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[Joris Versteeg]

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From: underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org
[mailto:underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org]On Behalf Of
sdv at krokodile.co.uk
Sent: zondag 19 november 2006 20:50
To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
Subject: Re: <underfire> Counter-Disappearance, 'Stealth Democracy,'
Picnolepsy

Irving/all

I enjoyed your reply and  found it very useful and helpful in clarifying
what look like being useful concepts.

I recognize that I am raiding the Deleuze and Guattari toolbox and am
suggesting that we can use it in the current socio-historical context,
within the context of  the work you are describing. In the context what
constitutes a 'rhizomic' tactic has to be able to address the relation
between the (islamists/anti-colonial fighters) of the reactionary-multitiude
and the latter day imperialists, (two loathsome reactionary ideologies in
struggle) which cannot be understood solely in relation to a positive
vitalism.   One way of offering the origins of this different reading is the
work on the event in the logic of sense which cannot be reduced  to some
positive order of being, 'dark impenetrable being and the surface of pure
fluidity the becoming of the event....' As Zizek described it making sense
for once. The act of suicide bombing explodes the chain of being as
understood in the west. This may be an obvious way of opening out the
concept of 'contemporary war machines' whilst remaining within the
mainstream of Deleuzian thought, but I would also remind you that the
origins of my logic are also within D&Gs brief notes on terrorists and the
anti-colonial struggles, the support for Italian 'Terrorists' (negri etc),
the comments on Arafat (accidentally and shamefully 'deleted' from the
recent book). But also and more importantly it is clear that the use of
"suicide bombings" are not actions that simply destroy themselves in the
process but become a profound statement on the enemy and what it offers. It
should be said (i suppose) that it is not auto-nihalistic to die for a
cause, even if the cause is one that is reactionary.

With regard to the second response 'becoming-imperceptible" - that makes
perfect sense.  I missed the intended rhetorical inflection, a bad
misreading on my part. For the moment ignoring the necessary globalized
nature of the resistance to capital, I'd suggest that two areas of
resistance that might be related to your response are the resistances
developing within the 'control-society' itself and those that are more
directly related to the resistances of the multitude to global capital. I
suppose to counter this whilst remaining within the ever fluid present you
might argue that you are less interested in the surface responses and more
in the immanent and non-transcendental-human subject however it is the
surface which shows the existance of the imperceptible.

The state/UAS re-statement does help my understanding of what you were
saying,  (nicely put by the way). The 'militarization of  civilian spaces'
connects rather well with the 'control society' phrase used earlier.
(Interesting that I read your note whilst also reading the 'Evangelical
Internationalisation' posts, with the implicit connection between the
militarized democracies and the religious expansionism...).  The dialectic
of disappearance which has been sketched out is fascinating,  especially so
given that the "order of disapperance"  is so fragile,  with people
appearing and disappearing constantly,  before this was accepted as normal.
Whereas in the fluid/liquid present the panic that disappearance creates
grows all the time ( e.g young people going missing,  money disappearing ,
the disappearance of order as the technology fails and the absent
terrorists)...

Perhaps democracy is a concept that has become so corrupted that it is past
its sell-by-date and we should discard it, and work on a total or pure
critique of democracy, (kantian and marxist references intended) ?

best wishes
steve
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