An inventory – Chapter II
“Impérialisme d’exclusion et état d’exception” (Imperialism of Exclusion and the State of Exception) by Robert Kurz
Published in Germany in 2003 but edited in France in 2018, a text of great lucidity on the new deal by which global capitalism hopes to endure and “which already has all the features of the new barbarism to come.”
“Wherever the social and intellectual movements against war and the brutal restrictions of capitalism in crisis threatened to cross a critical threshold and break the pseudo-natural law of the subordination of all social resources to the irrational principle of valorization, the democratic apparatuses revealed the hideous violent face of the state of exception. (…) The construct of ‘sovereignty of the people’ proved in practice to be a counter-truth and the ideological travesty of a profoundly repressive principle of reality, under the imperatives of which the individual-citizen is a molecule of sovereignty only insofar as he or she surrenders unconditionally, on the socio-economic level, to the evolutionary forms of the irrational end in itself of capitalism and, in this sense, oppresses him or herself.”
“The progressive savagery of unbridled security apparatuses, the infringements of rights at all levels and the ‘mafia-ization’ of politics are superimposed on democratic ‘normality’: society becomes a trompe-l’œil image in which moments of dictatorship and parliamentary representation, of delimited violence and legal positivism merge into one another.”
“La Voie pauvre de la rébellion” (The poor way of rebellion) by Jacques Fradin
“Since enrichment, growing and for all, is impossible, since the economic project is a dead end, there remains only the possibility of enrichment, which can then be extravagant, for a few; very weak growth (or even degrowth) associated with a highly unequal distribution, and whose inequality is growing, will do the trick. To continue to defend the economy, placed at the exclusive service of the ultra-rich.
But this program of the new economic government must be hidden and publicly denied. We must continue to make people believe in the possibility of increasing enrichment for all, knowing that such a thing is impossible and that the economic policies that are being maintained are policies of impoverishment of ever-increasing parts of the population and monstrous enrichment of ever-smaller parts of this population (inequality
is growing).
The new economic government must therefore practice systematic lying, in the name of defending the economic faith (the new name for reason of state).”
“Une violence éminemment contemporaine” (An eminently contemporary violence) by Jean-Pierre Garnier
Essays on the city, the intellectual petty bourgeoisie and the erasure of the working classes.
“In short, everything happened – and is still happening, for many – as if, unconsciously making a virtue out of necessity, the neo-small bourgeois had resolved to make his smallness the measure of the world.”
“Fragmenter le monde” (Fragmenting the world) by Josep Rafanelli i Orra
“That ‘women’ see in every man a pig in disguise and that ‘men’ see in every woman an inconsiderate tease ensures a bright future for the maintenance of the imperial order.
That “non-whites” see in every “white” an atavistic racist and that every “Frenchman” fears his “replacement” by those who were colonized, this guarantees against any risk of popular insurrection.“ (preface by Moses Dobruska)
“En attendant la fin du monde” (While waiting for the end of the world) by Baudouin de Bodinat
“& also that most certainly had not demanded, had not personally wanted these depredations, had not demanded in their name this setting to plunder, all this cyclopean extraction and razzias, of clear-cutting, this brutal denudation of terrestrial life – nor anything in particular of what made the bed of this threatening disorder; nevertheless that they wanted what they were being given, and not only the strictly utilitarian but also the very superfluous in the form of container ships, the flattering amenities of negligence and lack of taste, all this profusion in blister packs or in freezers; that they were willing takers of these innovations of the information to carry around with them, which they now consider essential to their personal development; whether they have resented this invasion: “I didn’t ask for it”, they exonerate themselves (“I had nothing to do with it if it turned out like this”, “We didn’t ask for it, but we might as well make use of it”, etc.). Which is duplicitous enough, the “I didn’t ask to be alive” of the sullen teenager. We will answer him: But yes, you wouldn’t be here otherwise; and to the others: But yes, we wouldn’t be here otherwise. ”
“
La Société ingouvernable” (The Ungovernable Society) by Grégoire Chamayou
See the review of this book on this website.
It is what one might call, with reference to the wood-boring insect of the same name, the policy of the longhorn beetle: there is no need to cut the beams with an axe when, lurking in the wood, thousands of little mouths are inexorably gnawing away at the framework.
With this method, it is not necessary to persuade everyone to adhere to the overall project of a market society for everyone to work towards making it happen. In fact, it is even crucial never to ask people about this scale: we are not going to sell them that society wholesale, only retail. The big question of choosing a society is evaded by dissolving it into the tiny questions of a society of choice. (…) This micropolitics is therefore also small in the sense of pettiness. Narrowing the horizon. Looking at the world only through the small end of the telescope. The general landscape will only be contemplated later, perhaps finally taking a step back. One by one, the most minute relationships will have been altered and, as far as the eye can see, the whole will have become unrecognizable.
“Politique des multiplicités” (Politics of Multiplicities) by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
“The idea that globalized capitalism has led to a diminution of the power of the state seems implausible to me. Apart from the fact that it took and still takes a gigantic regulatory and interventionist apparatus, administered by the State, to produce the “deregulation of the economy, as well as to politically and militarily support a ‘free market’, which is neither, it is not necessary to be a fanatical ”anarcho-autonomist” fanatic to realize that the State has never been so present, so close to everyday life. ”
“Avis de tempêtes : la fin des beaux jours ?” (Storm warning: the end of sunny days?) by Collective
A review by Jacques Luzi: Does political ecology need collapsology?
https://lepromeneur111.blogspot.com/2020/09/lecologie-politique-t-elle-besoin-de-la.html
“De la démocratie en Pandémie” (Democracy in a Pandemic) by Barbara Stiegler
“The old tendency of neoliberals to lecture a population deemed unfit and to hammer home the ‘pedagogy of reforms’ gave way to a general infantilization of all acts of life, public and private.
“Thus, from the very beginning, there was a spectacular inversion of responsibilities. While citizens were the victims of a policy that had disarmed the health system, the government reversed the burden by blaming it on the citizens themselves. ”
“La Liberté dans le coma” (Freedom in a Coma) by Groupe Marcuse
“The urgent task is not to defend ‘liberties’, but to reinvent freedom. The programmed decline of partial freedoms is only the other side of the triumph of a debased conception of human freedom, reduced to that which the market and technical system demands. ”
The modern idea of freedom was formed against the closed worlds of yesteryear, of village life or in small neighborhoods, with their gossip and their local social control. Economic independence and direct contact with nature have been sacrificed to this desire for anonymity. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, anonymity – which has gained ground in many rural areas – no longer offers any protection. Freedom is not achieved by fleeing our humanity but by developing it in a different way.
“Prospérités du désastre : Aggravations” (Prosperities of disaster: Aggravations) by Jean-Paul Curnier
It would be wrong to think that such a rout marks the end of the spectacular regression that characterizes the political life of the dominant countries in the globalized world. It is in fact only the first stage, appalling as it may be, of a new and even greater form of submission to power that is in the making. And if this stage is in every way frightening, it is because it already exceeds our own imagination of the rout, any anticipation, even the most alarmist, of the contemporary decline of politics.
“Contre la résilience” (Against resilience) by Thierry Ribault
A disastrous chimera promoted to the rank of therapeutic technique in the face of current and future disasters, resilience makes its victims co-managers of the devastation. Its advocates even call for a catastrophe whose damage feeds our ability to overcome it. This is why, from now on, the “human element” is the last obstacle to full accommodation. Everything contributes to transforming it into a malleable material, capable of “bouncing back” at every obstacle, of making its destruction a source of reconstruction and its misfortune the origin of its happiness, thus subjecting it to its condition as a survivor. Both an ideology of adaptation and a technology of consent to existing reality, however disastrous, resilience is one of many solutionist deceptions.
“Antimatrix” by Alessi dell’Umbria
Everything must be done to distract us, the decisive step having been taken with the production of devices designed to keep each individual constantly distracted from his environment, his loved ones, his own life… Distraction thus cultivates absence from the world.
Never before has so much been built in the world for the sole purpose of making it uninhabitable.
“La Nature contre le capital” (Nature against Capital) by Kohei Saito
Marx’s ecology in his unfinished critique of capital.
“With the capitalist mode of appropriation, individual and social ‘metabolism’ has
considerably impoverished, precisely because of the hidden class character, because the mass of workers is subject to a foreign power, that of money, regardless of their concrete needs.”
What is important in Marx’s scientific contribution to current ecological debates is his demonstration, based on the fundamental determinations of the market society, that value as a mediation of the transhistorical character between humanity and nature is incapable of satisfying the material conditions of sustainable production.
Capitalism could very well continue to profit from the unscrupulous exploitation of natural resources until the point where nature is so destroyed that a large part of the earth has become uninhabitable.
“Le Mur énergétique du capital” (The Energy Wall of Capital) by Sandrine Aumercier
Contribution to the problem of the criteria for the overcoming of capitalism from the point of view of the critique of technologies.
“The organic composition of capital can vary greatly from one era to another and from one region to another, but the absolute trend is towards the exhaustion of all energy sources, either cumulatively or successively. Capital has a preference only for the cheapest energy source at any given point in its historical trajectory.”
“Green“ energies are the pure product of capitalism at the end of its tether, trying to present itself as ‘renewable’ when it is nothing more than extractivist and neocolonial.
“L’Impasse capitaliste” (The capitalist dead end) by Tom Thomas
Labor, needs and ecological emergency.
The men of capitalism no longer control anything of the human/nature metabolism, although they know full well that it is seriously deteriorating. None of the means mentioned above allows capital to escape from its senile decadence since it is structural and has its roots in what produces and reproduces capital and is withering away: labor. These means are and will nevertheless be implemented because the dynamics of capital are automatic, and it will always find people who will strive to be its executors, for financial and ideological reasons, as well as out of submission.
Rebound:
Translated by TerKo with the help of a free translation tool.
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