Showing posts with label mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mexico. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
The O Word
A Wordle of the last draft of my senior capstone. I'll repost it when I submit my final version next week. (This idea was stolen from ED who did the same with his dissertation.) Details will be posted about the talk I'm going to give based on my research as soon as I set it up.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Blah blah blah
Okay, let's get real here.
I'm totally tired of reading communiques/statements/expositions about short actions that run on for four paragraphs. There's this tendency to write these great pieces and delivery them during the course of a direct action, or even a symbolic but danger-zone actions. But no one is listening to you talk about the war in Iraq or political prisoners or whatever, while all your nearby buddies are locking down the building or tossing agitational pamphlets from a third story balcony. They are watching people do cool/weird shit. I respect well-worded statements and I think they can be powerful and affect people. But I've been in discussions which drag on for hours about the precise wording of a specific phrase for a statement during an action which assures that no one will ever listen to the speaker.
It's not a big deal ya'll, just read a few sentences and let everybody dig the cool shit you're doing.
Additionally, writing a three paragraph manifesto for some sneaky late night DA is equally lame. The most egregious recent example is a video called "19 segundos de guerra social" that's swirling around the anarchosphere. It breaks all my rules of things I like (smashing banks and thinking you're super-revolutionary, using the phrase "social war," being the same group that attacks people at the bullfights here in Mexico City.) Seriously gang. Go ahead, fuck up a bank if you feel like it. But post a long release about how hard you are and how you're fighting the system? And then get it translated? Self-important much? Sheesh...
I'm totally tired of reading communiques/statements/expositions about short actions that run on for four paragraphs. There's this tendency to write these great pieces and delivery them during the course of a direct action, or even a symbolic but danger-zone actions. But no one is listening to you talk about the war in Iraq or political prisoners or whatever, while all your nearby buddies are locking down the building or tossing agitational pamphlets from a third story balcony. They are watching people do cool/weird shit. I respect well-worded statements and I think they can be powerful and affect people. But I've been in discussions which drag on for hours about the precise wording of a specific phrase for a statement during an action which assures that no one will ever listen to the speaker.
It's not a big deal ya'll, just read a few sentences and let everybody dig the cool shit you're doing.
Additionally, writing a three paragraph manifesto for some sneaky late night DA is equally lame. The most egregious recent example is a video called "19 segundos de guerra social" that's swirling around the anarchosphere. It breaks all my rules of things I like (smashing banks and thinking you're super-revolutionary, using the phrase "social war," being the same group that attacks people at the bullfights here in Mexico City.) Seriously gang. Go ahead, fuck up a bank if you feel like it. But post a long release about how hard you are and how you're fighting the system? And then get it translated? Self-important much? Sheesh...
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Decentralization in Theory and Practice
I've been pondering this question for awhile now and have only been pushed to consider it even more strongly since I've been here in Mexico.
What is it exactly that anarchists mean when they talk about a society based on "decentralization"? What is being decentralized?
My experiences here in Mexico City have taught me that, if nothing else, decentralization of institutions is incredibly frustrating and inefficient. Decentralized capitalist institutions like immigration have provided me with a great deal of irritation, but that's understandable, as they are premised on a giant bureaucracy that makes things difficult to accomplish. Surely in an anarchist society, we wouldn't need the extensive decentralized bureaucracy that say, the Mexican or U.S. migration process provides.
But decentralization in our daily lives of institutions would mean a whole host of different problems. Take decentralization in institutions of learning. I'm familiar with the critique of schooling, but I'm still a firm believer that we can radically restructure education in order to produce institutions that educate without indoctrinating. Here, at my university in Mexico though, decentralization is already the rule of the day. There are literally dozens of autonomous bodies that make decisions which affect themselves but which carry consequences for the whole university. This means that inscription, application, class schedules, as well as more "institutional" tasks like maintenance of facilities require a knowledge of a Byzantine bureaucratic labyrinth to navigate.
This is obviously just one example, but I want to apply it to the theory of decentralizing all of our economic and social activities. What exactly does decentralization imply in terms of the daily lives of people and their well-being? The effects of decentralization in capitalist society reflect in some bizarre manner the so-called centralization of the economy in state socialist societies, where the centralization of power with the state resulted in a profuse diffusion of bureaucracy.
Am I just suffering the irritations of the infamous Mexican impulse towards bureaucracy? How can we decentralize our activities and institutions without creating shortages that could be potentially fatal? That is to say, moving beyond my rather silly example of an educational institution, what potential dangers would a decentralized agricultural system bring? How can anarchist theory account for, and plan to deal with, for these issues?
What is it exactly that anarchists mean when they talk about a society based on "decentralization"? What is being decentralized?
My experiences here in Mexico City have taught me that, if nothing else, decentralization of institutions is incredibly frustrating and inefficient. Decentralized capitalist institutions like immigration have provided me with a great deal of irritation, but that's understandable, as they are premised on a giant bureaucracy that makes things difficult to accomplish. Surely in an anarchist society, we wouldn't need the extensive decentralized bureaucracy that say, the Mexican or U.S. migration process provides.
But decentralization in our daily lives of institutions would mean a whole host of different problems. Take decentralization in institutions of learning. I'm familiar with the critique of schooling, but I'm still a firm believer that we can radically restructure education in order to produce institutions that educate without indoctrinating. Here, at my university in Mexico though, decentralization is already the rule of the day. There are literally dozens of autonomous bodies that make decisions which affect themselves but which carry consequences for the whole university. This means that inscription, application, class schedules, as well as more "institutional" tasks like maintenance of facilities require a knowledge of a Byzantine bureaucratic labyrinth to navigate.
This is obviously just one example, but I want to apply it to the theory of decentralizing all of our economic and social activities. What exactly does decentralization imply in terms of the daily lives of people and their well-being? The effects of decentralization in capitalist society reflect in some bizarre manner the so-called centralization of the economy in state socialist societies, where the centralization of power with the state resulted in a profuse diffusion of bureaucracy.
Am I just suffering the irritations of the infamous Mexican impulse towards bureaucracy? How can we decentralize our activities and institutions without creating shortages that could be potentially fatal? That is to say, moving beyond my rather silly example of an educational institution, what potential dangers would a decentralized agricultural system bring? How can anarchist theory account for, and plan to deal with, for these issues?
Monday, March 2, 2009
Today's Quote
"Normally, Wobbly bluster far outdistanced performance but it is undeniable that they sometimes acted upon, or intended to carry out, their wild schemes."
-Lowell Blaisdale, The Desert Revolution - Baja California 1911
-Lowell Blaisdale, The Desert Revolution - Baja California 1911
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