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From Barthes to Foucault and beyond – Cycling in the Age of Empire.
Martin Hardie
'Whilst the onomania lasted, bickerings and divisions endured.'
Barthes is right in that he tells us that there is an onomastics of the Tour.
But in the time since Barthes, in a manner the semiotician may not have envisaged, that onomastics has descended from the heights of myth and epic having the status of Greek gods. They have descended from being these lofty signs of the valor of the ordeal, of beings signs of old European ways and ethnicity – Brankart le Franc, Bobet le Francien, Robic le Celte, Ruiz l’Ibere, Darrigade le Gascon; to being patronymics of the biopolitical, of homo sacer and the spectacle that sustains Empire.
Although Barthes' idea of an onomastics of the Tour still holds fast, sadly, in the time in which we live, Barthes' classic piece on the Tour de France as Epic no longer depicts the essence of events such as la Grande Boucle.
Cycling, entangled in the process of its own globalisation, is a game in flux. It is no longer the pure myth or epic as Roland Barthes wrote. Mont Ventoux remains a moonscape, bare, barren, rising out of the lavender plains of Provence and on this landscape those playing this game are no longer heroes of epic proportions but bare life, homo sacer.
The precarity of existence better depicts the state of the peloton today: Free as the birds to soar to the greatest heights – Pantani, Rasmussen, Dajka, Valverde, Vinnicombe, Vinokourov … the list is endless; but unlike those Greek gods of the time of Barthes in this age they are free to be shot down at a whim.
A Rainbow Flag Over Habana
Marina Sitrin
We are on a main city block early Saturday morning. People gathering are high spirited, almost giddy. As people begin to form a line I
exhale deeply, imagining it is just one of many lines that are the Cuban reality. This line, however, is different. This line begins to shift, snake, jump and dance. This is a conga line. There are hundreds of us, perhaps even a thousand, and we are dancing in a conga line down one of the most central streets in Havana. And we are not just some random group of people, we are a group of lesbians, gay men, transvestites, transsexuals and bisexuals, along with heterosexual friends and sometimes even families, all gathering for the International Day Against Homophobia. For over a week activities have been taking place throughout Havana, as well as in a few provinces in the country to educate about sexual diversity, and, to celebrate it.
While the events that have been taking place have the feeling of Gay Pride, they are also Cuba’s version, meaning it is organized for people, not by the people. But this is Cuba. A place where all passions cannot, and are not, controlled from above. I felt the contradictions that are Cuba surface in a palpable way on the Saturday of the conga line. I saw some of the things I love most about this contradictory island, and some of the things I like least.
Why my vote goes to the pirate party
Lars Gustafsson
According to an ancient source, the Emperor of Persia gave orders that the waves of the sea must be punished by beating, as the storm hindered him from transporting his troups by ship. That was quite stupid of him. Today, would he maybe have tried with Stockholm district court? Or a consultative conversation with the judge? It is odd, how strongly the situation spring 2009 – on the area of civil rights – reminds about the struggles over freedom of press in France, during the decades preceding the French revolution.
A new world of ideas is emerging and would not have been able to, were it not for an accelerating technology.
Raids against secret printing houses, confiscated pamphlets and – even more – confiscated printing equipment. Orders of arrest and adventurous nightly transports between Prussian enclave Neuchâtel – where not only large parts of the Encyclopedia was produced, but also lots of daring pornography, between the atheist pamphlets – and Paris.
Between the 1730’s and 1780’s, the number of state censors in France was doubled by four. The raids against illegal printing houses was rising at about the same pace. In retrospect, we know it did not help. Rather, the increase of censorship and printing house raids had a stimulating effect on the new ideas and made them spread even faster.
Now the conflict rage over the net’s continued existence as a forum of ideas and as an institution of civil rights, protected from privacy-threatening interventions and against powerful private interests.
‘You Secretly Believe…’
Cultural Work, Internships and Precarity
Monday June 2nd 2009
7-9pm
LARC
62 Fieldgate St., Whitechapel, E1 1ES London
This session, hosted by members of the Carrot Workers Collective will begin with some fables and anecdotes from the world of interning in Europe’s Cultural sector. In bringing together these accounts, we aim to begin an analysis of the circuits of anger, resignation and moral compensation that often characterise the experience of free labour. The session aims to not only find ways of understanding these predicaments, but also to identify the ways in which these circuits can be interrupted, and might operate otherwise.
Global University Labour, Struggles and the Common within the Crisis
Giovedì, 11 Giugno 2009 - Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Facoltà di Lettere
Edu-Factory
As was the factory, so now is the university. Where once the factory was a paradigmatic site of struggle between workers and capitalists, so now the university is a key space of conflict, where the ownership of knowledge, the reproduction of the labour force, and the creation of social and cultural stratifications are all at stake.” A few years ago in its manifesto, the edu-factory collective underlined the productive and conflictive dimension of the contemporary university.
But in fact the university does not at all function like a factory, and we are not nostalgic for the struggles of the past. This statement was rather the indication of a political problem. If we begin with the incommensurable spatio-temporal differences between the actual functions of the university and those of the factory, what are the political stakes of their comparison? In other words: how can the problem of organization be rethought in the aftermath of the demise of its traditional forms such as the union and the political party?
Today the economic crisis has opened new spaces to rethink the function of the university and the production of knowledge itself on a global scale. In other words, we have the chance to rethink the rise of the global university, as well as its crisis. Within edu-factory, we refer to this as the double crisis. On the one hand it is an acceleration of the crisis specific to the university that marks its end, the inevitable result of its eroded epistemological status; on the other hand it is also the crisis of postfordist conditions of labor and value, many of which circulate through the university.
“We won’t pay for your crisis”: this was the slogan of Italian “Anomalous Wave”, that is, the refusal to pay the cost of economic crisis and the crisis of university itself. The slogan was translated in other struggles, in different forms but with a common goal. Starting from this point, we want to outline this double crisis from a global perspective. From India toBrazil, from US to Europe, we want to focus on different experiences to think about the production of a transnational common space of debate and action.
The University of Trash
a project by Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman
Exhibition: May 10 – August 3, 2009
The University of Trash is an experiment in alternative architecture, urbanism, and pedagogy produced through Sculpture Center’s artist-in-residence program. Drawing from utopian ideals and radical urban projects undertaken since the 1960s, the artists will create an installation that functions as a temporary, makeshift University - hosting courses, lectures, presentations, and workshops. A Free Skool program will operate within the University, offering the public the opportunity to propose their own courses - open and free for all sign up and attend throughout the duration of the exhibition. To see all events or to make a proposal for an event, please visit www.universityoftrash.org.
The Anti-G20 Protests Lacked Politics
Mario Tronti interviewed by Tonini Bucci
Even if it is ritualistic, even if it is yet again the hope that there will be movement within social conflicts, there is no circumventing the question, what kind of movement it was that we experienced against the G20 summit in London and against NATO in Strasbourg. Much has already been written and said. Newspapers and televisions have described it as a protest that emerged in response to the effects of the global economic crisis. Its composition is not that of the classical organized subject of the workers’ movement. The question is thus: Is a movement that acts outside of the traditional representational spheres (without any ties to trade unions or parties), automatically a movement outside of politics, or does it just conduct a different kind of politics? In short: Is the criticism against those who accuse this movement of not being able to transcend the symbolic gesture of anger and frustration too narrow-minded? We asked Mario Tronti.
Tonini Bucci: What kind of movement is the one that we saw against the G20 in London?
Mario Tronti: Maybe it makes sense to compare it to today’s major rally of the CGIL in Rome. Here we see a horizontally expanded world of work currently mobilized and organized by a large trade union. That’s the tradition, right? Even if there are many new features, not least the presence of migrants and a youthful kind of publicity, the world of work exists and is a protagonist, or at least has the will to continue to be a protagonist in Italian history. And then there are the effects of the crisis. Conflict has again emerged with the G20 off the back of the more or less effective measures that the European countries, the USA and others are deciding upon. To me that is a consolation. The demonstrations we have seen in other countries in the last few days are different from today’s. Here there is an organized force that makes an intervention and there are forces of movement. Given that the Anglo-Saxon countries are more exposed to the crisis, there is a different type of movement. I also don’t get the impression that this is still the antiglobalization movement. This is something else.
Argentina Copyright Case Brings Access To Education Into The Spotlight
From IP Watch
Catherine Saez
An Argentinean philosophy professor is being sued for alleged copyright infringement for posting translated versions of French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s works on a website, according to the Copy South Research Group. The case is bringing international attention to the limitations on access to education brought about by copyright.
In an attempt to make foreign philosophers’ work available to Spanish language readers and students, Prof. Horacio Potel said he created an open source website named “Nietzsche in Spanish” in December 1999, one named “Heidegger in Spanish” in June 2000 and one entitled “Derrida in Spanish” in June 2001.
On 19 February he was advised that a criminal case was opened against him. In December 2008, French publishing company “les Editions de Minuit” lodged a complaint which was passed on to the French Embassy in Argentina and it became the basis of the Argentina Book Chamber’s legal action against Potel, according to CopySouth.
The Perfect Wave
Edu-factory
The Anomalous Wave has invaded the streets, and blocked the cities again, and again has conflicted on the link education-work, starting from the protests against the unsustainable and illegitimate G8 University Summit. In Turin, ten thousands students, moving from the Block G8 Building,decided to march across the centre, sanctioning banks and temporary employment agency, crying again that "We won't pay for your crisis". The whole Wave decided to break into the red zone, not to accept prohibitions to the freedom of movement, and to try to reach the venue of the illegitimate summit of the chancellors' baronial lobby: we protected the demonstration from the charges and we denounce the massive and excessive use of tear gas thrown at eye level against students. Yet another Wave that subverts the G8 University Summit, once again we demonstrate our dissent, day after day in every faculty we build up the autonomous university by the "self reform", we build up the reappropriation of income and the autonomous production of knowledge!
C.R.A.S.H – A Postcapitalist A to Z
Between the 1st -21st of June C.R.A.S.H will be experimenting with radical sustainable alternatives to the ecological and economic crises across the City of London. Dozens of free events, debates, interventions and performances will take place in various locations around London’s financial centre. For the full programme see the “2 Degrees Festival” www.artsadmin.co.uk/twodegrees.
Working with artists, activists and permaculturists, C.R.A.S.H merges popular education, live art and direct action. At the heart of the project is the C.R.A.S.H Course, building skills of resilience and resistance with precarious and unemployed workers who will then co-create C.R.A.S.H Contingency, a mystery night time journey to utopia and back. C.R.A.S.H Culture, a series of interventions in the city, and three public C.R.A.S.H Conversations round off the postcapitalist experiment.
Infamous for touring the country recruiting a clown army, throwing snowballs at bankers, launching a rebel raft regatta to shut down a coal fired power station and falling in love with utopias, the Lab of ii is a network of artists and activists whose work falls in between resistance and creativity, culture and politics, art and life.
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