Skype meeting with Stephen Duncombe, 9 February 2010
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Skype meeting with Stephen Duncombe, 9 February 2010
Contents |
Personal history
- 80s Hardcore punk experience
- Against lots of things
- But not doing very much
- Cultural life (punk), very empowering, participatory
- Political life, unempowering, formal marches on Washington (ACT UP)
Combining radical culture and politics
- Rethinking politics through cultural experiences (hc, hiphop, etc)
- Beginning in the 1990s but fomenting across many groups of people in the 00s
Developing fantasties
How do you make that transition from narrative of simple evils to complex realworld evils?
- Simple evils: terrorists, child soldiers, He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named, etc.
- Complex evils: Israel/Palestine
One possible approach,
- Caricatures
- Tea Party : Obama as Black Stalin
- But danger is that no one can engage with those figures, only destroy them
Time
- Activist time, give yourself over to the cause
- Privileged with time and money, or gainfully employed (as organizer)
- Cultural time, "dip in and out"
- What can I do? sheets, "If you have a minute, if you have 5 minutes, if you have 15 minutes, etc..."
Actions
Activity is the point, is the political act
- Riding in Critical Mass actually IS the politics
Consumption / participation / production
Can these be distinct?
- Is it a worthwhile distinction?
- Is consumption "simply" building the brand of a corporation?
- What are you producing?
- For who?
- For what?
Design and activism
- ACT UP's concern for design
- Design permeates
- Skolnik, "all politics is theater but most of it is bad theater"
- Powerful symbolic acts:
- Mailing peanuts to studio regarding Jericho
- Bringing kindegarteners down to an office to say they have to pee
- Making fun, making activism fun
- "Cutting through the clutter" of a bureaucracy
- Funny events get MSM circulation
- What are you "demonstrating" (en esp, manifestación)?
- Problem: calling senator takes 5 seconds, more interesting acts, less easy
Budget
- Spending on culture
- Should the govt spend money on culture?
- NEA
- New Deal govt had "many different ways" of propagating its message
- Lower budget activities
- "Having the seams showing" is a way in
Identification, no "join" moment
No "join" moment
- Assumption of membership
- Connected to "common sense"
- Power of naming discontent
What are the ethical implications?
- Fascist
Examples?
- 9/12, tea bag/party
- What is the problem with this?
- Could it be positive? Greatest generation?
- Youth movements, punk, etc.
More decentralized
Anti-globalization example
- No "on message"
- Dispersed 100s of sub-groups
- Some will be contradictory
- Yet, "themes" emerge
- How do/can these "themes" circulate as "messages" in scenarios that expect them?
- How can multiply themed groups get things done?
MassPIRG
- Connecting to independent tea party folks
- Especially as concerns transparency
Dream aimed at progressives
But generalizable to "democracy"
- How does tea party resonate with Abbie Hoffman?
