richard-day-gramsci-is-dead

164 Gramsci is Deadeven decades, to keep up the kind of intensity associated with theTAZ. Of course, no zone, autonomous or not, can ever aspire tototal permanence; for this reason, perhaps the model that breaks usout of the temporary/permanent dichotomy is best thought of asthe SPAZ, or Semi-Permanent Autonomous Zone; a form that allowsthe construction of non-hegemonic alternatives to the neoliberalorder here and now, with an eye to surviving the dangers of capture,exploitation and division, inevitably arising from within and beingimposed from without.Despite the promise of the TAZ concept, I cannot help but sharethe concern that Bey’s conception of social change is a little tooreliant upon what seems to be an ethos of fleeting, individualisticencounters. This is undoubtedly a result of the influence of the SIwhich, despite its advanced positions on a number of issues, alwayshad an air of being most amenable to young White men with noattachments to such banalities as partners, children or broadercommunities. Leafing through the pages of their journal, one cannothelp but get the sense that those who are not willing (or able!) tospend their days drifting about the streets of Paris are doomed toact as agents of decomposition and inauthenticity, impedimentsto the realization of the city of the future. It is this aspect of thesituationist imaginary that has led Vincent Kaufman to label theSI—in an article not entirely unsympathetic to the cause—as ‘angelsof purity …. invisible mortals installed between a planetary LunaPark and Never-Never Land’ (1997: 66). Many of Bey’s ruminationsseem to come from a similar point of view: ‘Whether my REMs bringverdical near-prophetic visions or mere Viennese wish-fulfillment,only kings and wild people populate my night. Monads and nomads’(1991d: 64). Installing this kind of dichotomy not only seems to runagainst the grain of Bey’s post-revolutionary politics (is there really arevolutionary subject after all, and is s/he a monad/nomad?), but alsoleads, at times, to uncritical celebration of qualities that are assumedto be associated with nomads.La décadence, Nietzsche to the contrary notwithstanding, plays as deep a rolein Ontological Anarchy as health—we take what we want of each. Decadentaesthetes do not wage stupid wars nor submerge their consciousnessin microcephalic greed and resentment. They seek adventure in artisticinnovation & non-ordinary sexuality rather than in the misery of others.(1991d: 44)