Io brucio: da un’inchiesta in Tunisia

In Tunisia, partire dal paese si dice « bruciare » la frontiera.
 
Nel mese di maggio 2011,  un gruppo di compagne e compagni venuti da Italia, Francia, Germania ed altri paesi europei vanno a fare inchiesta militante nella Tunisia post-insurrezionale, dalle città autorganizzate del sud alle spiagge del nord da dove partono i migranti per raggiungere Lampedusa, liddove si va a « bruciare ». La realtà è che, in seguito allo sconvolgimento del 14 gennaio, la caduta di Ben Ali susseguitasi all’occupazione della Kasbah I - l’esplosione delle forze - il governo di transizione così come i media nazionali ed internazionali, cercano di dare della situazione una visione pacificata. Di contro, numerosi gruppi ci parlano della necessità di portare avanti il processo rivoluzionario, di approfondirlo, spingerlo oltre la caduta dei simboli. Oltre l’ordine imposto. Oltre la normalizzazione. Torna la repressione. Questa volta, attraverso una strategia di guerra a bassa intensità, fatta di poliziotti in borghese che pestano i manifestanti alla minima mossa. Le tensioni politiche si acuiscono, si dà la caccia all’attivista, giovane soprattutto, cioè i diplomati disoccupati, studenti e provenienti da ogni parte delle campagne, rimasti a Tunisi dopo la fine dell’occupazione della Kasbah, proseguendo la protesta.

Tame Beasts: on obedience

In 1959, Dr. Dimitriy Belyaev and his colleagues of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia, started a long-term experiment in the domestication of the silver fox (Vulpes vulpes). From an original population of 130 farm-bred foxes, the research team  progressively selected those who showed the least avoidance behaviour towards humans and separated them from the rest of the group. By allowing them to breed only amongst themselves – while avoiding interbreeding – by 1985 the researchers had managed to have 18% of the tenth generation of foxes showing extremely tame behavior. Their experiment was interrupted in that year, but other, more recent experiments have shown very similar results. Foxes, some of the least domesticable animals in nature, can be tamed as a species.[1]
 
Let’s compare the transformation of the Vulpes vulpes over the relatively short time-span of ten generations, with the evolution of humans over the vastly longer period of History, which we presume began in 3200 BC, with the first written records in Mesopotamia. That is, over 200 generations ago.
 

A Reading List for #Occupy - Part IV

Edited by Paolo Mossetti

After the Occupy Wall Street "People's Library" was brutally dismantled by the police, last November, I asked some of my favourite writers, activists, and academics to help me compile a list of books that would recreate, though only virtually, the library's shelves. 

A Reading List for #Occupy - Part III

Edited by Paolo Mossetti

After the Occupy Wall Street "People's Library" was brutally dismantled by the police, last November, I asked some of my favourite writers, activists, and academics to help me compile a list of books that would recreate, though only virtually, the library's shelves. 


This is the third selection of 
answers I collected. 

Squandering: the case for disrespectful opportunism

Hitherto you have believed there were tyrants.
Well, you are mistaken: there are only slaves.
When nobody obeys nobody commands.
Anselme Bellegarigue, 1850
 
 
Promises
 
Why do people work? If they are not insane, they do it for the money. And what do they need this money for? To buy freedom from work. At the same time, money seems to be necessary to escape from the money-obsession of the poor, just like work seems to be necessary to escape from the work-obsession of the unemployed. The apparent non sequitur of these connections is the description of the logical loop in which most humans live and function in today’s society. Strangely enough, the very origin of their endless tail-chasing seems to be their desire to achieve a state of freedom, that is, an escape form the loop itself.
 
How could the human desire for freedom turn into a self-perpetuating and enslaving mechanism? Within the contemporary landscape, the answer lies in the way capitalism, as it always does, manages to take our requests to the letter, and to return them to us realized, if slightly modified. That slight modification, as we all know, is the tiny poison pill that turns all our ‘realized’ demands into even stricter chains. This is how, over the years, capitalism realized the requests for flexible work, sexual liberation, democracy, and so on. Capitalism always gives us what we want, but it does so in such a way that brings to reality the darkest warnings of the old saying, ‘be careful what you wish for’.
 
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