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CTHEORY: THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 35, NOS 1-2
*** Visit CTHEORY Online: http://www.ctheory.net ***
TBC 038 05/25/2012 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
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THEORY BEYOND THE CODES
Event-Scene
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burning at all
~Thierry Bardini~
Have you ever felt that the curiosity of the wanderer has often
thrown into a riot, the same joy I feel when I see a guardian of
public sleep–city or municipal sergeant, the true army–hitting
a republican with the butt of his rifle? And like me you told
yourself in your heart: "hit, hit a bit harder, hit again,
municipal of my heart; for in this supreme hitting I adore you
and judge you equal to Jupiter, the great avenger. The man whom
you are hitting is an enemy of roses and perfumes, a fanatic of
the utensils; an enemy of Watteau, an enemy of Raphael, an
arrogant enemy of luxury, of fine arts and letters, sworn
iconoclast, torturer of Venus and Apollo! He does not want to
work anymore, humble and anonymous worker, to the public roses
and perfumes; he wants to be free, this ignorant, and he is
unable to set up a flowers and new perfumes workshop. Hit
religiously the shoulder blades of the anarchist!"
– Charles Baudelaire, _Aesthetic Curiosities_, 1868.
Seven years ago you asked me to write about the protests that were
then going strong in my native country, France. I couldn't, I
thought, do it from Montreal. So I wrote a few lines instead about
how it felt to experience politics in the (Parisian) streets at a
distance, through the lenses of the media apparatus. I wrote how it
made me feel like a migrant worker, watching pictures of Caracas on
CNN in 1989, back in Santa Monica, in 1992, as I was watching Paris
on CBC, unless it was Watts on France 2. At home in front of the TV,
in this global turmoil, estranged from this world and that world, in
between, witnessing the same patterns of violence and liberation, oh
so little liberation indeed.
Seven years have passed and here I am again, in Montreal, my home
city, metropolis of a province I will probably never think of as *my*
province, colonial and colonized city of a country that has become
the end of my journey. A city, a country, where I have settled, where
my son was born and is growing, where I teach and write, still
estranged, but where, strangely enough, I have found a renewed sense
of hope.
Because Montreal, this city, my city, is burning with life, but not
burning at all.
As we passed this week the hundredth day of what was at first a
student movement and appears now as a slow growing and maybe even
*tranquillest revolution*, as people are taking to the streets with
chants and noise, recycling every night the Acadian Tintamarre, or
the French Charivari, as we follow in social meshworks and other
digital means the lines of flight of a rhizomatic and definitely
molar *becoming other*, as the young adult spokespersons of an even
younger direct democracy brave the corruption suspected clowns posing
obnoxiously as leaders and exception-determining law makers, as I
experience all this in the streets with a growing uneasiness for the
media circus that claims to report it. "Now human pride, which always
takes the upper hand and is the natural cause of laughter in the case
of the comic, turns out to be the natural cause of laughter in the
case of the grotesque" (Baudelaire again, "On The Essence of
Laughter", 1855). Yes, I, who so often felt like Gunther Anders,
calmly desperate, yes, I found hope again in a fit of laughter.
Of course I am tempted every day to revert to my usual doubts. Of
course I have this ongoing discussion with myself about the simulacra
of yet another announced revolution that will be facebookized. Of
course I cannot believe in the so nice formulas of the even nicer
Canadian/ Quebecker claims to implement a nationalist social
democracy open to all and guaranteed by a charter that makes of
tolerance the cardinal value of our society–yes you read correctly,
*nationalist* and *tolerance* are respectively the first and final
words of this counter-intuitive proposition, albeit it might also be
the opposite if you read our history backwards: tolerance first,
nationalism last. Of course I often think of my fellow
revolutionaries as this spontaneous line that *always* forms here
while waiting for the autobus of change, oh so nice, indeed, and so
proper. Of course, I resent that all this started because of money,
always money, fees, debts and taxes. Of course, of course, of course.
But then again, there is always this little voice in my head
murmuring "Why not?" Why not, after all... My students do not bother
themselves with my old world doubts anyway; they laugh at them and go
back to the streets and tweet and shout, every night for three months
and counting. They laugh at me as they laugh at the powers that be,
they laugh at the media reports as they laugh when a shower suddenly
falls on their demonstration, they laugh and chant, ~meme la pluie
nous appuie~. Even under a rain of insults and tear gas, even under a
rain of police brutality and arrests, even under a rain of disdain
and humiliation, yes even then, they keep on laughing, ~meme les
pluies nous appuient~.
Because Montreal, this city, my city, is burning with life, but not
burning at all: the rains of laughter extinguish the fires of
violence before they even start burning.
We are more than fifty, much more than fifty, and we disobey with
civility.
We are more than fifty, much more than fifty, but who cares for
numbers anyway?
We are more than fifty, and we do not count our clicks, our tweets,
our status updates.
Because Montreal, this city, my city, is burning with life, but not
burning at all: the paradoxical rain of the data shower extinguishes
the fire before it incinerates the real, whatever that means.
No, this is an old reflex, a symptom of a baudrillardian infection,
no need to add anymore, *whatever that means*. You know what it means
when you experience it. You know how it feels to feel alive when you
could be complaining, lamenting or even mourning. You might have to
pause and pinch yourself once in a while, thinking, what, no death?
Where are the corpses and the clashes? How come the cops do not kill,
as it always happens in such times, unfortunately? Why, you may ask,
is Montreal not burning?
We laugh in the streets because we know that the simulacrum went full
circle, and that there is now only one world to experience it, and
laugh. Yes it was very close: just after the law of exception was
passed, last weekend, we were scared. Very scared. Yes, there were,
and there still is, violence, physical and symbolic. Yes, a student
lost an eye, many were and still are kicked and shoved in police
trucks (an average of 150 a night). Yes, paranoia was in the air, you
could feel it. Some claimed that the clowns fed it with a Queen's day
military parade on Monday–also the day of the Patriots, by the way:
in one more desperate attempt at symbolic intimidation, rumors had it
that they had altered the direction of troops from their usual yearly
promenade, rerouting them through the streets of downtown. Here we go
again, we feared. Back to October 1970, here it comes again– martial
law and its dance of terrorism and resistance, counterterrorism and
repression, this macabre dance. But in the meantime, Montreal, I
repeat, is not burning, the dance has not begun, so far.
On this rainy Tuesday I took my riot kit, my bicycle helmet and my
scarf, my camera and my sound recorder, and I went down to the
streets, not knowing how it would turn out, not knowing how many
would turn out, and how many would stay at home, intimidated and
scared. Arriving at the ~Place des Arts~ where we were supposed to
meet, I was still wondering. There were not many people at first,
there was still tension in the air. But then I noticed more and more
music and drums, funny, yes funny slogans and posters. There were a
few signs that hope could still exist: the unions were there, the
virtualities of a general strike answered those of the troops. But
more importantly, there was music and fun. A colleague from another
university had retooled a baby stroller into a boogie kart. It
blasted protest songs such as "~Liberez nous des liberaux~", people
danced around while we waited two hours for the march to begin. The
sun started to shine, we burnt a bit, the Maple Spring was here
again. Suddenly there were rumors of astonishing numbers circulating
within the crowd, some said there are half a million of us. I started
to relax. I noticed a poster that portrayed the emblem of the
movement, the red square, as Bolognese sauce over a plate of
spaghetti. Another claimed that "78", the number of the emergency law
that turned the movement around [1], away from a student protest to a
civil protest, "was not his preferred position."
Then we started to march. We soon heard that we were indeed
disobeying the law: one student organization intentionally deviated
from the itinerary other students organizations had, following
compulsory legal requirements , given to the police, in agreement
with Bill 78. They then deviated at the first turn, going left
instead of right, of course. There were cops and riot police squads,
cars and trucks. The march moved on one block, the cars moved on to
the next, and so on for five blocks, for half an hour of high
tension. Then the cops vacated the streets and the march went on.
Everybody followed the illegal itinerary, the cops kept retreating,
always a block away at least. We saw them a few blocks later: oh not
that many in fact... Only a dozen of them actually, guarding the
building hosting this most popular institution, ~Loto Quebec~. I
think that this was exactly where and when I finally understood.
I was not in Montreal the week before, when the law was passed. I was
in the Netherlands for the V2 Dutch Electronic Art Festival. I came
back on Sunday and left immediately to spend the day of the Patriots
with some of my friends in the Eastern Townships. I did not see the
troops parading, I did not roam the streets at night with the
students provoking and escaping the police until they were arrested
in large numbers. I did not. Instead I enjoyed myself in the after
hour parties of the Festival, or resting by a lake, watching our kids
play. I was not disconnected, though. I followed the events on
Facebook, checking the websites of the newspapers and television
channels to witness it all from an ocean away, while listening to
Chumbawamba, "Laughter in a time of war".
Take my life and sing it back to me
My big mouth, it's my own worst enemy
Funny how it all sounds better in harmony
Laughter in a time of War
Oh my soul
(Repeat)
The people at the top have further to fall
I was not laughing yet, though. I was mad, and my big mouth and
little brain were full of angry words and strong and not so strong
concepts. My Marxist education, my punk late teenage years, my
Deleuze and my Foucault was being remixed by the events in my head.
Not a pretty song, even if a minor voice said, wait and see, wait to
experience it in the streets, the Arab Spring did not start on
Facebook and Twitter, but with one guy who set himself on fire in
Tunisia. Nobody had set him or herself on fire here yet, there was
still hope of avoiding this, the minor voice in my head kept saying.
But there was still madness and paranoia, disinformation, propaganda
and lies: I was under the spell of the digital representation, where
truth and lies blur in a mist of zeroes and one. I felt estranged,
again, trapped in the false desert of the virtual, and it made me mad
enough.
This is exactly why, when back in Montreal on this cloudy Tuesday
morning, I decided to join the street–~A qui la rue? A nous la rue~.
This is exactly why I decided to go see and experience it for myself,
with my riot kit and my half-baked concepts. I had a hunch I might
experience the frontal clash of representative and direct democracy,
and wondered how frontal that might get. Well, the only frontal fact
I experienced that glorious day was that of the nudity of two young
women running wild in the cortege, getting naked for their rights,
and laughing like chubby amazons, weaponless. Instead of a frontal
clash, I followed for a while the meanderers in the street of young
"radical elements" carrying signs.
So yes, I think I finally got it that Tuesday. The law of exception
is this ultimate simulacrum, these so-called political
representatives are its makers, these cops, too tired to think, too
lost to join in, its passive guardians, these journalists its
pushers. This version of democracy, law and order, has outlived its
time, it is becoming the mere zombie of former times, ~a peine~
lingering on... Laughter will dissolve it like acid rain. Laughter
will prevail, hopefully.
Last night, amidst the tintamarres, in the embarrassingly proud
silence of those who still claim to govern while young people rule
the streets, while the population is slowly joining in the drumbeat
of kitchen pots and pans, we were still laughing. Without a hint of
cynicism, we just laugh.
We are more than fifty, and we laugh at the *grotesque* simulacrum
going full circle,
We are more than fifty, and we laugh at a time where there could be
war,
Oh my soul
We got oil for the pan
We got rock n roll
Laughter lines run deeper than skin
And the world's just
Something that the cat brought in
Thanks to the SNS Gang, and especially Heraclitus, for his
Baudelarian plugs.
Montreal, May 25, 2012.
Notes
—————-
[1] "Bill 78" is an emergency law, or "loi speciale," titled "An Act
to enable students to receive instruction from the postsecondary
institutions they attend," and passed on 18 May 2012 by the National
Assembly of Quebec. Bill 78 was drafted by members of the Quebec
Liberal Party, and introduced by Education Minister Michelle
Courchesne in response to ongoing student protests over proposed
tuition increases of 75% in the next five years. Bill 78 declares
illegal any picket or "form of gathering" by strike supporters within
50 meters of the "outer limits" of the "grounds" of any university or
~College d'Enseignement General et Professionnel~ (CEGEP) building.
The bill requires student associations, unions representing teachers,
and CEGEP or university employees to "employ appropriate means to
induce" their members to comply with its provisions, or face
prosecution. Article 9 of the bill states that the Minister of
Education, Recreation and Sports is granted the right to modify any
Act of law to provide for any dispositions deemed necessary to
enforce continuation of sessions throughout the duration covered by
the bill. The bill furthermore declares illegal all demonstrations of
over 50 people, organized for any purpose and at any location in
Quebec, unless the dates, times, starting point, and routes of those
locations and also the duration of the venue and the means of
transportation that will be used by participants, if applicable, have
been submitted to and approved by Quebec police. It is then possible,
at the police authority's discretion, to modify the location and date
of the protest if it judges that the protest would pose a serious
threat to the order and security of the public. According to the
provisions of the bill, any infraction against its prohibitions
require offenders to pay fines, which are paid for each day of
infraction. Those fines amount to $1,000-$5,000 for individuals,
$7,000-$35,000 for student or union leaders, and $25,000-$125,000 per
day for student or labor organizations. Fines are doubled following a
"second offence." Universities or institutions which do not comply
with the provisions of Bill 78 are subject to the daily fees paid by
student or labor organizations. The bill establishes a date after
which all education employees must return to work, and prohibits them
from striking should this, "by act or omission," prevent students
from receiving instruction, or indirectly impede services. Bill 78
suspends winter semester classes at 11 universities and 14 CEGEPs
where over 150,000 students remain on strike; classes at those
locations will be completed in August and September, if not earlier.
The law expires on 1 July 2013 [adapted from Wikipedia, entry Bill
78]
—————-
Agronomist (ENSA Montpellier, 1986) and sociologist (Ph.D. Paris X
Nanterre, 1991), Thierry Bardini is full professor in the department
of communication at the university of Montreal, where he has taught
since 1993. His research interests concern contemporary
cyberculture, from the production and uses of information and
communication technologies to molecular biology. He is the author of
_Bootstrapping : Douglas Englebart, Coevolution and the Genesis of
Personal Computing_ (Stanford University Press, 2000), _Junkware_
(University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and _Journey to the End of the
Species_ (in collaboration with Dominique Lestel, Editions Dis Voir,
Paris, 2011).
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