Jan+19th

What is apparatus? Deleuze: "literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings." The media is the most obvious example. What is the “Media apparatus” made of of? Art, film, real estate, marketing. What is the process of production? Poiesis and socialist realism; praxis; technique; Praxis: to speak out; to exercise one’s right to speak truth to power. Poiesis: is to express something minding address and technique. Tecne: “To cause to appear” and to “produce into presence” What is there to be done? For now, we learn the history of struggles; seek what are the problems and challenges today: Russian artists addressing uneducated masses; since the 60’s addressing educated masses (the “multitude”) Vanguard: it is solely on the side of PRAXIS; “Dictatorship”: To TAKE OVER power (violently) “Dictatorship of the proletariat” in theory it meant…. Three moments: the vanguardist party; avant-garde art (1920s) and socialist realism. In PRACTICE it meant… (Stalin) Benjamin: Form + content are not opposed to each other; innovate technically. How to innovate with the technique? Brecht: (and godard) Disrupt our visual habits (distantiation); a way in which they innovate technique); Difference between socialism (theory) and communism (practice)  What happened to the working class?  à Management of cultural differences in a multi-racial society; model imported from Britain (1970s); “Different habits” (or lifestyle); antagonistic interests (class)… cultural differences;  à The intensification of the police estate, of social work, of multiculturalism, of the disappearance of the working class. “De-ideologization” of the world (Ideology and it is also a theory: Marxist-Leninism –which empirically didn’t work. New relationships between theory and praxis; à Praxis used to be conceived as an **application of theory** (“Dictatorship of the proletariat”) and praxis was supposed to inform or to create a new form of theory. (Process of totalization; one shapes another); Deleuze: Theory and praxis are much more fragmentary and partial. Theory: is always local, related to a limited domain; The rule of application is never one of resemblance; For us, the relationships between theory and praxis are fragmentary and partial; Theory always encounters obstacles, walls, collisions; Who speaks, according to Deleuze? For us, the intellectual and theorist have ceased to be a subject, a consciousness that represents or is representative. And those involved in political struggle have ceased to be represented, whether by a party or a union that would in turn claim for itself the right to be their conscience. à ** Why was representation dismissed? Because students and workers contested the authority of union delegates, professors, intellectuals. ** There can only be ACTION There is only action, the action of theory, the action of praxis, in the relations of relays and networks. à What was the purpose of siding with workers? To achieve Self-MANAGEMENT “Anti-imperialist” struggle; What is imperialism? (System of powers: economic and military); American Hegemony; Cold War: Soviet Russia, Communist China and Capitalistic America: (Fighting over their influence in Europe) “Proletarian Internationalism”; not a NATIONAL LIBErATION STRUGGLE à We will be talking more next class about National Liberation Struggles; Countries that were fighting for their de-Colonization (ALGERIA, 1961: liberation from France) or for a National Socialist project (Cuba, 1959); Vietnam, Congo, Palestine, Bolivia, Chile… National Liberation Struggles: Also fought American influence (that is why they are anti-imperialist. “Third world peoples” Guerrilla in the jungle; guerrilla in the city. à They are in solidarity with Third World struggles: attack imperialism…  Describing life under capitalistic system in the city: Separation of public and private life, competition (war of all against all), separation of people into: “men and women, young and old… foreigners and natives”… ISOLATION; consumerism…  à They wanted to DESTROY capitalism and imperialism.  à Not one leader but collectivization as the political process or political work;  RAF: Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Holger Meins and Ulrike Meinhof. Along with Jan-Carl Raspe and Irmgard Moller –were discovered in their cells at the high-security prison in Stammheim, near Struttgart (On October 18, 1977); they had been incarcerated… tried for murder and other politically motivated crimes. Meinhof: Was found hanging in her Stammheim cell, shortly before she and the others were sentenced to life terms. (Suicide) as well as of the others found in 1977. Red Army Faction (Other emerging groups in France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the US): Challenging institutions and governmental systems. Germany: Challenged those responsible for the genocide of Jews in World War 2. Germany was divided in two: Russian influence and Western influence; Hanns-Martin Schleyer: Was taken hostage in 1977 by members of the RAF in the hope of gaining the release of Baader, Meinhof, Raspe, Enslin. (A trustee from the Daimler-Benz Company); He had been a member of the Nazi student movement and a senior SS officer in Pargue; (murky past); RAF executded him; the RAF activists came from families that had repudiated Hitler. JUrgen Ponto, the head of the Dresdner Bank was kidnapped and murdered in 1977; “Idealistic rebels” Not romanticizing violence but realistic about the power of the state; Social work (with teenagers); writing, spokes person for political parties; some members of the RAF were sentenced to jail but they went underground; first stop Paris… (Debray’s apartment0; sent back to Germany; Baader was caught in 1970 and brought back to prison; Ensslin and Meinhof and others helped him escape. Jailbreak; went to East Germany and then to Jordan, where they trained at a PLO camp. Against: American hegemony and German authoritarianism; (American bases in Germany); anticapitalist and anti-imperialism; by 1972 the main figures were in custody; crimes charged: murder, bombings… bank robbery, Baader’s escape.  Bombings: Springer headquarters in Hamburg; German police stations in Augsburg and Munich; American military sties in Heidelberg and Frankfurt and Karlsruhe.  Shootouts with authorities.  “Six against sixty million.” ???  1977: Hans-Martin Schleyers was kidnapped: ransom: to liberate the RAF members from jail; Government: resisted to succumb to the terroistss’ threats. In October 13 a Lufthansa jetliner was kidnapped by RAF gunment and Palestinian guerrillas: landed in Somaila. They appeared to have “killed” themselves a month later. Baader: with a bullet on the back of his head; Ensslin: hanging by an electric cord; Raspe: shot in the temple/ Irmgard Moeller: had been stabbed four times in the chest but not mortally wounded. Wheatherman or wheather underground: “an army of revolutionary white youth.” (1969) To fight racism (solidarity with the Black Panthers) and end the war in Vietnam. A “cell” or //groupuscule//; demonstrations; firebombing police cars in Chicago in response to the murders of Black Panthers… firebombing of the house of a judge. Bomb-building mishap in New York: Three members died. Formed all-women cells, bombed the Capitol Building,t he Pentagon and released may communiqués; some describing the reasons for their actions, others supporting other insurrections. Imploded in 1976-77 Capitol attack 1971 (documentary) They were also anti-imperialists; Extreme-left; sought media attention: violent actions, smart, educated young people. Fought an unjust system… Bombs to detonate at sites that purported oppressors; targeted empty buildings; NY Police heardquarters, Harvard international studies center… sending warnings in advance; Anti-imperialism and the war in Vietnam; Iraq and Vientam: “Nation building”; liberal good intentions; clash between the Americans who supported the South Vietnamese versus the Communists in the North (Ho Chi Min); Black Panther Party: Mid 1960s-1970s. Self-defense against racism and oppression. Oakland, California; protection of African Americans from police brutality; socialism and black nationalism… What is anti-imperialism? National Liberation Struggles against colonialism; Asia, Africa, Latin America in the 1960s and 70s within the context of the Cold War: Vietnam, Indonesia, Argelia, Angola, Congo, Zambia…. (Nehru, Ho Chi Min, Fanon, Lubumba, Sukano) Latin America: to promote social change; Fight against colonialism and neocolonialism; privatization or the creation of multinational enterprises; nationalization of basic sectors of economy; Anti-imperialism: Brought together CLASS STRUGGLE and NATIONAL LIBERATION PROJECTS RED BRIGADES in ITALY: in 1978 they kidnapped their Prime Minister Aldo Moro; (to release 13 of its enprisoned members) the government refused to negotiate with them; Moro’s body appeared 55 days later. Sabotaged factories; kidnappings of politicians and business men. à Infiltrations by the CIA internationally and the COINTELIMPRO internally (a branch of the FBI)… infiltrate the movements and break them apart… informants, collaborators, etc. It’s still debatable what happened… mass arrests; State murders Armed struggle against the capitalist state; What do we make of this turn to violence and terrorism? Not to judge it as ‘immoral’, right or wrong. But try to figure out WHY was violence an option for young, smart people. Why did they want to fight capitalism and the state by way of violence; To see the state’s response as the origin of the Police State (security, surveillance, information made public, airport security… Terrorism was not an invention of the Middle East or Central Asia). An apparatus of FEAR in the population. Arendt: technological advances: go toward warfare. (Internet) Why do we have warfare? Because it is socially and economically dangerous to be disarmed; “Final arbiter” in international affairs. War as politics by other means. How foreign affairs… are conducted. In the history and politics: Role of violence (great role) in human affairs; They were first taken for granted and therefore neglected. War and Political and Economic continuity; (Engels and Clausewitz) War, politics, violence and power. The “Cold War”: Demilitarization of Europe, American army bases; Soviet military-industrial complex. Arendt: Perhaps war is endemic to the social system; the basic social system to which secondary modes of social organization conspire against. She talks about biological and nuclear weapons… that cound destroy a small nation in a few hours; soldiers as automatized (soldiers pressing buttons in an airplane today in a video-game like screen) New developments that have reversed the relationship between POWER AND VIOLENCE (which is also the relationship between small and great powers) POWER CANNOT BE MEASURED IN TERMS OF WEALTH Violence is “dubious and uncertain” in international affairs (Cold War) But it has gained a reputation at home (in terms of the revolution) Violence: to bring the old society to its end; the new society as coming out form violent outbreaks. State: exerts violence… (but it does not entirely rely on violence) New shift toward violence in the thinking of revolutionaries; à ”Their pathos, élan and credibility are closely connected with the SUICIDAL DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN WEAPONS (The first generation to grow under the shadow of the atom bomb (HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI); extermination and concentration camps, genocide and torture. First: politics of nonviolence  Psychological explanations for the terrorist twist;  Student rebellion is global;  A generation of courage and will to action; they want change.  This generation’s view of the future: “Provided there is still a world” the future like a “time-bomb buried, ticking away in the present.” They hear the ticking.  Harsh critique of the Black Power movement… “To lower academic standards” they were more cautious than the white rebels; Negro demands are silly and outrageous;  Glorification of violence by the student movement;  Inspired by Fanon; VIOLENCE TO CURE VIOLENCE;  Not revenge, but violence.  The slaves doing violence to their masters; the colonized to the colonizers; For Arendt: this is a dream, it doesn’t happen; at the most you get a “mad fury” that turns into a collective nightmare. à Link between the THIRD WORLD and violence; à She is very critical of the movements: They are inconsistent with Marx…. THEORY cannot be put into practice; it fails; history has proven that when Marxist doctrines have been put to practice, empirically it is a disaster. à The concept of PROGRESS (which united Liberalism, Socialism and Communism into the “Left” The idea that there is progress of mankind; (an invention after the 17th century)  à The accumulation of knowledge will lead to progress and betterment; toward a classeless society; freedom.  20th century: influenced by Marx and Hegel…  Student’s rebellion: is about the limits of manipulation;  Men can be “manipulated” through physical coercion, torture, or starvation, and their opinions can be arbitrarily formed by deliberate, organized misinformation, but not through “hidden persuaders,” television, advertising, or any other psychological means in a free society.  à The “REFUTATION OF THEORY BY REALITY” has …  PROGRESS (the belief in unimited progress): to know more and more about less and less…  The rebellion of the young IS NEITHER MORALLY NOR POLITICALLY MOTIVATED exclusively; much of it has gone against academic glorification of scholarship and science; The progress of science has ceased to coincide with the progress of mankind; PROGRESS: can no longer serve as a standard by which to evaluate the disastrously rapid change-processes we have let loose. VIOLENCE: IS THE INTERRUPTION OF THE HISTORICAL PROCESS; VIOLENCE BRINGS HISTORY TO A STAND-STILL, not to an end; For Arendt: This coming to a stand-still of progress was inevitable… this interruption was going to be automatic and the students helped toward that. à Progress: History is it supposed to progress? And in what direction? Marx: communist society; optimistic conception of history; the doctrine of the end of history is inseparable from the Enlightenment’s idea of progress and the kind of optimism that regards history as a rational process leading to both materially and morally higher stages of being. To derive ends or purposes from the evidence of history has been difficult… history regarded as a progressive movement culminating in a confederation of republics overseen by a league of nations to ensure perpetual peace. Marx: leap from necessity to freedom TODAY: We do not believe in progress but in DEVELOPMENT and ECONOMIC GROWTH. Derrida: “Force of Law” // Gewalt // signfies for Germans legitimate power, authority, public force. //Staatsgewalt//: is the authority or power of the state. It is both, VIOLENCE AND LEGITIMATE POWER. (justified authority) How do we distinguish between the force of the law (of the legitimate power, justified authority) and the ORIGINARY VIOLENCE THAT ESTABLISHED THIS AUTHORITY?
 * The GROUP OF INFORMATION OF PRISONS, DELEUZE AND FOUCAULT **
 * A theory cannot be developed without encountering a wall, a praxis is needed to break through. **
 * Politics (the delegate) and aesthetics (the artist, writer) **
 * Struggles began to be organized in groupuscules; what is a groupuscule? **
 * Deleuze and Foucault ** :
 * Intellectuals: not to produce the knowledge for the proletariat anymore BECAUSE THE MASSES CAN DO AWAY WITH THEM: THEY KNOW HOW THEY ARE OPPRESSED. AND THEY KNOW BETTER THAN INTELLECTUALS. **
 * à Maoists (students): dropped out of school and started working in factories, action, practice, to know what it is like to be a worker (and move away from their position as bourgeois students) **
 * à As Foucault says, the intellectual at the front or at the side of the proletariat is no longer; (they are part of the system of power) **
 * To let the workers, peasants, oppressed speak. To give them the means to speak out, the tools to denounce the conditions of their oppression. **
 * Also bear in mind: the PROLETARIAT is NO LONGER after May ’68. **
 * “Proletarian Left ” was a kind of party with a loose structure kind of splintered into cells fighting for a PLURALITY of struggles: Comité against the war in Vietnam, for women’s rights, for immigrants rights, etc. The proletrian left was declard an illegal movement. Many of its members were arrested (rioting, picketing) “Sedition” (a crime against the security of the state ; inciting or provoking rebellion against the government and authority) **
 * One of the cells or branches from the Proletarian left was the Group of information about prisons (GIP) founded in 1971. Many activists were in prison and saw the conditions in which prisoners lived; fighting for the legal status as “political prisoners”; general conditions of imprisonment; prisoner’s rights. **
 * “Relay” (passers on, conveying) relay in between the prisoners and public opinion. To TRANSMIT INFORMATION FROM INSIDE TO THE OUTSIDE . **
 * Foucault, Discipline and Punish To draw public attention to prisons; How? Through having drawn a questionnaire and smuggling it in and out in the prisons; Not an end in itself or just for gathering information but to create a COMMUNICATION NETWORK. Prisoners to have the right to read the daily press; rooof top protests, rallys, rights; **
 * RAF or Baader-Meinhof Gruppe **
 * Armed anti-imperialist struggle (and the Defensive Position of the Counterrevolution in its Psychologic Warfare Against the People) **
 * Urban Guerrilla: What is the example she brings up? The liberation of Andreas Baader from prison; (Strategy and arms); his liberation from the state apparatus. **
 * Prison, criminalization: Ryan; great paper. A “soft” form of criminalization by “branding” people with a police report for life. (Canadian Penal system) **
 * Psychological Warfare ** : From the state to the masses; to turn the masses against the guerrilla (FEAR); Instigation, lies, dirt, racism, manipulation: After the liberation of Andreas Baader in 1972 they went underground for two years.