ‘Demonstrations 120 Craik, Jennifer (2005) Uniforms Exposed: From 144 Thatcher, M in Wilenius, P (5th March 2004) ‘Enemies to be banned during Olympics’ in The Independent: conformity to transgression, Oxford: Berg: 214-215. within: Thatcher and the Unions’ in BBC News: http:// http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ 121 Ibid. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3067563.stm demonstrations-to-be-banned-during-olympics-6265121. 122 Paul Deighton in Gibson, Owen (15th December 2011) 145 BBC News (5th February 2012) ‘Prince William html ‘London Olympics security to be boosted by 13,500 Falklands Duty Entirely Routine – Hague’: http://www. 92 Brady, B (20th November 2011) ‘Demonstrations troops ‘ in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16896591. to be banned during Olympics’ in The Independent: sport/2011/dec/15/london-olympics-security-boosted- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ troops. 146 Portsmouth News (31st January 2012) ‘Britain is Right to Send William to the Falklands This Year’ demonstrations-to-be-banned-during-olympics-6265121. 123 “In his [then heavily satirised, eve of St. George’s Day] in Portsmouth News: http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/ html address to the nation [reported in The Guardian 23rd news/defence/britain_is_right_to_send_prince_ 93 Sky News (22nd November 2011) ‘Cost of Protecting April 1993], John Major deliberately used cricket william_to_the_falklands_this_year_says_portsmouth_ Olympic Venues Revealed’: http://news.sky.com/home/ to ‘invoke a mythical, nostalgic and implicitly white mp_1_3471499 uk-news/article/16115059. notion of England’, an essentially rural country full of 94 BBC News ‘London 2012 Olympic Budget Doubled’ : ‘invincible green suburbs’, with Englishmen drinking http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16030785 warm beer to the distant sounds of cricket being played on the village green (Carrington 1998: 102). Carrington 95 Blowe, K (14th November 2010) ‘NETCU uses friendly (ibid.: 102) argues that the imagery within Major’s journalists to send message to Government’ in Random speech represented an attempt to promote ‘dreamlike Blowe: http://www.blowe.org.uk/2010/11/netcu-uses- constructions’ of earlier ‘golden ages’ as a way of friendly-journalists-to-send.html managing ‘contemporary political, economic and social 96 The new Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, Tony problems’ by recourse to an invented past of imperial McGrew, according to Principal Jim McDonald: http:// greatness when ‘Britannia ruled the waves’ and the www.myshelegoldberg.com/words/item/sociology-at- English were not ‘beaten at their own game’ of cricket.” strathclyde-under-the-axe-due-to-critical-stance Wagg, Stephen (ed., 2008) Cricket and national identity 97 Miller, D & Mills, T (2009) ‘The Terror Experts and the in the postcolonial age: Following On, London: Routledge. Mainstream Media: the expert nexus and its dominance 124 Greig, R ‘Beyond Retro’ in Time Out Magazine: http:// in the news media’ in Critical Studies on Terrorism, Vol www.timeout.com/london/gallery/1041/beyond-retro- 2, No 3: pp414-437. royal-wedding-gallery 98 CSTRV have links to RAND Corporation in the US, a 125 Craik, Jennifer (2005) Uniforms Exposed: From hugely influential think-tank with strong ties to both conformity to transgression, Oxford: Berg: 215. Government and the defense industry. 126 Walker, R (1st July 2009) ‘Remixed Messages’ in 99 Miller, D & Mills, T (2009) ‘The Terror Experts and the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/ Mainstream Media: the expert nexus and its dominance magazine/05FOB-consumed-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine in the news media’ in Critical Studies on Terrorism, Vol 2, 127 Sweney, M (22nd June 2010) ‘Nectar ad plays on No 3: pp414-437. wartime poster for new era of post-budget austerity’ in 100 Mackay, A & Tatham, S (December 2009) ‘Behavioural The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/ Conflict - From Generic to Strategic Corporal: jun/22/nectar-loyalty-card-advert-keep-calm complexity, adaptation and influence’ inThe 128 Quoted in Henley, J (18th March 2009) ‘What Shrivenham Papers, No 9. Crisis?’ in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ 101 For more on this see: Briant, Emma (Manuscript lifeandstyle/2009/mar/18/keep-calm-carry-on-poster for Forthcoming Publication) Special Relationships: 129 Walker, R (1st July 2009) ‘Remixed Messages’ in How Britain Tweaked the Propaganda Machine, US-UK New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/ variant 43 | spring 2012 | 19 Tom Coles “Organise your

mourning”draw on my own experience of the seven-month occupation at the Endless Growth University of Glasgow between February and August 2011, known “Under capital, austerity is necessary.” since as the Free Hetherington. (Escalate Collective, Salt, p.4) The common commitment of the texts Springtime, Users Guide to Demanding the Impossible1, and The Occupation Cookbook2, which Springtime These texts – Springtime, Users Guide, Occupation Cookbook – and have been produced as responses to a series of struggles since 2008 the manner in which their ideas are expressed, have now been – struggles against policy, struggles for space, for new ideas – is that overtaken by events. This is necessary and desirable; as forewords they make use of assemblages of materials to try and simultaneously use to say in the future anterior tense: ‘May this book soon become document, promote and develop new forms of resistance. While one redundant due to the abolition of these problems through struggle!’. struggles to make out easily recognisable formal political projects When the student protests of 2010, emerging from the short invasion emerging from what is unsatisfactorily known as ‘this crisis’, all and occupation of Conservative Party HQ on November 10th, were around there seems to be an incessant drive to document every largely put to rest with the passing of the fee hike in the Houses small event. The pieces are typical of the proliferation of tactical of Parliament on December 9th, many of the arguments produced documents; documents that collate the detritus from, rather than as agitation became instantly outdated. For those involved, their demonstrate the nature of, this unnameable. Conceding that even an struggle was immediately followed by more important events analysis of detritus may help towards a praxis of change, this, to my in the chain of escalations of popular unrest; the North African Springtime: The New Student mind, cannot be undertaken by mimicking in form the professional self-immolations which triggered a pan-Arab uprising on an Rebellions legislative ‘white paper’ or policy review. The famous dictum of unprecedented and unexpected scale. In the face of this example edited by Clare Solomon & song-writer and poet Joe Hill, “Don’t mourn, organise!”, can be it must be insisted, if we are to have any hope, that the month of Tania Palmieri recalibrated as “Organise your mourning”: these documents either protest in Britain does not represent the limit of the reconfiguration Paperback, 296 pages mourn or organise, but, crucially, as of yet, our mourning remains of British education politics: the implications of events in the Middle ISBN: 9781844677405 unorganised. They are users’ guides that operate as quick overviews East and North Africa could bring far reaching change. Similarly Verso, September 2011 and re-bakings of old events, movements and motivations to flatten it is difficult to know what will become of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ differences of time and space through positing possibly non-existent movement, now that it is being referenced by Bruce Springsteen’s common motivations or effective forms. Is this a revolutionary tract new album. Economic crises are as uneven in their development as or a funding proposal? Is it a measurably ‘outcome orientated’ growth. In the year after the publication of Springtime, a collection revolutionary practise that would be most useful in this situation? of journalism and essays previously published in pamphlets and This review is intended as a proposal towards a discourse of various blogs, we see that many of their conjectures (“Simmering resistance that is beginning to resist mere resistance. Greece” outlining the ‘troika’-led collapse of Greek democratic The narrative is clear now, every rant written, spoken or legitimacy, escalating action on US campuses) have now become declaimed begins with its own version: the banking crisis of reality, and grown to a new urgency. The deadly inevitability of 2007/8 quickly became a series of world crises, a complex chain of the ‘capitalist realist’ construction of ‘no alternative’ and ‘the end spatial, institutional and temporal deflections which continues to of history’ no longer remains self-evident; we can see changes lengthen, interlink and take the form of a steady inundation. The happening, we can see choices being made to achieve those changes banking crisis is translatable into a public debt crisis; a US crisis however ‘tough’ they may be. Will another moment like ’68 emerge, into a European crisis; a public debt crisis has become a crisis of where students in France were taken aback at how the edifice fell, international finance; and this a crisis of international finance like fruit rotted through except for the skin? The growing almanac is quickly becoming, if it wasn’t already, a crisis of national and of minor crises for the UK Government – pasties, police horses, international democracy. Greece, Italy and Ireland are occupied by corruption and bought legislation – are surely proxy conflicts hostile bureaucrats. In our preparation for a decade of deepening masking a larger implicit logic that must become apparent? David economic depression, a deepening of the social effects of these crises Harvey anticipates change for all: should be expected, as should an ebb and flow of social and protest movements in response. “Can capitalism survive the present trauma? Yes, of course. But at what cost? The Occupation Cookbook: or the In a year in which so much ‘history’ seems to be taking place – to This question masks another. Can the capitalist class reproduce its power Model of the Occupation of the catch up with the short period of its claimed obliteration between in the face of the raft of economic, social, political and geopolitical and Faculty of Humanities and Social 1989 and 2008 at the hands of what Mark Fisher outlines, in his environmental difficulties? Again, the answer is a resounding ‘Yes it can’. This Sciences in Zagreb 2009 book of the same name, as ‘Capitalist Realism’ – there are will, however, require the mass of the people to give generously of the fruits by various authors, English not only periodisations to be made, but spatialisations. It is the of their labour to those in power, to surrender many of their rights and their translation by Drago Markisa / simultaneity of these events combined with their spatial and cultural hard‑won asset values (in everything from housing to pension rights) and introduction by Marc Bousquet reach that is so astounding, resulting in a sudden glut of spectacle to suffer environmental degradations galore... More than a little political ISBN 978‑1‑57027‑218‑9 and movement. For the majority of participants and commentators repression, police violence and militarised state control will be required to Minor Compositions, 2010. Originally there is very little contemporary history to compare this with, they stifle the ensuing unrest... The capitalist class cannot, if history is any guide, published by the Center for stand in amazement or resort to documentation. It should never be maintain its power without changing its character...” Anarchist Studies, 2009 forgotten that our culture has a ready stock of the cynical and the (David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, p.215‑216) superlative, and the amazed stance is a well learned one (as is that of Springtime, edited by University of London Union president and the variably arrogant or cynical commentator) – and its deployment sudden student leadership figure Clare Solomon, presents itself delays analysis. As with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the as a historical source-book, published before the dust has settled. informed listener is presented with a comprehensive overview of It documents a series of stifled attempts to create an emerging the day’s events without context, daily (sometimes hourly) restating mass mobilisation of students (prevented by not a little political that these events are historically world-changing, and therefore repression). The volume’s impulse – to view documentation and beyond analysis. For example, debate around the alter-globalisation collation as active a protest as any other – is typical of those, for movements of the 1990s is insufficient, despite the similarity of the whom transmission is always anterior to content, as they are long targets and sentiments. The 1960s is the ubiquitous reference, not used to being bystanders instead of one amongst many agitators. only for advertising companies and pop singers but for protesters Its temptation is to pre-emptively historicise, to transmit the idea and commentators. It is now being reconfigured by the ugly fact of happening before knowing what is happening, to communicate that we are having to ‘re-live’, rather than simply remember, such rather than act upon history: in the case of Springtime it is as though complicated historical transitions. the History has pre-empted the event. The inclusion of ‘flashback’ What, it is asked, are the connections between Millbank Square, pieces from the 1960s by Eric Hobsbawn, Fritz Teufel and Ernest Puerta del Sol, Tahir Square, Zucotti Park, Paternoster Square? Mandel stand-in for any new analysis of the history of student What does it signify that the age-old tactic of ‘occupation’ of public radicalism – there is a radical edge to historical re-enactment, but it space has become so prevalent as identifiable and visible forms of is the re-enactment of the impulse that is radical, not the reprinting resistance and protest? Under what circumstances are occupations of the articulation – and this is one assessment that will bear on the politically effective, and with what implications? glut of (profitable?) publishing projects in the near future. However, Users Guide to Demanding the This exploration will tend to function as a partial (incomplete and the inclusion of Nina Power and Peter Hallward (including his blog Impossible partisan) review of the techniques and justifications for operating posts from Cairo as a voice from outside the UK), who, along with by Laboratory of Insurrectionary an occupation, as outlined to a greater or lesser extent in a series Laurie Penny, Peter Osborne, Owen Hatherley and Owen Jones have Imagination (John Jordan & of publications and drawing on subsequent interventions – most emerged from the discontent of 2011 as an increasingly recognisable Gavin Grindon) notably: Danny Hayward’s ‘Adventures in the Sausage Factory’3 grouping of ‘citizen’-journalists/bloggers and academics, showing ISBN 978‑1‑57027‑218‑9 published by Mute, and Salt4 by Escalate Collective. It will also the emergence of newer voices. Owen Jones’s appearances on the Minor Compositions, 2010 20 | variant 43 | spring 2012 weekly spectacle of UK ‘democracy’, Question speak were expected to self-censor. The intake of Time, and his and Laurie Penny’s inclusion on breath and of holding back in political meetings other mainstream broadcast channels as tokens of was palpable, if only in comparison to the more a mostly unheard left-wing voice, is particularly usual flow of debate: interesting despite the condescension they “More information is not going to motivate us to act, are shown. This group can be found as initially neither are representations or pictures of politics, what emerging around the Middlesex University makes us move is tasting dreams of what could be, protests (including its occupation) prior to the UK stepping into the cracks where another world is coming general election in early 2010, when its Centre into view.” for Research in Modern European Philosophy (Users Guide to Demanding the Impossible, p.25) was closed. The “Con-Lib coalition’s aggressively This commitment to pre-figurative politics philistine and class-driven rhetoric was amply – ranging from promoting non-gendered anticipated by the Middlesex management” says terminology, communal vegan cooking, removing Hatherley5. images of objectification, running a donation and More recently, two new texts have appeared in-kind economy – was an important experience that belong to an emerging and productive line of for many, though difficult to sustain. It has enquiry, self-consciously outlining the underlying continued subsequently in collective reflection, situation and political topography on which and, as with campuses across the world, there is a coming intervention might act. In January an explosion of collectives and reading groups: 2012 Escalate Collective, a writing and activist invitations to join reading groups of Marx’s group associated with the University of London, Capital (led online by David Harvey) flooded into produced the pamphlet Salt, demystifying the inboxes just as reports of police-free streets in collapse of the logic of neoliberalism. Later that Tottenham were pouring in. Marxism and the month Mute (tagline: “we would feast on those that working class are back as spectre though not as would subdue us”) published Danny Hayward’s force: The Telegraph6 raves against ‘far-left’ groups ‘Adventures in the Sausage Factory: a cursory attacking government policy, Conservative MPs overview of the university struggles, November 2010 have started to blame communists, anarchists and - July 2011’. Where the earlier publications left me even largely absent unions7 for online protests despondent, these subsequent texts represent an and picketing of abusive employers. Conversely, as evolving, alternative critique that ought to be of the contestation of established institutions began use in coming months to understand the blasted to generalise beyond Universities, the apparent landscape that the receding froth of the earlier routes of potential action began to narrow. After wave of publications has left. the experiment of the Hetherington, the local and much national focus of student activism switched Leaderlessness? to running in student elections. The ‘broad left’ Critiques must provide actionable ‘alternatives’ to coalitions on campus which had mobilised over the stances taken by contemporary representatives 2010/11 attempted to use their new prominence and leaders: that of the ineffectual or discredited to focus on more traditional attempts to capture role of official student representatives who so supposed power. On some campuses this has been far, at the very least, have opposed any militant successful, though at the University of Glasgow the mobilisation; similarly, the positions of trade union ‘OurGlasgow’ coalition campaign narrowly failed leaders have tended towards the conservative; to win any of the major positions. Whether those and, perhaps unsurprisingly, mainstream political attempting to change institutions like the National leaders and their parties have only sought to Union of Students from within will manage to capitalise on the current popular actions to do so, or are in fact embarking upon a well-worn continue their reactionary policies. This, even career path, is yet to be seen. as, in the UK and the US, there appears to be a public questioning of some of the consequences of Endo-Politics contemporary capitalism. Compare this to the UK/US manifestations Even a cursory involvement in the current of the Occupy Movements, where ‘politics’ is movements, whether it is the wave of ‘Occupy’ not just mistrusted but actively feared and events or the student occupations of 2010/11, gives rejected – because acting politically or ‘politics’ witness to a characteristic expression and advocacy (sometimes ‘as usual’) is seen as the problem. The of ‘leaderlessness’ – something not uniformly ‘person in the street’, the authentic individual practised nor actually attained. Mistakenly, this member of the public, is not interested in the confusion of ‘leaderlessness’ with declarations of ‘political’, only in challenging injustice: we have ‘consensus’ (such as through subsequent evokings politicians to do politics for us, the problem is of a ‘99%’), has led to a disavowal of all hierarchy – that they aren’t listening! The failure is seen as viewed as being susceptible to co-option. However, one of communication and education, we’re not on these flattened swamps of consensus there are speaking loudly enough! While much remains bubbles rising. uncertain and in flux, the construction and then The ‘Free Hetherington’, a seven month rejection of a certain image of ‘politics’ among occupation at the University of Glasgow, more or the Occupy Movements results largely from less sincerely attempted (and never achieved) a a reductive conflation of the term with ‘party non-hierarchical formation. Its focus on hierarchy politics’. The result has been a loose consensus for involved continual attempts at the breaking a commitment to a form of ‘distributed protest’, down of accrued status and privilege, rather where the job of each activist is to focus on than seeking to attain the necessary platform facilitating the voicing of every voice except their – involving a level of hierarchy and leadership – own – the isolated voice is mistrusted as a voice from which effective actions could more quickly of unwelcome authority. The ‘People’s Mic’ of flow. The debate over who should speak, when Occupy Wall Street, an echo chamber devised to and how, was frustrating for those who saw this avoid a local by-law against amplification (crowd as a ‘cultural’ issue irrelevant or subordinate to repeats the words back to the speaker) is a potent issues of revolutionary mobilisations and State manifestation of this tendency. It is an extremely power. The revolutionary groupings that involved ‘low bandwidth’ method, which communicates themselves, and participated in these debates, did action but rarely allows for extemporisation or so principally by their ascetic removal of political rhetorical power. tactics such as co-option. This was perhaps the If the Hetherington said “We are not political!” first prominent grass roots political event I have less loudly, it was because it was understood that experienced where the question would regularly the problem is the political process – including be asked: ‘Where is the Socialist Workers Party?’ those extra-parliamentary tactics commonly This is not to say that such groupings weren’t practised by progressives – rather than politics influential, but it was more their non-Centralist as such. This tacit agreement to keep ‘politics’ on presence that influenced debate. The implosions the back-burner can quickly become something of the party political ‘left’ in Scotland have more unpleasant once it morphs into dogma: necessitated other stances, thereby opening up within ‘Occupy’ people have been attacked as a other potentialities. There were figures who at dangerous cabal for being ‘Maoists’, ‘Communists’, times dominated through their regular attendance or, in the furore surrounding Chris Hedges’ or their ability to speak, but they either refrained criticism of ‘black bloc anarchists’ in Oakland, as from seeking a formal dominance or could not simply “criminal”8. arrange for it to be conceded to them, and a For the wider sympathetic constituency that cultural norm emerged whereby those keenest to variant 43 | spring 2012 | 21 these protests have managed to activate (and of which it is constituent), it mimics the familiar Different and Similar Forms of amplification of the online social network, the Dissent repeating is a formal re-occurrence of the impulse Largely unspoken within the context of all these to re-blog: such protest today is not action – when protests is the biggest determinant of Western defined as confrontational counterpower – but is foreign and domestic policy in the post-2001 era: limited to sorting and retransmitting previously the ‘War on Terror’ and its urban militarism. existing information which, when done on a mass Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani – whose level, takes on the appearance of political action. works of ‘theory-fiction’ I believe usefully explore The desiderata is no longer the new, but faster and modern politics – describes the tactics of Jihadis, more coherent transmission. In fact the form of a explaining their strategic response to postmodern ‘mob’ (to use the terminology of the detractors) and neoliberal hegemonic global politics. There is has found its closest match in technological form an overlap in the imagination of some observers in Twitter and Blackberry messaging – forward (especially policy makers) between the apparent forward forward! The message matters little as form and effect of the terrorist and the Occupy long as it is passed on. The reciprocal relationship protester, the ‘Islamist’ and the ‘domestic’ terrorist. between response and message, both feeding off Where there may be a similarity between the two each other, takes the effect of an increasingly is in attempts at moving away from anti-politics lubricated situation that allows ritualistic into an ‘endo-politics’. dissent to spread more quickly than ever. And as “This, ‘endo‑militarization of peace’, a new type of long as it is the communicative rather than the tactical line which totally blends with the enemy’s operative that is given primacy, a non-violent lines in such a configuration that it introduces radical fundamentalism prevails – Occupy needs to appear instability and eventually violent fissions into the both everywhere and non-threateningly. system from within... In attempting defence the enemy The actors congregate around a tactic rather can only necrotize and dissolve itself.” than a political project: a confluence of anger, (Reza Negarestani, ‘The Militarization of Peace: Absence entertainment, aesthetic and action that comes of Terror or Terror of Absence’, Collapse I, ed. R. Mackay. before understanding or politics, this is not a Oxford: Urbanomic, September 2007. p.55‑6) novelty in terms of historical mobilisations. The success of the insurgency – itself a cyclical What is interesting about the new protests is the “blowback”9 of US strategy/support for the anti- tendency for protesters to quickly change their Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan – has been to designation and apparent allegiance – such as the entice the repressive apparatus of the State into quick transition from ‘acquiescent’ protester to a ‘hyperfoliant’ (excessive and overspeed) cycles of more militant stance either in response to police investment in, and development of, containment aggression or in order to catch police off-guard. techniques that, unable to complete the imposition “Wanton press releases from the Met confirmed this of ‘peace’ on Western societies, and always unable fact, as the authoritarian PR service pumped out anxious to eliminate the enemy within, will never attain declarations about how ‘extremely disappointed’ the their declared horizon of ‘stability’. While since service was ‘with the actions of many protesters’, who 2001 the external, ‘Muslim’ enemy has been were evidently becoming more confrontational, quicker promoted as the likely terrorist, such constructions and more spirited, more prepared to abandon routes are supplemented with the internal threat of and disregard ‘advice’ issued by frantic ‘organisers’ the potential catastrophes of dissent and non- wherever the balance of forced on the ground competitiveness, as witnessed in the responses demanded it.” to recent workfare protests. More disruptive are (Danny Hayward, ‘Adventures in the Sausage Factory’, the hacktivist tactics of ‘Anonymous’, a sort of Mute) online Black Bloc, and the appropriation of ‘meme It is this duplicity and instability of the nature culture’ as a political vehicle by groups such as of the crowd which is (quite rightly) identified DSG (Deterritorial Support Group10). The cultural, by security services as a threat of the becoming contextual and doctrinal differences between the mob. Similarly there is a worry among organisers insurgent ‘network’ of Al Qaeda and the ‘network’ (whether it be the NUS at student demonstrations of activist actors cannot be ignored, nor can the or the adherents of non-violence in Occupy) former’s willingness to use their own death as a of the Jekyll and Hyde nature of protests. The tactic (a doctrine of asymmetric warfare) – nor infectious nature of these tendencies is latent, attempts to criminalise political engagement in initially not apparent and difficult to locate, its the form of dissent/protest by cynically conflating almost instantaneous emergence at the protests the two. However, from a structural point of view, of 2010/11 reflecting both frustration at further they can seem to share a morphology; the flashmob constriction and criminalisation of protest. But that disrupts a train station or shop is not an key is what Hayward, to my mind rightly, identifies explosion, but it is a disruption not easily resolved as a revivified cross-class class mobilisation: it by the authorities, it represents a time-limited was the ‘EMA kids’, of long-oppressed minority interruption of accumulation. groups, who brought the trouble that so shocked The networks and conceptual arrangements and exhilarated the other students – the ones that are ‘ad hoc’ in the technical sense. As complex truly understood the nature of urban territory. To adaptive systems they not only work around a great extent the training and development work the unreliability of individuals, but draw power of the anti-capitalist protesters of the ’90s, the from it, giving up the discipline of hierarchy for experience of many during protests against the the power of anonymity. The shared technical Iraq War, and the climate change movement, mean standards that allow networked computers to that under current conditions there is an available replicate information resemble agreements body of experience in society – the potential for of limited solidarity which can be assumed in co-operation here is astounding and unrealised. situation of unrest. As with any complex system, That the mobilisations dropped away in militancy small core groups and organisations emerge and size is largely down to the failure to maintain based on affinity and trust, but as with the copy- consistent and reciprocal relationships with the cat explosions of Occupy (or indeed, the riots in more marginalised protesters. There is a very England) there is no need for formal links to exist deep class prejudice at work in those parts of the for a series of events to take on a common external left dominated by middle classes that find the appearance. potential power of cross-class solidarity terrifying When ‘networks’ can “at one moment appear to – in Glasgow those college and school students who be universal and at another vanish into thin air”11 took to the streets at the end of 2010 would, in my the result is that the State’s readiness for excessive experience, be told by police that ‘you don’t belong violence will find its target in the ‘host population’ here’, and they would be looked at suspiciously of such potential emergences – students, workers by the ‘real students’ as potentially disruptive or and other malcontents. These were recently the even dangerous; they were not like us. As Danny (unwitting or complicit?) test group for spectacular Hayward neatly summarises in ‘Adventures in the ‘total policing’ witnessed at the November 9th 2011 Sausage Factory...’, “Middle class students might student protest. Billed by student organisations piously hope that working class teenagers will as the one year anniversary of the Millbank be allowed to ‘access’ universities and become occupation, it in fact took the form of a parade of more like them.” They might even fight to do so (State) force as 10,000 students were chaperoned if they believe it is necessary to bolster their own around the City of London by 4,000 police for the position. benefit of the camera phones of investment bank staff standing behind floor-to-ceiling windows. 22 | variant 43 | spring 2012 At indeterminate intervals the police would put This demonstrative submission by the on their helmets, extend their batons. Later, they individual to the ‘multitude’14 is the key marker of would remove their helmets, retract their batons membership of the new protest movements. Often and attempt to chat with protesters. Similar to the this formal submission is a form of cynical Pieta, appearance of arbitrary escalation by protesters, where those cradling, mourning and celebrating for protesters the actions of the security forces the dying of leadership figures will soon be the were just opaque. Suddenly, a three-layered new leaders. The idea of leaving formal positions blockade of officers would present itself, flanked of responsibility vacant is not new; in fact it by horses. The ‘militarisation of peace’, and of the is the essential truth underlying capitalism’s police – distending the accepted distribution of vigorousness. The occupation of the Hetherington, violence dictating social relations – results in the like the Occupy Movement, consciously used this well documented systematic use of anti-terrorist logic as a simple technique to derail criticism. By legislation against ‘regular’ citizens, designating insisting that everyone is welcome to make their them ‘domestic extremists’. views heard (including University administrators, Mayors, Police officials, and other opponents) “Today, strikes remain battle re‑enactments – but it makes opposition more difficult. In short, re‑enactments which exist solely within the realm critics must submit to the operational structures of cathartic performativity. Institutionalised by the of the General Assembly to reject the General state, neutralised through anti‑union legislation, Assembly. The response to critics is simple: come strikes become dress rehearsals for nothing – since all down and make your view heard. The alternative claim to challenging state violence has been forsaken. democracy of the recuperated space, like the mass They can neither be ‘political’ (the assertion of labour ‘democracy’ of the Nation State, demands that against capital; the product of class consciousness) the enemies of a structure accept that structure, nor consecutive (where they could threaten one which is well placed to defend itself in its infinitude). Reduced to the status of impromptu own terms and can claim tacit legitimacy. Liberal public holiday, defined byaction-as-symbolism , the societies promote the equality of the laws and new strike abandons politics for theatre: a gesture institutions, while ignoring the arguably more not of antagonism but of conciliation, reinforcing its it remains within the University body, protest important inequalities of social and economic impotence in every moment of its articulation.” and rebellion can be billed as a part of the lively relations. Occupy and similar movements promote (Escalate, Salt, p.15‑16) student experience, a safely bounded constituency the legitimacy of their arguments while ignoring This is the space prepared for us, but where in where disputes remain on-campus. It was this their lack of power, defining non-violence as an the past there was a managed political consensus mixture of constituents, and the attempt to project unwavering moral principle rather than a tactic. – be it by Union leaders, officers, the Labour party, messages beyond the recuperative structures of In trying to use the power of the multitude, while the courts – on occupying this space, there is a new the University bodies into wider society, that is denying the use of force by any tendencies in that attempt to keep the shape of that consensus not by necessary and which often cannot occur. multitude, they fail to acknowledge that there politics but by blunt force. The enforced carnivals By sitting directly on a nexus between the there is a problem with saying violence is never that are one-off occasions, such as football matches State, the Church and the City of London, Occupy justified: or the Commonwealth Games, are the model for the London Stock Exchange pulled a largely protest. Protest quickly becomes another form of unexpected but impressive feat. By turning the “Power needs no justification, being inherent in the entertainment, but it can quickly return to the dead transit spaces between Paternoster Square very existence of political communities; what it does political: the ‘Kelvingrove Party’ was an example and St. Paul’s into a public place it acted as a need is legitimacy... Power springs up whenever of this. Following on from David Cameron’s significant enough irritation (intentionally or not) people get together and act in concert, but it derives invitation to celebrate the Royal Wedding, with to elicit a process of systematic over-reaction. The its legitimacy from the initial getting together rather its on-the-ground class and sectarian tensions, tools brought to bear: first ‘Health and Safety’, than from any action that then may follow. Legitimacy, it quickly became a riot. The skill embodied in then the legal process contorts to find purchase when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, the techniques of cultural production under on an assembly which eschews individualism, the while justification relates to an end that lies in the capitalism are formidable, as Mark Fisher puts it: basis of the judicial system. This was, for one, future. Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be “authenticity has proven highly marketable”12. exemplified in the judgement delivered in the legitimate.” The ‘Great Britain: You’re Invited’ ad campaign case of the Fortnum & Mason’s sit-in “that each (Hannah Arendt, On Violence,15 p.52) focusing on images of Tudor villages and Highland defendant did take part by encouraging others The ethico-political response of the pre-existing scenery grates with the February announcement with his or her presence”. The systematic reaction – in the case of the University of Glasgow, the role of the deployment of surface-to-air missiles to of councils and local governments to occupations of student bodies – is to sustain the structuring ‘protect athletes’ confirming the 2012 Olympic exposes the impasse between the administration principle that there are ‘legitimate’ and right Games as a London-based ‘Green Zone’: “Why will and the administrated. A similar narrative played decision making bodies of a non-political authority. an unmanned drone be flying over the London out in the occupation at the University of Glasgow. This was seen in the response by University Olympics next year in 2012” asks Escalate (p.47), First control was applied to occupiers for their management, who stated that they would not while Francis Fukuyama explains “Why we all own safety, then appeals were made to vacate the negotiate with people who violated the concept need a drone of our own”13. History has restarted, building so it could be returned to the use of staff of rightful property ownership. The power of an and the theoriser of its end is arming himself, as if and students (for which it was intended), before occupation is that it matches a demand that can be a State-driven hyper-inflation of the full-spectrum the authorities resorted to a violent eviction. seen as legitimate by the current system – ‘no fees, panopticon and dispersed militarism runs counter Months after the occupation ended, the building is no cuts’ – with a certain amount of (‘illegitimate’) to, rather than continuous with, State violence. still shuttered. hard power – ‘this building is ours’. It creates Indeed, some appear to propose that certain of lines of defence and sovereign boundaries that these technologies, assuming access, may, at least are to be defended, usually passively, and invites for a short time, provide advantages that can Collectivisms possibilities to cross those boundaries. This poses be used in the interests of the oppressed while “The most important trait of the media strategy was a problem for the ‘legitimate’ bodies, who must primarily being tools of oppression: depersonalization.... The reason for this was not because respond with active violence against the power students feared possible sanctions, but rather because of passive resistance, which will be justified as “Know your enemy – how it moves, reacts, changes they wanted to emphasize the collectivity of the action necessary to restore some form of status quo, but shape, lies. Know your material – the people and and the general demands which concern not individuals will, as Arendt states, never be legitimate. Slavoj movements around you, the places you occupy, the but the society in general. This was also a way to avoid Žižek suggests “political space is never ‘pure’ but desires you keep.... Take up residence in the thing you creating leaders and recognizable individuals who always involves some kind of reliance on ‘pre- will transform, flow with it until your relationship might avert the media’s attention from the action political’ violence”16, and, to go beyond Arendt, becomes seamless. Feel its patterns and networks so and its goals, reducing it to a vehicle for turning aggressive use of violence by those who nominally deeply that they somehow become you.” several ‘leading’ students into new media stars.... have power actively saps whatever legitimacy (Users Guide to Demanding the Impossible, p.13) The continuous rotation of spokespersons (as well as is appealed to. This sapping of legitimacy is the The role of University occupations for ‘re- delegates and plenum moderators) served to ensure necrosis identified by Reza Negarestani cited appropriation , as the Hetherington was, ’ that the plenum is the collective and only political above. As Escalate outline in Salt, “you can only applies a technique which can also be found in subject of the action.” asset strip once” (p.38). The legitimacy of the post Negarestani’s Jihadi, or the Users Guide’s model (Occupy Cookbook, p.55) war consensus was based on welfare – universal artist – “take up residence in the thing you will healthcare, guaranteed housing, and, if capitalism transform” – in a strained effort to become a cannot provide you with work, guaranteed site for a general social dissent. One of the key benefits. After the London riots this logic has demands of university authorities, one that returned as censure, where councils (Conservative was never granted, was that the occupation and Labour) threatened the families of rioters should be able to prove that all occupiers of the with the loss of their council houses. However, as building were enrolled as students – members the state hollows, privatising housing, utilities, of the public could have no legitimate interest transport, healthcare and education, when “there in the fate of higher education. This demand is are no means of purchasing a new class base” usually acceded to – often without question by (p.41), and it is the very people who gained from student occupations that contain no non-students ‘right to buy’ schemes who are now losing their – but turns a potential re-appropriation by the homes, the only resort may be violent suppression. community into a recuperation on behalf of the “Where social peace can be ensured only by the power structures of the University. As long as variant 43 | spring 2012 | 23 police... the class struggle is converted ever more communication in the form of ‘the media’. definitely into a situation of war” (p.50). Even This was, however, to some extent, the stance commentators on the Daily Mail website have of the Hetherington: publicly it was framed as started referring to the return of the days when a re-appropriation of education, privately we the police were more readily understood as being understood that the best chance of producing a the “paramilitary arm of the conservative party.”17 political effect was a violent confrontation where This spectre of oppression will appear more on the occupiers could be positioned as victims – but more – it is repeated on a small level with every where was justice to be imposed from? eviction that takes place. This is particularly But requiring punishment from the state is as noticeable in the controversy surrounding the useless a route towards autonomy as requiring use of ‘pepper spray’ against a sit-down protest praise or pity. There is an increasing seriousness at University of California, Davis, on November and movement from ironies to concrete affirmation 18th 2011. The most widely circulated video18, and direct conflict. This is different to the previous which attracted around 1.5 million online tendency to push protest into the realm of self- viewings within 3 days, is edited to show none expression and entertainment. Instead of finding of the limited confrontation between police and release in the assemblage and carnivalesque protesters, instead focusing on the particularly there are indications that a new seriousness gladiatorial flourish of one of the officers involved is breaking out: “The beauty of protest is not and this direct act of violence – the spraying of simply about how it looks, the fun and pleasure sedentary protesters with chemical agents (to use it engenders in our bodies, but as importantly it’s language which re-animates the violence quashed about its success. ... nothing is more beautiful than in the name ‘pepper-spray’). This is designed to winning.” (Users Guide, p.57) There is an important further decontextualise and erase all possible opportunity (the example here being the Users legitimisation of the officers’ actions. It has been Guide) for art practise to move into the politics of called a ‘Bull Connor’ moment in the media, work, to produce victories rather than artworks. referring to the use of fire-hoses and dogs against All around, more artists are downing tools and peaceful civil rights protesters in May 1963. This beginning to discuss rather than ‘produce’: in New focus on the violent moment delegitimises the York the Arts and Labour group of Occupy Wall authority of the (civic) State, while, in a similar Street have demanded the end of the Whitney way, representations of violence among protesters Biennial, pointing out its position in the apparatus seek to delegitimise their claim to power. The of the State and the abusive practices of key media focus on violence in protests appears to sponsors such as Sotherbys and Deutsche Bank19. have the effect of seemingly eradicating politics Will the Whitney take the joke, react angrily, from the narrative, and of turning it into a moral ignore it or absorb it? As Art Not Oil have found game of good vs. evil. On March 26th 2011 the in attempting to publicly shame UK institutions Hetherington was evicted by police, though there such as the Tate’s continuing co-reliance on BP was active resistance and attempts to break sponsorship, assuming a moral high ground for through police lines by protesters, the final image the arts does little to account for the conservative of the day presented by the media was that of nature of its public and practitioners or shared almost a hundred officers used to evict half a institutional value systems. One of the key logics dozen students. of direct action is to destabilise a situation enough that forces of authority will react – and by reacting against a fissure the authority widens the gap Manuals for Action between itself and the processes by which it The Zagreb occupation, outlined in The Occupation constructs its legitimacy. Cookbook lasted for 35 days in protest against Such an over-reaction took place in California tuition fees. It was organised around a ‘plenum’, – the police spraying chemical agents on students or general assembly, which was designated sitting peacefully on the ground. It also took place the “central organ of decision making” (p.19). during the UK education protests with the use of The Cookbook/Manual, like any such blueprint mounted police charging ‘kettled’ protesters. document, presents an ideal that almost certainly The spectre here is the precedence of the was not achieved. At the Hetherington the result Kent State shootings of 1970. As one of the key of the ‘plenum’ format was often a constant delegitimising moments against expansion of the deferral with a specific result: acceptable inaction. Vietnam War it is seen as a model turning point The tactic of peaceful occupation can have only in struggle: the hyperbolic cries of ‘brutality’ and limited claims to power: 1) to present a serious ‘shame’ during every encounter with the police enough alternative to the normal power relations may be a willfully amnesic, though not inaccurate, to represent a formidable challenge of legitimacy, calling out of the repressive and deadly nature of or 2) to halt the operation of the target institution state violence. While at the Free Hetherington the to such an extent that they choose to act (in the precedent of an autonomous space was important public eye) in a disproportionate manner, leading both in principal and as an organising hub for similarly to a crisis of legitimacy. For both, the action and education, equally important was that concept of ‘legitimacy’ hinges on a perceived we waited for the use of force. continuity of a public consensus around underlying desires for social justice and/or solidarity. The “...the government... itself begins to filter, purge and Zagreb occupation attempted the first method: hunt down its own civilians, curtailing their rights, confining them to economic, social and political “What does it mean to ‘occupy’ a school? A school quarantine to isolate or even purge the disease and its occupation is not, as the corporate media like to portray potential hosts at the same time.” it, a hostile takeover. A school occupation is an action by (Reza Negarestani, The Militarisation of Peace, p.62) those who are already its inhabitants – students, faculty, One concern with such a ‘quarantine’ is the fear and staff – and those for whom the school exists. of the activist in the face of potentially deadly (Which is to say for a public institution, the public itself.) violence; it is not enough to be angry and act, The actions termed ‘occupations’ of a public institution, it is necessary to find a way of holding out. The then, are really re‑occupations, a renovation and new protests are not a demand for death. They reopening to the public of a space long captured and have, however, organised around a self-produced stolen by the private interests of wealth and privilege. vacuum of leaders and demands which are a result The goal of this renovation and reopening is to inhabit of what is commonly thought of as a postmodern school spaces as fully as possible, to make them truly crisis of grand narratives – there is a form of habitable – to make the school a place fit for living.” Protest Realism that, like ‘Capitalist Realism’, (The Occupy Cookbook, p.7) “...no longer stages this kind of confrontation with modernism. On the contrary, it takes the Off With Our Heads! vanquishing of modernism for granted; modernism is now something that can periodically return, but The idea that if citizens remain passive in the only as a frozen aesthetic style, never as an ideal streets – thus allowing the state to oppress us for living.”20 We have the slogans of 1968, of 1917 directly and violently – then the ‘masses’ will be even, but it is all already aesthetic. The events able to recognise injustice and rise, is beginning remain primarily reformist, incipient rebellion is to wear thin. It is an essential failure of liberalism rehabilitated in advance and radical critiques are to assume that all political actors have the same quickly overcome and made redundant due to the general interest in a ‘good’ society, that it can pace of neoliberal ‘shock and awe’ – what Naomi be achieved through discussion, and that all bad Klein famously describes in her 2007 book The behaviours are merely error. It also presupposes Shock Doctrine as ‘disaster capitalism’. Why, after a degree of access to and transparency of public 24 | variant 43 | spring 2012

all, are some people demanding free education for my survival, which was based on a very dignified but not free food? ‘Shock and awe’ seems clearly pension that I alone paid for 35 years with no help from the state. to be the tactic of the current UK administration: And since my advanced age does not allow me a way of NHS privatisation is eclipsed by privatisation dynamically reacting (although if a fellow Greek were to of the roads, the police, and so on, backwards grab a Kalashnikov, I would be right behind him), I see and forwards. The initial crisis of 2007/8 is used no other solution than this dignified end to my life, so as cover for a series of social dismemberments I don’t find myself fishing through garbage cans for my sustenance. and instead of providing an increasing stock of I believe that young people with no future will one day motivational injustices, the protest movements are take up arms and hang the traitors of this country at increasingly silenced by the weight and speed. An Syntagma square, just like the Italians did to Mussolini echo of political death returned shockingly with in 1945.” the suicide of 77-year-old Dimitris Christoulas who shot himself outside the Greek Parliament on April 4th 2012; unlike the young Mohamed Bouazizi, who set fire to himself on December 28th 2010 in Tunisia, Christoulas’s anger was no longer directed only at a government but the people who were too passive, writing in his suicide note: “I believe that youth who have no future will one day take up arms and hang the national traitors upside‑ down in Syntagma square just as the Italians did in 1945 to Mussolini.”21 ‘Occupy’ in its current form will probably not work for much longer, and as a single tactic is not enough – in many locales the state can be seen to have eradicated resistance through the use of greater force – but it has got us a long way: Does anyone believe the other when she declares ‘we Notes have nothing to lose’? If there was really nothing 1 PDF available freely online: http://www. to lose, would campaigners still be mobilising minorcompositions.info/usersguide.html around defending single issue campaigns? 2 PDF available freely online: http://www. As stated at the beginning of this piece, the minorcompositions.info/occupationcookbook.html dictum of protest singer Joe Hill (‘Don’t mourn, 3 ‘Adventures in the Sausage Factory: a cursory overview organise’) can be recalibrated as “organise your of the university struggles, November 2010 - July 2011’, mourning”. Too much can be made of apparent by Danny Hayward, Mute, January 2012. PDF freely novelty: organisation, communication and co- available online: http://www.metamute.org/editorial/ articles/adventures-sausage-factory-cursory-overview- operation are common to all historical periods, and uk-university-struggles-november-2010-%E2%80%93- political experiences today are not fundamentally july-2011 different than in the past. It is their ornament 4 Salt, by Escalate Collective, January 2012. PDF freely and a lack of historicity which obscure this. They available online: http://www.escalatecollective.net/?p=32 still predominate on the street, they still rely 5 ‘The Occupation of Space’, Owen Hatherley, Afterall, on territorial concepts, they still produce the 21 October 2010: http://www.afterall.org/online/the- exhilarating feeling of licence and comradeship. occupation-of-space Tragedy, resistance and community are everywhere 6 ‘Tiny band of left-wing radicals bring jobs policy to its knees’, Patrick Sawer and Robert Mendick, The at lower or higher intensities. They are not enough. Telegraph, 25 February 2012: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ Critically, and yet again, we need a new form to news/politics/9105983/Tiny-band-of-left-wing-radicals- inhabit. To restate the Salt Collective, rather than bring-jobs-policy-to-its-knees.html, 25.2.2012 merely quote: under capital, austerity is necessary. 7 ‘Owen Jones: If trade unions don’t fight the workers’ It should be remembered that the social wage and corner – others will’, Owen Jones, The Independent, 2 the settlement for those subsisting under capital March 2012: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/ commentators/owen-jones-if-trade-unions-dont-fight-the- has always been austere. workers-corner—others-will-7468921.html 8 ‘The Cancer in Occupy’, Chris Hedges, Truthdig, 6 February 2012: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ First the tragedy, then the funeral, the_cancer_of_occupy_20120206/ then... 9 Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs What would an organised mourning look like? As and Consequences of American Empire (January 4, 2004 the Users Guide says, “Nothing is more beautiful ed.). Holt Paperbacks. pp. 288. than winning”. This is not a co-ordinate but a 10 ‘Autonomy Tonight / Utopia Tomorrow: DSG is over’: common direction of travel. It is to abandon the http://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com/ image in favour of the event, or, more accurately 11 Hardt & Negri, Multitude (London, Penguin: 2004) perhaps, it is to consciously appreciate the 12 Fisher, Mark, Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? necessity of an orientation with which to position (London: Zero Books, 2009) p.14 our values, processes, tactics. and objectives. The 13 ‘Why we all need a drone of our own’, Francis Fukuyama, Financial Times, 24 February 2012: tragic becomes farce only because the mistakes of http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9cc59dce-5e27-11e1-8c87- the past have not been appropriately understood 00144feabdc0.html#axzz1rd6OSgML and buried – the capitalism we hoped had died 14 Hardt and Negri’s: “The deterritorializing power of the in 2007 must be dug up and reburied with the multitude is the productive force that sustains Empire social consensus that has preceded it into the and at the same time the force that calls for and makes grave. Taking the worst seriously is not very necessary its destruction.” Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio, Empire. (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University different to what the pessimist does today: we Press, 2000) p. 61 would announce the failure of our projects before 15 Arendt, Hannah, On Violence (Orlando, Harcourt, 1969) we have attempted them, we would take on the 16 ‘The Obscenity of Human Rights: Violence as Symptom’, grief of our incapacity to change our situation. We Slavoj Žižek, lacan.com, 2005: http://www.lacan.com/ would accept the return of the past, and rely on zizviol.htm ; libcom.org, 2011: http://libcom.org/library/ the fact that this time the same will be not better the-obscenity-of-human-rights-violence-as-symptom or more bearable but different. If we are mourning 17 ‘Tories order police to halt workfare demos as MP makes the wastage of our lives under capital, it must be formal protest to BBC over bias in favour of hard-Left an ‘organised mourning’. What is key is taking the militants’, Simon Walters and Glen Owen, Daily Mail Online, 26 February 2012: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ horror, the scale and the intensity seriously. We news/article-2106601/Tories-order-police-halt-workfare- cannot demand our own immiseration, but we can demos-MP-makes-formal-protest-BBC-bias-favour-hard- mobilise it as it happens. As organisational form Left-militants.html switching overspeeds, technological fact overcomes 18 ‘UC Davis Protestors Pepper Sprayed’, 18 November legal and national barriers for communication, 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4 and techniques of co-operation become more 19 ‘2012 Whitney Biennial to open March 1; Museum breaks permissive – that as the machine begins to heat with two Corporate Sponsors, apologizes to participating artists’: http://whitney2012.org up and lose control then we can imagine a coming 20 Fisher, Mark, Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? social [eu]catastrophe. Our civilization is a blight, (London: Zero Books, 2009) and whatever happens next, it will be worse for all 21 The translated, full text of Dimitris Christoulas’s suicide involved. note is reported as reading: “The Tsolakoglou government has annihilated all traces variant 43 | spring 2012 | 25 Ethics and the political efficacy of citation in the work of Santiago Sierra Ellen Feiss In his essay ‘Signature Event Context’, Jacques and failure of utterances. Rather, the term serves language.21 As such, Austin’s non-serious ‘staged Derrida utilises J.L. Austin’s definitive theory to account for the role of the speech act within a performative’ becomes the performed citation; the of the “performative utterance”1 from ‘How to notion of language as socially constituted, as part referencing of speech said or written elsewhere. Do Things With Words’.2 That “utterance which of Derrida’s larger project of deconstruction.14 This, performing the non-serious utterance is both allows us to do something by means of speech Iterability as a process of alteration, accounting for an unconscious and conscious act with performers itself”3 interests Derrida; a speech act which the way in which meaning is unbound by context embodying an unconscious medium of the iterable does “not designate the transport or passage and infinitely transmutable, as opposed to an process whilst knowingly, and consciously, reciting of content of meaning”4 but in itself enacts an account that emphasises context and linguistic a script. event, provides an entry point through which conventions in the service of individual intention, The non-serious is a transparent speech act, as to break down the conception of speech, and is bound up in Derrida’s notion of the non-serious its conditions foreground language as necessarily therefore communication, as it is defined within but is not confined to it.15 circulated and constituted through repetition. Western philosophy.5 By destabilising the Derrida’s establishment of the serious and Derrida chooses the performative utterance institution of communication, Derrida contests non-serious utterance16 as co-dependent linguistic as an entity which, through its non-serious the understanding of meaning as a fortified entity structures, reliant on each other in the creation of transported from speaker or author to listener or meaning, presents a paradox. What of the event reader, in order to undo the notion of the conscious that embodies both the serious and non-serious intention of the speaking subject as the central performative utterance? The excavation of such force in language. However, more specifically, an event offers a method for analysing the self- it is what Austin expressly excludes from his referential nature of power in late capitalism, definition of the performative utterance which that utterance which acknowledges the terms presents Derrida with a framework for recasting of its constitution while simultaneously acting. speech as constituted through its citationality, or Significantly, iterations of the serious and non- “iterability”6, rather than tied to the context of a serious event have been employed in contemporary speaker. art practice since the post-war period as a mode Austin’s strict definition of the performative of critique, from Claes Oldenburg’s storefront to utterance requires the “conscious presence of the the institutional critique of Andrea Fraser. This intentional speaking subject”7 and a laundry list article seeks to question the dissident potential of historically contingent regulations in order for of this framework in art by considering the work the “successful”8 performative utterance to come of Santiago Sierra. The ethical and political into being. Austin contends that the “successful” consequences of Sierra’s work have been debated or the “serious” performative utterance is its only for over a decade, most significantly, perhaps, in form. For example, the historically contingent Claire Bishop’s pioneering essay ‘Antagonism and ‘I do’ speech act in a marriage ceremony is a Relational Aesthetics’. However, the performative performative utterance for Austin only when utterance I attempt to illustrate is a conceptual manifestations, provides windows onto the iterable it is between two consenting people, and its mechanism through which the binary of ethics that process. Conversely, Derrida describes the serious success further demands that the subject not be Sierra’s work is often trapped in (ie, is the work as a ‘statement event,’ experienced as having a “already married with a [spouse] living, sane and damaging or necessary artistic transgression?) can status of singularity and understood (incorrectly) undivorced.”9 Austin specifically excludes those be transcended. Furthermore, I seek to reconsider through the intention of the speaker. The serious utterances outside the conditions of intention and the question of citation and political potency: is it utterance can thus be understood as invisible context that don’t result in social constitution. possible to use the language of power in critique? through naturalisation, concealing the processes He precisely states that performative language How does one assess the political potential of a by which language is constituted, and the non- in “circumstances (where it is) intelligibly cultural strategy of resistance that utilises the serious as necessarily that of repetition as it is, in used not seriously but in ways parasitic upon its hegemonic structures it seeks to dismantle? As part, knowingly performed. normal use… All this we are excluding from well as drawing on Derrida, I will look to Judith consideration”10 (my emphasis). That Austin Butler’s incarnation of iterability17 in order to renders those failed performative utterances establish a new framework for understanding the outside the terms of his argument – a “possible consequences of Sierra’s work. risk” in all performatives, as he highlights them Further definition of serious and non-serious as a constant structural possibility – is significant. utterances is needed, particularly in establishing In contrast, Derrida resurrects these utterances them as necessarily materialised enterprises. which Austin casts off as failures11 and establishes Austin’s specification of the non-serious, when an them as spoken citations; indications of a “general utterance is “intelligibly used not seriously”18, iterability”12 without which the “successful” implies a conscious and purposeful usage of the performative wouldn’t be possible. Derrida uses performative utterance out of context. These Austin to extrapolate his notion of iterability by incorrect contexts are listed as “said by an actor illustrating both forms, the serious and non serious on the stage, or if introduced in a poem, or spoken utterance, as citational. in soliloquy.”19 Austin deems the “non-serious” I restrict my discussion of Derrida to ‘Signature as contextualised within the staged medium, Event Context’ in order to use his analysis of or indeed any form that indicates fiction. This Austin’s original conjuring of the stage and not only serves to undermine the ability of the fictional in his definition of the parasitic those contexts to enact social landmarks, but utterance, or the non-serious. The conception of additionally, it connotes the “non-serious” as being audience and the context of the stage in Austin’s necessarily experiential and as always having an examples of fictional exclusion are crucial in my audience. While Derrida’s central problem with 250cm line application of iterability to art. I exclude other Austin’s argument is his reliance on “the conscious Judith Butler moves the concept of the tattooed on six theorists’ use of the parasitic and its fictional intention of the subject”, I wish to highlight materialised citation onto the realm of paid people. backdrops, specifically John Searle, because that the conscious mis-use of performatives the body, through her definition of gender Espacio 22 of my exclusive reliance on iterability – I don’t alternatively indicates that intention can be “performativity” , an analysis which uses Aglutinador, 20 engage at this point with debates surrounding part of the larger societal process of iterability. Derrida’s iterability to deconstruct sex and Havana, 1999. the legitimacy of iterability but instead move Derrida does not disagree with intention playing gender categories. Recognising the process of Six unemployed 13 forward with the concept as a core pillar. I use a role in language as long as the process of iterability as a force of hegemonic power, “the young men from ‘Signature Event Context’ in tandem with Judith iterability, as a process outside the consciousness citational practice by which discourse produces Old Havana 23 Butler’s concept of performativity to describe of individuals, is understood to be responsible the effects it names” , Butler’s performativity is were hired for artistic utterances that hover between statement for the production of that language, requiring fundamental to an understanding of iterability $30 in exchange 24 and embodiment. To clarify, Derrida’s iterability that conscious intention should no longer be as “materialized” and as a tool of social control. for being reaches beyond my restriction of it to the success understood as the central governing force in In terms of importing Butler’s analysis into the tatooed. 26 | variant 43 | spring 2012 “there is no necessary relation between drag and He enacts a labour contract which cites its own subversion” and that “drag may well be used construction in capitalism. In terms of the logic in the service of both the denaturalization and of the performative utterance however, can the the reidealization of hyperbolic heterosexual context of Sierra’s work be localised, as Claire gender norms.”31 In establishing the non-serious Bishop suggests through the “indexical trace”? as potentially political, but not structurally As he is replicating the same power dynamic42 in subversive, Butler’s drag can be appreciated as a each city he is invited to work in, hiring cheap crucial tool for evaluating instances of the non- labour, Sierra is, rather, providing a view into the serious in other critical cultural practices. construction of the impoverished subject. This non- The definitional capabilities of the stage, serious gesture pries at a process much larger than and its accompanying relationship of speaker local economies, while at the same time excavating and audience, are a structural component in local realities both for aesthetic definition as Butler’s understanding of the serious and non- well as in a serious utterance that is not as serious. In her analysis, both serious utterances “ephemeral”43 as Bishop concludes in ‘Antagonism of gender and non-serious “instabilities” are and Relational Aesthetics’. Like the integrated physically materialised, however, staged qualities spectacle, Sierra’s work reinscribes an abusive are structurally necessary for recognition of the power relation by describing it, in an iteration that non-serious as a citation. In her analysis of Paris garners power through the embodiment of the Is Burning (1991) – Butler’s central discussion of labour contract, contextualising performativity as drag – it is precisely because “drag pageantry”32 a process which similarly constitutes the identity is watched by a live audience that the non-serious of the worker. For the performer-workers in The is articulated. The audience within the film reads wall of a gallery pulled out, inclined 60 degrees from the pageant, judging each performer in terms of the ground and sustained by five people (2000) or the success of their impersonation by a degree of Twenty-four blocks of concrete constantly moved “realness”.33 Attaining realness is the ability of during a day’s work by paid workers (1999) they a performer to successfully dissolve the artifice perform acts of manual labor that utilise their of their own performance, or any indication of bodies as any “real” contract would, albeit in the non-serious qualities, and seamlessly become, ‘wrong’ context of the art institution. Bishop points for example, a “bangie, from straight black out that Sierra’s critics quickly summarise his work masculinist culture”.34 The judging audience and as illustrating the “pessimistic obvious: capitalism the performer together evoke the non-serious, exploits”.44 She is right that the work is more than creating a literal runway where the serious that. Like the mixed utterance of the ball queens, utterance, a successfully “real” impersonation of that expression of subscription and simultaneous a straight black male, for example, is recognised defiance, Sierra’s work is a complex interrogation as a citation. The necessary context of the non- as well as a proliferation of the processes of capital serious, then, is on the stage and in the mouths of it deals in. As in the drag pageant, some utterances Others, revealing that recognition is a foundational are more resistant and others more complicit. component of citation. While the serious (in the Sierra created a living map of the racial and case of Butler, hegemonic gender) also requires class based exclusions of the Venice Biennale, performance for constitution, as a normalised evoking a sense of role reversal for viewers of occurrence, its viewing is not announced. The stage Persons Paid to Have Their Hair Dyed Blond, (2001). of the non-serious is what marks it as such and, as This work astutely references the systematic in Paris is Burning, the naming by its audience is oppression of whole populations by liberal also what establishes it as citation. The gaze of the democracy, which the art world is a part of, as audience, Butler reminds, is “structured through Bishop rightfully points out.45 Bishop describes those hegemonies” and, therefore, through “the feeling implicated by this piece in the processes hyperbolic staging of the scene”35 the non-serious of economic exclusion that structure society, is born, or, in fact, witnessed. noticing the unsettlement of her self-identification An “ambivalent”36 politicisation of the audience at the fair because of the inclusion of the street is articulated by Butler as the audience being vendors. “Surely these guys were actors? Had they “drawn into the abjection it wants to both resist crept in here for a joke?”46 The unsettlement of and overcome.”37 While Butler is discussing an identity, in this case one of elite cultural belonging audience with a specific “abject”38 identity, the and financial privilege, is what the successfully ambiguous political potential of the non-serious denaturalising serious/non-serious utterance that she describes is applicable to citational sends out in rippling waves. Other variations of 160 cm Line terms of the serious and non-serious, “naturalized events more generally. The non-serious is often Sierra’s practice though have yielded what Butler Tattooed on gender”25 can be understood as the serious and interpreted as universally subversive, a citation described as the “reidealization” of norms. Ian the 4 People. El the non-serious as those acts which “reflect on that is, therefore, a critique of the norm, where a Irish (2002), involved Sierra paying an Irish street Gallo Arte the imitative structure [iterability] by which closer reading could prove otherwise. If “realness” person to stand outside a gallery in Birmingham, Contemporáneo. hegemonic gender is itself produced”.26 Butler is an example of the dual event, the enactment England, repeating, “My participation in this piece Salamanca, understands the “reiteration” of gender as a of the serious as a non-serious project, a similarly could generate a profit of 72,000 dollars. I am Spain, 2000. process that fundamentally includes “instabilities” complex combination of utterances should be read being paid 5 pounds”.47 An instance of integrated Four prostitutes and that it “mark[s] one domain in which in other citational mobilisations. spectacle, this dual utterance serves only to echo addicted to the force of the regulatory law can be turned Guy Debord’s “integrated spectacle” argues that a relation of inequity. While attempting a citation, heroin were against itself”.27 Butler further establishes such the serious and non-serious event is a powerful this event fails to activate a non-serious relation hired for the instabilities – the politicised non-serious – as tool in service of liberal democratic hegemony. to its audience, as the street person remains price of a shot having the potential for the revolutionary use Here, it is clear that the dual utterance is not naturalised: in a familiar position, soliciting of heroin to of the “alterity”28 of citation and a fundamental only an occurrence in (sub)cultural39 activities. passersby on the street. Serving up the obviously give consent ability to deviate from, while also reflecting the Rather, the integrated spectacle contextualises pessimistic, in a form which does not transcend to be tattooed. original. The potential for critique in Butler’s Butler’s reminder of the reinscription of power the serious labour contract it enacts. The same is Normally they “non-serious” is conceptualised as gender parody, as a possibility in citation, in terms of late true of 160cm Line Tattooed on Four People’ (2000). charge 2,000 or specifically practices of drag, which situates capitalist strategy. The stress Butler places As both an unusual and aggressively exploitative 3,000 pesetas, Austin’s specification of the utterance used on the precarity of citational subversion, the project, Tattooed avoids a non-serious reading as an between 15 and “intelligibly not seriously” as one in revolt. This possible reinscription of power, is expressed by un-placeable utterance, rendering viewers either $17, for fallatio, is not to say, however, that certain subjects are Debord’s integrated spectacle as not solely a appalled48 or non-plussed, such as Bishop when she while the price not constituted through the involuntary process possible outcome but a method of expanding referred to it as “ephemeral,”49 which even its title of a shot of of iterability, or interpellation29 in the case of capital’s frontier. The integrated spectacle is a disproves. Its formal relationship to minimalism heroin is around Butler’s performativity. Just as it was the case form of power that “has integrated itself into adds a dimension to the exploitation of bodies as 12,000 pesetas, that under Derrida’s account all utterances were reality to the same extent that it is describing part of the history of art, but confuses the labour about $67. subject to iterability, for Butler, all subjects are it, and that it was reconstructing it as it was relationship it references. Therefore, Tattooed gendered through that “very regulatory law”.30 describing it.”40 Understanding manifestations cannot be seen as citation. Lacking “realness”, like Derrida’s allowance for intention requires that of the non-serious and their ‘description of a bad drag performance, it has gone too far. while a subject’s intention is not completely reality’, as a re-establishment of the serious (the The serious/non-serious utterance can be void in speech, it is no longer the central axis. hegemonic) highlights the power of description described as parasitic, in revival of Austin’s The same is true in Butler’s evocation of drag: to integrate power. Contemporary art practice original term, to both its conflicting ends. Either where the intention in these events could be seen is one method of description and given the art it is a hegemonic parasite, burrowing deeper as palpable, it does not undermine the larger market’s inseparability from global capitalism, down new pathways, or it is a counter insurgent, structure of performativity. Rather, as a non- its practices of integration operate with much at attaching itself and poisoning the vital internal serious entity, drag can only be comprehended stake. Santiago Sierra’s “ethnographic realism”, system of power relations. At the end of ‘Bodies in relation to the “serious” normative categories or his art “actions” which “form an indexical trace That Matter’, Butler addresses this relationship of gender and the overarching process of of the economic and social reality of the place by asking: “How to know what might qualify performativity. Butler is clear that in drag, and in which he works”41, can be understood as an as an affirmative resignification – with all the it is possible to infer that in all citational parody, incarnate of the serious/non-serious utterance. weight and difficulty of that labor – and how variant 43 | spring 2012 | 27

‘repetition/alterity’, p317. drag as not always subversive, but rather containing Right: 7 J. Derrida. ‘Signature Event Context’. Margins of both “a sense of defeat and a sense of insurrection”. 133 Persons Paid Ibid., p128. Philosophy. (Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1982.) to Have Their p322. 37 ibid., p132. Hair Dyed Blond 8 J.L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words, (New York: 38 Butler uses abject to signify the construction of at the 2001 Oxford University Press, 1962.) pp8-9 qtd. in J. Derrida. bodies outside the norm. “Given this understanding Venice Biennale. ‘Signature Event Context’. Margins of Philosophy. of construction…it is still possible to raise the critical (Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1982.) p323. question of how such constraints not only produce the Illegal street 9 J. Derrida. ‘Signature Event Context’. Margins of domain of intelligible bodies, but produce as well a vendors in Philosophy. (Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1982.) domain of unthinkable, abject, unlivable bodies.” Butler, venice were paid p323. xi. to have their 10 ibid., p325. In the text Derrida italicises seriously and 39 Sierra’s work and the art world more generally cannot hair dyed blond. parasitic and signs J.D. I am doing the same, to draw be considered a subculture, whereas drag as a practice is attention to another aspect of Austin’s quote. connected to a specific queer subculture. 11 ibid., p324. Derrida notes Austin’s creation of a success/ 40 Guy Debord. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. failure opposition. (London: Verso, 1998.) p9. 12 ibid., p325. Or a ‘general citationality’. 41 Claire Bishop. ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’. (October 110 2004: 51-79) p70. Available at: http:// 13 Furthermore, Searle’s notion of the parasitic utterance roundtable.kein.org/files/roundtable/claire%20bishop- as reliant on the non-serious intention of the speaker antagonism&relational%20aesthetics.pdf And Liam or writer isn’t useful for my analysis and instead serves Gillick’s response, ‘Contingent Factors: A Response Searle’s description of literature, namely metaphor. to Claire Bishop’s “Antagonism and Relational Towards an analysis of contemporary art, I use Austin Aesthetics”’, is at: http://www.practiceincontext.net/wp- and Derrida’s deconstruction of Austin, and the content/uploads/04_gillick_responds_to_bishop.pdf definition of the parasitic as the product of abnormal context. See: J.R. Searle. Expression and Meaning: Studies 42 The same power dynamic but different outcomes of in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge oppression dependent on the city. As Bishop notes University Press, 1979. “immigration, the minimum wage, traffic congestion, illegal street commerce, homelessness”. ibid., p72. 14 Derrida utilises the non-serious because it is the central exclusion of Austin’s argument, the exclusion for 43 Claire Bishop. ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’. Derrida being a necessary mechanism in metaphysical (October 110 2004: 51-79) p70. thought. Derrida’s conception of the “trace” and his 44 ibid., p71. work on absence and presence in ‘On Grammatology’ 45 ibid., p73. Referencing her own discomfort at the 2001 and ‘Writing and Difference’ are important precursors to Venice Biennale at the inclusion of illegal street vendors iterability and together, form a more complete picture of in Sierra’s piece, Bishop clearly articulates “Sierra’s Derridian deconstruction. action disrupted the art audience’s sense of identity, 15 Searle’s critique of ‘Signature Event Context’ elucidates which is founded precisely on unspoken racial and class the latter claim, that language is tied explicitly to exclusions”. context and intention and iterability is the process 46 ibid., p73. by which linguistic conventions are repeated, across contexts. I do not enter into much of Derrida’s debate 47 Katy Siegel and Paul Mattick. Money: Art Works. with Searle, instead taking Derrida’s conception of (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004.) p77. iterability to task uncontested. 48 “Sierra has attracted tabloid attention and belligerent also, to run the risk of reinstalling the abject at criticism for some of his more extreme actions, such as 50 16 In this essay, the serious and non-serious will be used the site of its opposition?” Sierra’s work puts without quotations to signify the use of them as terms 160 cm Line Tattooed on Four People (2000)”, Bishop p70. this question to task with much at stake, namely outside the context of ‘Signature Event Context’. 49 Claire Bishop. ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’. intensifying contemporary complicity in the 17 Specifically, Butler’s discussion of drag and its (October 110 2004: 51-79) p70. degradation of Others and, as Butler will come to precariously subversive potential in Bodies That Matter: 50 J. Butler. Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of in later writings, their precarious lives.51 Looking On The Discursive Limits Of ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993.) p240. forward, Butler notes the mutual, “unstable and 1993.) 51 J. Butler. Precarious Life: the Powers of Mourning and continuing condition of the ‘one’ and the ‘we’”, or 18 J.L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words, (New York: Violence. London: Verso, 2004. Print. In which Butler considers the relation to the Other after 9/11. In relation as humans we are all “used by, expropriated in” Oxford University Press, 1962.) pp8-9 qtd. in J. Derrida. ‘Signature Event Context’. Margins of Philosophy. to my concluding paragraph, her call for ‘imagining language together, “the ambivalent condition of (Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1982.) p323. interdependency’. Ibid., xii-xiii. 52 the power that binds”. Sierra’s work implicates 19 ibid., 324. 52 J. Butler. Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of both the I and the We, to variously parasitic ends. 20 Derrida’s response to Searle in Limited Inc. provides ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993.) p242. The reinscription of power occurs. But alternately, further elaboration on the role of intention, and its like Bishop and the whole of the Biennale that limits, in iterability. In Reiterating the Differences, Blond (2001) year, an entire community can be Searle understands iterability to be the “necessary rearticulated through such an utterance. presupposition of the forms which intentionality takes,” and therefore, iterability solely constitutes the meaning Sierra’s work illustrates that the political of linguistic conventions, which are then applied Person Paid to potential of the citation as always a potentiality, uniformly across contexts. Iterability provides the and that strategies of resistance open themselves tools for the individual speaker to load with meaning. remain inside up to failure every time they import the language Rather, Derrida clarifies that iterability is both the the trunk of a of power into critique. This risk however, is basic presupposition for the creation of meaning, and car. Limerick the creator of meaning itself, that which continually City Gallery, structural to the citation’s critical efficacy. As fragments meaning through repetition. See: J. Derrida. the activation of the audience is the dissident ‘Limited Inc a B C ...’ and ‘Summary of Reiterating the Limerick, potential of the citational utterance, this effect Differences’ Limited Inc. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, Ireland, 2000. can only be aimed for and not preemptively 1988. Print. Produced during guaranteed. The risk of not being recognised, as 21 J. Derrida. ‘Signature Event Context’. Margins of the opening Philosophy. (Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1982.) of the Fourth in the case of some of Sierra’s labour contracts pp326-327. and for any variable reason not affecting viewers EVA Biennial, 22 J. Butler. Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of at the entrance subversively, is inescapable, structural to the ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993.) p2. to its main site. citation and cannot be accounted for. As an event 23 ibid., p2. without a ‘successful’ formula to appropriate, A vehicle was 24 ibid., p2. I would argue it is one of the more potent parked at the 25 Hegemonic expressions of sex and gender, where the gallery entrance strategies available in cultural critique. In terms of iterable structure of gender construction is rendered and a person evaluation, each instance of the serious and non- invisible. was put into serious utterance must be analysed individually, 26 J. Butler. Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of with an eye to the activation of the audience; the ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993.) p125. its trunk. The person was paid impact of Sierra’s work cannot be appropriately 27 ibid., p2. 30 Irish Punts, addressed when viewed as a whole. In light of this 28 J. Derrida. ‘Signature Event Context’. Margins of risk, Sierra’s work operates through an ethics of Philosophy. (Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1982.) about $40. pragmatism rather than of drama or shock. He p317. ‘The essential iterability of communication Nobody noticed puts into play citation after citation, as few will (repetition/alterity)’. his presence, succeed. 29 “Interpellation is the constitutive process where since he was individuals acknowledge and respond to ideologies, put into the thereby recognizing themselves as subjects.” trunk before the Notes ‘Interpellation’. Index. 12 Nov. 2011 . public arrived at Philosophy. (Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1982.) 30 J. Butler. Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of the opening. p321. ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993.) p2. 2 J.L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words, (New York: 31 Ibid., p125. Oxford University Press, 1962.) 32 J. Butler. Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of 3 J. Derrida. ‘Signature Event Context’. Margins of ‘Sex’ (New York: Routledge, 1993.) p128. Philosophy. (Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1982.) p321. 33 ibid., 129. Butler defines realness as “a morphological ideal”. “What determines the effect of realness is the 4 ibid., p321. ability to compel belief, to produce the naturalized 5 Earlier in the essay, Derrida deconstructs the primacy effect.” Ibid., p129. of speech over writing in Western philosophy, see pp309- 34 ibid., p129. 321. 35 ibid., p132. 6 Derrida’s concept of the potential for citation as a structural necessity of language. Iterability equals 36 ibid., p124. “Ambivalent” is Butler’s term to describe 28 | variant 43 | spring 2012 Tom Jennings The Poverty of Imagination

The UK’s soporific slide deeper into fiscally- outcome is queasy revisionist hokum in outwardly imposed structurally-readjusted barbarity, without The Coming of Age of Austerity well-meaning, commemorative approximations much in the way of disturbance to putative social UK cinema responded in a relatively sluggish of, say, traditions of northern music-hall (Little peace, has now been thoroughly punctured. manner to the tragedies of the 1980s, hot on Voice, Mark Herman 1998), Northern Soul (Soulboy, First the exuberant Lethal Bizzle of EMA kids the heels of the Tories’ first decade of cuts and Shimmy Marcus 2008) and even the militancy of prompted their university ‘betters’ to trash the accompanying degradation of working and factory women (Made In Dagenham, Nigel Cole Conservative HQ. Latterly, so-called Black Blocs living conditions for vast swathes of the populace. 2010). Having said that, other film revivals of bypassed passive masses of notional protest and In the 1990s, however, veteran social-realist working-class life – in the 1950s (Vera Drake, Mike pissed on complicit bureaucracy to attack the City. director Ken Loach was soon able to make up Leigh 2005), ’60s (Small Faces, Gillies MacKinnon And then, most vividly, came unexpected eruptions for lost ground, forensically detailing the latter 1995), ’70s (Neds, Peter Mullan 2011) or ’80s (This of spontaneous sustained rage among festering in terms of restructured employment (Riff Raff, Is England, Shane Meadows 2006, plus 2010/2011 slumdwellers that blazed all over the national 1992; The Navigators, 2001) and unemployment television series sequels)6 – may flirt with shop. (Raining Stones, 1993; Ladybird Ladybird, 1994; sentimental closure but, courtesy of subject matter What is remarkable, nevertheless, is how My Name Is Joe, 1998) – with Jimmy McGovern’s and handling, instead serve genealogies of the unprepared those supposedly in-the-know were in rare account of grassroots industrial struggle in present far better than safe paeans to, or laments the face of these socio-political squalls, storms and Dockers (Channel 4, 1999) integrating both within for, heroic or hellish pasts. 1 tornadoes. Sure enough, the flog-’em-and-bang-’em- a wider urban context. Elsewhere, less shackled up brigade broadcast their bile in a prompt chorus by documentary motivations, of class-hatred, as if the perpetrators of anti-social more expressive aesthetic and crime were restricted to archetypal, opportunistic, narrative means were mobilised small-time hoodies and arsonists. As if it had to bemoan crumbling lower- nothing to do with a wider, more deliberate class ties – whether these were orchestration on an apocalyptic scale, thanks to traditional (Nil By Mouth, elite financial obscenities mugging the 99% and Gary Oldman 1995), biological foreclosing on the mortgaged futures of global and (Orphans, Peter Mullen 1997) local populations. or alternative (Among Giants, But why do the revolting poor come as such Sam Miller 1998). Yet, despite a surprise? After all, despite unhealthy upstart not shrinking from the heft and idealisms regularly messing up business-as-usual scope of misery suffered, these elsewhere, a mythic enlightened middlebrow films still reserved space for rationalism is normally alleged to have bewitched germs of unprepossessing hope this geographic idyll. Early last century it even – some genuine residue, albeit gave birth to that dispassionately charitable tenuous, conflictual or deeply media empiricism called ‘documentary’ or ‘social buried, of affiliation, commitment, realism’. This has remained at the centre of the conviviality and solidarity. country’s fantasy factories ever since – despite But beyond being corruptible infernal colonisations by vulgar American kitsch for cynical enterprise, such organic human Service economy realignments in value- and purist continental aesthetics. And this cultural values have no obvious place in the New generation also nudged middle-class identification paraphernalia of institutional and representational British Order. If Thatcher’s “no such thing as from institutional professionalism towards crass patterns, disciplines, practices, and rhetorics society ... only individuals” was not so much corporate or petit-entrepreneurialism – which, has always taken as its very special scientific empirical description as statement of intent in among only recently mobile fractions, often led project the minute observation and adumbration a parochial version of global neoliberalism, its steadily back to precarity. Class recomposition had of the travails of the poor. In other words, where enduring corollary that “there is no alternative” myriad reflections in new social movements – from was the careful data gathering, processing and was pointedly rendered in baleful portraits of anti-Poll Tax action, hunt sabotage, New Age travel interpretation, on large and small public screens, attenuated nihilism and hopelessness among and Reclaim the Streets, to anti-globalisation – but when the think-tanks, policymakers, police, and younger generations in Naked (Mike Leigh 1993), direct political manifestation scarcely troubled movers-and-shakers seemingly needed it? Butterfly Kiss (Michael Winterbottom 1994) and mainstream media fiction. Instead, as in working- Accepting that current predicaments set-in Stella Does Tricks (Coky Giedroyc 1997). Conversely, class realism, markers of commodified (counter) during Thatcher’s yesteryears, not yesterday’s a cinematic coming to terms with ‘capitalist culture dominated representations of hipsters 2 recession, this essay subjectively surveys two realism’ sketched resignation to the rule-of- and bohemians flaunting superior fashion; decades of austere growth in British poverty porn. the-market over economic and social relations foregrounding consumption over production and Dissecting grim-up-north platitudes, perilous- among impoverished post-industrial subjects, assuming assimilation to blind materialism in down-south perambulations and sundry slumming- yielding three highly successful British films which biopics of youth music scene appropriation like it social-realist serenades, an attempt is made profited from blending social-realist tropes with Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes 1998) and 24 Hour to see if the national film oeuvre ought to have populist melodrama, comedy and romance. Worse, Party People (Michael Winterbottom 2002)7. The opened any eyes. Brassed Off (Mark Herman 1996), The Full Monty postmodern manoeuvering was more deviously (Peter Cattaneo 1997) and Billy Elliott (Stephen deployed by Cool Britannia’s celebrated middle- Daldry 2000), as well as sad retreads like Up ‘N’ class vanguards who, adapting slick cinematic Under (John Godber 1998), displaced structural innovations from Hollywood and MTV spectacle, 3 relations of class into its contrived performance purportedly blurred class boundaries in superficial – projectively mystifying the contemporary travesties of underclass abjection – such as 4 crisis into anachronistic patterns of masculinity Shopping (Paul Anderson 1994), Twin Town (Kevin presented as wilful personal obstacles to survival, Allen 1997), South West 9 (Richard Parry 2001) health and happiness via vicissitudes of cultural and, most iconically, Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting capital. (1996)8. With class-denialism promulgated If the illusory bubble of New Labour’s “Things promiscuously – left, right and centre – elegies to can only get better” mirrored Boyle’s thematic what was lost from a mythical social-democratic trajectory – from yuppie psychosis (Shallow golden age of the political clout, social stability Grave, 1994), through Trainspotting, to X-Factor and economic security of labour now readily transcendence (Slumdog Millionnaire, 2008) – figured as mere consolation. Period drama concurrent trends in UK cinema thoroughly recuperations of recent proletarian experience tainted any seamless passage to consumerist strategically accentuate style over substance in a nirvana9. Darker urban pastorals spoiled ersatz 5 distanced nostalgia of ‘decadent mannerism’ cut streetwise cosmopolitanism with the return of the loose from specific historical moorings. This ironic repressed, signalled again through dysfunctional mendacity retrospectively legitimises its referent’s macho convolutions – such as the ‘disease’ of inevitable demise, having eviscerated the messy football hooliganism forever worried over in The contextual blood and guts which animated it. The variant 43 | spring 2012 | 29

Firm (Allan Clarke 1989) all the way to nevertheless, survived. So Nick Love’s a protracted 2000s cycle spearheaded biographically inflected picaresque, by Nick Love. A parallel nostalgic Goodbye Charlie Bright (2001), chased restoration dredged up more archaic its eponymous likely lad, streaking ghosts of mockney spivs and hardnuts round a run-down but still marginally dressed up in Tarantinoesque neo-noir, benevolent south London manor, flanked posturing at hyperstylised gangster gloss by equally schematic petty criminals in the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and sociopaths. Despite ducking and (Guy Ritchie 1998) franchise. These twin diving soon going decisively pear-shaped, fetishisms then promptly smart-casually Charlie’s readiness to put away childish cross-fertilised in a lucrative homegrown things gets spun unconscionably sunny – exploitation genre greeted with universal even if his creator’s own output graduated critical derision. A common denominator from wideboy thuggery to middle-aged throughout is supine acceptance of the bovver and raving vigilantism. However, petty bourgeois order, with its pitilessly in many rotting metropolitan boroughs, diminishing real returns wished away in Goes Shopping and Tina Takes a Break (Channel things already were more murderous, and infantile dreams of lottery wealth and celebrity 4, 1999; 2001) gave way to audacious crossovers, dilemmas starker, for schoolkid armies brokering lifestyle. The accompanying solipsistic vacuum is with wildly uneven results, in The Principles of Lust narcotic economies with knives and guns. And this then hysterically concealed in atavistic charisma, (2002), Mischief Night (2006), Exodus (Channel 4, wasn’t just according to moral-panic merchants in the latter cases of ‘New Lad’ vintage, coding 2007) and 1 Day (2009). and tabloid crisis-mongers – the teenagers stranded, fragmentary memories of collective UK cinema’s 2000s infancy intelligibly believed the hype too. But before their versions of vigour, pride, and even resistance to the present embarked from middle-childhood fantasies of events reached the screen, there was still time for desperate state of things. Even when upwardly- escape, after the surreal end-of-century Ratcatcher sober documentary observation as well as cynically mobile, it seems the rough and dangerous classes (Lynne Ramsay 1999) cut adrift abandoned intemperate exploitation. could not be persuaded to exit the big historical offspring to blissful suicidal merger in the In depth and texture, Bullet Boy (Saul Dibb stages and screens. poisoned urban womb. A rash of kitchen-sink 2005) merited promotion as the ‘Brit Boyz N the stories then set about the salvation of dying Hood’ even if hardly matching the gang-infested Coming of Age in Austerity families via wounded youthful innocence, with intensity of American New Black Cinema. The fairytale resolutions varying in outlandish naffness film’s restrained picturing of Hackey towerblocks, Meanwhile the working and workless inhabitants in Purely Belter (Mark Herman 2000), Billy Elliott, terraces and playing fields counterpointed of sink estates and industrial wastelands suffered and Gabriel and Me (Udayan Prasad 2001)11. More troubled biographies and questionable futures, as the New Public Management of state provision, complex portrayals of the negotiation of naïve a paroled aggravated assaulter fails to go straight which increasingly appeared premised on Oedipal archetypes among networks of kith and thanks to irreconcilable demands of family, shortchanging both its demoralised education, kin – for example in Like Father (Amber 2001), All friends and foes. His pre-teen brother strives to health and welfare staff and ‘customers’ punished or Nothing (Mike Leigh 2001), Sweet Sixteen (Ken avoid the same fate with an integrity built from for privatised, personalised deficiencies. But in Loach 2002), or A Boy Called Dad (Brian Percival scratch, himself facing multiple threats in an the ruins of the post-war Keynesian settlement – 2009) – again endeavoured to resurrect the nuclear environment of jaundiced institutional hypocrisy the practical and psychological ramifications of alms across intransigent generations, and amid and thoroughly compromised masculine power. which their parents wrestled with in struggling corrosive infrastructure. Perhaps more presciently, With their own preoccupations, the damaged and to survive – fresh cohorts of kids were growing up further contributions fast-forwarded past besieged elders exhibit contradictory nobility relatively unencumbered by broken twentieth- adolescence to recalibrate bad family romance and inflexibility, with the generations’ lifestyles century promises. For them, material and social in elective relational antagonisms no longer so barely intersecting. Even when they do, mutual decay and deprivation were always already facts of bogged down in blood provenance – including incomprehensiblity ensures a zero-sum game of life; the glittering sheen of consumerism a world A Way Of Life (Amma Asante 2004), Love + Hate passionate relations. In impressive yet impeccably away even when on sale round the corner. And (Dominic Savage 2005), Summer (Kenny Glenaan modest social-realist style – thanks to a complex, again, the millennium’s social-realist filmmakers 2008) and Somers Town (Shane Meadows 2008). subtle script and naturalistic dialogue delivered by were well-placed to explore how these young However, uprooting from unsafe havens in a committed cast – both the spiralling determinism generations could conceive, build and live lives migrant dislocation to make economic and of violence and, counterintuitively, genuine in such straitened circumstances. After all, the emotional ends meet risks alienation at every turn. chances of youngsters thriving without abandoning original colonial impetus of early British realism This was charted in melancholic accounts of young homemade ethics or home turf are convincingly also thrust anthropological apparatuses into slums adults depressed beyond their years in transient rendered. to observe and record their strange exotica. This oddball communities of uncertain motive, in time round, many of its exponents had themselves Human Traffic (Justin Kerrigan 1999), The Last emerged from working-class backgrounds and, Resort (Pawel Pawlikowski 2000), Late Night with more intimate knowledge, were motivated by Shopping (Saul Metzstein 2001) and Morvern Callar their own unfinished business. (Lynne Ramsay 2002). Corresponding paranoid So a heterodox flow of realist films by low- detachment may then follow overweening budget auteurs blended poetic naturalism malevolence, as in London To Brighton (Paul with European arthouse enchantment and Andrew Williams 2006), but also prehistories popular melodramatics. Each sought potential of impersonal or absent nurturance poignantly in contemporary poverty, in contradistinction to conveyed in Helen (Christine Molloy & Joe the deafening discourses flooding media, culture Lawlor 2008) and The Unloved (Samantha Morton, and politics which blame, dismiss and demonise Channel 4, 2009). Finally, black-magic temptations neoliberalism’s victims. Established old hands of addiction to stave off social and psychic collapse like Amber Films10 paid painstaking attention to easily prove fatal, overwhelming ambivalent authentic sources, while bold faces like Lynne forbearance and despairing care offered against Ramsay, Pawel Pawlikowski and Andrea Arnold all the odds in Pure (Gillies MacKinnon 2002), tempered miserabilism with impressionist Shooting Magpies (Amber 2005), Better Things perspective or mixed-genre expressionism. (Duane Hopkins 2008) and The Arbor (Clio Barnard Shane Meadows had also privileged local and 2010)12 – thus circuitously recalling Ratcatcher’s autobiographical narratives for Smalltime comparably psychotic oblivion in other polluted (1996), Twenty Four Seven (1997) and A Room hinterlands that no last-ditch love could cleanse. Only the former was managed by the resolutely for Romeo Brass (1999) before risking provincial But the love remained alive, albeit in abeyance, unrealistic Rollin’ With the Nines (Julian Gilbey Hollywood pastiche in Once Upon a Time in the and the newbies weren’t giving up without a fight. 2005), a cheap blaxploitation ripoff revelling Midlands (2002) and Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) Filmmakers who had matured within Thatcher’s in kinetic drug-fuelled brutality and depths of and subsequently returning to more expansive blight, witnessed at first-hand the squandered and sexual depravity. It did, however, showcase the social-realism in This Is England. Conversely, dashed hopes among peer groups which they had, indigenous gangster-rap incarnation of Grime – Penny Woolcock’s faithful ethnography in Tina 30 | variant 43 | spring 2012 London’s ascendant mixed-race music subculture of-view cinematography, this potent expressive limited material resources, relations and ethics which, like the tawdry trappings of pornographic interplay of single-minded interior and implacable discernible in the city’s wreckage. Their tentatively consumerism, was neglected in Bullet Boy’s exterior alienation perfectly conveys the reckless awkward strategies may have only modest atmosphere before being thoroughly integrated damage risked for self and others; when lashing- chances of pragmatic success, but ultimately they into later youth-centric fare. Accordingly, Life out at each successive vain option threatens a self- reject the false promises of embracing addictive and Lyrics (Richard Laxton 2006) was next up in fulfilling prophecy of disappointment. barbarity to feed fatal fancies of fulfilment. Maybe the neighbourhood-watched stakes – a relatively Top Boy’s author retains radical sensibilities from mild Brixton hip-hop romance kitsching Eminem’s his own outspoken revolutionary republican, 8 Mile – which was promptly blown away by the libertarian-Left youth, even if in dotage accepting manic virtuosity of Kidulthood (Menhaj Huda political and artistic limits of temporary respite 2006). Written by Noel Clarke (who directed for isolated souls. But what works best, as in much Adulthood, the 2008 sequel), this pursuit of of the work described above – whether focusing classmates dragging a panoply of delinquent on personal or interpersonal change or stasis – is predicaments round streets and high-rises drew on imaginatively brewing trials and tribulations his intimacy with its disreputable setting – more into ensemble patchworks of juxtaposition to like four funerals and a teenage pregnancy than creatively mull over. This was already explicit in in the yuppie Notting Hill – and the vernacular the rhythms and rhymes of the local soundsystems of impatient yearning, impassioned loyalty and and griots, and now brings to life on screen the harsh wit rang as true as the quickfire intimidation extraordinarily multifarious striving for individual and unforgiving shaming and disrespect among and collective redemption and empowerment still incipient predators and prey. characteristic of environments mired in the most Sadly, rushing to deliver revelations of moral unpromising circumstances. Misery? Yes: in spades squalor in juvenile rites and wrongs of passage – but far more besides, and by no means only rammed far too much implausibility into a twenty- The grievous hostility here evident in representable miserably. four hour exegesis. Inflated physical, mental and dysfunctional lower-class daily life, however, sexual cynical prowess in characters left little of matches fractiously vibrant intimacy, spirit and the humdrum anomie and vulnerable uncertainty intelligence, and such vital human impulses can Community De- / Re-generation of real adolescent shades of grey. The breathless warp destructively when inchoate fury narrows For the most comprehensive excommunication of narrative panned out thick, fast and predictable, the limits of the foreseeable. Refusal to relinquish kitchen-sink drudgery in the service of exuberant leaving no space for reflection let alone quotidian desirous intensity, no matter how inadequately flatulent hilarity – but never abandoning a teenage kicks such as enjoying the spot-on beats articulated and negotiated, or subsume it in scandalous sacreligious slant on magical realism blaring on the soundtrack. Maybe kids do mature conventional role prescriptions, is highly likely – the unique, groundbreaking Shameless (Channel that quickly and wickedly. But such suspiciously to result in schism. Yet emotional bonds run 4 2004-2012), now in its ninth series, is unlikely partial verisimilitude seems rather to reflect as deep as the profanity even in a family this to be beaten. With nary a trace of patronisation teenage’s own delusions of grandeur, keeping fear fragile; one which nurtures as well as neglects. or mockery, but profound and abiding respect of the future at bay while inadvertently nourishing Conversely, Channel 4’s recent four-part Top for those making the most of the slings and agendas pushing the repressive containment Boy (Ronan Bennett 2011) revisits Bullet Boy’s arrows of outrageous misfortune, Paul Abbott’s of subhuman underclasses. And authorities in Hackney(ed) crossroads, whose socio-economic barnstorming soap-operatic brainchild – based any sense are conspicuously absent here, as in climate over intervening years has exacerbated on memories of his troubled childhood – began later Menace II Society wannabes like the rather the unravelling of further impoverished kinship serial offending with a humble family-in-meltdown charming 1 Day (Penny Woolcock 2009) and networks: blood connectivity now stretches beyond on a satellite Manchester sink thoughtfully relentlessly charmless Cherry Tree Lane (Paul breaking point. Fashioning substitute clans from dubbed the ‘Chatsworth’. The non-landed gentry Andrew Williams 2010), as well as, at another social detritus at hand is thus imperative and, as of this lumpen country estate are the Gallaghers, figurative extreme, the comedic contempt of in its precursor, realism and crime melodrama presided over by drunken, feckless Frank: a Anuvahood (Adam Deacon & Daniel Toland 2011) are skilfully blended, daring to expose prevailing fleetingly present, irredeemably self-centred dad where clueless cretins with Ali G pretensions are commonplaces of urban deviance as simplistically gone rotten who was doubtless never good for antisociality’s primary perpetrators. prejudicial with Ashley Walters nailing yet much other than siring nine. Successive series Recent entries in UK youth cinema’s urban another bad boy with a heart of tarnished gold, inexorably haemhorraged siblings pining for killing fields continued to earnestly craft dialogue and a young cousin warding off his ambivalent greener grass, so narrative blinkers slowly widen scripted from authentic patterns of banter and mentorship. to a panoramic kaleidoscope of ne’er-do-wells patter, but disguise blindingly obvious narrative Psychiatric and relationship breakdown and and inadequates who actually do tolerably and arcs with increasingly tired crowd-pleasing novelty overworked drudgery leave kids fending for adequately well, from day to day at least – shoring gimmicks. Sket (Nirpal Bhogal 2011) at least themselves among drug cartels who succumb to up mutual, unapologetically glaring weaknesses tempered testosterone overdoses with feminine the vicious logic of their enterprise more from lack and bad-luck excuses with irrepressible optimism, ferocity and tenderness in girl gangs betraying of alternatives than psychopathy – paralleling the surprising nous, and adventurous brio. And, as well their men and each other – whereas Shank (Mo affective sufferation among children, parents and as their effortless practical genius in syncretic Ali 2010) and Attack the Block (Joe Cornish 2011) intermediate cohorts alike. Highlighting one lad’s cultural expropriation, this best of humanity traded respectively in Mad Max and Spielbergian navigation through everyone’s stormy weather, certainly know how to throw a party – both in the 13 sci-fi buffoonery. The former parachuted an utterly a sophisticated meshing of trauma, painful dry political and festive wet-bar senses . unconvincing nonviolent direct action credo into love and hope, in overlapping the directionless moral starvation of infantile biographies, convincingly teens, while the latter’s unwelcome intruders were sketches manifold constituents rampaging pitch-dark aliens disrupting mugging, of crumbling commons, in spite drugging and blagging in a motley starstruck crew. of an unfeasibly minimal cast Our petty posse transform themselves into unlikely and plentiful questionable plot superboys in ridding the ’hood of its unspeakable holes. In the light of dishonest nemeses – forging alliance with a slew of more commonplaces elsewhere or less respectable middle-class fractions in overstating degraded sociality, the process. Sadly, and ruinously, however, the the anachronistically threadbare ultimate deeply offensive corollary implies that gangs and police presence here the otherworldly invasion actually emanated from rather suggest institutional their own psychic recesses, whose ‘blackness’ they neglect, paradoxically letting must expunge to prevail. autonomous interaction breathe. Alongside high-energy grimefests running out Dehumanisations of feral scum of steam for want of hints of the transcendence of crescendoed after the series’ endless, restless immaturity, more contemplative completion, but no deterministic slices of community hard-knock life have truck is had with clichéd embedded individual outsiders within – as opposed inadequate parenthood, positive to insiders without prospects – in translating role models and the ‘Victorian’ elements of the filmmakers’ own conflicted values toxic in any strata, but pathetic in these. The writing team’s eschewal of any harsh upbringings. Among the best was Andrea Arnold’s So, Reality TV’s tough-love presaging of soft-cop judgement that the characters wouldn’t already Fish Tank (2009), updating her Oscar-winning invasion to transform fortunes is trashed along level at one another – affectionately or otherwise, desperate single-mother short Wasp (2003) and with traditional professional imperialism; with though never with superior snobbish boosterism showing a disaffected daughter suffocating social workers only being useful when disavowing in mind – instantly and consistently irked all under constricting Thames Estuary horizons. Her officialdom and following class-conscious conceivable sneering moral majorities. The high- obsessive-compulsive acting-out veers from solitary noses, instead of turning them up in disgust at minded chatterati can’t handle every facet of their hip-hop dancing to cathexis with her mam’s respectability’s failure to thrive. bourgeois omniscience being bawdily punctured new boyfriend – the exotic downhome appeal of The older characters seem paralysed in sad with unforgiving regularity, pinpoint alacrity and local travellers and strangeness of semi-natural individualistic tactics just as useless these days alarming accuracy. And they writhe and whinge landscapes beyond the estate contrasting with as the moral homilies which blatantly failed in apoplexy about this ‘fetishisation’ of poverty its familiar ambient clamour of a back-catalogue them. Acutely so aware, the youngsters combine as if we haven’t had to put up long enough with of plaintive calls and responses from British soul wily intelligence and obstinate interpersonal schedules full of the pompous circumstances musics. Coloured and lit with bewitching point- commitment to carve out coherent paths from nourishing their vanity. Yet among sublime variant 43 | spring 2012 | 31 crackpot pratfalls and subversive overcomings youth of all races enjoy their hybrid culture in metaphorised in failed marital attempts by the of official and informal malignancy, mistakes relative peace away from vexing intransigence couple at the centre of comic gravity. Cheap, have certainly proliferated – like embracing elsewhere. cheerful ceremonials fall foul of material, social local Plods to the bosom or, worse, installing Cross-stitching the corrosive fissures of white and historical stumbling blocks threatening to criminal tribe the Maguires at the heart of the and Asian communities, the film’s hysteria cripple the future. The groom sorrowfully panics darkness – but the surefooted guiding vision consistently erodes stereotypes, remaining about turning into his father’s facsimile, and the sweeps such embarrassing accidents under rooted in working-class neighbourhoods. Here, bride’s abused backstory comes intolerably into the carpet-bombing profanations of sincere despite intense material pressures, upward conscious relief in a transfixing strand escalating single-issue and PC complacencies. Shameless mobility’s false promises are just as destructive to unlikely resolution. automatically and unerringly takes the side of as the baleful allure of the law of the criminal Switching format seemed natural in light of the the subalterns, without sacrificing clear-sighted jungle in crystallising vicious circles of isolation. cinematic inspiration of social-realism by Alan vulgar class pride and righteous reverse prejudice. The desperate rearguard defence of ancestral Clarke, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh which failed And if the proof of TV puddings is ratings, it has families provides no useful prognosis, merely to attract film funding. Trademark collaborative vastly overperformed, whilst remaining fondly locking members into perpetual hypertension practices with a superb cast shine through, appreciated by all demographics closest to its and the submission to oppression which carnivals improvising everything from dialogue to design beady-eyed gaze. have always had the function of momentarily and costume, placing a premium on the awkward Among few cultural products with the bare- overturning. In fact, though now celebrated only in naturalism of time, place and interaction rather faced cheek to compare, Under the Mud’s (Sol Yorkshire, the druidic origins of Mischievous Night than slavish devotion to seamless superficial Papadopoulos 2006) repair of a lame marriage – a time when fairies walk the earth – predate simulation. This approach favours narratives seems wastefully unambitious given the scouring Hallowe’en and Guy Fawkes by many centuries. weaving together multiple characters without Scouse humour and invention in its community While hardly supernatural, the outcomes of this relegating subsidiary roles as mere props for workshop source material. Mischief Night (Penny highly unusual urban fairytale “with its head in conflicted heroes – which previous work, including Woolcock 2006) also skims romcoms and amateur the clouds and its feet on the ground” might also the cinema film, was regularly guilty of. That it northern (this time Leeds) raconteurship, but appear somewhat improbable. Nevertheless, its augured well for emphasising the open-endedness with inspired whittling and surreal realisation hidden script alchemy of pragmatic irreverence of real communities – haunted by ghosts of crisis is a different kettle of fish altogether from the for authority, laughing-off of adversity, and past but with potential for resilience, autonomy previous Tina films. They located their Channel 4 imaginative empathy and engagement updates and creativity as well as regression, submission Cutting Edge credentials in recounting everyday age-old formulae for survival, solidarity and and malice – was amply demonstrated in the 2011 resourcefulness among the urban deprived resistance still applicable most anywhere. series set at Christmas 1988 and with the most struggling to stay afloat, gut-wrenching but almost rather than merely reactions inconceivably optimistic to trauma as in normal collective passion on display. social-realist agonies. But the Skilfully melding the mildly cinematic denouement was amusing, sympathetically shot amid heightened police grotesque and downright paramilitarism after the horrific without detracting London bombings, reinforcing from very serious concern, aims to comedically Meadows’ best script yet undermine increasing sketches comparably tangled segregation of British Asians personal tensions and from neighbours. Here, pressures across the board legacies of closer prior interaction converge on Of course, a crucial salient caveat with in a compelling portrait of a desolate generation a single mum seeking stability for the kids, and suspiciously benevolent heterotopias like bodging their own coming of age15. various diverse connectives develop with the the aforementioned is a risk of soft-pedalling embattled Khan family leading to November 4th’s tragedies and turning points, indelible scars and festivities of benign delinquency set against the intransigent devilishnesses probably present “We Come From the Slums of ...” mundane disrespect and darker anti-sociability of in many midsummer night dreamers’ real lives. Not only run of t’ mill rations of awfulness, but crime, racism, drugs and violence. Shameless sometimes surely errs on the rosy also fascinating cornucopias of fictional fancy Design and photography magnify warmth and side since, for example, sticky ends are so few and food for thought about the social and cultural vitality despite divisions, and the overlain New and far between. But significant negativity can reproductive conditions of the wretched of our Beats and bhangra avoid cliché as the mayhem nonetheless be acknowledged and encompassed earth have smuggled through the closed-circuit resolves into generational contrasts of multiracial if the storytelling is sufficiently freewheeling Big Brother filters of conformism in the towering hope. Romance rekindled breaks backward- while being carefully, caringly choreographed. manufacture of consent. On closer inspection, looking traditions, while teenagers pursue quests Exemplary in this category are Greg Hall’s grounds for provisional encouragement that and forge friendships based on generosity and super-ultra-low budget guerrila productions14 – another world is possible seem least opaque in – glimpsing the limitations of parental blind The Plague (2005) and Same Sh*t, Different Day exactly those scenarios where groups of characters alleys – working-through toxic power relations to (2010) – chronicling teetering trajectories among have some paltry time and space to arrange their serve future needs. But deterministic narrative lovable London hip-hop chancers, which allow affairs without constantly being individually arcs rather miss the point – an urge obliquely frustrating prevarication and protracted interludes and collectively fingered and pestered by formal lampooned in the Big Men’s ballooning fetish; a to modulate impending agony or ecstasy and market and governmental forces. In which case, deft condensation of joyriding, lifestylism and the judiciously sprinkle sudden serious twists among it’s telling that the remnants of Old Left patrician Northern kitchen-sink ritual of climbing a hill to inadvertent clowning and slobbing. But for deep vanguardism these days, in concert with the usual look down on the town. The lieutenants flail out of dramatic chutzpah, oscillating humour and bourgeois suspects, line up to a man, woman and control of their territory, ending impaled on the winning gross caricature, as well as in facing transgendered being in the parties of the dark mosque tower – contrasting the failed Western nightmare scenarios head-on, the 1980s saga This angels of capitalism and the State. No doubt we secular hot air of mastery with the impotence Is England (2006-12) might, if mentally calibrated should also give a passing nod to conspiratorial of the Muslim hierarchy in challenging the to regional, sonic and sartorial specifics, share paranoia over the recuperative inoculation fundamentalists eventually repelled by enlisting common class co-ordinates across the present day of animalistic carnival among human couch- dope-dealers’ muscle. Such plot absurdities UK. potatoes vegetating in the future-in-the-present likewise signal the humility of the film-maker in The four-part This Is England ’86 (2010) matrix of Baudrillardian simulation. But that relinquishing authorial omnipotence – bravely reconstituted threads of the initial film, depicting too comfortably coincides with the absorption weaving the weft and warp of meticulously its ensemble’s continuing misadventures three of comfortable classes into twittering Webs collected grass-roots anecdotes and repartee to years later. The skinhead subculture whose inconsequentially cluttering up so many Occupy demolish pretension, free up energy and facilitate ambivalences the earlier work unpicked – echoing Everything liberal world views. Effete consensual agency. only in fading NF graffiti – has diluted further dissociation from the obscene Real cannot Fittingly, the children’s exploration of a into post-punk, goth, mod and casual crossovers. stomach any of the hideous visceral immediacy mysterious adult world provides most bite, blithely Style-sense promiscuity mirrors diverse fortunes and euphoria, let alone convulsive mortal agonies, juggling real danger and heartache with naïve among misfit gang members who nevertheless of the libidinous and death-drive imaginaries of sass and insight. They grapple with the inanities retain the rabid loyalty emblematic of the illiberal billions – who can’t in any case afford the of respectability (“My mam’s a smackhead.” depressed post-industrial contexts excavated latest must-have digital gadgetry or other high- “Mine’s a dinner-lady.”) and are drawn to the so convincingly. Again structured by the re- blown or low-rent distractions of fashion, let alone relatively well-off ‘Death Row’ whose denizens engagement of old mates, Meadows’ loosening decent IT facilities. Descending back to ground – paedophiles, headteachers, gangsters, bosses – of the semi-autobiographical focus allows fully- zero, two tendential gaps may be noted in TV and correlate posh with perverse. While one joyrider realised grappling with the challenges of young cinematic transitional programmes out of the post- views Osama bin Laden screensavers and jihad working-class adulthood, with prospects dire and war social-democratic settlement ushering in the videos as comic relief from being pressganged into dubious past certainties disappearing in rampant post-class-war neoliberal consensus and beyond. iniquity, another’s apprenticeship to a hardman political Machiavellianism. In such inauspicious First is the odd erasure alluded to above of signs grandad entails blundering around junkie mums circumstances the ‘imagined community’ of nation and symptoms of the direct intervention of either and courier pensioners. And whereas one lass coheres no better than England’s footballers at corporate or state services and utilities, be it hard finally guns down her unlikely father, a younger tournaments then or since – rendering concrete forces of law, disorder and criminal injustice or, Muslim stepsister strategises her transcendence damage to social fabrics most explicit in gamuts for that matter, soft bizzies of all education, social of patriarchy in the local urban music nightclub – of savage stress and ill-ease which friendship work, or welfare disciplinary stripes. But then a temporary autonomous zone where lower-class networks struggle to heal or ameliorate – the contemporary repressive SNAFU (‘situation 32 | variant 43 | spring 2012

normal, all fucked-up’) of the militarily-industrious Notes that scant recorded intelligent attention has accrued to Shameless so far. What does exist includes: James complex is moderately disinclined to bother 1 And, even now, we can confidently predict that no right- Walters, ‘Saving Face: Inflections of Character Role on leftie accountancy will reach our plasma screens mobilising its bungling apparatus unless the lower- Play in Shameless’, Journal of British Cinema and – matching the mainstream media news blackout of classes collectively impinge outside abject zones Television, 3 (1), 2006, pp95-106; Sally Munt, ‘Shameless the most significant victory of British industrial labour in Queer Street’, in Queer Attachments: The Cultural on solid middle-England ground. Except, of course, for many years – of the recent magnificently horizontal Politics of Shame (Ashgate, 2007); and Stephen Baker, in cultural representations – those discussed national networking militancy of sparks, siteworkers and ‘Shameless and the Question of England: Genre, Class herein, but more especially in the mesmerising allies, defeating with inspired direct determined action and Nation’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 6 16 (against the grain of their appalled and appalling trade panopticon of Reality TV . Of course, once (3), 2009, pp452-67. For discussion of the first series in union hierarchy) the massed ranks of the Big Seven sticking our necks above the parapets and daring terms of previous television comedy and drama, see my construction companies; thus, for now, retaining some of ‘A Low Down Dirty Lack of Shame’, Variant, 12, 2004, to intrude in the sterile civic spaces of genteel the precious terms and conditions remaining from what pp11-12. Note also a considerably tamer Shameless U.S. residence and dirty commerce, they’ll come down their ancestors battled so hard for (see, for example, (produced by John Wells and Paul Abbott in 2010), reports at http://neanarchists.com/). like a ton of bricks – but neither is there much with the otherwise superlative loser-actor William hint of that on telly or at the pictures. Whereas, as 2 Cf. Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No H. Macy completely unconvincing as a Yank Frank. the riotous August proved17, if there’s more than Alternative? (Zero, 2009); see also Slavoj Zizek, ‘Risk Whereas north of their border, the comparably mordant a few of us at a time they’re not really fit for that Society and its Discontents’, Historical Materialism, 2, mockumentary saga Trailer Park Boys (Mike Clattenburg, 1998, pp143-64. purpose anyway, unless tooled up like robocops Canada 1999-2009), as with Manchester’s favourite 3 See Mike Wayne, ‘The Performing Northern Working fictional pikeys, broke viewing figure records year on bludgeoning and blasting innocuous passers-by Class in British Cinema: Cultural Representation and its year – see Dean DeFino, ‘From Trailer Trash to Trailer and those deluding themselves trying to cash in on Political Economy’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Park Boys’, Post Script magazine, 2009 (posted at http:// ‘rights’. 23 (4), 2006, pp287-297. libcom.org/library/trailer-trash-trailer-park-boys). At stake, then, is what will happen when 4 For relevant discussions and varying interpretations, 14 The outfit responsible is called Broke But Making Films, the unruly multitudes emerge en masse from see: Slavoj Zizek, ‘Whither Oedipus’, in: The Ticklish whose website at www.broke-but-making-films.com can symbolic and actual respositories of despair and Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology now be visited to snap up The Plague and extras on DVD (Verso, 1999); John Hill, ‘Failure and Utopianism: for only a fiver ... sleepwalking estates of mind, to posture, frolic Representations of the Working Class’, in: R. Murphy 15 For an account of Meadows’ own coming of age in and act directly in the faces of authority, its (ed.) British Cinema of the 1990s (BFI, 2000) and ‘From bodging bang up-to-date slickly digital production, see reluctant or enthusastic servants, and those who New Wave to Brit-Grit: Continuity and Difference in his interview in The Guardian, 16th December 2011, just don’t care and are content – if not intent on Working Class Realism’, in: J. Ashby & A. Higson (eds.) online at www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/16/ it – for us to remain corralled there? Apart from British Cinema Past and Present (Routledge, 2000); Claire making-of-this-is-england-88. Monk, ‘Underbelly UK: the 1990s Underclass Film, 16 At the turn of the century, sociologist Beverley Skeggs sideways glances and glimpses in Shameless and Masculinity and the Ideologies of “New” Britain’, also embarked on a thoroughgoing decade-long investigation the like, and occasional frescoes of fury against the in Ashby & Higson; and Cora Kaplan, ‘The Death of the of Reality TV’s primary function of informally Working Class Hero’, New Formations, 52, 2004, pp94- indiscriminate, discriminatory intrusion of public legislating popular orientations to lived class – see: the 110. For a corrective, see James Heartfield, ‘There is No policing and, even rarer, the intimate internal excellent collection Reality Television and Class (edited Masculinity Crisis’, Genders, 35, 2002, www.genders.org/ with Helen Wood, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Reacting biopolitics of the nano-commodification of desire, g35/g35_heartfield.html. to Reality Television (by Skeggs & Wood, Routledge, UK filmmakers are largely silent on such questions 5 As Paul Marris aptly puts it, in ‘Northern Realism: An – and would doubtless be booted offscreen pronto 2012); and, for tentative political lessons, ‘Imagining Exhausted Tradition?’ Cineaste, 26 (4), 2001, pp30-66. Personhood Differently: Person Value and Auonomist 18 if presuming otherwise . However, in matter of 6 Not to mention the excoriating postmodernist grandeur Working-Class Value Practices’, Sociological Review, 59 fact – to cite one tiny recent example – when of the Dante-meets-James Ellroy apparitions of (3), 2011, pp496–513 (also at: www.hum.aau.dk/~proj- East London’s Muslim and other youth come out 1970s-80s West Yorkshire in the Red Riding trilogy (by forsk/beverley_skeggs/articleskeggs.pdf). and about scouting against fascist manifestation, Tony Grisoni, from four David Peace novels, Channel 4, 17 For a range of interesting perspectives on the 2009); let alone those dipping into the rural and urban blatantly flouting the commands of community significance of the UK riots, see: ‘Paul Gilroy Speaks class-saturated vicissitudes of previous centuries, such on the Riots, August 2011, Tottenham, North London’, ‘leaders’, and make a point of seeking out as Andrea Arnold’s exhilaratingly trenchant take on http://dreamofsafety.blogspot.com; Slavoj Zizek, ‘Mischief Night’ camaraderie with ‘the anarchists’ Wuthering Heights (2011) and the sickly-sour sex-work ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’, London Review of while the woefully backward self-styled ‘advanced exposé The Crimson Petal and The White (by Lucinda Books, 19th August 2011; Aufheben, ‘Communities, fractions’ of self-important politicos studiously Coxon, based on the Michel Faber novel, BBC2 2011). Commodities and Class in the August 2011 Riots’, self-kettle down the other end of the road; well, 7 A rare exception being the reggae dancehall-themed Aufheben, 20, 2012, pp1-17 (available at http://libcom. Babymother (Julian Henriques 1998); discussed in org); The Guardian, ‘Reading the Riots: Investigating maybe there’s hope for us all. Rachel Moseley-Wood, ‘Colonizin’ Englan’ in Reverse’, England’s Summer of Disorder’, 2012, www.guardian. Visual Culture in Britain, 5, 2004, pp91-104. co.uk/uk/series/reading-the-riots; plus the Khalid 8 In Visions of England: Class and Culture in Contemporary Qureshi Foundation & Chelsea Ives Youth Centre, ‘Riot Cinema (Berg, 2006), Paul Dave convincingly parallels Polit-Econ’, and Howard Slater, ‘FTH: The Savage and the venture capital speculation on low-cultural signifiers Beyond’, both in Mute, 3 (2), 2012, ‘Politics My Arse’, emptied of context in Trainspotting with similarly www.metamute.org. Finally, for a preliminary – if blatant cultural commodity trading among the era’s sometimes strangely misconceived and over-reaching – Young British artists – as critiqued by Julian Stallabrass exploration of what insurgent educational praxis might in High Art Lite (Verso, 2000) – calculatingly pandering entail, see the admirable Mastaneh Shah-Shuja, ‘Zones to sundry aspirational, reactionary and aristocratic of Proletarian Development’ (Open Mute, 2008). deceptions that class really no longer mattered. 18 Perhaps that’s why the risibly underwhelming 9 See Carl Neville’s valuable analysis in Classless: Recent Wachowski brothers-produced American version of Alan Essays on British Film (Zero, 2011). Moore’s graphic novel V For Vendetta (James McTeigue 2005) wasn’t a whole lot more illuminating on the 10 Amber’s work is discussed in more detail in my subject, either. ‘Hunting, Fishing and Shooting the Working Classes’, Variant, 34, 2009, pp25-27. 11 See James Leggott, ‘Like Father? Failing Parents and Angelic Children in Contemporary British Social Realist Cinema’, in: P. Powrie, A. Davies & B. Babbington (eds), The Trouble With Men: Masculinities in European & Hollywood Cinema (Wallflower, 2004). 12 The latter not being fiction at all, but a quasi- documentary with professional actors ventriloquising the family and friends of troubled Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar. For a discussion of the ‘truth’ irretrievably lost in this variety of realism, see Omar El- Khairy, ‘Clio Barnard’s Talking Heads’. Mute, 3 (1), 2011, ‘Double Negative Feedback’; www.metamute.org. 13 Despite all these uncommon attributes, it is revealing variant 43 | spring 2012 | 33 “Our country’s calling card”1 Culture as the Brand in Recessionary Ireland Rosemary Meade Introduction: A moral crisis begets an ‘Our’ obsession with the property ladder, “[S]peakers focused on the concept of branding, noting speculative investments and conspicuous the strength of ‘Brand Ireland’, but that in today’s economic crisis? consumption are now memorialised in the ugly hugely competitive environment, resources must be While there have been some efforts to explain reality of ghost estates, abandoned race-horses targeted and the message focussed so that Ireland, Ireland’s2 economic crisis with reference to the and home repossessions. Former President could distinguish itself on the global stage. The arts and dialectical tendencies of capitalism3, globalisation Mary Macaleese became something of an early culture had a key role to play in this process. Participants and neo-liberalism, mainstream media and touchstone for anxieties about prosperity’s strongly argued that the arts are no longer a luxury political commentary has preferred to avoid impact on our national value system. Having or a charity, but are a hugely important part of the this kind of sustained analysis. Instead, with warned against the dangers of “the cul de sac of economy.”16 varying degrees of emphasis, commentators have complacent consumerism”10 in November 2005, she It’s a limited and limiting appraisal of the role attributed causality to specific errors – some would later suggest that recession presented an of the arts – charity, luxury or brand extension collective, others individual – in behaviour or opportunity for moral rehabilitation, – and it could easily be dismissed as corporate judgment. They include our foolhardy reliance “Somewhere along the line, we began to think that babble, typical of an event such as this. However, on the property sector, the misbehaviour and we weren’t happy with deferred gratification. We had the ever present threat of further cuts in public miscalculations of rotten apples in the banking to have it now and in this moment and I think that we spending has done much to focus Ireland’s sphere, and cronyism and ineptitude within ruling have paid a very, very big price for that very radical shift. political elites. In the general rush to censure, And now the balance presumably is going to swing back the Irish public has not escaped criticism. The the other way and it will be no harm.”11 Expectations of the arts profoundly ideological contention that we are all somehow to blame4 is repeatedly passed off as an These would become the narratives of to reboot the economy incontestable fact; a ‘common sense’ legitimising blame: either so universalising that they fail to reductions in the minimum wage5, assaults interrogate issues of power, social reproduction, seem inconsistent with the on public sector spending and conditions, the inequality and exclusion in the Irish context; or so broadening of the tax base to include the low-paid narrowly targeted on charismatic miscreants that actual earning power of and the avoidance of more decisive redistribution they avoid analysis of the structural roots of this from the summit of the earnings hierarchy. For latest crisis in capitalism. Demonstrating, a wilful artists themselves example, former Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan, denial of their own partiality they ultimately ritually invoked our collective responsibility fall back onto that most pervasive of ideological devices, the fetishisation of individual choice. As collective consciousness. ‘Brand Ireland’ discourses – constituted by one part guilt and one part have been adopted by arts organisations that are patriotism – to rationalise his government’s with doctrinaire neo-liberalism they assume that individual citizens – be they ordinary consumers, cognisant of the rising expectation that all must deference to global markets and the new climate prove our commitment to the economic revival. of austerity6. politicians or employees of financial institutions – can be disassociated from their economic Even before the Global Economic Forum, Visual “This Budget serves no vested interest. Rather, it and social habitus and thus hold sovereign Artists Ireland “the all Ireland Development and 17 provides an opportunity for us all to pull together and responsibility for their risky choices in the market resource body for professional visual artists” th play our part according to our means ….” (October 14 , place. Sometimes these choices are represented made a submission to the Innovation Task Force th 2008) as ‘rational calculations’ and sometimes as ‘moral on September 16 2009, in which it positioned improved grants and resources for artists as “Everybody pays and those who can pay most will pay lapses’, but the overall effect is similar; to gloss over the contradictions of late capitalism as a “further support of the cultural identity of Brand most. The Plan calls on us all to take more responsibility Ireland”18. It is also worth noting that similar th global system that governs our every day practices. for ourselves.” (Budget 2011 Speech, December 7 , 2010) tendencies were common in Japan in the wake of “I accept that I have to take responsibility as a member its economic crash in 1991, with the ‘J-cool Brand’ of the governing party during that period for what A functionalised culture invoked to counteract the country’s reputational happened, but let’s be fair about it, we all partied.” There is another problem with all this showy and image problems19. During March 2010, RTE (Prime Time, November 24th, 2010) [My italics.] lancing of collective guilt; it typically prefaces Radio’s flagship news showMorning Ireland ran In the mainstream media, discussions about a more urgent kind of ‘X Factor’ quest, where a week-long discussion series centred around the the economic crisis have displayed a comparable the search is on for those innovators who can somewhat rhetorical question ‘Can the Arts help moralising sensibility, with recurring references lead the economic revival. It became manifest revive the economy?’, incorporating interviews to how we’ve been let down by elites7 – politicians, in the recurring calls for particular business with guests who were described by presenter Áine ‘dynamos’, celebrities, economists or civil society Lawlor as “the great and good”20 of the Irish arts leaders to run for elected office in the General world. Significantly the interviews were timetabled Despite all the moralising Election of 2011. It also became manifest in to coincide with the St Patrick’s holiday, the various representations of the cultural sector, the now ‘traditional’ focal point for international about Celtic Tiger evils of arts and artists – or as Fintan O’Toole describes marketing of Brand Ireland. Participants included them “Ireland’s greatest remaining asset”12 – as Abbey Theatre director Fiach Mac Conghail, consumption, hegemonic storm troopers in the battle to rescue the nation’s musician and broadcaster Philip King, writer beleaguered reputation. When the economic crisis Colm Tóibín, theatre director Garry Hynes and the discourses inevitably punctured the credibility of old elites, it also newly appointed Cultural Ambassador to the US, cleared a space for new icons of hope and as the actor Gabriel Byrne. The interviews did not allow retreat into a consumerist National Campaign for the Arts recognised, participants to reflect on the social, democratic or transformative possibilities of the arts, or how “There is now a broad consensus that the arts will and why culture might be meaningful to citizens. model of culture play a dynamic part in Ireland’s economic and social Instead questions were framed to elicit arguments recovery. To maintain the role of the arts as a significant regarding the economic, and specifically touristic, state officials, bankers – and how we as a people driver of employment, cultural tourism, the creative dividends that could be yielded by investment in let ourselves down. The economic crisis is thus industries, our collective wellbeing and international 13 the cultural sphere. framed as a kind of un-cool karma, drawn down reputation…” In Ireland there has been a long-standing by citizens’ relentless pursuit of hedonism during What manifests as a consensus, I am inclined 8 tendency for government and mainstream media the period of the Celtic Tiger . In April 2011, to describe as hegemony; the broad acceptance to privilege a narrow frame of economic rationality the Finnish Banking expert Peter Nyberg, who that culture be ‘functionalised’ in the interests in their evaluations of cultural, scientific, social was charged with reporting on the causes of the of the economy. In September 2009, the Irish and political developments21. As the economic banking crisis, finally published his analysis: Department of Foreign Affairs hosted the crisis has unfolded, invocations of that rationality “[T]he way Irish households, investors, banks “inaugural Global Irish Economic Forum”, which have become cruder and more frenetic. Given that and public authorities voluntarily reacted to was attended by “members of the Government; the artistic sphere is often attributed transcendent foreign and domestic developments was probably Secretaries General of Government Departments, properties – based on its ability to elevate our not very different to that in other countries now CEOs of State Agencies, and leading members of minds and desires – it is notable that it too should experiencing financial problems. However, the the Irish business and cultural sectors”14. Among fall victim to that tendency. A speech by former extent to which large parts of Irish society were the principal themes under discussion were the Taoiseach Brian Cowen, “at the announcement of willing to let the good times roll on until the very last uncertain status of Ireland’s reputation and the Ireland’s next Professor of Poetry – Harry Clifton” minute (a feature of the financial mania) may have urgency of ‘brand’ consolidation15. The report on 9 comically illustrates the case: been exceptional.” [My italics.] the event explained that, 34 | variant 43 | spring 2012

“[T]his country is fighting its way out of a severe such as knowledge, information, communication, socially constructed: their status is derived from recession and we will come through this because of a relationship or an emotional response”29. By and sustained by social distinctions, patterns the quality of our people, their self‑belief and their hegemony they are not claiming that the majority of exclusion, power inequalities and market ingenuity. The arts and our culture has a big role to play of workers are engaged in this kind of labour – relationships34. As the arts and cultural sectors in getting Ireland back on track. clearly they are not – but that this labour has a are responsibilised to fashion brand identity and I believe that being Irish holds a distinct and intrinsic comparatively elevated status in contemporary attract consumers in international markets, their value. Ireland is a brand. People know us. Our country, capitalism, whereby it is perceived to embody responsibilities to Irish citizens are trivialised. her landscape and her culture are known the world over. all that is most market friendly, innovative and Alternative expectations of the sectors might We must connect with that brand now and use it to give forward-looking. Immaterial labour imposes “a include: the broadening and deepening of us the competitive advantage in a globalised world that tendency on all other forms of labour”30 and audience participation; the creation of new is increasingly the same. We must ourselves portray the societies, states and industries must show that opportunities for ordinary citizens to make and positives that others see in us.”22 [My italics.] they are willing to “informationalize, become distribute their own cultures; and a critical In other words: creativity must be intelligent, become communicative, become interrogation of hegemonic discourses of culture, entrepreneurial, cultural distinctiveness means affective”. Given that the arts and cultural spheres Irishness and our so-called ‘Brand’ identity. market advantage. are already invested with these kinds of attributes, Ultimately hegemonic discourses, such as they are well placed to be activated in the interests those embedded in the fantasy of ‘Brand Ireland’, of economic accumulation and commodification. offer an impoverished conception of culture. The Rhetorical status Vs structural In Ireland the ‘Smart Economy’ has become a ‘arts sector’ becomes a proxy for creativity in its location new signifier of economic progress, with the arts broader sense. ‘Tourism potential’ and ‘market As Howard Becker observed, the arts are never and cultural sectors identified as key potential share’ become the default measures of cultural immune from social processes and are never contributors, but ones that require ‘leveraging’: and artistic achievement. A nationalist imperative merely the products of sequestered minds or “[F]uture investment in this sector must be based is imposed on artists who must generate positive individual imaginations. Instead they should be on world-class ambition and achievement, and it PR for Brand Ireland. Citizens are responsibilised viewed as outcomes of collective action where must also be based on engaging and attracting to take pride in and to cheerlead those PR “[R]elations of co-operation and constraint, … the business sector”31. Hegemonic discourses, achievements, like supporters of the national penetrate the entire process of artistic creation therefore, simultaneously seek to discipline and football team, while our own contributions to and composition”23. Despite all the ‘Brand Ireland’ the contestation and re-fashioning of culture are rhetoric, issues of economic survival constitute overlooked. Despite all the empty moralising about a pressing constraint on contemporary Irish arts Upbeat prescriptions of the evils of consumption in the period of the Celtic organisations and individual artists. Significant Tiger, hegemonic discourses inevitably retreat in this regard are the findings of survey of 1,128 the arts’ economic role and into a consumerist model of culture: privileging artists that was jointly commissioned by both Arts spectacle and things – they can be bought, sold, Councils on the island of Ireland. It suggested their centrality to Brand visited or reproduced – over communication, that the average income from their arts practice critique and “ordinary common meanings”35. for artists in the Republic of Ireland was less Ireland carry a parallel Finally, it is worth emphasising that this than “€15,000 in 2008, with 50% of artists earning hegemony is not absolute, that there are some €8,000 or less from their work”24. Expectations threat regarding the fate of vital expressions of resistant culture in Ireland of the ability of the arts to re-boot the economy today. In any functionalised reckoning of what seem inconsistent with the actual earning power the economically irrelevant constitutes a society’s cultural wealth, it is of artists themselves. Furthermore, hegemonic difficult to monetise these localised, provisional discourses about culture and its role are taking enable the arts and cultural sectors. Upbeat and reactive processes: although particular, shape against the backdrop of significant prescriptions of their economic role and their they do not seem so special; although real, they cuts in revenue for the Arts Council and arts centrality to Brand Ireland carry a parallel – albeit usually lack celebrity. Nonetheless, un-branded organisations. Launching its strategic plan, in often implicit – threat regarding the fate of the culture that speaks against the crude hegemony October 2010, the Arts Council chair Pat Moylan25 economically irrelevant. is vibrantly present in the creative solidarity that noted some of the challenges it now faces: artists, musicians, poets, dancers – professional and otherwise – give to social movements. In its “[T]he Arts Council said it was publishing the strategic A case for resistance most limited form, the ‘cultural contribution’ to overview ‘in a spirit of confidence, tempered by the Given their sector’s vulnerablities, it’s unsurprising activism is reduced to fundraising or PR. At its realism required to plan and provide for the arts at that many and artists and arts organisations best, the political reclamation also coincides with a time of significant difficulty in the public finances’, have mobilised collectively to resist the threat of a cultural reclamation and celebration, so that and stressed that the consequences of some decisions cutbacks and to argue for continued public subsidy culture and creativity is seen as intrinsic to social could be ‘far from what we would wish in ideal of the arts. For example, the National Campaign change, not merely as a decorative accessory. circumstances’.” for the Arts has combined high energy and Cultural reclamation and resistance is also evident In 2009 the Special Group on Public Service visually arresting forms of advocacy with repeated in the emergence of independent social centres, Numbers and Expenditure Programmes, chaired assertions of the sector’s economic relevance. poetry slams, lo-fi festivals, alternative screenings by economist Colm McCarthy and established During the 2011election, it urged supporters and all those other spaces – be they intellectual for the explicit purpose of rationalising cutbacks to deliver a unified message to canvassers and or physical – where people get together to in government spending, recommended €5.3 candidates. communicate and co-operate democratically. These billion in savings and staff reductions of 17,300 “The arts enrich our lives efforts may well be temporary expressions of an across the public sector. It identified the arts The arts enhance Ireland’s image and reputation on the always elusive autonomy, but even when they and cultural fields as a “lower priority”26 for the world stage disappear and reappear in other forms they add up state and posited that the existing government The arts are a stimulant of and contributor to the smart to a cumulative culture of resistance – maybe even department’s functions be re-allocated to other economy a culture beyond the brand. departments. It also recommended a 6.1million € The arts are a significant employer reduction in the Arts Council budget, along 32 The arts drive cultural tourism” Notes with the discontinuation of financial support for Arguably, lobbying by artists and arts 1 Comment by Taoiseach Brian Cowen made during his Culture Ireland and the Irish Film Board. This speech ‘at the announcement of Ireland’s next Professor organisations has been quite successful in ‘lower priority’ status was underscored by the of Poetry – Harry Clifton – Newman House’ Wednesday, obviating austerity’s more draconian effects33. In ‘controversy’ that surrounded the appointment of 30th of June, 2010. many ways their structural position resembles Mary Hanafin as minister for ‘Tourism, Culture 2 Here Ireland is used to refer to the Republic of Ireland that of community organisations that are feted for and Sport’ in 2010, a move that was widely rather than the Island of Ireland. their contribution to society, yet are ultimately regarded as a demotion. 3 See Allen, K (2009) Ireland’s Economic Crash: A Radical dependent on state favour for their financial Agenda for Change. Dublin: The Liffey Press and Kirby, P “I did say, that whereas I would be very happy to take survival. Community organisations can find (2010) The Celtic Tiger in Collapse, Hampshire: Palgrave the job, that it would be perceived as a demotion themselves strategically adapting to government Macmillan. – because, unfortunately, media over the years has policy in order to protect their sector and to 4 Following the general election of June 2011 a new coalition government came to power in the Republic. In perceived arts, sports and culture to be something of legitimise their particular value claims. Likewise advance of its first budget in later that year, Taoiseach less importance than some of the other departments. arts organisations may draw upon hegemonic Enda Kenny was moved to address the nation and to And, yet when you see the importance of it to the discourses and economic rationalities in order assure us that the crisis was not our ‘fault’. His analysis economy, when you see the people who came last year to defend what are already precarious funding seems to have been revised by January 2012 when he 27 to Farmleigh to share their ideas on how to promote streams and support networks. told the World Economic Forum at Davos that ‘people went mad borrowing’. Scally, D (27/01/2012) ‘Taoiseach Ireland, culture and tourism was at the heart of what However, when resistance is framed within 28 blames crisis on ‘mad borrowing’ and greed’, Irish people were suggesting.” [My italics.] the parameters of the prevailing hegemony it Times: Accessed 19/04/2012 http://www.irishtimes.com/ Simultaneously championed and treated as ultimately speaks to the short term material newspaper/frontpage/2012/0127/1224310810287.html an afterthought, the rhetorical status of arts and interests of (a minority within) the arts sector 5 That policy decision, taken in the early aftermath of culture seems to be at odds with its structural and its audiences. It is worth remembering that the Irish crisis, has since been reversed by the new government. location. This contradiction is less puzzling if we beyond that sector, cultures are generated through consider the broader economic and discursive everyday encounters and uncelebrated forms 6 Lenihan, B (14/10/2008) ‘Financial Statement of the Minister for Finance Mr Brian Lenihan, T.D’ Department context, and what Hardt and Negri have described of aesthetic practice. As Paul Willis explains, of Finance: Accessed 04/03/2011 as the hegemony of ‘immaterial labour’ in the ‘aesthetics’ and ‘Art’ are presented as universal http://www.budget.gov.ie/Budgets/2009/ contemporary period. By immaterial labour they signifiers of what is best and most exceptional FinancialStatement.aspx mean labour that produces “immaterial products, in cultures, but those signifiers are themselves Lenihan, B (07/12/2010) ‘Financial Statement of the Minister for Finance Mr Brian Lenihan T.D.’ Department variant 43 | spring 2012 | 35

of Finance: Accessed 04/03/2011 http://www.budget.gov.ie/budgets/2011/ FinancialStatement.aspx Lenihan, B (24/11/2010) ‘Prime Time Interview with Miriam O’Callaghan’, Prime Time, RTÉ. 7 O’Connor, J (18/11/2010) ‘Irish people feel frightened, alone and unled’, The Guardian. Accessed 04/03/2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/18/ irish-people-frightened-recession-ireland?intcmp=239 8 Sunday Independent (28/11/2011) ‘What did we do to deserve this?’ Irish Independent. Accessed 04/03/2011 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/what-did-we- do-to-deserve-this-2439239.html 9 Nyberg, P (2011) Misjudging Risk: Causes of the Systemic Banking Crisis Ireland, p. ii. Accessed 02/06/2011 http://www.bankinginquiry.gov.ie/Documents/ Misjuding%20Risk%20-%20Causes%20of%20the%20 Systemic%20Banking%20Crisis%20in%20Ireland.pdf 10 Hogan, S (09/11/2005) ‘Tiger society “scary for those left behind”, Irish Independent. Accessed on 02/06/2011 http://www.independent.ie/national-news/tiger-society- scary-for-those-left-behind-229934.html 11 Irish Times (16/12/2008) ‘Ireland is on rebound from consumerism, says President’, Irish Times. Accessed 04/03/2011 http://www.irishtimes.com/premium/loginpage 12 O’Tooole, F (27/03/2010) ‘Does Mary Hanafin realise she’s the minister for all we’ve got?’, Irish Times. Accessed 04/03/2011 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ weekend/2010/0327/1224267154518.html 13 National Campaign for the Arts (No Date) ‘About the Campaign’, Accessed 04/03/2011 http://www.ncfa.ie/index.php/page/about/ 14 Department of Foreign Affairs (2009) Global Irish Economic Forum 18-20 September 2009 Report. Dublin: Department of Foreign Affairs, p 4. 15 ibid, p 15. 16 ibid p 21. 17 Visual Artists Ireland (2009) Creative Ireland – Submission to the Innovation Taskforce. Dublin: Visual Artists Ireland, p 3. 18 ibid p 5. 19 Allison, A (2009) ‘The Cool Brand, Affective Activism and Japanese Youth’. Theory, Culture and Society, 26 (2- 3): 89-111 20 http://www.rte.ie/news/morningireland/ artsandcultureindustry.html hosts Podcasts of the interviews. 21 See O’Mahony, P and Schafer, MS (2005) ‘The Book of Life in the Press’, Social Studies of Science, 35(1): pp99- 130 and Meade, R. (2008) ‘Mayday, Mayday! Newspaper Framing Anti-globalisers!’, Journalism, 9(4): pp330-352. 22 Cowen, B ( 30/06/2010) ‘Speech by the Taoiseach, Mr. Brian Cowen, T.D., at the announcement of Ireland’s next Professor of Poetry - Harry Clifton - Newman House, Wednesday, 30 June, 2010 at 6.30pm’ Accessed on 02/06/2011 http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/Government_Press_ Office/Taoiseach%27s%20Speeches%202010/Speech_ by_the_Taoiseach_at_the_announcement_of_Irelands_ next_Professor_of_Poetry_Harry_Clifton_Newman_ House_30_June,_2010.html 23 Becker, B (1974) ‘Art as Collective Action’, American Sociological Review, 39(6): 767-776, p 770. 24 McAndrew, C and McKimm, C (2010) The Living and Working Conditions of Artists of Artists in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, The Arts Council/Arts Council Northern Ireland. Accessed on 02/06/2011 http://www.artscouncil.ie/Publications/LWCA%20 Study%20-%20Final%202010.pdf 25 Arts Council (29/10/2010) ‘Arts Council outlines strategic approach for next three years’, Accessed 01/06/2011 http://www.artscouncil.ie/en/news/news. aspx?article=6cba59ed-ba3f-4185-8982-463a7e7a3fcb 26 McCarthy, C [chair] (2009) Report of the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes. Dublin: Stationery Office, p 33. 27 She is referring to those who attended the Global Economic Forum. 28 Hanafin, in Ó Caollaí, É (24/03/2010) ‘Hanafin raised demotion perception’, Irish Times, Accesssed on 26/01/2011 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ breaking/2010/0324/breakingnews 29 Hardt, M and Negri, M (2005) Multitude. London: Hamish Hamilton, p 108. 30 ibid p 109. 31 Irl Gov. (2008) Building Ireland’s Smart Economy. Stationery Office; Dublin, p80. 32 National Campaign for the Arts (No Date) ‘Election 2011’, Accessed 01/06/2011 http://www.ncfa.ie/files/2011-messages.doc 33 Smyth, G (10/12/2010) ‘Do arts cuts hit the right note?’, Irish Times. Accessed 01/06/2011 http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ features/2010/1210/1224285184614.html 34 Willis, P (2005) ‘Invisible Aesthetics and the Social Work of Commodity Culture’, in D Inglis and J Hughson (eds.) The Sociology of Art. Basingstoke: Palgrave, p 73-74 35 Williams, R (1989) Resources of Hope, London: Verso, p 4. 36 | variant 43 | spring 2012 Generation Bailout Art, Psycho-Geography, and ‘The Irish Mind’ debate Joanne Laws

The Crisis Becomes Visible: Ireland post-Imperial4 country on the peripheries of Inspired in part by Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the Europe, Ireland, having joined the anti-pluralist global Occupy Movements patchily called for and the European Project ranks of ‘new muscular liberalism’,5 is now an examination of alternatives to capitalism, Following a period of rapid economic growth compelled to scramble, like the rest, for restitution reactivating modes of resistance in the public beginning in the 1990s, Ireland was ranked by in the crisis-ridden European project. consciousness with demonstrations, sit-ins and management consultants in 2002 as the most Many economists and cultural analysts have occupations of work places, corporate buildings 1 ‘globally connected’ country in the world . ruminated on the systemic failings of the Celtic and civic spaces. In an Irish context, Occupy With this newly awarded status, Celtic Tiger Tiger era, and the implications of the subsequent protests in Dublin’s financial district and other exceptionalism, and a uniform acceptance of financial collapse for Irish society. “The Celtic parts of the country aligned in opposition to the capitalist ideologies among the neo-rich, “a new Tiger wasn’t just an economic ideology,” wrote State sale of Ireland’s oil and gas reserves, and monetary hero” was spawned – “the brilliant Irish Fintan O’Toole, “It was also a substitute identity. the burden of ‘private debt’, referring to the 2 capitalist” . It was a new way of being that arrived just at the billions currently being paid in increments to Under the centre-right Fianna Fáil, ‘crony point when Catholicism and nationalism were the unsecured bondholders of defunct banks. capitalism’ prospered, and was largely defined not working anymore.”6 Describing the Celtic As redundant workers of the Vita Cortex factory by mutually beneficial arrangements between Tiger as a “mirage” largely defined by social continue to occupy the Cork premises in an on- government and the corporate elite. The Irish inequality, Peadar Kirby warned of the “social going dispute over the terms of their dismissals, Financial Services Regulatory Authority was costs of economic success in the era of neoliberal an Anti-Eviction Taskforce13 seeks to prevent appointed in 2003, but failed to “impose major globalization”7. The main purpose of this text county sheriffs from carrying out ‘unlawful and sanctions on any Irish institution, even though however, is to examine what is happening to the unconstitutional’ repossessions and evictions, Ireland had recently experienced several major visual arts in Ireland at this post-bust juncture, while Occupy protestors seek to ‘liberate’ NAMA14 banking scandals”, prompting the New York with a view to highlighting current socio-political, property, retaining vacant buildings as community Times to dub Ireland “The wild west of European intellectual and artistic concerns. centres and civic spaces, highlighting NAMA’s 3 finance” . The economic boom, (fuelled by an over An emerging ‘political turn’, visible across failure to deliver on a promised ‘social dividend’.15 active construction sector, extreme house price recent festival formats in Ireland, will be In February 2011 the governing Fianna Fáil inflation, an unhealthy dependence on foreign examined in detail, portraying an institutional party suffered defeat on a historic scale. The multinationals, and easy access to credit) came framing of an ‘emergence’ from crisis, supported new Fine Gael/Labour coalition, inheriting the by discourse on political exhibition making. post-Celtic Tiger economic wasteland, have Most notably, in cultivating a new fidelity to the subsequently reneged on many pre-election ‘local’, contemporary Irish art is re-inhabiting promises, most notably on political reform and the familiar terrain – that of ‘land’, ‘place’ and elimination of (crony) political patronage. Historic the “native sensibilities of the local genius”8. state visits from Queen Elizabeth II and Barack Concluding thoughts will draw on a revival Obama articulated international statements of of the ‘Irish mind debate’in cultural studies9, solidarity with Ireland, but the strategic interests harking back to an earlier, seemingly simpler, behind the visits went largely unchallenged, era of pre-globalisation. Doing so it will query with mainstream media coverage centring on the whether there is a specifically Irish intellectual morale-boosting effects of these symbolic gestures. tradition counter to a ‘hegemonic rationalism’ of Visiting his great-great-great-great grandfather’s ‘Anglo-Saxon/Ango-American logic’ which might ancestral home in Moneygall, Country Offaly, enable “a reinvestment in the notion of what it Barack Obama spoke about Irish-American means to be a republic”.10 In framing culture as connections, blood lineage and the (voting?) Irish decisively conditioned by changing economic and Diaspora for whom the ‘homeland’ symbolised socio-political relations, how are current artistic such extraordinary traditions and people. The and curatorial practices in Ireland producing Queen’s visit in May, the first by a British sovereign Superflex,The to an end in 2008 when the economy collapsed a “systematic analysis of relations between to the Republic since 1911 when Ireland was still Financial Crisis and Irish banks were unable to refinance their economic interest and competing versions of under British rule, was a powerful reminder of the (Session I-V), foreign borrowings, exposing corruption in identity on offer”11? In short, I will examine troubled relationship between the two nations. film Still (2009). Anglo Irish Bank in the form of hidden money artistic practices which consider national psycho- Poignantly, Ireland’s colonial past and history of A hypnotist and loans to ‘anonymous’ businessmen. In order geographies as a supposed counter culture to mass emigration found contemporary resonance takes us through to alleviate fears of a sovereign debt crisis, the material interest and burgeoning global hegemony. below the glossy media veneer, against the current four stages of Irish government nationalised six banks and backdrop of increasingly depleted national economical issued a spectacular blanket guarantee to pay sovereignty, Europeanisation and financial ruin. disaster. The film the bondholders, in the hope that the financial Festival Formats: Curating the As 2011 drew to a close, several prominent Irish is divided into markets would regain ‘confidence’ in the euro-zone Political Turn art events utilised their respective exhibition and four sessions. overall. 2011 was defined by waves of political protest seminar platforms to consider the current Irish Presented by Receiving a bailout of €67 billion from the and sustained campaigns of civil resistance, situation, citing art’s potential to navigate political Frieze Films European Central Bank for this purpose in 2010, whose groupings were perceived as largely non- terrain. The curatorial framing of this ‘emergence and Channel 4 the Irish government swiftly shackled this debt hierarchical in structure, characterised by a from crisis’ centred largely on negotiating a and created for onto the public, through the implementation of heavy reliance on internet technology and social position for art within this period of ‘re-building’. Frieze Art Fair ‘austerity measures’ – a euphemism across Europe networking sites for communication, mobilisation References to local and global networks of 2009. for forced cuts to public services and public and reportage. Describing the Arab Spring exchange persisted as a reoccurring theme. ownership. Under such conditions, Ireland’s dire protestors as “democracy’s new pioneers”, Michael Curator driven statements gestured towards fiscal situation is set to continue for generations, Hardt and Antonio Negri outlined how the self- something radical, while substance was delivered amidst soaring unemployment, tax hikes, shrinking organised, leaderless “multitudes in Tunis, Cairo with varying degrees of success. public services, and crumbling infrastructures for and Benghazi” have the capacity to “invent a Irit Rogoff recently described the process of health, housing and education; the original pillars common plan to manage natural resources and ‘turning’ as not only a move away from out-dated of the Irish free-state and 1937 Irish Constitution. social production”, concluding that “This is a modes of doing towards something more urgent, If Ireland’s boom phase was an exemplary threshold through which neoliberalism cannot but also a means of propelling an audience model – an archetypal blueprint from which to pass and capitalism is put to question...Here towards active engagement. “In a ‘turn’, we observe the extent of ‘functioning Capital’ – then insurrection touches on not only the equilibriums shift away from something or towards or around the bust phase will surely provide a necessary of north Africa and the Middle East but also the something, and it is we who are in movement, gauge to study its effects and measure its global system of economic governance...raising rather than it. Something is activated in us, repercussions, not least for those still advocating aspirations for freedom and democracy beyond the perhaps even actualized, as we move.”16 In reading larger doses of the same. Once a small, introverted, region.”12 ‘the political’ across curatorial formats, how were variant 43 | spring 2012 | 37

new perspectives generated? How were audiences politically motivated curation, bypassing any and democratic processes. The Irish state, viewing engaged, forcing “these spaces to be more opportunity to engender political agency through the Corrib gas field as ‘a gateway to sustainability’ active, more questioning, less insular, and more the implementation of robust exhibition making deployed Gardaí to heavily police the area, challenging”? strategies. Slogans reminding us that “art has the facilitating construction workers to carry out capacity to imagine and effect change in the social their production schedule. “No matter how much sphere” adorned the walls of the main venue at knowledge or information people had gathered, it Dublin Contemporary 2011: ‘Terrible Earlsfort Terrace, while graffiti ‘subverted’ the was secondary to a homogeneous globalised model Beauty – Art, Crisis, Change & The walls of the National Gallery, producing a lack- of how things work”28 stated Nolan. The myth of Office of Non-Compliance’ lustre veneer, conveying vague gestures towards progress, enticed by corporate investment and the Dublin Contemporary 2011 marked Ireland’s institutional critique that were never formally prospect of economic growth, was upheld, while inauguration onto the international art circuit, realised. the endangerment of nationhood, identity and promising a “quinquennial art exhibition of cultural sovereignty declared by those claiming historical rights to working the land and seas, was global magnitude and local consequence”. But Tulca Festival of Visual Arts24, 2011 - while lavish international launches and optimistic unilaterally disregarded by an amorphous enemy. visitor/revenue statistics created a celebratory ‘After The Fall’ The local had become marginal. veneer, tensions (both internal and external) over- Tulca 2011, curated by Megs Morley, embarked Collective modes of resistance, protest and shadowed the ambitious project. Resistance had on a socio-political inquiry into the world ‘After activism were expressed by several other artists built up among the arts community in Ireland, the Fall’, which negotiated imagined pasts and including Amie Siegal and Jesse Jones. When who generally felt that the lack of information and dystopian futures, producing an experience that re-appropriated into the present moment, 29 30 communication projected an air of exclusivity. In was unequivocally of the moment. The programme surveillance footage and megaphones – symbols early 2011 the original management board was was tightly under-pinned by an incisive curatorial of ‘them and us’; the state and the disenfranchised dissolved17 and new curators were appointed. New statement, framing the event as a “pause in an classes – become inscribed with the time that York-based curator and critic, Christian Viveros- endless circulation of ideas... positioning itself has lapsed, calling for new modes of resistance Fauné, and Franco-Peruvian artist and curator, in the juncture at the end of one era and the within this post-binary political landscape. Jota Castro, swiftly assembled the ‘Terrible beginning of the next”. The exhibition functioned Recession in the 1980s was defined by trade Beauty’ theme, referencing Yeats and the 1916 as a point of convergence for many relevant union unrest following the adoption of neoliberal Rising, alluding to the current climate of austerity, conversations – civil protest, emigration, how economic policies in the west, creating a shift from which could hardly go unnoticed. capital moves – referencing land, territory and manufacturing and heavy industry into finance The curatorial vision for the large scale event nationhood, punctuated with potent imagery such and service industries. The current recession is a aimed to provide a departure from the flashy, as ‘flag’, ‘border’, ‘island’, and ‘counter-monument’. product of these global economic systems, as the conventional biennial or art fair model, drawing These images resonated within an immediately flight of capital shifts to the east, highlighting the inspiration from the principles of the Italian perceived and conceived surrounding ‘Irish precarious nature of labour within capitalism. Arte Povera Movement of the 1960s, which had landscape’, while also offering access to wider geo- Contemporary campaigns of resistance, as reacted against the corporatisation of art and political discourse. culture. This positioning aligned with a growing Filip Berta’s single channel video, Homo Homini acknowledgement that the global art biennial Lupus (2011) gestured towards conflict in the format is a product of the “distorted relationship euro-zone, with a depiction of wolves fighting between art and market” – a value system based over an Italian flag. A symbol of territory, the on “west-eurocentrism”18 – which is currently flag, luminous against the desolate landscape, experiencing retrenchment in an age of “art- is decimated, as the wolves each display their funding austerity”19. instinct to survive and dominate. In Elaine As a platform for contemporary practices and Byrne’s A Message to Salinas (2010), Mexican periphery events, Dublin Contemporary 2011 was citizens articulated their desire to retain national critically relatively well received. 20 Certainly, sovereignty in the face of US intervention and there was an acknowledgement of the quality state privatisation. A border is a defining national of the work produced by artists in Ireland, and geographical feature. The border zone, as when viewed on this international stage. An place and ‘non-place’, as a site of migration, emerging kind of ‘constructionist’21 aesthetic was surveillance, and a threshold between native/ discernable, suggesting an impulse to deconstruct, foreigner, enemy/ally, import/export, has been to salvage, and to clear, privileging an active revived as a source of study within geography and ‘learning through building’ over a transmission of wider fields of social theory, providing a counter- existing limiting forms of knowledge. culture to ‘borderless’ transnationalism. To the The Danish Art collective Superflex provided simple construction of binary terms – Good? Evil? already described, are becoming increasingly self- Seamus Nolan, 25 the most biting prognosis of the current Irish Terrorist? – the notion of borderlands enables a organised and more informed about law and civil Corrib Gas, predicament, with a video-installation entitled The more nuanced engagement. rights, in trying to hold the state, authorities or Project Arts Financial Crisis (Session I-IV). A space, containing While The Good Hatchery, informed by corporations accountable for breeches of their own Centre, film hundreds of euro coins (which were glued to the their ‘islanded’ position, cultivated a fidelity policies, relying on the judicial and democratic still (2009). floor), provided a backdrop for a video projection, to micro-geographies with a meditation on systems of international law. “The shift from the See, Corrib which presented crisis in the euro-zone from a the transportation of cargo and monarú earraí industrial form of production to the semiotic form Gas Project: “therapeutic perspective”: “A hypnotist guides us (manufactured goods), Gareth Kennedy referenced of production – the shift from physical labour to http://vimeo. th through our worst nightmares to reveal the crisis 19 century industrialist logic, plotting an average cognitive labor – has propelled capitalism out of com/6947901 31 without as the psychosis within. During 4 sessions location for all of the cargo pallets currently itself, out of its ideological self-conception” . you will experience the fascination of speculation traversing the planet with his folk-fictional Paul O’Neill has written extensively on the 26 and power, too fear, anxieties and frustration Mean Pallet. In developing rural ‘folk-fictions’, shifting parameters and apparatus of exhibition of losing control, economic loss and personal Kennedy stages encounters between globalised making, biennial culture, and the emerging role disaster. In Session 1 ‘The Invisible Hand’ we are and localised material cultures, in an attempt of the curator as “subject and producer of this 32 introduced to the backbone of capitalism, the to identify social and environmental concerns discourse” . Reflecting on O’Neill’s description idea of the ‘invisible hand’ as the benign faith in within macro-economic contexts. Kennedy often of exhibitions as “subjective political tools” and 33 self-regulation that prevents markets and people works collaboratively with Irish artist Sarah “modern ritual settings which uphold identities” , from spinning out of economic control. Under Browne, producing temporary occupations which it seems plausible that the formation of a ‘political hypnosis we are asked to interrogate that faith trace “alternative historical trajectories linked to exhibition’ is partially, if not largely, determined 27 and to imagine a world no longer governed by the contemporary concerns” . by the radicality of the curators’ own personal invisible hand. In the following Sessions we go In Oral Hearing (2009), Seamus Nolan re-staged politics. Insights into Megs Morely’s own political deeper and deeper into the financial crisis...”22 and filmed the final session of a Bord Pleanála persuasion are provided not just through her Declarations that Dublin Contemporary public hearing, where members of a small north approaches to curation but also in her work as 34 could engage with “art and its place in society” Mayo community voiced objections to the Corrib an artist. Recent works such as Post-Fordlandia or operate as a hub for “non-conformist art Gas project, and the laying of a production (a film produced in collaboration with Tom proposals”23 proved unconvincing. Occasional pipeline by Shell Oil to bring high pressure gas Flanagan) portray a fidelity to anthropological glimpses of curator-centred hierarchies, and inland, reaching the Irish coast at Glengad and research, supported by textual analysis in the knowledge that the event was executed with Rossport. Members of the community took part critique of capital, which frame the visual and a heavy reliance on internship staff, made it in the re-construction, which took place in a material narratives, outlining artistic inquiries difficult to reconcile such a radical preamble local community centre. Formed out of a deep that are echoed in her approaches to curation. with the hostile atmosphere palpable within the connection with their own locality, the contentious Tulca 2011 was a panorama of embedded insights venues. Most disappointing was the format of ten-year struggle against corporate and state that gradually merged, contributing to an over- the event, which did not deviate from the typical forces cited concerns about public safety and safe- arching dialogue. O’Neill’s concern that artistic biennial model, doing little to circumvent notions guarding the rights of its farmers and fishermen and curatorial practices should not be treated in of art as entertainment. Art market rhetoric as their main areas of concern, displaying an isolation, but as co-existing spectrums “within the and tourism statistics took precedence over any impressive accumulative knowledge of judicial field of cultural production”, is further expanded 38 | variant 43 | spring 2012

concern – that of the ‘utility’37 and permanent an ease of passage for production and distribution nature of ‘crisis’ as a function of capitalism38. within ‘Fortress Europe’. His observations centred on the ‘absent’ border checkpoint – no military, 39 no surveillance, no flags – where the transition TRADE Seminar 2011 from one country to another, north to south, is Foreign multinational gas and oil exploration also only visible via the signage denoting either miles became the focus of a group of artists participating or kilometres. [Paraphrasing] “The logic economy in TRADE residency 2011, in Carrick-on-Shannon, has swept away the sovereigns of the foreign. A with an examination of the devastation that nation that historically was defined by Unionist hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a ‘fracking’40) for gas introversion is now being asked to adopt an would have on their locality. Their campaign ‘Talk outward-looking perspective.” About Fracking’ pertinently demonstrates the ‘Border-zone’ study within traditional tangible links between global practice and local anthropology, which examined primitivism and impact, with the national, (i.e the capacity of the typology of ethnic groups, seems increasingly state governance to implement, mediate or reject static in the context of contemporary globalisation. those practices) occupying a determining position. The relationships between populations and the As already outlined, the government stance on heterogeneous structures of geography, nation this issue focuses heavily on economic prospects, states and international law are becoming with Minister of State at the Department of the correspondingly blurred. Drawing on the influence Environment, Fergus O’Dowd, recently stating of post-structural, post-colonial and Marxist that “if there was a chance that billions of euros theories, emerging interdisciplinary thought re- in untapped gas could provide a massive economic asserts the role of cultural struggle in reproducing boost, the Government must take account of social life, while making apparent the inherent that”41. power relations. Much of this deconstruction The ‘Talk About Fracking’ campaign, while centres on a re-examination of cultural questioning the apparent consensus of economic convergence and population mobility. Meanwhile necessity that subordinated the local, also emerging anthropological studies focus on the functions self-reflexively in its capacity to cultural differences between ethnic groups which align artistic activity with societal concerns. persist precisely because of border division and Interrogations regarding the social function examine identity and political organisation across of art have persisted across a spectrum of national spaces in the context of global economic twentieth century movements, from dadaist and expansion, increased global transportation and constructivist directives towards a new social telecommunication technologies. order, to conceptualist and feminist experiments Speaking recently north of the border, at of the 1970s and relational aesthetics practices of the opening of his exhibition ‘Recalculating’, the 1990s. Much of the discussion at the TRADE at The Void in Derry, Philip Napier examined seminar centred on how art might continue to the persistent connections between “frontier negotiate a socially engaged position, and the discovery” and the “lingering idea of terror in civil important role the artist plays in advocating society”43. ‘Recalculating’ is a continuation of the active citizenship, challenging the commodity and narratives explored in previous bodies of work, entertainment functions designated by capitalism, most recently in his ‘HMS Terror’ series, which which define art as a servant of the economy examined Franklin’s ill-fated arctic expedition to and support the bourgeois image of the artist the North West Passage in the 1840s, headed by as a ‘creative genius’ existing on the margins of Captain Francis Crozier, from Banbridge, Co.Down. society. Coupled with the proliferation of artist Several countries are currently in competition led initiatives across the country, alternative to locate the shipwreck, which could establish methods of production and display are emerging economic sovereignty over the major sea way. as defining features of the “new ecologies of Suggesting that the Arctic explorers were “the 42 practice” in contemporary Irish art. Formed space men of their time”, Napier considered the largely out of practical necessity - the sharing HMS Terror expedition as being enshrined in myth of space and resources - artist led co-operative and romantic imagination. With global warming structures have become increasingly associated the North West Passage has widened, offering with seemingly political models of collective potential for the expansion of a trade route linking self-organisation. Although the suggestion that Europe to China and the Far East. With dominant art, in this recessionary time, might experience global power now shifting eastwards, the industrial The Good by Boris Groys when he described the interplay a “renewed purpose” seem patronising, it does and economic logic of connecting to China Hatchery, between exhibition-making and art as producing seem tenable that institutional and art market becomes salient, thus “accelerating consumption Missionary 52, a space that “installs everything that usually hierarchies are less prevalent in these spaces, with where the Communist ‘command economy’ meets -7, mixed media circulates in our civilisation”35. For Groys, the less of an emphasis on commerciality. But that is and the capitalist ‘laisez faire’ economy”. sculpture (2010). mass of exhibition visitors “...become part of the not to say they are entirely emancipated. In many The most radical aspect of Napier’s work is ‘Commonage’, exhibition ...in a way that assists them in reflecting Irish urban districts, artistic activity is becoming the ease with which his sculptural installations Callan, upon their own condition, offering them an increasingly intertwined with urban planning, oscillate between aesthetic manifestation, site Co. Kilkenny. opportunity to exhibit themselves to themselves.” with numerous county councils inviting artists to specifity and cognitive abstraction. When linked Examining civil rights, environmental temporarily ‘activate’ vacant commercial spaces to contemporary culture – the “atomisation of campaigns, judicial structures and corporate in dormant retail sectors. While artistic practices human experience, which creates anxiety and agendas in proximity to artistic processes, in Ireland appear to be genuinely thriving under then offers a (comforting) resolution to that Tulca’s visitors observed tangible connections these conditions, revealing an underlying capacity anxiety, for the purposes of consumption”44 – any with the surrounding location. This ‘landscape for co-operative production, the lingering uneasy symbolic exploration into unchartered territory, revival’ is not concerned with nostalgia for celtic relationship between developer and artist is yet (going without maps or satellite navigation romanticism, nor has it become interestingly to be tested. Pitched as a ‘win win situation for technology, being stripped of co-ordinates) kitsch following decades of subversion. An island everyone’, this arrangement is reminiscent of reactivates a potential to be curious; to navigate engulfed for so long in cross-border conflict the gentrification discourse which followed the using fear as an instinctive force; to discover must now acknowledge that the biggest threat development of ‘creative quarters’ in Temple Bar, political alternatives; to observe the spaces where to national sovereignty comes not simply from Shoreditch, Soho, etc. ; a debate too lengthy to civil resistance occurs before armed combat is the conditions of already having renunciated enter into in this text. By contrast, the image of deployed; to devise our own ‘global positioning national economic sovereignty under globalisation, rural art practices emerging from the TRADE systems’. In this way the “expectations of the but from the continuing political compliance seminar utilised the distance from the (urban) conditioned mind”45 are disrupted, and there is and the “democratic deficit”36 of the ‘flexible centre as a pensive site for many artistic inquiries “no easy resolution to that anxiety”46. Referencing developmental state’. EU/ IMF financial logic – commonage, local infrastructure, connectivity, French philosopher Michel Serres’ analogy of the and restructuring, enacted through the state via and temporary publics – producing meditations fly, whose pattern of discovery on a window pane directives for local and regional government, on ‘the periphery’ and ‘the local’, which are portrays a “speculative route-making between propose another, arguably more intrusive round translatable across a spectrum of geographies, cartographies of knowledge”, it becomes possible of regulating the rural and legislating for the cartographies and cultural discussions. to observe the sites where translation between domestic. Multinationals, most topically those accounts can occur, back and forth between in the business of oil and gas exploration and Cultural Geography - Signs, Routes, domains, without privileging one as accurate or production, continue to seek to exploit and authoritative. monetise the land and waterways, a prospect Perspectives On my journey into Derry city I was aware welcomed by the Irish government with the In his contribution to the TRADE seminar, artist of the significance of painted kerbs stones, and same enthusiasm as it embraced foreign direct Phillip Napier described the M1 motorway the ceremonial removal of ‘London’ from its investment in its economy. ‘After The Fall’, connecting Belfast and Dublin, which forms part precursory position on road signs. I had heard while focusing on these locally sited issues, is of a larger European EU01 route infrastructure about the tours of the Bogside, and the murals questioning the broader body politic, just as crisis connecting Ireland to mainland Europe via land – enduring icons of the troubles – which have in the euro-zone points to a broader systemic and sea links with Portugal and Spain, facilitating accumulated an ironic distance and become in variant 43 | spring 2012 | 39 some way kitsch, turning the residents into tourists analysis in art criticism pre 1990. These in turn of their own history. These “visible manifestations contributed to the marginalised position of the of underlying conflicted realties” 47, which became visual arts in comparison with a strong literary legible externally through the mass media (with tradition53. Under these conditions, the Irish its “hunger for ‘drama’, a beginning, a middle landscape, as a site of artistic, ‘native imagination’, and an end, heroes and villains and the idea of assumed priority over any reference to increasing resolution”48) are still palpable, real, and “not modernisation, or the influence of economic and consigned (completely) to historical abstraction” consumerist forces. in present day northern Ireland, despite its Calling for a balanced assessment of constant inscription as a post-conflict zone. ‘provincialism’ in art criticism in the 1980s, Tom When competing powers have caused turmoil to Duddy highlighted a need for lateral thinking erupt, how might this ‘discontinuity’ of history in the ‘local versus global’ dichotomy. In carving and ‘unresolved remembering’ be meaningfully out an identity for ‘Irish art’ at that time, Duddy inhabited? Art, as a site for communally insisted that the ‘geographical aesthetic’ should constructed, lateral rather than linear meaning, resonate within the local, but must endeavour to can pose the question of “…not, what does it mean, resist clichés of Celtic mysticism and Nationalism but what do we mean?” (a ‘provincialism of the right’). Similarly, for Irish When asked how art might navigate a position art to convey a ‘sense of place’, it should articulate for the historical, national or local within an awareness of international influence, global globalised or post-colonial contexts, Napier issues, and the economic realities of modernism suggested that these structures can be redefined (a ‘provincialism of the left’) without pandering to through emphasis on ‘the particular’ through trends. the embedded processes of situation, and the In examining the influence of the Irish “transference of agency to place and context”. By intellectual tradition on national identity, constructing ‘psycho-geographies’, which engage much of the discourse generated in the fields across the symbolic structures of land, religion, of cultural theory has historically privileged place names, language and identity, micro- the ‘literary imaginative vision’ of traditional political landscapes can be represented while intellectual thought, which addressed nationalist, also acknowledging those “deep seated fault-lines political and cultural concerns but “left the which, like trade routes, are local and global, at analysis of economic and class issues to others.”54 the same time.” In this way, art practice becomes Conversely, the emerging ‘specialist’ intellectual “local, but legible and meaningful elsewhere”, stratum of economic modernisation, reliant on and the land becomes an active cultural force, state institutions, delivered only the technical rather than merely a subject of monetisation, requirements of nationalism (trade, economy, consumption and political division. ‘Territoriality’, etc.) that were based on a generated ideological as an epistemological principle, provides a consensus, while marginalising socialist or “cognitive framework through which the world radical alternatives. How can contemporary is observed” 49, while it nonetheless remains a debates on nationalism (or localism?), as a concept that needs careful attention and critique. counter to neoliberal globalised positions, move beyond historical abstraction, nostalgia or idealism? Fundamental to this debate Concluding Thoughts - Art, must be a self-reflexivity regarding Ireland’s Ethnocentrism, and the Future newly assumed national role in continuing Cultural accounts of ‘Irishness’ projected to reproduce a competitive globalised space internationally via references to the land and favourable to transnational capital, underscored territory have historically persisted through by an acknowledgement of the power relations philosophy of flexible accumulation, cannot evolve Above, top: romanticism, celtic revival and nationalism, already put in place by a colonial past. How self-reflexively in response to “changes in the Philip Napier, conveying an ethnocentric mindset constructed can “nationalism, culture and even racial social paradigm”. Recalculating, largely through an introverted fidelity to the stereotyping”55 endure amidst current portrayals Current economic ‘solutions’ to the global mixed media native landscape. The idea that Irish cultural of Europe as one big “Western tribe” – a model recession – that in refinancing the banks, credit sculpture, tradition is a product of specific (and previously conceived for the collectivisation of trade will flow again, and consumption will resume, (2012). The Void, unacknowledged) intellectual traits was the focus and resources, implemented through the thus re-activating a stagnant economy, returning Derry. of the Richard Kearney’s ‘Irish Mind Debate’ modernisation of infrastructures, in the pursuit it to a path of exponential accumulation – place of the mid-1980s.50 With reference to Ireland’s of a single European financial market over the infinite faith in an ideology defined by the Above, bottom: strong literary tradition, Kearney suggested last fifty years. The recent relegation of the older conceptual framework of future growth, with an Philip Napier, that the Irish position – of periphery and exile periphery states such as Ireland, Italy, Greece, and insistence that society comply. But what if, as Visual Amenity –produced an intrinsic ‘decentredness’ in the Portugal – which remain comparatively central Berardi suggests, this version of ‘the future’ is 1 (Erebus) & Irish population, generating a stereotype of given the new eastern european periphery56 – actually over and we are “living in a space that is Visual Amenity the geographical or linguistic ‘other’, with a and the socialising or ‘nationalisation’ of their beyond the future?” This question forms a point 2 (Terror), mixed capacity to “respond creatively to dislocation and respective debts have caused many cultural of departure for the upcoming EVA International, media sculpture, incongruity”51. The border, as a partition between commentators to describe the European project in Limerick (19th May - 12th August 2012) curated (2011). The Gael and Saxon, colonised and coloniser, catholic as fundamentally flawed and unsustainable57, by Annie Fletcher, and provides a few short Dock, Carrick on and protestant, was a geographical division that with German philosopher Jürgen Habermas thoughts on which to conclude this text. In the Shannon. further permeated the Irish intellect, producing warning that present policies are leading to the EVA press release Annie Fletcher states that a distinct capacity to identify the ‘foreign’ over “creeping death” of the European Union and the “aesthetic practices and artistic thinking have the ‘familiar’. Kearney also proposed that double “sinking [of] 50 years of European history”. This an integral role at the juncture of the present vision – a Joycean kind of lateral thinking which ‘democratic deficit’ in Europe is representative not and past, rather than as part of a prophetic simultaneously holds two contradicting thoughts only of the increasingly precarious relationship future fantasy”61, supporting Berardi’s advocacy in the mind – demonstrated a ‘dialectical logic’ between citizen and nation state, but also of “for living slowly in the infinite present”. The characterised by an “intellectual ability to hold the increasingly visible discrepancies between active, contemporary Irish arts community, more the traditional oppositions of classical reason economic forces and societal realities, something educated and outwardly aware than previous together in creative confluence”, providing a which has arguably been at the core of the generations, is displaying a capacity to engage not counter-movement to the “mainstream hegemonic European common market/ currency from its only with enduring legacies of the past, but with rationalism” and “linear, centralising logic of the conception. the destabilising and complex current realities of Greco-Roman culture which dominated most of This ideological void was the basis of (post-) permanent crisis in a post-industrial era. Western Europe”. autonomist media theorist Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi’s In distilling the present moment through The main oppositions to this classification of recent ruminations on ‘The Future After the End historical, geographical and social lenses, ‘the Irish mind’, centred on a rejection of these of the Economy’. Aligning economics not with identity unfolds within the vernacular of profit, proposed ethnic characteristics, which ultimately the logic of science but with religious doctrine, privatisation and economic transnationalism reinforced the celtic racial stereo-types devised he outlined an ideology based on “profits, with increasing ambiguity. A distinct connection under English rule, formed out of an enduring accumulation, and power”, which gives credence with wider art practices reveals a congruity with master/slave colonial self image. “...Kearney, in to the future as a site of “infinite expansion”. international discourse, the elevation of the the cause of Irish nationalism, had essentialised Economists, akin to priests, “worship the dogmas curator, the fluctuating form and function of the Irishness and simply reversed the usual colonial of growth and competition, denounce the bad biennial, the temporary public62, the welcoming of claims that Ireland was full of people who simply behaviour of society, require repentance for your the ‘political’ into the gallery space63, supported couldn’t think straight, privileging this inability as debts, threaten inflation and misery for your sins, and extended by a return to substance in art an ‘alternative system of thought’.”52 and profess social reality to be in crisis if it is does criticism. Echoing the politically self-organised In attempts to identify a particular native not conform to the dictates of these notions.”58 The and the horizontally collectivised, supplanting sensibility in Irish art in the 1970s and ‘80s, implications of his argument are further evident the alienated and exploitable individual, a ‘poetic, passive and introspective’ interpretations not only in the ‘crucifixion’ of Ireland59 but also in reorganisation of the production process attests were positioned within nationalist, anti-modernist the sacrifice of Greece to the economic gods of the to the implications of community, which searches and romantic stylistic and iconographic contexts European Union.60 The future orientated ideology for alternative modes of being – exploring, living, and aligned with a distinct lack of scholarly of finance, which draws its momentum from the 40 | variant 43 | spring 2012

acknowledging fear, in being, for the moment, of-the-biennale-in-the-age-of-global-austerity generated from future rises in inflation of gas and bereft of the answers previously provided by 20 Several critics have produced cohesive responses to the oil prices will be distributed as profits multi-national exhibition, outlining details of artists, artworks and overseas partners.” http://www.irishtimes.com/ a linear and unconscious belief in the future. newspaper/ireland/2012/0127/1224310808790.html Drawing on this ‘present collective intelligence’, venues. See Chris Fite-Wassilak, ‘Dublin Contemporary’, Frieze Magazine, Issue 143, (Nov/Dec 2011). http://www. 42 New Ecologies of Practice: A short season of projects alternative routes can be found, proposing that, frieze.com/issue/review/dublin-contemporary/ by Catalyst Arts [Belfast] / Occupy Space [Limerick] like Serres’ fly, we might experience “abrupt, 21 I am using the term ‘constructionist’, while / The Good Hatchery [Offaly] / Basic Space [Dublin]. unexpected, diagonal transitions of the mind” acknowledging the existence of the deconstructionist NCAD Gallery, (9th February –13th April 2012). and “oblique accidental insights” which lead activity of the 1930s, and its revival in architecture in Exhibition and public seminar presenting the work of the 1980s. Firstly, I am commenting on a masculine DIY a number of Irish artist led initiatives, embodying new us up “the zigzagging but royal road to the approaches to production, distribution and display, as understanding of how things come, and cease, to aesthetic visible in the work of several artists at Dublin Contemporary 2011, and other Irish art platforms. a perceived counter to mainstream and institutional 64 be.” Secondly I am drawing comparisons between these practices. http://gallery.ncad.ie/index.php/2012/02/ artistic processes and the pychycological process of newecologiesofpractice/ Notes ‘leaning through making’- the basis of Jean Piaget’s 43 Parts of this section are paraphrased from Philip 1 A.T Kearney, ‘Globalisation Index’, Foreign Policy epistemological theory of constructivism. Using this Napier’s artists’ talk in The Void, Derry, (10th March, Magazine, (2003). http://www.atkearney.com/images/ term in this way I am seeking a linguistic definition for 2012.) global/pdf/Measuring_Globalization_S.pdf the experimental process of ‘constructionist learning’ 44 Parts of this section are paraphrased from Declan - the making of tangible objects as a as a mode of 2 Ciarán Bennett, ‘Dublin Contemporary, Dublin Diary’, McGonagle’s, ‘Remembering The Future’; an upcoming processing the world. See M. Cakir ‘Constructionist text on Napier’s work. Artnet, (September 2011). http://www.artnet.com/ Approaches to Learning in Science and Their magazineus/reviews/bennett/dublin-contemporary-9-7-11. Implications for Science Pedagogy: A Literature 45 ibid. asp Review’, International Journal of Environmental & Science 46 ibid. 3 Brian Lavery and Timothy L. Obrien, ‘For Insurance Education, 3(4), (2008), pp.193-206. 47 ibid. Regulators, Trails Lead to Dublin’, New York Times, 22 http://superflex.net/tools/the_financial_crisis (2005). http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/business/ 48 ibid. worldbusiness/01irish.html?_r=1 23 http://www.dublincontemporary.com/exhibition 49 Mathias Albert, ‘Territoriality and Modernization’, 4 Luke Strongman, ‘Post-Colonialism or Post-Imperialism?’ 24 Tulca Festival of Visual Arts takes place annually in Institute for Global Society Studies, (2001). http://www. Deep South, v.2 n.3 (Spring, 1996). http://www.otago. Galway, in the west of Ireland: http://www.tulca.ie/ uni-bielefeld.de/soz/iw/pdf/albert_3.pdf ac.nz/DeepSouth/vol2no3/post-col.html 25 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, ‘The Global State 50 Richard Kearney, ‘The Irish Mind Debate’ in Navigations: 5 Bryan Fanning, ‘Irish Connections, Immigration and the of War’, War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, (New Collected Essays 1976-2006, (New York: Syracuse, 2006) Politics of Belonging’, Variant, Issue 26, (Summer 2006). York: Penguin Press, 2004), p16. p19. http://www.variant.org.uk/26texts/BFanning26.html 26 “The Mean Pallet functions as a symbolic barometer 51 Vivian Mercier, The Irish Comic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford for worldwide economic activity. Estimated to be University Press, 1962) p173. somewhere over the Caspian Sea, the mean pallet is 52 Richard Haslam, citing Conor Cruise O’ Brien, ‘A Race moving eastward with an approximate velocity of 0.24 Bashed in the Face: Imaging Ireland as a Damaged km/day, attributable to a high level of manufacturing Child’, Jouvert, 4: 1 (Fall 1999). http://social.chass.ncsu. and economic growth of the far eastern ‘Tiger economy’ edu/jouvert countries.” [A tiger economy refers most commonly to 53 Dr. Róisín Kennedy, ‘Made in England: The Critical Asian countries (such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Reception of Louis le Brocquy’s A Family’, Third Text, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) who have undergone a period Vol. 19, Issue 5, (September 2005), pp475-486. of rapid economic growth. In the 1990s the term Celtic Tiger was applied to the republic of Ireland.] 54 Liam O’Dowd, ‘Neglecting the Material Dimension: Irish Intellectuals and the Problem of Identity’, in The 27 http://www.kennedybrowne.com/ Irish Review, No.3 (1988), pp8-17. Considers the roles 28 Judy Murphy, ‘Corrib Gas row the subject of show in played by intellectuals in debating Irish communal Tulca Festival of Art’, The Connacht Tribune, (Nov 2011). and national identity and investigates why material http://www.galwaynews.ie/22584-corrib-gas-row-subject- circumstances have been ignored in cultural studies show-tulca-festival-art worldwide; applies Michael Foucault’s definitions of 29 Amie Siegel, DDR/DDR, HD Film, (2008). traditional and specific intellectuals when examining 30 Jesse Jones, Against the Realm of the Absolute, Film, intellectual criticism of Irish society, North and South, (2011). while comparing the focus on abstract traditional debates to the marginalisation of socialist or radical 31 Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, ‘The Future After the End of the alternatives; refers to theories put forth by Benedict Economy’, e-flux journal, (2011) http://www.e-flux.com/ Anderson, Ernest Gellner and Maurice Goldring. journal/the-future-after-the-end-of-the-economy/ 55 ibid. 32 Paul O’Neil, ‘The Curatorial Turn: From Practice to Discourse’, in Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and 56 The so-called peripheral countries of the eurozone are: Performance, Judith Rugg and Michèle Sedgwick eds. Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain. However, (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2007) p13-28. EU membership has today grown to 27, including northern and eastern countries, the most recent being: Jesse Jones, 6 Fintan O’Toole, Enough is Enough: How to Build a New 33 ibid. Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Against The Republic, (London:Faber and Faber, 2010). 34 Post-Fordlandia, Press release, June 2011.http://www. Slovenia in 2004; Bulgaria, Romania in 2007. Until the Realm of the 7 Peadar Kirby, ‘Globalization, the Celtic Tiger and social galwayartscentre.ie/events/view-event/168.html mid-1990s, Ireland was classified by the EU as a single territorial unit eligible for aid from the Structural Absolute, film outcomes: is Ireland a model or a mirage?’ Globalizations 35 Boris Groys, ‘Politics of Installation’, e-flux journal, Volume 1, Issue 2, (2004) pp205-222. (2011) Funds (Objective 1). However, by 1999, because of the still, 16mm film high levels of economic growth experienced during 8 Tom Duddy ‘Irish Art Criticism - A Provincialism of the 12 mins, (2011). http://www.e-flux.com/journal/politics-of-installation/ the previous five years, average GDP for the state Right?’ published in Sources in Irish Art: A Reader, Fintan 36 Mathias Albert, ‘Territoriality and Modernization’, exceeded this threshold. Regional disparities in levels Cullen ed. (Cork University Press, 2000) p91. Institute for Global Society Studies, (2001) of development and well-being were still recognised 9 Richard Kearney, Navigations: Collected Irish Essays 1976- http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/soz/iw/pdf/albert_3.pdf though, with the Irish government successfully seeking 2006, (New York: University Press, 2006) pp17-31. 37 Naomi Klein, ‘Wall St. Crisis Should Be for to have two regions recognised as eligible. See: Doris 10 Fintan O’Toole, Enough is Enough: How to Build a New Neoliberalism What Fall of Berlin Wall Was for Schmied ed., ‘Winning and Losing: the Changing Republic, (London:Faber and Faber, 2010). Communism’, presentation at the University of Chicago, Geography of Europe’s Rural Areas’,. (USA: Ashgate 11 Liam O’Dowd, ‘Neglecting the Material Dimension: Irish (2008), available at Democracy Now: http://www. press, 2005). Intellectuals and the Problem of Identity’, in The Irish democracynow.org/2008/10/6/naomi_klein 57 See Fintan O’Toole, ‘Treatment of Ireland a Review, No.3 (1988), pp8-17. 38 Slavoj ŽiŽek, ‘A Permanent Economic Emergency’, New disaster for European project’, The Irish Times, 12 Michael Harte and Antonio Negri, ‘Arabs are Left Review, Issue 64, (July/August 2010) (May 2011) http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ Democracy’s New Pioneers’, The Guardian, (February http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2853 opinion/2011/0503/1224295913381.html 2011). http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/ 39 TRADE is an annual Visual Arts Programme supported 58 Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, ‘The Future After the End of the feb/24/arabs-democracy-latin-america by Leitrim and Roscommon County Councils, and the Economy’, e-flux journal, (2011). http://www.e-flux.com/ 13 Fiona Gartland, ‘Anti-eviction Blockades Promise’, The Arts council of Ireland. “The initiative consists of a journal/the-future-after-the-end-of-the-economy/ Irish Times, (February 2012). http://www.irishtimes.com/ residency phase, where four local artists work under 59 Fintan O’Toole, ‘Treatment of Ireland a disaster newspaper/ireland/2012/0223/1224312243910.html the mentorship of an invited artist, and a seminar for European project’, The Irish Times, (May event – which has historically displayed a substantial 14 NAMA - National Assets Management Agency 2011) http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ engagement with current critical discourse. An opinion/2011/0503/1224295913381.html 15 Brian O’Connell, ‘Protesters take empty offices interesting legacy has evolved out of contributions from for community use’, The Irish Times, (Jan 60 William Wall, ‘This shameful sacrifice of Greece to the an array of national and international participating gods of the market’, Irish Left Review, (February 2012). 2012) http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ artists, curators and thinkers.” Joanne Laws, TRADE ireland/2012/0103/1224309736369.html http://www.irishleftreview.org/2012/02/13/shameful- report, Paper Visual Art Journal, http://papervisualart. sacrifice-greece-gods-market/ 16 Irit Rogoff , ‘Turning’, e-flux, (2011). http://www.e-flux. com/?p=7560 com/journal/turning/ 61 EVA International 2012, Press Release March 2012, 40 Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) involves the propagation http://gallery.limerick.ie/Events/evaInternational 17 “At the end of 2010 some money was actually committed of shale and rock layers using pressurized fluid as a AftertheFutureMarchAnnouncement.html to the project, but with the condition that it be managed means of releasing oil or gas for extraction. Fracking by the same firm that had handled the St Patrick’s has been suspended in France, South Africa, parts of 62 Simon Sheikh, ‘In the Place of the Public Sphere’ Festival, a very successful tourist event, though not one Australia and a number of US states pending more http://www.societyofcontrol.com/research/sheikh.htm having to do with contemporary art. With the inevitable detailed investigations 63 Tempered as it is by Anthony Davies’ observations change in focus, the international art star curators 41 ‘Minister of State’s comments alarm opponents of in ‘Take Me I’m Yours: Neoliberalising The Cultural disappeared and so did Rachel Thomas as curator, along fracking’, The Irish Times, (Jan 2012): “Exploration Institution’, Mute Vol 2, No.5 - ‘It’s Not East being with many of the original Irish artists.” Ciarán Bennett licences were granted to companies such as Tamboran Green: The Climate Change Issue’, (2007). http://www. ‘Dublin Diary’, Artnet.com http://www.artnet.com/ Resources by the preceding Fianna Fáil government metamute.org/editorial/articles/take-me-im-yours- magazineus/reviews/bennett/dublin-contemporary-9-7-11. before any policy was developed around the fracking neoliberalising-cultural-institution asp process. The income generated to the exchequer is 64 Steven Connor, ‘Fly’ (London: Reaktion Press, 2006) 18 Interview with Huang Zhuan, ArtZineChina, (2008). thought to be negligible, especially considering the p184. http://artzinechina.com/display_vol_aid717_en.html favourable tax concessions in place for oil and gas 19 Ben Davis ‘The Humbling of the Art Biennial in the Age exploration, which allow consortiums to right off all of Austerity’, artinfo.com, (December 2011) capital and development debt, including security, http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/753700/the-humbling- policing and ultimately hefty public relations costs, before declaring any taxable profit. Any extra revenue variant 43 | spring 2012 | 41 The Housing Monster Friendofzanetti “We may call such a monster the ‘beast of property’. It people in the process of production” (p.10). Like skiving, mutual support, and now rules the world, making mankind miserable, and Marx, Rubin assumes that labour is the basic playfulness (p.28, p.42). While gains in cruelty and voracity with the progress of our so‑ element of human society, and he emphasises these observations counter a called ‘civilization’. This monster we will in the following Marx’s theory of fetishism as the basis of Marx’s typical Left narrative of woe characterize and recommend to extermination.” critique of the economic system, and his theory of and alienation for workers – Johann Most, cited in The Housing Monster (p.3) value7. This simple, yet often mystified, materialist finding instead moments of analysis forms the core of the book, challenging craft pride, relative autonomy Just as Marx set out to de-mystify the commodity the arbitrary ‘value’ of the home as commodity. and banter in a kind of form in the first chapter inCapital Volume 1, That prole.info performs the difficult task of workers ‘history-from-below’ The Housing Monster by prole.info sets out to de- deconstructing value-form theory in the popular – they sit contradictorily (as fetishise housing as a commodity form by means form of a highly-readable illustrated book – freely may be expected) with the of an illustrated book. That we have waited so available to download8 – is highly commendable. hierarchies and divisions so long for such a clear and compelling introduction The book approaches the housing commodity convincingly evinced as “the to this subject says much about the aporias of the in a clear, straightforward manner that both biggest obstacle” to mutual solidarity elsewhere productivist Left which has traditionally relegated demystifies the ‘social hieroglyphic’ of housing as in the text. Prole.info acknowledges the extent of reproductive issues, including housing, behind a commodity, and suggests a form of critique that specialisation and separation in the work process, workplace issues1. The book’s arrival provides an is widely applicable – though rarely applied with but continues to deploy the collective “we” (as a opportunity to discuss housing in a way that does the same lucidity as found here9. This is no doubt means of designating ‘the workers’) in a way that not merely replicate the dull compulsions of social down to the deployment of the graphic form, with is sometimes problematic. Divisions within the democracy, which assumes that distribution always a series of excellent illustrations complementing working class are most evident between skilled follows behind production, and thereby implicitly the economic use of text. and ‘non-skilled’ workers (apprentices, agency accepts the capitalist relation in the wage-labour workers and casual or ‘illegal’ labourers). Talking form2. Of course, Marx’s writing is replete with of “we” in this context tends to flatten out very All images, monsters. The ideal workhouse for the capitalist, real differences – in much the same way that the illustrations he relates, is a “House of Terror”3, and vampires, ‘we are the 99%’ slogan of the Occupy movement, from The werewolves and ‘the Furies of private interest’ or Hardt and Negri’s concept of ‘the multitude’ Housing Monster, populate Capital throughout. In the preface to the does. Perhaps the problem is the assertion of this prole.info first edition, he describes how Perseus, slayer of “we” anecdotally, without adequate evidence monsters in Greek mythology, wore a magic cap of the forms it takes in organisation. Maybe so that monsters could not see him, yet in our this is deliberate: the book works very well as times, “We draw the magic cap down over our an abstract depiction around the relations of own eyes and ears so as to deny that there are any production and reproduction in housing, and monsters”4. This book is an attempt to lift the cap ‘templates’ for radical activity were generally from over our eyes again – the monsters must be scorned as ahistorical by Marx for instance. slain! However, the deployment of some kind of ‘workers’ By necessity there is something universal about enquiry’12 into the conditions and experiences our relation to housing that makes it such a crucial of construction site workers would have been subject. Excepting deepening homelessness useful, as a means to counter the sometimes god- and destitution5, we live in different types of like character of the narration, and as a means to houses, but we all live in homes. Thus the opening actively engage the workers as subjects of research ‘Foreword’, in the form of a narrative vignette, and action. tells an everyday tale of alienation, tiredness and As Marx noted long ago, the development of compulsion – commuting and working to pay a the division of labour for the enhanced extraction constantly increasing rent. The book is notable As The Situationist International used to of surplus value takes, as its necessary corollary, for its attention to the individual forms of stress say, capitalism is separation perfected10, and a “purely despotic” form through an enhanced and estrangement that the vast majority of us for prole.info “the biggest obstacle” (p.27) to regime of supervision13, and the book clearly experience on the capital-deficit side of property forming political groups which develop their expresses the everyday contradictions between relations. However, these problems reflect a wider own collectivity is the division of labour. The workers and management. While construction context of subsumption under the tyranny of rent, construction site is the shared workplace of work is not regulated by an assembly line, the and the relation between subjective observations different types of workers with different types drive for profits ensures that the pace of work and wider objective social relations are what of bosses, and with different work schedules. is constantly being monitored and sped up by gives the book a critical pedagogical form. Like Specialised subcontracting, which separates bosses. Piece work, a form of performance related Marx, prole.info takes nothing for granted in an activity even more, means that collective pay, is just one way in which labour is enjoined to elaboration of real, material social relations and socialisation across these different roles is difficult accelerate, at other times the methods are more a certain repetitive turn is concomitant with this (pp.23-28). These divisions are also overlaid with crude and disciplinary: approach. Given the normalisation of extortionate cultural differences such as class, race and gender. property relations in the present climate, however, “The fewer breaks we take, the faster we work, the more Divide and rule, as ever, is both the method and ‘don’t understand me too quickly!’ could serve work we get done in a day, the more surplus value the outcome of surplus value extraction. The pressure as the book’s coda. The review here thus intends company squeezes out of us. The faster we work, the to build houses for profit means that the work to tease out some of the main arguments with more likely we are to have accidents or to get repetitive process is constantly being intensified11. De- particular reference to the UK context of the injuries. The harder we work, the more work is likely skilling means that employees need less training, housing crisis. to eat up our free time. When we get home from work get paid less, and are easier to replace. A familiar we’ll be too tired to do anything but take a shower. tale of alienation and erosion of autonomy then, The less time we spend talking to our co‑workers, the but as prole.info usefully points out, rote tasks Part I. The Construction Site more boring the work is. We push in the exact opposite are less evident on the construction site than Construction labour, the dirty end of the direction as the company. We’re constantly trying to elsewhere (in factory production, telesales, cashier production of commodities, has all but slow down the pace of work as much as possible” (p.40). work, etc). Limits to growth, due to the durability disappeared from view behind hoardings Time and work-discipline are not trans- of existing buildings, and land costs, means that promising ‘safe construction’, and nylon sheets historical as the historian E.P. Thompson noted. there is an incentive to build small and quickly, advertising capitalist consumption on scaffolding ‘Saint Monday’ (a day for avoiding work) was and the need to create at least the appearance of (often fetishising the finished form of the building ‘honoured’ by workers almost universally in choice in design for the consumer market means itself before it has even been built). Meanwhile the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, with Tuesdays that production is rarely completely standardised hymns to ‘immaterial’ and ‘affective’ labour’ on sometimes thrown in too. Even in 1967 it was still over a large amount of units. This means that the Left sometimes obscure the fact that workers apparently kept by “a few coopers in Burton-on- workers on construction sites have a certain are still working and still producing surplus value. Trent”14. The drive to increase work time and degree of autonomy in their work, which must be The first section, ‘The Construction Site’, sets out intensity is always being met with an opposing performed with a certain degree of skill (p.35). to rectify this incomplete view, itself embarked force that seeks to reclaim lived time from work 6 The book makes clear that workers’ interests upon as a corrective , by emphasising the labour time. The Glasgow dock workers, for instance, (to work less for more money) are diametrically relations of production in the construction phase. mobilised a collective slow-down with the opposed to the bosses’ (more profit for less outlay). The chapter opens with a quote by Isaak Illich innovative ‘ca canny’ movement in 1889. Returning This antagonism is the foundation for solidarity, Rubin, a Marxist value theorist, who, reclaiming strikers (funds exhausted) replicated the slower and the inversion of socialised separation is posited Marx from vulgar political economy, noted that and inefficient labour practices of imported scab as the formation of workers groups amidst a range capitalism was not a science of “the relation of labour as a means to re-assert the worth of their things to things”, but the relation of “people to of different collective tactics including theft, 42 | variant 43 | spring 2012 not working-class pride or a sense of identity that Commonwealth Games 201423. As prole.info puts it, keeps workers working, but the class relationships landowners are in the position “to charge us a fee within capitalism where we are reproduced as for the right to live on earth” (p.72). For Michael ‘workers’ (and non-workers) on a daily basis. Hudson, the important category is economic rent, Wage labour and surplus value are the foundation “which is the profit one earns simply by owning of capitalist relations. Waving the flag for ‘the something”; an “unearned increment”, which working-class’ sometimes obscures the need to to the financier or capitalist is, “earned in their escape from the wage labour relation in order to sleep”24. But the ‘right to rents’ in the rentier exit our designated roles (pp.50-59). The object of economy depends on the type and location of the the everyday struggles prole.info depicts is clear: land. Claims to future rents are predicated on the “We are not just the working class; we are the use of that land. Zoning laws are introduced to working class that struggles to do away with work separate out land uses for effective planning, but and class, and the society built around them”17. these are constantly under threat as developers manipulate planning as an adjunct of economic development. Land speculators are not concerned Part II. The Neighbourhood with the most useful use of land, but the most Part II of the book looks at capital flows in profitable, and they actively intervene in the land and property and their impacts on labour, process of development through a phalanx of ownership, class and gender. Credit is essential opaque quasi-autonomous bodies that supposedly to the flow of capital in construction, allowing form the public interest in regeneration projects investors to keep their capital in constant and urban planning in general (pp.68-73)25. circulation, and avoiding devaluation through Changes in the urban landscape are not under-use. The loan capital of banks is based on natural processes. The economic boom in the US interest. Unlike value derived from exploiting after the World War II, for instance, was heavily labour, this capital is fictitious, based on future state-supported. The G.I. bill subsidised home claims to wealth generated from the loans it ownership by giving out loans to veterans with distributes. Crucially, the credit is predicated no down payment necessary (p.91). This was, on continual growth, but as repeated cyclical in effect, a debt-financing strategy that helped downturns and the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage crisis derail public housing, prioritise private home has shown – with its defaults, ‘delinquencies’ and ownership and individualism, and stimulate foreclosures – the miracle of continual growth the commodity-economy26. The economic boom always turns out to be a fallacy. Repayments are sustained demand for housing and allowed for the never guaranteed: “When the crash inevitable expansion of huge development firms. ‘Levittown’, comes, last year’s (or last week’s) confidence looks for instance, a symbol of post-war US suburbia, like stupidity. Prices that had built-in assumptions was the fiefdom of William Levitt, the ‘King of of a profitable future pop or deflate like balloons” Suburbia’, who ran both a development firm and (p.65). Here, ‘fictitious capital’ disappears or a construction company, utilising standardisation becomes ‘toxic’ (if it wasn’t already), businesses and prefabrication methods which allowed him can’t sell their commodities (houses in this case), to build the first model mass-produced suburb and capital loses its liquidity (essential to its (p.75). This is the type of American landscape functioning), getting ‘stored up’ in unsold houses which Theodore Adorno might have meant when that become subject to devaluation and decay. he said it was, “as if no-one had ever passed For an analysis that emphasises labour their hands over the landscape’s hair”27. Costs of processes, The Housing Monster could say more machinery and labour were reduced massively about the role of off-shoring in production. through Fordist production methods, enabling 18 skilled labour. With profits affected, the ‘ca canny’ Graham Turner , in his analysis of the roots of the construction of a homogenised landscape of action got the wage increase that the dockers had the housing bubble, argues that the credit bubble tens of thousands of homes. ‘Dumping’ money into failed to get by striking. The strike-breakers could was the direct result of companies moving jobs urban infrastructural projects is one way in which neither work as fast or as safely as the long-term abroad for cheaper labour and the maximisation capital attempts to resolve its frequent crises. dockers and thus the balance of forces had shifted of profits, leading to the reduction of consumer David Harvey, has written of Robert Moses, the 15 towards their return . This “balance of forces” is spending in the UK through unemployment and urban planner, who updated Hausmannisation the territory that is constantly disputed in prole. a more ‘competitive’ job market. The rise in debt for the post-WWII US context, by embarking on a info’s account of the contradictions between labour was the flipside to jobs being lost to the East: huge process of debt-financed suburbanisation as a and bosses on the construction site. The book property inflation was a “necessary stimulus” for means to resolve a capital surplus problem arising does not neglect the smaller details. Even though economic growth in the West, with cheap interest from the economic crisis of the 1930’s28. work is harder to come by, most people are still rates and easy credit fostering “money illusion” compelled to be there, and all the little methods – and “property mania”; a short term, myopic bid for skiving, talking gibberish, singing, mimicry, pranks growth. Debt was the major factor in the housing – by which the day is made less boring are evoked bubble. No wonder that the UK government with a degree of solidarity and understanding publicly understated the importance of the that is often absent from sociological accounts of housing market to the economy: the economy was labour practice. However, as John Holloway argues, supported by record levels of borrowing, and the the transformation of the struggle against time at spectres of chronic debt deflation and negative work to a struggle about time at work has rarely equity haunt our debt-ridden homes. A recent been elucidated. The struggle over the length and Shelter report19 suggests that almost seven million intensity of the working day is crucial, but we people in the UK are relying on “unsustainable” should not forget that this struggle is inseparable credit with extortionate interest rates to help from the imposition of capitalist labour. When we pay their housing costs, including payday loans, represent ourselves as workers we tacitly accept unauthorised overdrafts, other loans or credit the capitalist wage labour relation16. cards. According to Credit Action20, the average While acknowledging the need to find an exit household debt (including mortgages) in January from capitalism, the ‘Blue Collar Blues’ chapter 2012 was £55,988, and the average amount owed re-affirms the compulsion we face to drag our per UK adult around 122% of average earnings. hides to work for sale: “We have to spend our time Every 15 minutes a household is repossessed. working for someone else to be able to exist on Every 4 minutes someone is made bankrupt or our time. We both need and hate work” (p.55). insolvent. As Michael Hudson argues, mortgage This basic antinomy – the need to accept waged loans, by far the biggest form of debt, are work at one level, even if we may violently reject increasingly a form of peonage; a “new road to it in principle – creates a situation whereby we serfdom”21. resign ourselves to our identification as workers: But while prole.info may neglect the links ‘the working class’. From a Left point of view, between financialisation and property, there is one of the more interesting discussions in the a thorough analysis of land ownership and the book is over ‘working-class’ identity. As prole.info rentier economy. As David Harvey explains, land notes, ‘working class’ in the context of capitalist is a unique non-fungible resource which cannot, relations can soon become a stereotype of itself, as a rule, be produced or built anew: there is a defined internally as a sign of ‘authenticity’, and limited supply and it already has owners22. This externally as a sociological category defined by is what Mark Twain meant when he said, “Buy income and lifestyle choices that can be marketed land, they’re not making it any more” (cited, to and pandered to by politicians. But escaping p.68). Without contributing to ‘development’ the from this ‘role’ is not as easy as changing ‘lifestyle’ landowner can profit off other developments such options, a notion which prole.info describes as as a new train station or a large ‘regeneration’ the “the ideology of the wage labourer who can’t project, as with the multiple land-grabs via imagine any way out of wage labor” (p.57). It is the London Olympics 2012 and Glasgow’s variant 43 | spring 2012 | 43 Land speculation is even more profitable than link in developing class cleavages and divisions construction and the developers’ main interest and tying a new group of atomised consumer is in making sure the value of the land rises. citizens more thoroughly into capitalist relations. Gentrification is one of the chief mechanisms for Home-ownership is tied up with respectability, this revaluation. Transport links make an area individualism and hierarchy. By owning a house, attractive to affluent incomers and often serve we largely relate to it as exchange-value rather to separate an area from poorer neighbourhoods than use-value, becoming our own landlords (p.92), nearby, while state subsidies make the area more and scanning the housing market ourselves for alluring for developers. Increased investment (now vastly diminished) profitable opportunities. creates a vicious spiral of higher rents, higher But how much respectability is there in owning house prices and higher taxes, all of which price your own home when, as Michael Hudson argues, out poorer people in the neighbourhood, changing in the odd logic of the real estate bubble, debt has its character and making it more acceptable for come to equal wealth? In the UK the bait on ‘the higher band tax payers. With huge amounts of new road to serfdom’ was low interest rates, access money to be made, state intervention and policing to subsidised public housing (a one-off fire sale) assist the process – often violently. As prole. and easy credit. While some got in on the property info notes: “Quick, speculative development is ladder and made money, the trap for most is a an obvious attack on us” (p.78). Urban theorists lifetime of work to pay off debt on an asset rapidly like Neil Smith and Rachel Weber have pointed dwindling in value33. out the role of disinvestment, defamation and As prole.info argues, the terrain of reproduction stigmatisation in creating the conditions for (housing, health, social services, transport, wholesale makeovers of urban areas, and prole. leisure) is as significant as the terrain of the info insists that the decay and development of workplace in challenging capitalist relations. This neighbourhoods are, “both automatic market argument was hammered home by the Italian processes and the result of conscious action by autonomous feminist movement in the early 1970s developers and city planners” (p.79). This is not through key figures such as Selma James, Maria a rational process from a social point of view, but Dalla Costa and Leopaldi Fortunati, but these it is from an economic one: whatever use value different terrains suggest different problems of we might want to make of urban space, exchange organisation. The workplace has traditionally been value dominates as the privileged motor of social built on co-operation. As Marx noted, this created change under capitalist relations. the possibility of “a new productive power, which The housing market and the labour market is intrinsically a collective one”34 – although this are inextricably interlinked: ‘Levittown’ is only tremendous potential power has more often been an extreme example of a ‘company town’; every harnessed for the production of surplus value kitchens, gardens, laundries, sport facilities, town is really a company town (p.95)29. Without within an elaborate division of labour. In housing, libraries, day care, schools, etc. These experiments property we are forced to sell our labour power especially when the working-class has been weak, collectivised housework and freed up women to on the market to those who already have property the tendency is towards separation and privacy, participate in other activities – for this they were and capital. We make just enough to reproduce creating an in-built set of divisions and hierarchies routinely demonised and denounced as ungodly ourselves as workers for the next day, covering to overcome (p.84). While at work, on the bosses’ and dangerously socialist (p.117-118). This reaction all our essential costs such as housing, energy, time, it may be possible to squeeze something may point to collectivised living as a model for transport costs and food. We need housing to out of ‘their time’, at home after work, we’re on living outside capital relation – the threat of survive, to reproduce ourselves, and the need ‘our own time’, facing tiredness and other threats good example – but self-management of housing to keep up rent and mortgage payments keeps to our already diminished leisure time. On the does not free it from capitalist relations, even if us going back to work every day – because other hand, prole.info argues, neighbourhood it might mitigate some of the worst aspects of landowners have the right to charge us money for struggles over housing or community services help those relations for small groups of people36. As a place to live (p.81). The tendency of the labour break down the atomisation of communities and prole.info points out, where collective living has market is to push down wages; the tendency create the potential for new modes of face-to-face really taken off en masse is when governments of the property market is to push up the cost communication over direct needs (p.85). As the have been pressurised by strong movements with of housing. We get squeezed in between. Rent urban theorist Henri Lefebvre has argued, when a commitment to public housing. Marx made rises, de-regulation, overcrowding, fewer repairs, it comes to alienation, there really is no substitute clear the problem of co-ops and mutual forms of damp housing have been our lot, except when for participation.35 organisation that concerned themselves more with sustained pressure from below has resulted in the distribution of resources rather than their gains. While the traditional Left has tended to mode of production37, and this question cannot be emphasise struggles in production over wages as Part III. Pushing, Pulling, Breaking elided in the housing problem: “Detached from opposed to reproductive struggles over everyday “Because things are the way they are, things will not a militant workers movement, collective housing living conditions, capitalists have understood that stay the way they are.” easily becomes a marginalized commodity” higher house and rent prices lower the real value Bertold Brecht, cited in The Housing Monster (p.108) (p.118). of our wages. Inflation is just as effective a means As prole.info notes, it is not always possible to While the workers’ movement, mediated by to subdue the worker as strike-breaking, and tell when real gains or losses have been made, a the trades unions, has traditionally relegated Heinrich Zille, who as an illustrator portrayed the ‘defeat’ can be demoralising, but it can also lead reproduction in favour of production issues, it is desperate overcrowding of the ‘tenement barracks’ to reorganisation and regrouping. For what may no surprise that lifestyle experiments in collective in Berlin in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, be considered a radical ultra-left perspective, in living are still explored, even if they are ever is quoted judiciously here: “You can kill a man terms of a fundamental critique of capital, prole. more subject to the constraints of the market38. with an apartment just as easily as with an axe” info is careful not to succumb to the hoary old However, prole.info cites the US practice of Union (p.80). With little or no public or social housing dichotomy of reform versus revolution. In the ‘hiring halls’ as one reform, whereby employment available, the market for private letting and home- balance of forces that makes up the capitalist is mediated though the unions rather than a direct buying has escalated out of control. The ludicrous relation, unified militant action can extract real capital-labour relation, meaning that: “The amount house-building booms in Spain and Ireland are concessions, yet ‘victory’ can easily be mediated of crap we have to take from asshole bosses is exemplary cases. What is notable here is that by top-down union bureaucracies whose unity is greatly reduced” (p.122). This would seem to neither country has a tradition of public housing, decidedly self-interested. This much we know. The compare favourably with the casual employment meaning that housing production has been push for reforms is partly about achieving gains agencies that operate in the UK context, yet completely dominated by a private sector that but must also be about developing strength from the hiring halls also perform the function of acted like the boom would never end. Now that the the bottom-up, and revealing the contradictions “labor brokerages” – mediating agents who tend crash has come, whole ‘ghost estates’ lie empty (as and the shifting terrain of interconnected forms to accede to membership concerns, reify craft of January 2012, 400,000 properties lay vacant in of capitalist social relationships. The demand for separation, and control militant and disruptive the Republic of Ireland alone30), negative equity ‘more public housing!’ – a necessity given the workers with the threat of exclusion from work is rampant and construction workers are made acute shortage of available public housing – is only (p.123). Gilles Deleuze asserted that ‘recognition’ redundant, not because there is nothing to do, but one aspect of the struggle: what about the location is the lowest form of philosophy, and the need for because capital cannot do it profitably. of these houses; their insulation; their interior legitimation that the unions crave – both from the Good public housing is anathema according to spatial arrangement; connections to the city, workers and the bosses – puts them in a position the capitalist imperative of growth – “Accumulate, town, countryside; transport and amenities? The of compromise whose negotiating position can be Accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!”31 question is qualitative as well as quantitative. summarised as the guarantee of a workforce that’s The disinvestment and defamation of public Yet beyond the problems of the ‘numbers game’ ready to work (p.124). For instance, Ken Loach’s housing has been no accident: public housing, played by previous administrations who have ‘Days of Hope’ (1975), written by Jim Allen, shows without the intervention of strong left-wing sought to control unrest in times of crisis through precisely how the UK Labour Party and the Trade movement32, is meant to be shit – private the provision of mass public housing, there is Union Council (TUC) were willing to sacrifice property depends on it (p.93). The landlord is clearly a need for a more universal provision of workers to the pyramids of accumulation in the a capitalist. Exchange-value will always trump affordable public housing. The privatisation of General Strike of 1926, in order to maintain use-value in the class relationship between the housing epitomises the separation and atomisation legitimacy at parliamentary level (to the scorn of landlord and the renter. As Thatcher understood, of individuals inherent to the capitalist system, even the Conservatives)39. Unions have failed to promoting a ‘property owning-democracy’ (an and various early experiments in collective living escape commodification themselves, and routinely aspirational working class) through the ‘right-to- incorporated, in some cases, integrated collective take part in managing capitalist relations, and buy’ scheme in council housing was an important 44 | variant 43 | spring 2012 undermining rank and file struggle. As prole.info Taylorist/Fordist principles that dominated the urban roots of the financial crisis, and the obvious argues, at a time of intense struggle, the need to US-American production system40. Experiments in links between capitalist accumulation and the go beyond the control of the union quickly makes collective living took place within this context of production of urban space45. The housing bubble, itself felt (p.125). productivist ideology and capitalist development: as Graham Turner argues, was the direct result of State mediation and support is a normative “Social life was being radically reorganized but capital’s accelerated flight to Eastern economies function of the ‘free market’: a wealth of subsidies, the changes were more the result of building in the 1970s for access to cheap labour. To retain guarantees, zoning laws and exemptions prop up modern capitalist society than of dismantling it” consumption levels in the so-called advanced the housing market (p.127). The state has only had (p.p137). Keynesianism, as Negri has reminded capitalist economies – increasingly without jobs an interest in controlling rents when they rose to us, was a solution to working-class antagonism and with a yawning wage gap – it was necessary to a level that required an unacceptably amplified within the capitalist relation41. In the Soviet case, create liquid wealth through debt (cheap credit). demand on wages, but these concessions were as elsewhere, as long as the value form was left The housing bubble, in both the US and the UK, typically nominal, partial and inadequate. What is intact social gains would be under attack through was the necessary component of the incessant required to lower rents, as has been proven time competition and the restless need of capital to drive to expand profits through the exploitation and time again, is a major “threat from below”, expand and flow: thus the needs of the workers of a global labour force46. The huge capital and prole.info discusses the rent strikes of New were increasingly squeezed out by the “needs of surplus generated by the simple expedience of York and Glasgow in the 1910s and early 1920s the economy” (p.138). not paying the price of labour greatly assisted that led to rent control and tenant protection in The tension between the need to create the expansion of the credit system, which Marx the first example, and, eventually, the beginnings immediate gains through the existing system, had described in Capital, as “a new and terrible of government funded public housing on a large while at the same time understanding the weapon in the battle of competition”47. Enormous scale in the second example (p.127-128). While necessity to move beyond inherently contradictory wealth differentials, financialisation on a vastly this legislation was passed to prevent the further and destructive capitalist relations, is carefully increased scale and the expansion of the ‘rentier development of tenants’ movements, they must navigated in the book. By locating these wider economy’ ran in parallel with these processes48. be seen as a real gain from below. Rent control contradictions within everyday social relations Important differences between countries and on a large scale limits profitability in the housing from the starting point of a seemingly simple continents suggests the need for caution regarding commodity and leads to disinvestment by private object, the home, ‘the housing problem’ is not just this thesis, but the link between property bubbles, capital, forcing state intervention as a means to posed as a question for well-meaning reformers, capitalist crisis and social reproduction suggests stave off a housing shortage crisis (ibid). but as a central problematic in our everyday a requirement to focus on a politics of space as existence. a key terrain of anti-capitalist struggle. Cities have become more than ever “the ultimate of exchange”49 since Lefebvre’s time, and the “beast Getting Rid Of Monsters? of property” that Johann Most recommended for By emphasising actual social relations between extermination won’t disappear by merely pulling people, prole.info goes some way to undermining the cap down over our eyes again. It’s about time, the “magic and necromancy” that surrounds the as Lefebvre advocated, that the urban realm, with 42 production of housing as a commodity . Getting housing foregrounded as a universal category, rid of monsters involves unmasking the social became an explicit locus of political organising relations that produce them and dissolving pseudo- alongside the workplace. critiques of capital for more fundamental ones: “All the critiques of immoral businessmen or the Notes attempts to set up ethical businesses do not make 1 See, for instance, Dalla Costa, Mariarosa and James, value flow through the economy according to Selma, The Power of Women and the Subversion of ethical rules. Clichéd criticism of capitalism only Community: http://libcom.org/library/power-women- works to make criticism of capitalism into a cliché” subversion-community-della-costa-selma-james (p.141). By explaining capitalism only through 2 Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program skewered this its worst aspects we risk conjuring monsters social democratic fallacy decisively in 1875: http://www. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ everywhere, creating a binary between our own 3 Marx, Karl, Capital Volume 1, Penguin Books, pp.388. actions and a fetishised world ‘out there’. The 4 Marx, Karl, Preface, ibid, pp.91-92. basic capitalist relationships reinforce monstrous relationships: in a commodity economy, everything 5 In England, homelessness applications are up 18% this year, In London 36%: http://england.shelter.org.uk/news/ Yet, as a measure forced on the ruling class, costs money; we have to buy what we need to march_2012/homelessness_up_18. For more news on the state housing has often been constructed as an subsist. In order to buy what we need, without destitution crisis facing rejected asylum seekers, see the inferior complement to private housing – with capital or property, all we have to sell is our ability Glasgow Destitution Network: http://destitutionaction. wordpress.com/ notable exceptions at points of organisational to work (p.144-145). We might make our own 6 For a good critical overview of these discussions within strength – serving to remind a precarious class housing, but we do not make it as we please; we do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but the autonomous Marxist tradition, see: http://libcom. of where they might end up. The decimation and org/library/aufheben/aufheben-14-2006/keep-on-smiling- ghettoisation of the UK’s public housing stock under circumstances existing already, given and questions-on-immaterial-labour over the past 30 years is apposite. To compete transmitted from the past. The solutions we seek 7 Rubin, Issak Illich, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, with private housing, historically there generally are immanent to the capitalist relations we want Aakar books, 2008 needed to be a serious crisis, and a very strong to exit: 8 http://www.prole.info/ working-class movement (p.129). Moreover, access “This is not about comparing the present to an 9 Prole.info is perhaps the exception that proves to cheap land to build on is essential; a need imaginary classless, moneyless future and finding it the rule. See for instance, ‘Abolish Restaurants: A that has been increasingly undermined by land Workers Critique of the Food Industry’, Ibid. See lacking [...] It’s about developing our everyday struggles also, Wu Ming, ‘Fetishism of Digital Commodities speculation and continual rounds of primitive to the point where we’re in a position to break capitalist and Hidden Exploitation: The Cases of Amazon and accumulation and enclosure. The re-appropriation social relationships once and for all. We need decisive Apple’: http://www.wumingfoundation.com/english/ of public wealth – a wealth generated by labour ideas and elegant actions” (p.146) wumingblog/?p=1895 after all – in the form of subsidies for housing is a The substance of these “decisive ideas and 10 Debord, Guy, The Society of the Spectacle, Zone Books, real material gain, but is considered expensive by 1994. Available at Situationist International Online: elegant actions” is not made clear beyond the http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/tsots00.html government and therefore always prone to cuts. need for a critique of capitalist relations tout This is why there is a need for constant agitation 11 Broadly speaking, Marx described this process of court, and an emphasis on reproductive relations intensification as the extraction of ‘absolute’ surplus by independent tenants and residents groups to long subdued in Left discourse. But with the value (extending and intensifying the hours of work) both protect previous gains and demand more cap pulled from over the eyes, there is at least and ‘relative’ surplus value (increasing productivity by gains in the present. Of course, state housing the possibility of addressing our real material mechanization and rationalization). is only a concession wrung from the capitalist relations. This was the core of Lefebvre’s ‘critique 12 See, for instance, Emery, Ed, No Politics Without Enquiry, system. Housing remains a commodity, but the of everyday life’, first elaborated in the 1940s; Available at: http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/material/ cs18inqu.htm most brutal aspects are in this way attenuated, and the ‘dead gestures’ of organised religion, and the 13 Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1, Penguin Books, p.450 more people, at least, can reclaim more lived time Surrealist ‘theme of the marvellous’ were seen as (p.130). mystifying ideas that demoted everyday life and 14 Thompson, E.P, ‘Time, Work, Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism’, Past and Present, Number 38, pp.73-74. While the kind of Keynesian economic solution 43 served to obfuscate its potential greatness . In the Available as PDF at: http://libcom.org/library/time-work- that has traditionally secured public housing may late 1960s, interrogating new modes of capitalist discipline-industrial-capitalism-e-p-thompson seem tempting, in a historical digression prole. production, Lefebvre speculated that urbanisation 15 http://libcom.org/history/1889-glasgow-dockers-go-slow info warns against an over-identification with this was beginning to supplant industrialisation in 16 Holloway, John, Crack Capitalism, Pluto Press, p.227. solution to the housing problem. In the wake of the advanced capitalist economies: For a good summary version of the main themes in the Bolshevik revolution, the central plan guaranteed book, see, Holloway, John, ‘Cracks and the Crisis of a continuous source of demand for housing within “…capitalism has found itself able to attenuate (if not Abstract Labour’, Antipode: http://onlinelibrary.wiley. Soviet state productivism. Large governmental resolve) its internal contradictions for a century, and com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00781.x/pdf capital outlay and prefabricated mass production consequently, in the hundred years since the writing 17 http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=Prole techniques brought the cost of housing down of Capital, it has succeeded in achieving ‘growth’. We 18 Turner, Graham, The Credit Crunch: Housing Bubbles, massively with workers often paying less than cannot calculate at what price, but we do know the Globalisation and the Worldwide Economic Crisis, Pluto 44 Press, 2008 5% of their income towards it (p.135). Workers means: by occupying space, by producing a space.” Despite resistance to this thesis, his central idea 19 http://england.shelter.org.uk/news/january_2012/ received a large part of their wages in a socialised millions_rely_on_credit_to_pay_for_home form through free healthcare, education, transport that we have “passed from the production of things in space to the production of space itself”, seems 20 http://www.creditaction.org.uk/helpful-resources/debt- and housing, but this didn’t preclude the wage- statistics.html labour relation, which was subject to the same less fanciful when considered in relation to the variant 43 | spring 2012 | 45

21 Hudson, Michael, ‘The New Road to Serfdom: An Illustrated Guide to the Coming Real Estate Collapse’: http://www.outstitute.org/blog/download/MichaelHudson/ Hudson_RoadToSerfdom.pdf 22 For a detailed examination of how land monopoly has played out in Glasgow via Harvey, see: http://www. variant.org.uk/37_38texts/13RentTyranny.html 23 http://gamesmonitor2014.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/ dodgy-land-deals-in-dalmarnock/ 24 Hudson, Michael, ‘From Marx to Goldman Sachs: The Fictions of Fictitious Capital’: http://michael-hudson. com/2010/07/from-marx-to-goldman-sachs-the-fictions-of- fictitious-capital1/ 25 Swyngedouw et al give an excellent account of these structural processes, albeit with little attention to resistance, in Swyngedou et al, ‘Neoliberal Urbanization in Europe: Large-Scale Urban Development Projects and the New Urban Policy’, in, Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe, Blackwell Publishing, 2002, p.201-209 26 See Gonzalez, Maya, ‘Notes on the New Housing Question: Home Ownership, Credit and Reproduction in the US Post-war Economy’, Endnotes, # 2, April, 2010: Misery and the Value Form: http://endnotes.org.uk/ articles/3 27 Adorno, Theodore, ‘Paysage’ in Minima Moralia, p.48 28 Harvey, David, The Enigma of Capital, Profile Books, p.169 29 See Stuart Hodkinson’s excellent critique of neoliberal urbanism in Leeds: ‘From Popular Capitalism to Third- Way Modernisation: the Case of Leeds’, in Glynn, Sarah, ed, Where the Other Half Lives: Lower-income Housing in a Neoliberal World, Pluto Press, 2009 30 http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/03/ireland- squatters-occupy-homes-nama?INTCMP=SRCH 31 Marx, Karl, Capital, Chapter 24, ‘The Transformation of Surplus Value into Capital’, Penguin, p.742 32 For examples of radical progressive public housing, see, Hatherley, Owen, Militant Modernism, Zero Books, 2009 33 Hudson, Michael, ‘The New Road to Serfdom: An Illustrated Guide to the Coming Real Estate Collapse’: http://www.outstitute.org/blog/download/MichaelHudson/ Hudson_RoadToSerfdom.pdf 34 Ibid., Chapter 13, ‘Co-operation’, p.443 35 Lefebvre, Henri, Critique of Everyday Life, Volume 1, Verso, p.237 36 This problematic is raised in co-housing and mutual home-ownership schemes. For a current model, see: http://www.lilac.coop/ 37 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ 38 Two social centres in Glasgow, for instance, have been closed down in recent years, in part because the rent was simply too much to cover. 39 http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/467647/index.html 40 Guy Debord describes the Bolshevik Party as “a substitute ruling class for the market economy”. Further, “when the bureaucracy attempts to demonstrate its superiority on capitalism’s own ground, it is exposed as capitalism’s poor cousin”. The Society of the Spectacle, p.73, p.79 41 Negri, Antonio, Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State: 1929 as a Fundamental Moment for a Periodisation of the Modern State: http://libcom.org/files/negri_keynes. pdf 42 For Marx, the commodity was “a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties”. At once a material object (such as a table), and also a commodity, it “evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were to begin dancing of its own free will”, Marx, Karl, Capital Volume 1, Penguin Books, p.165 43 Lefebvre, Henri, Critique of Everyday Life, Volume 1, Verso, p.237 44 Lefebvre, Henri, The Survival of Capitalism, Motive series, Allison & Busby, 1976, p.21 45 See, for instance, ‘The Geography of it All’ chapter in, The Enigma of Capital, Profile Books, 2010, pp.140-183 46 Turner, Graham, The Credit Crunch: Housing Bubbles, Globalisation and the Worldwide Economic Crisis, Pluto Press, 2008. 47 Marx, Karl, Capital, Chapter 24, ‘The General Law of Accumulation’, Penguin, pp.777-778 48 Hudson, Michael, ‘From Marx to Goldman Sachs: The Fictions of Fictitious Capital’: http://michael-hudson. com/2010/07/from-marx-to-goldman-sachs-the-fictions-of- fictitious-capital1/ 49 Lefebvre, Henri, The Urban Revolution, Minnesota Press, p.154