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When it comes down to it, in regards to the parapolitics of Trump and the deep state, and the interests at play – Wall Street and manufacturing wanting an opening to Russia, the military industrial complex wanting new enemies, tech wanting free trade and less surveillance – there is no ideological unity within the ruling class, and hence not within the state itself. They are all Peter Ustinovs, wandering around between embassies. Yet it is not enough to merely say ‘neither Washington nor Moscow but Peter Ustinov!’ on one hand, or to dismiss this as petty politics within the state that have no bearing on capitalist power in general, or the repressive, racist authoritarianism of the Trump regime in particular on the other hand. It actually is the playing out of the real competition of the former within the latter, and how the dreidel lands after spinning around is the moment in which an Ambassador is shocked. There is no telling what is going to happen next, so while it would be folly to end up like Angleton, convinced everyone around him was a Russian agent, it is useful to adopt an approach that examines the necessary internal relations within what cannot simply be called ‘the deep state’. Instead, given the fluidity between state apparatuses, the blurring of lines between coercive on one hand, and ideological on the other, it makes more sense, at this point, to merely call it the state.
So in what sense is sarcasm being referenced by Gramsci? In Note 29 from Volume 1 of Joseph Buttigieg’s translation of The Prison Notebooks, he distinguishes Marx’s sarcasm as a ‘passionate’ or ‘positive sarcasm’. Marx wants to ‘mock not the most intimate feelings’ associated with worldly illusions ‘but their contingent form which is linked to a particular “perishable” world, their cadaverous smell, so to speak, that leaks from behind the painted façade.’ He even aims to ‘give new form to certain aspirations,’ the better to ‘regenerate’ them.
But these ‘new conceptions’ are only germinally in existence, somehow not susceptible to being expressed in ‘apodictic or sermonic form’. Thus, if Marxism is to be effective, it must create new tastes and ‘a new language’ – sarcasm is ‘the component of all these needs which may seem contradictory’.
Gramsci’s claim is that, somehow, without sarcasm these new conceptions would be utopian. Sarcasm, that is, is a language for the not-yet-fully-realised, for that which struggles to be born, against that which resists death. Indeed, it is difficult to detach sarcasm from a half-occluded utopianism; the things we are sarcastic about tend to be those that outrage our sense of what should be.
However irresistible, it is of course resisted. If the form of prophesy is invoked, it is also to tacitly admit that we cannot be prophets. There is no Word of God to which we, mere flesh, could or should be subjected. And so we must analyse our situation with ruthless scorn, not sentimental illusions. We yearn for salvation, rapture, but we must not yearn so. We are down here among the garbage, and it is out of our rubble, the conditions of our existence, that we have to fashion new embodiments of these old aspirations.
Sarcasm, in this sense, is both this-worldly and other-worldly, both secular and divine, disillusioned and devoted. Organised sarcasm is yearning, bitter disappointment and still more yearning raised to the level of praxis.
not entirely sure i agree or even get what it's saying but it's lovely nonetheless
There is so much to say about a system that increasingly treats housing as a means to accumulate capital, never as a home. A creeping worldview that only understands the value of housing as a commodity, as something to be bought and sold, speculated in, land banked. To them, where you live is only a piece of property subject to global markets, real estate whose value is tied to location and status rather than its conditions, the wellbeing or stability of its tenants, its impact on the neighbourhood. By this system, boarded up and empty houses with front yards full of weeds are somehow worth more than deeply-loved homes that have witnessed the joy and pain of generations and yield harvests, or seasons of flowers.
pretty
their deaths happened long
Before. It happened in the minds of people who never saw
Them. It happened in the profit margins. It happened
In the laws. They died because money could be saved and made.
poem by Ben Okri on Grenfell
What will happen now if our growing resistance does not create change? The housing policies of the Tory government will inflict ever-deeper violence of both kinds on the most vulnerable, shored up by moralising around cheap ideas of self-help and responsibility. On 24 June a Guardian headline said it all in quoting a new report from Shelter: ‘Housing Crisis Threatens a Million Families with Eviction by 2020’. There is little that is ‘new’ in this new housing crisis, just new depths to the cuts to benefits already cut to the bone, new breadth to their reach to tear away basic necessities from more and more people. We are watching a car crash in slow motion. [...]
The mass building of council houses, the removal of restrictions on councils building, regulating the private rented sector to secure tenancies, restrain rent raises and ensure adequate conditions, housing-first provision for rough sleepers, reversing benefit sanctions and caps, changing a planning framework that guarantees obscene profits to developers and so much more … the holistic nature of the proposed changes is inspiring. It undercuts the idea of housing as something to generate profits, housing as commodity.
This is the first thing that must be done. Stop the worst of the violence, clear the way to what matters.
We must start there, though, only that we aim higher, do better. That we think about how to make of housing not a commodity nor just a shelter, but a home. That we think of how that process happens, how we are able to take space and make it our own as households, and more collectively in our buildings or estates or neighbourhoods. That we take seriously how home nurtures our selves and futures. That housing associations and councils rip up the petty rules and regulations that treat their tenants as the enemy. That we look at sweat equity, self-build, cooperatives and land trusts. That we transform our unused and unloved spaces to permanent benefit to the community. That we think about how sustainability connects to the wealth of local and natural materials that could be used to retrofit and build or the integration with green space and gardens or the green jobs that could be created. That we think about how we each connect to our home and through it to a vibrant hybrid culture and to a broad and welcoming community where we can grow old gracefully while space remains for our children and their children. Ownership is not necessary for this; rather, secure tenancies and management structures granting the ability to shape our spaces according to needs and desires, to try new things, fail and try again, to build and paint and transform. It sounds utopian until you remember we are conditioned to think of housing as an asset to be managed, not a space that to support our passions and our dreams. Knitted into communities, houses should redefine sustainability and living well upon the earth. [...]
i like her style
[...] These are only a handful of inspiring spatial movements I am aware of. There are so many more. All this is possible.
But we live under logic that justifies buildings boarded up, left to fall apart, investment flats built to sit empty, while crisis rages and people must choose between housing they cannot afford, housing that could kill them, and no housing at all.
again, i like her style
The slogan of the ZAD is ‘ZAD partout,’ (‘ZAD everywhere’), a goal which, however desirable, is ultimately impossible. The ZAD’s emphasis on self-sufficiency obscures the visitors who bring money and alcohol, the supermarket that doesn’t lock its bins, the factories which made the tyres for the barricades, which are all absolutely indispensable elements of the ZAD. The ZAD is self-reflexive but it is not self-sufficient. There’s no doubt that the 200 inhabitants are capable of looking after themselves. They are doing a superb job of growing their own food and organising a complex and peaceful community in a relatively small area of land. But their pride in this achievement ignores that their relations with the outside world, however fragile and minute, maintain the ZAD to an extent beyond that which they would like to be the case. The ZAD, which sets itself against the outside world and simultaneously relies on the outside world to exist, is in contradiction with itself.
kinda cool
In the conventional, thetic, paranoid form of reading imposed on children, every text is a kind of a puzzle. You can read it simply, enjoying the shape of the words in your mouth, their indistinct resonances, their minute associations which seem to hold a special meaning for you and you alone, or the ones which float in the clear vastness of possibility and never need to settle down and become fixed; you can take joy in the act of reading, and understand it as a perpetual collaboration between yourself and an author you've never met. [...]
i do like his writing style tbh