[Nettime-bold] Maria Bianchini, Serge Quadruppani: An Appeal about the Volksbad Declaration.

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

Hi Mods,

You could put this under 'nettime Q&D translators' or 'nettime human 
babalefish' or something funky like that... ;-)
cheers, patrice & Diiiino!

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This is a Q&D translation of a post on several French mailing lists.
(this version from Multitudes-Info)

Yann Moulier Boutang has written a long rejoinder to it, equally on 
Multitudes-info - but that stays in french for the time being... ;-)

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Maria Bianchini, Serge Quadruppani
An appeal about the Volksbad Declaration

The text of the Munich Volksbad Declaration has been sent to various 
mailing lists as a petition, and has subsequently been signed by 
economists, sociologists, net-activists of many countries etc. etc. 
The comments that we have been reading, and the diversity of the 
signatories show that there has been a strong support for this initiative. 
We consider this text interesting because it testifies of a will to break 
lose from previous, outdated and ever-lamenting activist discourses 

And yet... zones of shadow, a haziness that cannot only been ascribed to
the use of metaphors, and various proclamatory assertions makes it for us
in the end a text that can only be handled with considerable caution. We
wish therefore to share with the authors of this declaration our questions
and our disagreements.

In the text, globalisation is claimed as ours too, and we understand this 
is done in the name of the opening up of borders, the withering away of 
national barriers and the advent of the 'Empire'. But is it reasonable to 
put professionally mobile managers, undocumented migrants, and (new) 
social movements all on the same plane? One may think otherwise, after 
Genova, and the new anti-terrorists laws being enacted after the 11 th of 
September. If not, one simply rehashes, in this description and claim of 
globalisation, the basic tenets of capitalism about the free circulation 
of goods, capital, and human beings. If that is a sociological statement 
of facts, it is a gross generalisation, because it reflects on 
intrinsically different social realities and representations, on 
unquantifiable living experiences, and on contradictory formats of 
mobility. To be against crude anti-globalisation is an attitude that 
should not boil down to the use of simplistic imagery.

The indictment of the neo-liberal ideology that is to follow in the text 
is equally too simplistic in its argumentation. This ideology has only 
preached to those already converted that it would bring peace and 
security. In fact, it only promised the generalisation of the market's 
iron rule to all sectors of life from the single individual up to society 
as a whole, and the subordination of all to its (mercantile) values 
(re)defined as universal. Hence, we do not really believe that the acting 
multitudes have ever felt let down by it...

The declaration the proceeds to tackle the issue of war, and of the 
terrorist acts of September 11, and does so by taking a stand that in our 
opinion should have raised a lot of questions among the signatories.
"We are not in favor of war, we are not against war, more than ever, we 
need to organise the struggle outside of war, outside of organised panic" 
Court-room gesturing? Syllogism? Need to symetrise the dialectic? 
Provocative rhetoric aiming at bagging together and disposing of both the 
Dollar-talibans and the Religion-talibans? The aesthetics of distanciation 
practised here should however not make you forget that to decline to be 
against the war means support to the bombings. Otherwise, you could have 
opted to simply mark your refusal of war. "We are not against war"... does 
that mean that, for you, this is merely a war among fanatics? And yet, 
behind the fighters, the corpses that are piling up are those of the 
bricked in Afghan women and of the illegal Mexicans working in the World 
Trade Center before them...

To conclude, you appeal to the Net-economy to liberate us from the 
war-economy. It would seem to us that the net-economy foundered on and 
with the NASDAQ, and hence the substitution looks like a somewhat weak 
one, taking the needs of the real economy into account. If the liberation 
of the world, which you are wishing for, needs to happen through the 
development of networks of countervailing power, then it is unlikely to be 
found in the economy, but rather in resistance against the mercantile and 
economist order, as is already exemplified by a good many actors in the 
radical Network...


Q&D translation by Patrice Riemens




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