08.09.2015 Views

CRACK CAPITALISM

Holloway - Crack Capitalism

Holloway - Crack Capitalism

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS
  • No tags were found...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

:1 binary gender divide between men and women is the product<br />

of the abstraction of doing into labour. In this sense, the conflict<br />

between doing and labour is prior to other conflicts.19<br />

We are doers-against-Iabour, the true proletariat. We are<br />

doers-against-Iabour, shadows-against-masks. Whether workers<br />

or capitalists, women or men, black or white, we are self-divided,<br />

self-antagonistic, although the intensity and nature of the<br />

antagonism differs according to the role we reject or accept,<br />

or reject-and-accept. We are fragile, unstable, situationally or<br />

temporally schizophrenic. We adopt one personality in one<br />

situation, another in a different situation. At one moment,<br />

we are a doer in revolt against labour; at another, we are a<br />

meek, obedient labourer. This changeableness, often viewed as<br />

abnormality or even as betrayal of the movement, is in fact quite<br />

normal. The antagonism between doing and labour is constantly<br />

shifting. We are all self-antagonistic, but the antagonism is not<br />

stable over time: certain situations (the composition of social<br />

relations around us) bring out one or another side of this<br />

antagonism. Thus, military training is designed to strengthen<br />

the character mask and suppress any kind of hidden impulse<br />

towards humanity, and the army is a situation that strengthens<br />

this process. The same can be said of factory discipline and<br />

the factory, and indeed of any kind of institutional discipline<br />

and of any institution. The party too: the revolutionary party<br />

creates situations or contexts in which we adopt a certain role or<br />

character mask and suppress our drive towards creative doing.<br />

(This role, this character mask of the professional revolutionary<br />

or militant is now in crisis.)<br />

Does this mean that any form of institutionalisation creates a<br />

role, a character mask that disfigures and freezes? The doer-inrevolt,<br />

the rebel, the angry-young-man, the feminist, can easily<br />

become a role, an image that freezes and defines the shadowy<br />

figure that moves behind. The struggle against the role can be<br />

seen as a struggle for authenticity, but authenticity can itself<br />

become a role, a new identity that freezes.2o Capitalist society,<br />

a society characterised by the abstraction of doing into labour,<br />

constantly generates these roles and throws them upon us - there<br />

goes the revolutionary theorist, there is the militant. We want to<br />

oppose them with authenticity, genuineness, to give body to the<br />

223

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!