limits in the organic sphere … The notion of the “body without organs” hints at the idea that the organism isn’t something that you can define, that the organism is a process of exceeding, of going beyond a threshold, of “becoming other.” This is a crucial point, but it’s also a dangerous point … What body, what mind is going through transformation and becoming? Which invariant lies under the process of becoming other? If you want to answer this question you have to acknowledge death, finitude, and depression.
What can be done in a situation where demonstrations and protests prove to be of no use, where democratic elections fail to make any difference? According to Berardi, only withdrawal, passivity, and the abandonment of illusions canopen up a new way: “Only self-reliant communities leaving the field of social competition can open a way to a new hope.” I, of course, do not follow him here, but I do share his skepticism about chaotic resistance. I am more and more convinced that what really matters is what happens the day after: can we convince the tired and manipulated crowds that we are not only ready to undermine the existing order, to engage in provocative acts of resistance, but are also able to offer the prospect of a new order?
I think that Pussy Riot’s performances cannot be reduced to being just subversive provocations. Beneath the dynamics of your acts, there is the inner stability of a firm ethico-political attitude. Pussy Riot does not propose merely a Dionysian destabilization of the existing static order—in a deeper sense, it is today’s society that is caught in a crazy capitalist dynamic with no inner sense or measure, and it is Pussy Riot which de facto offers a stable ethico-political point. Pussy Riot’s very existence communicates to thousands the fact that opportunist cynicism is not the only option, that we are not totally disoriented, that there still is a common cause worth fighting for.
So what I wish you is also good luck in our common cause. To be faithful to that cause means to be brave, especially today—and, as the old saying goes, fortune favors the brave!
Yours,
Slavoj
“As I serve my ‘deuce’ in lockdown”
Nadya to Slavoj, July 13, 2013
Dear Slavoj,
Let me start this letter out by drawing a distinction I find crucial to avoiding the pitfalls of fictive universalization.
At the beginning of your letter, you caught yourself in a moment of male chauvinism. But I’m inclined to think you and I and our whole conversation are susceptible to a more justified—and so heavier—charge: that of a colonial perspective. What I mean is that we haven’t so far been accounting for regional differences and quirks in the operation of the economic and political mechanisms we’re discussing. This omission, this silence, feels suddenly shameful. Seduced by your arguments, I fell unreflectingly into the classic trap of exclusive and discriminatory universalization. And inthe end, like anyone toying with unfounded universals, I excluded and discriminated against myself.
The difference I feel a civic duty to stipulate is between how what you call “global capitalism” works in the US or Europe, and how that same capitalism works in Russia. From where I’m sitting as a political activist, not to address and problematize this distinction would amount to intellectual cowardice. I know that comparing Russia with a hypothetical “West” will always yield more questions than answers, and I guess that’s why, even though I would’ve loved to, I didn’t get into the distinction in my last letter (which I had to jot down quickly while at my sewing machine). I’d never have time to say as much as I was thinking, sitting here in jail in one of those Special Economic Zones, the zones of institutionalized exploitation.
But recent political events have left me completely enraged: the appalling trial of Alexei Navalny and the Bolotnaya Square demonstrators, 1 which has
What can be done in a situation where demonstrations and protests prove to be of no use, where democratic elections fail to make any difference? According to Berardi, only withdrawal, passivity, and the abandonment of illusions canopen up a new way: “Only self-reliant communities leaving the field of social competition can open a way to a new hope.” I, of course, do not follow him here, but I do share his skepticism about chaotic resistance. I am more and more convinced that what really matters is what happens the day after: can we convince the tired and manipulated crowds that we are not only ready to undermine the existing order, to engage in provocative acts of resistance, but are also able to offer the prospect of a new order?
I think that Pussy Riot’s performances cannot be reduced to being just subversive provocations. Beneath the dynamics of your acts, there is the inner stability of a firm ethico-political attitude. Pussy Riot does not propose merely a Dionysian destabilization of the existing static order—in a deeper sense, it is today’s society that is caught in a crazy capitalist dynamic with no inner sense or measure, and it is Pussy Riot which de facto offers a stable ethico-political point. Pussy Riot’s very existence communicates to thousands the fact that opportunist cynicism is not the only option, that we are not totally disoriented, that there still is a common cause worth fighting for.
So what I wish you is also good luck in our common cause. To be faithful to that cause means to be brave, especially today—and, as the old saying goes, fortune favors the brave!
Yours,
Slavoj
“As I serve my ‘deuce’ in lockdown”
Nadya to Slavoj, July 13, 2013
Dear Slavoj,
Let me start this letter out by drawing a distinction I find crucial to avoiding the pitfalls of fictive universalization.
At the beginning of your letter, you caught yourself in a moment of male chauvinism. But I’m inclined to think you and I and our whole conversation are susceptible to a more justified—and so heavier—charge: that of a colonial perspective. What I mean is that we haven’t so far been accounting for regional differences and quirks in the operation of the economic and political mechanisms we’re discussing. This omission, this silence, feels suddenly shameful. Seduced by your arguments, I fell unreflectingly into the classic trap of exclusive and discriminatory universalization. And inthe end, like anyone toying with unfounded universals, I excluded and discriminated against myself.
The difference I feel a civic duty to stipulate is between how what you call “global capitalism” works in the US or Europe, and how that same capitalism works in Russia. From where I’m sitting as a political activist, not to address and problematize this distinction would amount to intellectual cowardice. I know that comparing Russia with a hypothetical “West” will always yield more questions than answers, and I guess that’s why, even though I would’ve loved to, I didn’t get into the distinction in my last letter (which I had to jot down quickly while at my sewing machine). I’d never have time to say as much as I was thinking, sitting here in jail in one of those Special Economic Zones, the zones of institutionalized exploitation.
But recent political events have left me completely enraged: the appalling trial of Alexei Navalny and the Bolotnaya Square demonstrators, 1 which has
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