richard-day-gramsci-is-dead

30 Gramsci is Deadmeaningful critiques. On this analysis, the spectacular recuperationof the Black Bloc tactic would stand as a corroboration of one ofthe central claims of situationist theory—perhaps spontaneous,joyful construction of situations is subversive after all, and that’swhy the Black Bloc tactic is burgeoning into all the colours of therainbow, including the queer anti-capitalist Pink Blocs now makingregular appearances and sometimes marching alongside their Blackcounterparts—but so far without the same attention from either themass or the alternative media.No discussion of impediment of flows of power in the globalizingsocieties of control would be complete without mentioning attacks onthe informational infrastructure. Although it is obviously limited inits applicability to regions where internet access is affordable and therequired expertise available, hacktivism is becoming an increasinglyimportant form of direct action (Jordan 2002). This tactic emergedin the 1990s, as the tools created for raising awareness of internetcensorship and surveillance were turned to other uses. Deployingconcepts developed by Deleuze and Guattari, the SituationistInternational and Hakim Bey, two books by the Critical Arts Ensemble(CAE) provided the theoretical impetus for this development: TheElectronic Disturbance (1994) and Electronic Civil Disobedience (1996).In the latter text, CAE argue that as the state and capital have gonepostmodern—fluid, electronic—civil disobedience has remainedattached to its modernist roots, attacking buildings and supposedcentres of power:These outdated methods of resistance must be refined, and new methods ofdisruption invented that attack power (non)centers on the electronic level.The strategy and tactics of CD can still be useful beyond local actions, butonly if they are used to block the fl ow of information rather than the fl owof personnel. (CAE 1996: 4)Although CAE’s almost total dismissal of the efficacy of blockingmaterial flows is decidedly Eurocentric—and has been proven byrecent events to be incorrect even in the global North—groups such asthe Electronic Disturbance Theatre (EDT) have shown that electroniccivil disobedience can be a potent tactic, either on its own or alliedwith material actions. Denial of service attacks against WTO andFTAA websites during the Seattle and Quebec protests, for example,duplicated on the virtual level what was happening in the streets. TheFloodnet programme, developed by EDT, mechanized the denial of