CRACK CAPITALISM

could be a dialogue between character masks and what we are
talking of here is a dialogue in which each tries to see and hear
and touch the shadowy figures behind the character masks. It
is a question of feeling for and trying to touch hidden nerves.
Revolutionary theory, then, blends with art, theatre, music,
poetry: all, at their best, are attempts to break through the
world of character masks and give voice to and stir the passions
and dignities that lie below. Revolutionary practice has always
blended with art, but perhaps never more than in recent years,
where artistic or theatrical expression has come to form an
integral part of any demonstration of discontent: the Zapatistas
or the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army24 are just two
of the thousands of examples that leap to mind.
The touching of hidden nerves is clearly not just a rational
process, a process of rational argument or learning. It is a
looking for that which is already present, a listening for the
'hidden transcript'.25 This does not mean that it is an irrational
process. On the contrary: the core is rational critique. We live
in an 'enchanted topsy-turvy world' (Marx 189411971: 830) in
which our subjectivity, our power-to, is concealed by the reified
relations generated by the organisation of our doing as abstract
labour. The rational critique of those reified forms is central to
the discovery of the shadowy figure, of the flow of doing that
revolts against its repression, but theoretical reflection gains
force only as one part of the general struggle.
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