Imaginémosnos que la protesta del 15O se hubiera desarrollado en la famosa caverna de Platón. La de la alegoría (República, VII). La historia es conocida: dentro de una cueva se hallan unos pobres desgraciados, con las manos y los pies atados desde siempre, que no pueden moverse sino solo mirar una pared. A sus espaldas, un gran fuego. Entre el fuego y ellos hay un entresuelo donde unas personas mueven unos títeres. El fuego proyecta las sombras de los títeres en la pared dando la impresión de que parezcan seres vivos, enormes y aterradores. Los prisioneros no conocen otra realidad que la donde se han criado y, nada más oir a los titiriteros decir unas palabras, ellos piensan que la voz salga de las sombras.
movement
I am not the 99%
Numbers are the essence of our times. Science, technology, economics, even the education system of most Western countries understands its own performance in numerical terms. Anything that escapes the visual field of mathematics simply lacks the requirements to properly exist. Obversely, the more something is measurable, the more it can aspire to become a crucial element at any level of today’s life. And the bigger, the better. As if expressing the insecure masculinity that still governs the West, contemporary society seems to still be trapped within the obsession of ‘size matters’. It’s for a reason that some people call it ‘number porn’.
For an Emancipatory State of Exception
As the euro-mediterranean countries enter their umpteenth phase of decay, their governments are starting to consider extraordinary measures to face the situation. In Italy, on 15 October 2011, 200,000 people took to the streets to protest against the austerity measures enforced by their government. A day of mayhem followed, as the so-called ‘black bloc’ declared urban war. The smoke of petrol bombs was still lingering in the air when the right-wing Minister of the Interior declared the necessity of exceptional security regulations, promptly backed by the left-wing opposition.
TODAY #7
TODAY #7: a publication by Through Europe. Featuring articles by Federico Campagna, Toby Austin Locke, Paolo Mossetti, Franco Berardi Bifo, Nathan Witt. Freely available here.
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