through europe

Alexis Tsipras representa la resistencia de la sociedad griega contra la agresión financiera, y para mí este es suficiente motivo para apoyar públicamente y votar su candidatura  a las elecciones europeas. ¿Cuál es el objetivo de esta candidatura? Si en las elecciones solamente conseguimos un pronunciamiento de la minoría senil y tardo-gauchista (de la cual formo parte) a favor del único joven europeo que no es moralmente corrupto ni intelectualmente conformista, no será un gran resultado.

Es por eso que asumiendo el empeño en construir las condiciones culturales y políticas para una afirmación de esta candidatura, debemos pensar sobre los escenarios que puede abrir una campaña a favor de Tsipras, a la hora de una recomposición cultural y social.

   No tengo ninguna confianza en la democracia representativa. Es evidente la corrupción de las instituciones democráticas ante el capital financiero. Por otra parte, la Unión Europea es constitutivamente una autocracia financiera, desde el momento en que las decisiones del Banco Central Europeo se toman al margen del Parlamento. Entonces, ¿por qué movilizarse, por qué votar?

La sociedad europea está deprimida, desintegrada, irascible. La campaña a favor de Tsipras debe abrir la posibilidad de un proceso unitario de solidaridad y de revuelta, de insolvencia y de independencia de la vida cotidiana de la dictadura financiera o no servirá de nada.

The world is already apocalyptic. Just not all at the same time.

To be overcome: the notion of apocalypse as evental, the ground-clearing revelatory trauma that immediately founds a new nomos of the earth. In its place combined and uneven apocalypse.

--Evan Calder Williams[1]

 

I am not referring here to the microapocalypse of death: everybody dies, and even if everybody dies at the same time (I mean everybody), what is the problem? The earth becomes a cleared tape and why the angels grieve?

--George Caffentzis[2]

 

There is no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.

--Gilles Deleuze[3]

 

1. Catastrophic Events Articulating Apocalyptic Process

 

Due to the magnitude of calamity, there have been many discourses seeking to make sense of the Fukushima disaster and its aftermath: on the worsening dread of the crippled reactors; on radiation spread via distribution of irradiated food products and imposition of disaster debris by the central government; on the renewal of pro-nuclear, re-armament and market-centrist policies of the present Liberal Democratic Party administration; and finally, various types of voluntary actions of the people beginning from radiation monitoring of food and environment to information exchanges via internet to legal battles to street actions.

The integration of an athletic discipline into daily life in the Soviet Union is no undocumented phenomenon, it is acknowledged rather as a fundamental facet of its outward facing image. The body of the worker was symbolised in the athlete as the pinnacle of production, a subject perfected in use value. No less was this true of fascism, epitomised by Leni Riefenstahl's formally groundbreaking documentary of the 1936 Olympics, Olympia. The establishing of a link with the classical Olympian, a tacit recollection of a classical conception of the body prior to a Cartesian body-mind split. The body, of the athlete, of the Aryan, as historically determined, as perfectly suited to its goal. Olympia found its post-war place in the history of film but does it present the body as object of history and object of perfection or an aesthetically somatic concern? Let's not forget that Riefenstahl was a dancer, but we'll return to this later.

 

Alexis Tsipras represents the resistance of Greek society against the financial aggression, and for me this would be enough to declare my support to the political list which will have him as their candidate for the next European elections, and to vote for him.

But what are the aims of Tsipras' list? If the outcome of these elections will be merely the expression of an elderly and late-lefty minority (to which I belong) in support of the only young and not yet morally corrupt European politician, it won’t be a great result. Thus, as we take upon ourselves the task of creating the conditions for a success of Tsipras' list, we have to think both about the new horizons which could be opened by a campaign in favour of Tsipras, and about the effects of cultural and social recomposition to which we can aspire.

 

I don’t have any faith in representative democracy. The void left within democratic institutions by the automatisms of financial capital is now a matter of fact and of common sense. And the European Union is fundamentally a financial autocracy, since the decisions of the European Central Bank are removed from the sphere of influence of the Parliament.

European society is depressed, fragmented, rabidly aggressive. The process of disintegration of the European Union is now too advanced to be arrested. The identitarian egoisms which have been aroused by financial violence are destined to produce their devastating effects. We should have no illusions.

So, what is the point of getting involved, of voting at all?

 

The question of the anthropos lingers on, it remains as the ghostly apparition of that which was never thought, it continues, resting beneath a thin shadowy surface concealing its phantasmagorical form, it hovers beyond the vision of those who would fain it realised. The questions and answers linger on, nestled deep in hauntologies of Man.

Proud exclamations continue to echo in our ears, sending forth disembodied promises of objects lost amidst the ever-rising heights of nebulous abstraction.