text:
"The mandate to provide affordable housing has been co-opted by people who can afford to buy property in Vancouver."
–Julie Okot Bitek, statement to City of Vancouver and Metro Vancouver officials (July 21, 2011)
"The mandate to provide affordable housing has been co-opted by people who can afford to buy property in Vancouver."
–Julie Okot Bitek, statement to City of Vancouver and Metro Vancouver officials (July 21, 2011)
The Temporary Gallery of Reproduced presents
Toronto's vast, unseen network of aqueducts and waterworks was famously documented in Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion (1987). The aquatic labyrinths, moving through the city as anonymously as the migrant laborers that built them, stop at sites that become settings for the book: an intake tunnel below Lake Ontario; a water main along the underside of the Bloor Viaduct; the waterworks filtration building, whose atriums would at nights host immigrant workers gathered there illegally to attend theatre performances and plan labour actions and strikes.
By the 1930s, in the midst of militant labour unrest, Government officials would plan for possible threats to the urban infrastructure, including the filtration station. The passage of the Public Works Protection Act in 1939 would invest the government with 'emergency powers' in order to guard public buildings from sabotage by the Germans at the opening of the Second War, but more fundamentally in the context of anarchist and communist agitation. It became precisely this 1939 Act that the Toronto Police would use as grounds for martial law and the suspension of the Canadian Charter in downtown Toronto during the G20 meetings in June, 2010.[i] The policed Toronto of 2010 thus opens backwards onto 1938, when "the rich and powerful close[d] ranks. Troops were in evidence everywhere."[ii]
In the Skin of a Lion tells overlapping personal stories of love, primarily through the young-but-aging figure of Patrick. This montage of personal fragments, however, opens onto a set of radical truths. Ideas are de-personalized and unbound, transmitted to Patrick by his lover, Alice Gull, not as secrets or mementos, but in a way that allows for the emergence of the principle. Alice is the messenger of a universality that becomes, with the novel itself, an ode to the idea.
It is in this sense that the novel becomes a meditation on the "grand cause," the singular emergence of a shared experience stretched across a "gap of love" (157). Under the banner of a common idea, the grand cause becomes a name for what can occur in moments of emancipation marked by love. For Ondaatje, to love is to be seized by love, in the way that one is seized by the abstraction of an Idea. Love is supported by Alice and Patrick even while it simultaneously seizes hold of them at the point of an irreducible encounter. Depicted poetically, it might read: "From the utmost tip / and limit of your lips / a sliver of justice / kissed us unbeknownst."[iii]
"Alice had an idea, a cause in her eye about wealth and power" (165). This romantic egalitarianism is stark. It is both sentimental while being intensely profaned. It is rough, so that Patrick must come to know the wealthy "the way a dog before battling with cows rolls in the shit of the enemy" (132). No doubt it is this sympathetic and difficult depiction of axiomatic commitment, pure yet unclean, that excludes the novel from entering into discussions both during and after the recent G8/G20, even while In the Skin of a Lion remains the most famous prose written to date about Toronto and its anarchists.
"I'll tell you about the rich. They do not toil or spin. Remember that…Understand what they will always refuse to let go of. There are a hundred fences…between the rich and you" (132). Part of the success of In the Skin of a Lion is its attention to architectural, geographical and urban realities. Skin of a Lion is the story not only of the events of a political past, but also the ways in which they come to form the urban landscape itself. Events can possess the built environment, as we are used to imagining in the sense of city as a canvas, backdrop or stage. But they can also be possessed by it, embedded in everyday spaces of segregation, literally built into the city. Here fences become a political touchstone, emerging not only in open moments of authority and urban militarization (i.e. 1938 at the waterworks), but with the internal barriers and uneven spaces of a city on its gridded plan.
In the wake of the Toronto G8/G20 events, an anonymous writer conveyed precisely this aspect of everyday control in the city. "The dismantlement of the fence's evidently oppressive architecture, provides the convenient illusion that the exclusionary walls of the state apparatus are temporary rather than inherent."[iv] In reality, there are visible and invisible fences that structure our cities and their architectures on a daily basis. In fact, writing in the wake of the 2001 G8 summit, Giorgio Agamben captured precisely this aspect of the city: "I remember Genoa 2001. I thought it was an experiment to treat the historical centre of an old city, still characterised by an ancient architectural structure, to see how in this centre one could suddenly create walls, gates that not only had the function of excluding and separating but were also there to articulate different spaces and individualise spaces and subjects."[v] We can begin to identify a difference between a kind of 'disposable' state of exception, on the one hand, and something like an everyday 'architectural' state of exception, on the other – both are present during a spectacle or a super-emergency, yet one outlasts it's supposedly exceptional purpose. "This fence does not only represent the militarization of Toronto," said Harsha Walia, "but also the ways in which people are divided on a daily basis."[vi]
Harsha's statement was made at a time when 1,000 people were being arrested in a $1 billion dollar operation to enforce a heightened 'state of exception' backed by the pure violence of the Toronto Police.[vii] Harsha's statement is not an appeal to abstract humanity, in which divisions are dissolved into an overall harmony, imaginary or real. And here the final confrontation in Skin of a Lion is crucial, where Harris the city's planner baron attempts to reason with Patrick by stressing their equal share in the imagined urban whole. "Think about it, Patrick," says the master planner in the novel, "You're as much of the fabric as the alderman and the millionaires" (238). Harris' organic vision assigns human activity to a single plane of fate. We might, for a moment, try to imagine this in the concept of what philosopher Alain Badiou calls Oneness. The One is, for Badiou, the force that reduces human activity to repetition within a unified "clamour of being." It is the force that produces order, hierarchy, and nature. Oneness derives from a diminished concept of love, preventing love from ever being true by constantly guiding it back into repeated clichés and conservative tropes.[viii] We should consider Patrick's counter-response to Harris. In the memory of Alice and against Harris' paternal hierarchy, Patrick enjoins love. He becomes filled with a desire to throw light on the world and prescribe the situation, to invent a politics of confrontation with authority. The words of Alice, transmitted through Patrick, are uncompromising: "She [Alice] had…an old saying: In a rich man's house there is nowhere to spit except in his face" (239). This is the name of love? Yes, if we have to courage to give life to the romantic and profaned clarity of the irreducible limit that moves us in struggle, this difficult "gap of love."
"The bourgeois finds himself in contradiction with the citoyen, like the contradiction between the member of civil society and his political lion's skin."
–Marx, 'On the Jewish Question' (1844)
In the wake of the mass arrests and the attack on even the most basic civil liberties in Toronto, it is now more than ever that we should pay attention to a distinction made by Marx early on between two forms of political emancipation: 'civic' emancipation and 'human' emancipation. The distinction is today reproducible in the difference between a defense of civil liberties, on the one hand, and a political confrontation with capitalist inequality, on the other. The two must be thought in tandem. To follow only the former, Marx said, is to wear only a shell of politics – a political lion's skin.
Frederic Jameson, writing in 1977, made a useful insight in this direction: "it is precisely the distinction between anti-fascist and anti-capitalist strategy that seems less easy to maintain today and less immediately attractive a political programme over wide areas of a 'free word' in which military dictatorships and 'emergency regimes' are the order of the day."[ix] What Jameson added is that our militarized 'emergency regimes' are today "multiplying precisely to the degree that genuine social revolution becomes a real possibility." Is it not true that today the state is beginning to accumulate weapons and militarize our cities precisely in anticipation of potential disorder, a possible response in the streets to their economic policies (policies like the G8's agreement to brutally halve national deficits by 2013 in the wake of the financial crisis)? If so, new forms of state repression should not be seen as separate from the current course of proliferating privileges, in which the latter would in some way become an enlightened liberal basis for a defense against barbaric militarism. Rather, militarization and the suspension of civil rights is becoming an internal condition of capitalism at this historical moment of crisis, replicating in its own way what Agamben identified in the "parallelism between military and economic emergencies that characterize[d] the politics of the twentieth century."[x]
There is both a question of historical origins and a question of historical redemption. Origins convey the innumerable inequalities that shape our past, while redemption presents the emancipatory potential embedded in the very same history. The answer to how these two are conjoined lies, if anywhere, in In the Skin of a Lion. Ondaatje once called the film viewer a "reader."[xi] If the viewer is a reader, what is the actual reader? The reader, in fact, engages as a historian.[xii] In the coming year, most of us will experience what happened in Toronto during the G8/G20 summit through film and image media, through the posted fragments and visual condensations of a city's experience with a security state. Rather than consuming innumerable visual images, increasingly overdetermined in their immediacy, we should engage with literary depictions of Toronto as a city in history. Acts of fiction can provide the submerged tales of a living, subaltern past that becomes suddenly redeemable through poetic representations that are neither nostalgic nor properly historical, but that act as a means of foreseeing the present.
[ii] Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion (Vintage Canada, 1996) p. 220. All future quotes in brackets in text.
[iii] Unpublished poem by Andrew C. Witt
[iv] "G20 Toronto: An Exception that Confirmed the Rule", Anonymous author, Toronto Media Co-op, July 6, 2010 http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/story/g8g20-exception-confirmed-rule/4076
[v] Giorgio Agamben, "Metropolis" transl. Arianna Bove (2006) http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpagamben4.htm
[vi] "At the G20 Fence: Harsha Walia, No One is Illegal Vancouver" BChannel News, June 25, 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAOhCdWsb2M&feature=related
[vii] 'Pure' in Walter Benjamin's sense as a form of suspended practice without law as its immediate end. See his Critique of Violence.
[viii] For a case study in cliches, the short film 'Love versus the G20', where we find such statements of "love": "…this is a message to the police, we are not against you, you are human beings just like we are, we are all One." Fierce Light Films posted July 8, 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN51Ma1mQek
[ix] Fredric Jameson, "Reflections in Conclusion" (1977) in Aesthetics and Politics (London; New York: Verso, 2007) p. 203
[x] Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, transl. Kevin Attell (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005) p. 22
[xi] Gary Kamiya, "Delirious in a different kind of way: An interview with Michael Ondaatje" Salon, November 1996 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/int/1996/11/18/ondaatje961118
[xii] In the same conversation, Ondaatje suggests, "there's a sense of history which a book can catch, but…film almost can't."
Talk delivered January 27, 2010 at the University of British Columbia, conference hosted by the Social Justice Centre, 'Rethinking the Olympics'.
"The law is applied differently in the Downtown Eastside." -Douglas King (Pivot Legal Society)[i]
In the context of a dual intensification of policing and local real-estate gentrification, a concentrated state of emergency or 'state of exception' has been applied to the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Today I want to use the concept of the 'state of exception' in the way it has emerged in aspects of 20th century juridical and political theory, surrounding in particular a triangle of figures – Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben. The first two are from the early part of the century, one a revolutionary and one a reactionary, while Agamben is our contemporary, writing in the emancipatory tradition of Benjamin.
The theory of the state of exception emphasizes the construction of a legal framework that subjects humans to the practice of a sovereign or statist gap. This gap is an exceptional space in which the sovereign state is placed outside or beyond the law. The exception is paradoxical because it refers not to a general lawlessness but rather to a space without law constructed within the application of the law itself. It is in this sense that the exception occurs not in spite of the law but as one of its supports as a precondition to the law's application. As a consequence of the exception, human beings are found reduced to a "bare" existence, marginalized and stripped of dignity in the face of the law. The exception is twofold, because the state inflicts the exception on its subjects. Both are made symmetrically exceptional: the state is above and the subjects are below the law.
Thus there are three theoretical points to follow, which so far are merely claims: 1) there is an exception within the law that is necessary for the application of the law itself, 2) there is a position beyond the law, occupied by the sovereign authority of the state, 3) there are human subjects placed in the space of the exception, reduced to bare life and stripped of dignity.
As an initial example, I would like to talk about a recent law passed in the province of British Columbia: the Assistance to Shelter Act. This Act, recently passed by the British Columbia legislature, would seem to be a strange starting point in light of the fact that it remains unapplied to date. It rests at the level of a threat, whereas other concrete forms of policing have already been at work on the lives of the poor. I propose, however, that practices already in place to criminalize poverty in the city of Vancouver – which include a raft of police strategies surrounding the Safe Streets Act and Project Civil City (see Appendix, below) – can be best understood by reading backwards from the Assistance to Shelter Act. There have been recent assurance by the Vancouver police to not enforce the Act. Far from making the Act irrelevant, I will try to show that it is precisely this indeterminacy – an exceptional decision by the police in spite of the exact word of law – that underpins the state of exception itself. A cornerstone of the state of exception is the gap between the law and its implementation or suspension; between legislation and enforcement.
There is a space that separates the abstraction of the code, on the one hand, and the particularities of the situation, on the other. The upshot of this is that the use of police force in the name of a law must always exceed, in the particularity of its implementation, the generality of that law. A law must be sutured to its condition, bringing the gap into effect. What fills the space of the gap is a form of practice Giorgio Agamben terms 'pure violence.' 'Pure violence,' following Benjamin, denotes less the fact of raw force commonly understood by the term violence, although it encompasses that. Rather, 'pure' denotes a form of suspended practice that does not have the law as its immediate end. It places sovereignty outside the law, since the law sets in motion the suspended decision of the sovereign police, a decision necessary for the successful crossing of the legal zone of indeterminacy between the code and its effectuation.[ii] What is at stake in this process is a state that represents both the embodiment of the law and the embodiment of what is beyond it.[iii]
Homo Sacer
Out of exceptional process are created exceptional subjects, legally symmetrical. Like the state that rules them, exceptional subjects stand outside the law proper. Agamben terms these subjects homo sacer, borrowed from a category of Roman law designating those who are sacred, partly as a result of their transcendence of the law, yet whose lives can be destroyed or sacrificed with impunity.
Who is homo sacer? Or rather we could ask: From what legal structures do homo sacer emerge? For a moment, consider the Assistance to Shelter Act with an eye on its 'state of emergency' (and I remind you that the Act is specific to "extreme weather emergencies"). The Act, passed just in time for the Olympics, gives police the right clean the streets by using force against the will of anyone perceived to be homeless during a weather emergency, regardless of whether or not they have committed a chargeable offense. What exactly qualifies as "extreme weather conditions"?: "Temperatures near zero with rainfall that makes it difficult to remain dry, and/or sleet, freezing rain; and/or snow accumulation; and/or sustained high winds."[iv]
With the Safe Streets Act and Project Civil City, we had a legal situation in which general rules were established.[v] Importantly, the rules themselves did not give specific criteria. These laws did not say, "target the poor of the DTES," for example. Rather, as codes, they are neutral. Yet they work out their logic in specific ways. Like any other, their rules require the exceptional practice of the police. It is at the level of this exceptional practice that we find the most violence. In the case of Project Civil City and the Safe Streets Act, the rules resulted (and continue to result in) the targeted criminalization of the poor because of the exceptional practices of the police. The same applies for the Assistance to Shelter Act, which makes explicit what was latent in the Safe Streets Act and Project Civil City. However, what is significant is that the Assistance to Shelter Act goes a step beyond them both, since the code of the Act is itself inscribed as exceptional. There is a double exceptionality. First, there is the gap between the law and its effectuation. Secondly, this gap is re-inscribed into the formal codes themselves. This takes place to the extreme extent that, for example, the Assistance to Shelter becomes both a law and not a law. I will quote Minister Rich Coleman, responsible for the Assistance to Shelter Act:
"This will be a piece of legislation. It will be a law."[vi]
"I'll repeat myself. They're [the police] not enforcing a law or an offence but providing assistance."[vii]
As Benjamin showed, the exception has paradoxically become the rule.[viii] Schmitt himself, the great opponent of Benjamin, writes in this precise sense of the inscription of "general indeterminate clauses" into the law, often surrounding the usage of such ambiguous early century legal concepts as "good morals," "proper security and order," "state of danger," etc. What occurs is that with the support of indeterminate clauses, the exception is itself legislated into being, securing the exception as literally a state of exception.
It is precisely out of this juridical order that human lives are reduced to a bare legal function, animalized and effectively subjected to the arbitrary advances of armed authority. I have given examples, and there are countless more: the routine discarding of people's personal possessions by the City's engineering department; cycles of perpetual imprisonment that grow from offenses as minor as jaywalking; police beatings and daily harassment.
The practices just listed are what sustain the class divisions in the context of gentrification, the true topic of concern for residents of the Downtown Eastside. Gentrification is a process that includes not only heightened police activity, but also increased private security and surveillance in the community, self-segregated exclusive gentrifier areas, and widespread poor-bashing. In the last year, gentrifiers have thrown bricks, bags of shit, and whole television sets at residents of the Downtown Eastside, and of course they have gone unpunished. The gaps in the law are filled by class interest, which is obvious enough, but what needs to be stressed is that these ad hoc forms of gentrification – rents and bags of shit – cannot succeed without a legal framework for the state of exception. It has to be understood that gentrification is a common form of class domination, but also a particular unique form requiring particular forms of violence. It asks the state to perform a kind of human displacement that evictions and real-estate markets alone cannot carry out. Gentrification displacement – the clearing out of our neighborhoods for the settlement of the middle classes – requires the creation of the legal category of homo sacer, the subject reduced to bare life and stripped of human dignity, criminalized for being poor with no standing.
Conclusion (Concluding remarks)
While I have depicted aspects of the concreteness of the situation, I would also say that I've presented a problem for activism: the question of how we are to engage in the class struggle and side with the poor. Do we entangle ourselves in the legal triangle of sovereign-police-subject? I have suggested that in a class society, the gaps in the law – the spaces of exception – are occupied by dominant interests. The challenge should not be to bring the law ever closer to the police, as the dream would appear in liberal aspirations for a legal narrowing, however noble those dreams are. Rather, in the context of the heightened policing and criminalization of the poor, we must work on solutions that in themselves exceed the logics of sovereignty, law and police. For the people who live in the neighborhood this is almost too obvious to mention. The community says it everyday, if we are willing to listen: the truest solutions will have no relation to the logic of Policing.
Nate Crompton
[i] 'Judge raps Vancouver police tactics' CBC February 18, 2010 http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/02/17/bc-legal-rights-downtown-eastside.html
[ii] Schmitt's famous definition of the sovereign reads simply, "he who decides on the exception." Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (Chicago: MIT Press, 1988) p. 5
[iii] I would like to give a stark illustration. Thanks to the tireless work of advocates and a few journalists, the police have been for the past twelve months asked repeatedly if they would be willing to give a public promise not to use agents provocateurs during the Vancouver Olympic Games. After these painful months, the police have given a certain assurance not to use agents provocateurs. However, they retain the right to take over and direct activist groups from within, as well as the right to commit illegal acts once inside these groups. see, 'Police reserve the right to take over activist groups for 2010' BC Civil Liberties Association, December 22, 2009 http://www.bccla.org/pressreleases/0912ISU.html
[iv] Minister Rich Coleman, Third Reading of parliamentary Bill 18, 'Assistance to Shelter Act', Page 2434: http://www.leg.bc.ca/hansard/39th1st/h91117p.htm
[v] see Appendix: Legislation Timeline
[vi] Minister Rich Coleman, Third Reading of parliamentary Bill 18, 'Assistance to Shelter Act', Page 2449: http://www.leg.bc.ca/hansard/39th1st/h91117p.htm
[vii] Minister Rich Coleman, Third Reading of parliamentary Bill 18, 'Assistance to Shelter Act', Page 2448: http://www.leg.bc.ca/hansard/39th1st/h91117p.htm
[viii] "The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the "emergency situation" in which we live is the rule." Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History (1939) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm
APPENDIX: Legislation Timeline
2005: Safe Streets Act
-changes in the Trespass Act, targeted to the practices of the poor
-restrictions on panhandling
-spearheaded by the DVBIA, with the aim of, "making Downtown Vancouver North America's number one business-friendly downtown core."
2006: Mayor Sam Sullivan's reports to council on "public disorder" lead to Project Civil City
-how can we keep the class gap wide without having poor people decrease the property values of the downtown core
-VPD votes unanimously to endorse Project Civil City, adopting quotas and a "results-based" commitment to the project. 20% increase in charges falling under the Safe Streets Act between 2007 and 2008 (see 2008 Annual Business Plan, VPD)
2007: the City approves more money for Project Civil City.
-MTI (Municipal Ticket Information) project give police the ability bypass court processes in issuing tickets: spitting and defacating, $100; dog off leash or no dog license, $250; objectionable noise, $150; jaywalking, $100
"The new gentrification package for Vancouver's Downtown Eastside", published January 20 by Rabble.ca (article here)
"Gendefecation: The upper classes shitting on the lower classes by forcing them out of their neighborhoods through a system of increased property values."
Gentrifiers throw bags of shit at Vancouver homeless shelter.
Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
-Marcellus, Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 1)
Hamlet – an early artistic defense of the Copernican infinite universe? – opens with the guards' encounter with the ghost of King Hamlet. Marcellus, Barnardo and Horatio seem to momentarily discern the indiscernible, groping at the contours of a threshold between the imaginary and the immanent. Derrida, in his late book on Marx – Marx, that other Shakespeare who too summoned specters that haunt (Derrida reports that he almost forgot these opening lines from the Manifesto!) – tells of the guards' encounter: "Nor does one see in flesh and blood this Thing that is not a thing, this thing that is invisible between its apparitions…"[1]
So, what is this invisibility that causes a "visor effect," so that "we do not see who looks at us…looking without being seen"?[2] 20th century emancipatory politics deliver the recurring theme of the 'uprising from nowhere,' the premise of anti-colonial theorists and black revolutionaries from Frantz Fanon to Malcolm X, and philosophers from Jean-Paul Sartre to Alain Badiou. In his Theory of the Subject Badiou indeed presents Shakespeare (the Copernican) through Hamlet, who says to Horatio: "the Universe always contains more things than it can name according to those very things. Hence its inexistence."[3] The notion of the 'in-existent' (Lacan) was in Theory of the Subject the organizing category. Badiou has never withdrawn from the inexistent, where being is exposed to the event. Event, subject, and truth are always beyond existence, hidden in the realm of, if you like, 'trans-being.'[4]
The anti-colonial tradition has these terms well in its grasp. Frantz Fanon wrote starkly of the fact that, "[t]he black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man," causing the colonized subject to lack an existence.[5] The colonized 'is' invisible. But this is-invisibility upholds both the site of domination and the site of emancipation. Emancipation is the will of an impossible possibility, it is the freedom that draws truth from its own indeterminacy. From the armored perspective of mere being-qua-being, such truths are invisible, literally non-existent. They are outside ordinary placements and hierarchies. Malcolm X once answered an interviewer about Harlem in this way: "there are all kinds of movements…[that] remain almost invisible – they remain almost unknown, but yet they are there. When I say invisible I mean invisible in the sense that their existence is unknown."[6] They sit awaiting at the edge of the void, that non-space known well for tossing up sudden transformations. It is because of the void that we witness the rare, magical shift from obscurity to maximality.
[1] Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International transl. Peggy Kamuf, (New York and London: Routledge, 1994) p. 6
[2] Ibid. p. 7
[3] Théorie du sujet, p. 235 quoted in Oliver Feltham, Alain Badiou: Live Theory (New York/London: Continuum, 2008) p. 73
[4] see for example Badiou, 'The Event as Trans-being' in Theoretical Writings: Alain Badiou transl. Ray Brassier and Alberto Toscano (London/New York: Continuum, 2004)
[5] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks transl. Charles Lam Markmann. (New York: Grove Press, 1967) pp. 109 – 110
talk delivered May 21, 2009 to York Socialists (University of York)
As the Japanese critic Kojin Karatani noted, "the recent casino capitalism…seems to indicate that people no longer believe in the rewards of diligent production and fair exchange."[1] But as Karatani suggests, this common disdain for the 'excess and greed' of banking and finance is today the diversionary code-work of a failure to grasp our current predicament. Critics from several angles today place blame on "deregulation,"[2] a catch-all term whose consequences are summarized as the separation of autonomizing finance capital from its real base, or in other words, a system adapted to the spontaneous creation of "fictitious" (in place of concrete) value. Deregulation becomes the real agent for a dizzying world of speculation, over-leveraging, asset inflation, 'casino' behavior, and the abandonment of what Karatani called – with more than a little bit of irony – "diligent production and fair exchange."
We are made to picture a gap between real/fictitious, productive/financial, value/exchange-value: "the antithesis between commodities and their value-form, money."[3] I myself will speak of a gap, and I use "gap" where others on the left speak of "de-coupling" (i.e. Robert Cox), "dissociation" (i.e. Werner Bonefeld), and "inversion" (i.e. Monthly Review editors), terms that one way or another obscure the original, constitutive nature of the gap itself. I should say that here we need to be a little bit theoretical, dare I say dialectical, or in any case we need to be patient with the use of concepts. This is because of a definite antinomy: while the gap is between value and money, there is at the same time no such thing as value without money, since money is the enabling condition of a system of value. In this respect, the gap can be thought of as internal to value, which, as I will argue, is precisely why notions of abolishing the gap through a "return to real value" – and the Keynesian, social-democratic, New Labour, etc. projects associated with such a 'return' – are less coherent than we would hope.
The gap reaches a breaking point at a certain conjecture, which we know as crisis. However – and this is my central claim today – the conjecture is called crisis, not the gap itself. The phenomenon of the gap is too vast, containing too many shapes and causing too many effects, to be reduced to something as narrow as crisis alone. The gap is the name for capitalism as a whole, as both the site of crisis and as the precise site of growth.
"Crisis," wrote Suzanne de Brunhoff, "is the brutal manifestation of the law of value."[4] Mainstream critics of deregulation would now seem to agree with this characterization of our era, a period of two phases: 1) prices bloat, paper wealth multiplies and "all capital seems to double itself, and sometimes treble itself,"[5] 2) the 'brutal law' asserts its logic when prices can no longer levitate and "defy gravity" as the commentators often say of bubble economics. Crises burst bubbles and devalue capital, so that the political choice becomes one between 'managed' devaluation and 'chaotic' devaluation, this choice being secondary to the fact that in either case, devaluation is the common imperative: "In crises, the choice is between devaluing money or devaluing commodities."[6]
Thus, by the summer of 2008, Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank was suggesting that $1.2 trillion of profits would need to be wiped out before the US financial sector could be "cleansed of its excess."[7] More recently, the IMF has estimated a $2.7 trillion write-down of US-originated assets, while the global number may be in excess of $4 trillion.[8] "I would advance the following," said Kevin Warsh, a Governor of the US Federal Reserve: "We are witnessing a fundamental reassessment of the value of virtually every asset everywhere in the world."[9]
Warsh's innocuous notion of a "reassessment of value" and Reid's technical concept of "mean revision" are euphemisms for nothing less than the massive destruction of capital. I think that for us it's far more illuminating to use Schumpeter's concept of "creative destruction" or to quote Henri Lefebvre, who wrote grimly of the fact that "wars and crises have the same result: they liquidate excess (things and men)."[10] However, the enigma of capitalism – and this enigma is captured in the 'creative' half of 'creative destruction'; the 'dynamism' half of 'crisis and dynamism' – is that the magnitude of the destruction of value that takes place in the event of a crisis is not equal to any previous gains. In the long trajectory of accumulation, it is as though crises are mere setbacks to be overcome, or as Marx wrote, "a crisis always forms the starting point for new investments." [11]
Against this long view, liberal notions of equilibrium – notions always tasked with finding ways to either manage immediate crisis or to defend non-crisis operations – seem to suggest a certain topology of a system in which finance represents an 'overflowing' […perhaps this cognitive mapping is helped along by an image of 'liquidity'?] while crisis (qua illiquidity) represents the corrective – a lid – to the previous excess. The unifying figure of such a topology is the container itself, conceived as a static item of unchanging volume. But this imagery obscures the secret of capitalism itself, whose container is strictly figurative; capital is by definition that which discards its container. Capitalism solves its problems not with new lids but with new containers, so to speak. "Every limit appears as a barrier to be overcome,"[12] so that what were once limits are reconfigured as mere barriers in the endless circuit-work of de-containerizing and re-containerizing.[13]
Why is it the gap (between money and the value it represents) that enables the breaking of the container, in which broken containers are the forensic evidence of crises just they are of expansions? We should simultaneously broaden and specify our definition of the gap. There is not only a simple split of money from value, there is the gap that money itself engenders, a gap within value. This separation is simultaneously money's ability to separate point of sale from point of purchase, and in a related mode, present from future. As Keynes wrote in the General Theory (1936): "[T]he importance of money essentially flows from its being a link between the present and the future."[14] Marx therefore spoke of money as a 'means of payment.'[15] The means of payment is simply what allows the commodity producer to produce prior to sale: it is the inaugural money that exists temporally prior to the production of the actual value in whose name it is advanced. For a moment, the money advanced is therefore fictitious, or "up front," until it is 'realized,' thereby becoming capital. 'Capital advanced' therefore "retroactively posits its own presuppositions.[16] In other words, the 'means of payment' is credit: "credit-money springs directly out of the function of money as a means of payment."[17] Or, to say the same thing: "currency itself is already credit."[18]
To summarize the last, rather paradoxical, point: money operates for the commodity producer by splitting the present (purchase) from the future (sale) in the name of a future gain – this is its 'futurity,' its essential credit aspect. I think its not incorrect to say that all subsequent gaps are derived from this primal archi-gap, so to speak. Financialisation, in the sense of a periodisation, turns the gap into a visible social sector called 'financial sector,' but it expresses the simple separation of exchange-value (money) from value, the separation internal to value itself. The financial sector is an institutional codification of money's primary tension under a system of private producers.[19] The fictitious aspect of capital is not merely an 'excess' for causing crisis, even if it is that too. Fiction creates value. As the novelist Margaret Atwood asked as a young child faced with the complexities of the banking system: "how could a fiction generate real objects?"[20]
How should we think about the move from fiction to what John Bellamy Foster calls "throughput." Capital makes greater claims on the economy than the economy, at its existing capacity, can immediately realise for capital.[21] The result is not failure, but rather competition, whose expression is the accumulation of an excess capital (profit) that, strictly speaking, is immediately unemployable. The structural resolution to this aporia in which existing productive capacity is saturated – in which overaccumulation looms – is total growth through the multiplication of values, in other words, through the multiplication of sites of absorption for investment.[22] The gap is a motor for forward movement (from the perspective of accumulation). Growth is not a choice but a necessity for capital: if growth does not occur, the capital advanced goes unrealized, failing to make its 'fatal leap' (salto mortale), in other words, in must be destroyed. If capital stops swimming it dies – like a shark and just as predatory.
I hope I have painted a picture in which, to bring a total rapprochement between money and value would be to eliminate both. My question is one posed to those who today aspire to perfect the state of the situation by eliminating "those most excessive aspects." If we see that the dynamic gap is internal to value, to use the language I have deployed so far (admittedly there are probably better ways to pose the problem), is it enough to call for a 'return to value,' or 'value for money'? Should we really criticize "excessive capitalism," in which case the signifying predicate plays the role of a redundancy, as though one is speaking of "capitalist capitalism" – is there another kind? Excess (of money-circulation-exchange-finance over value-production-capacity) is the name for capitalism itself, so that we should criticize capitalism and not what has become its ideological decoy in the form of crises, no matter how severe and seemingly anomalous.
I propose a break from domination by the value form, therefore emancipation from the endless accumulation of capital. I am talking about an end of the total subsumption of labour to the commands of ceaseless work and capital. This requires an axiomatic insistence on equality in the face of barbaric inequality, the end of a 'state of the situation' in which individuals are part of the 'count of the count' (counted merely as potential sources of "effective demand") under the biopolitical regime of population management. For the task we don't need optimism, the affect that will never fade in all its beauty. We need to summon something more rare…which is courage: the will to be not an object but a political subject.
[1] Transcritique: On Kant and Marx transl. Sabu Kohso (London / Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003) p. 266. As the promotional material for a banking scheme in the United States recently stated: "the only solution is a return to value: value that comes from production and honest trade." http://press.freelakotabank.com/index.php
[2] see a survey, Leo Panitch and Martijn Konings, 'Myths of Neoliberal Deregulation' New Left Review 57 May/June 2009
[3] Marx, Capital Vol. I (New York: International Publishers, 1967) p. 138
[4] Suzanne de Brunhoff, Marx on Money transl. M. J. Goldbloom (New York: Urizon Books, 1976) p. 118
[5] The passage in full shows Marx already observing what in the context of the subprime mortgage imbroglio we call "securitization": "all capital seems to double itself, and sometimes treble itself, by the various modes in which the same capital, or perhaps the same claim on a debt, appears in different forms in different hands." (Marx, Capital Vol. III quoted in David Harvey, The Limits to Capital ([1982] (London / New York: Verso, 2006) p. 288.) In Vol. I of Capital Marx also reports on something like securitization: "certificates of the debts owing for the purchased commodities circulate for the purpose of transferring those debts to others." p. 139 op. cit.)
[6] Harvey Limits (op. cit.) p. 296
[7] John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009) p. 126
[8] see Patrick O'Connor, 'IMF issues grim forecasts for 2009' (April 24, 2009) World Socialist Website http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/imfr-a24.shtml
[9] Kevin Warsh, 'The Promise and Perils of the New Financial Architecture' speech to the Money Marketeers of New York University (November 6, 2008)
[10] Henri Lefebvre, The Survival of Capitalism: Reproduction of the Relations of Production transl. F. Bryant (London: Allison and Busby, 1976) p. 107
[11] Capital Vol II. quoted in Harvey Limits (op. cit.) p. 219, p. 222
[12] Marx, Grundrisse (Middlesex: Penguin, 1973) p. 408
[13] "Capitalism continually reterritorializes with one hand what it was deterritorializing with the other." Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983) p. 259
[14] John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Great Britain: Palgrave, 2007) p. 293
[15] Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy [1859] Ch. 2 ('Money or Simple circulation) Section 3 of Ch. 2 ('Money') sub-section 3.b of Ch. 2 ('Means of Payment') http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02_3b.htm
[16] Slavoj Zizek, The Parallax View (Cambridge, MA / London: MIT Press, 2006) p. 59
[17] Marx, Capital Vol. I (op. cit.) p. 139
[18] Karatani, Transcritique (op. cit.) p. 218
[19] What are the "roots" of today's financial crisis? On the one hand, the financialisation of the last quarter of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first is seen as a symptomatic development, having "roots in the whole pattern of real accumulation under monopoly-finance capital." (Foster and Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis (op. it.) p. 19). On the other hand, financialisation is seen as being closer to a cause of symptoms, so that "the international financial system [is] the rootstock from whose disorders stem the various problems which afflict the international political economy, just as blight, disease or mildew attack the different branches of a plant." (Susan Strange, Casino Capitalism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986) p. 4) I side with the first approach, stressing, however, that the root is money and the value form itself. "[M]oney lies at the root both of the social nature of the private labour of commodity-producers and of the fact that this social character can only prevail by the roundabout route of the exchange of commodities, the market, and private appropriation of the value product." (Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism (New Left Books, 1975) p. 408) Basically, the 'roundabout route of the exchange of commodities' is more roundabout than liberal and bourgeois economists are willing to admit – exchange travels through finance, pure and simple. It travels through the fated "gap" I've been promoting.
[20] Margaret Atwood, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, CBC Massey Lectures, 2008 (Toronto: Anasi Press, 2008) p. 6
[21] Competition "compels every capitalist to expand production by developing the forces of production without regard to the limits of the market." Simon Clarke, Marx's Theory of Crisis (Great Britain: Palgrave, 1994) p. 88
[22] see, for a foundational example of the discussion of saturation, Paul Baran The Political Economy of Growth (New York; Monthly Review Press, 1957)
theses by Bahram Norouzi, Andrew Witt
In our time, love has come to stand as a justification for two complementary and equally depoliticising modes of being: on the one hand love signifies little other than fun, sex and collaborative consumption; on the other hand, it is the way by which humans are integrated into the laws of the nation, state and capital. The dual forms of love appear most vividly in blockbuster cinema. The romance of Queen Gorgo and Leonidas in 300, Lorrell and Jimmy's affairs in Dreamgirls and Dent and Rachel's love in The Dark Knight – in each case the characters themselves are merely supplemental to a choice of costumes that can carry the characters over to the side of the good. But if in these movies the love among the characters has a merely ornamental function, the characters are nevertheless animated under the name "love": the love of nation, the passion for the law, and the seduction of wealth. It is only under the name "love" that featureless characters endure the plot as they are crushed, mutilated, dismantled, and tossed across the screen. The romance of kitsch is easy to consume because it reflects the structure of everyday life, and the banal romance of everyday life is magical because its elements are found in the phantasmagoric epic of kitsch.
The story goes that until not long ago, people were subject to the discipline of religious and patriarchal masters who scorned sexual pleasures, especially the pleasures that were deemed illegitimate; the story then logically follows that we today are sexually liberated because we dismay pious scorn with laughter. What such sermonizing, after all, could survive a single episode of Sex and the City, Will and Grace, or even Friends? But there is at least one possibility for the disciplinary law to survive: what if Joey Tribbiani is the true archbishop of New York? Today, through sit-com jokes, sex advice columns, and the endless statistics and polls about sexual fantasies and practices, modern subjects learn to regulate their bodies, construct their fantasies, measure themselves against the average, and take the intensity of orgasms as the criterion of good life. Today the mode of discipline is the injunction to enjoy.
The private life of modern subjects is the oscillation between long periods of empty homogeneous time of repetitive practice and moments of explosive overstimulation by spectacles and drugs. Of course, love is not alien to the lives of modern subjects; modern romance simply fits in the general structure of the modern experience, which puts abrupt intensity in place of meaningful duration. Popular romantic movies are simply sentimentalized representations of the cycles of empty and overstimulated times. Whether the empty time is the time of uneventful marriage (Bridges of Madison County; The Horse Whisperer), frustrated engagement (Titanic), or simple honest prostitution (Pretty Woman), the romantic movie climaxes with a passionate kiss or a night of sensual lovemaking. But after this moment, either the lovers should be permanently separated (by death or by other means) or the movie should end because after the climax there is little to narrate but the return of empty time.
Key to the current hegemonic success of liberal-capitalism is its anti-essentialist characteristic. Money does not distinguish sex, colour or ethnicity; capital views polygamist Arab sheikhs, lesbian couples in San Francisco, and aboriginal Australians simply as diversities. Capitalism emancipates humans from the dogmas of totalitarian cults as it makes everything holy profane, but it also falsifies all truths, turns every thought into an opinion and every practice into a choice of life. In the falsified world of liberal-capitalism, human's biological body is the only remaining common denominator of judgment. For this reason, not only in our conversational language is "fun" emerging as an equivalent to "good," but also in academic discourses of political scientists, psychologists and sociologists, biology is emerging as the only reliable foundation to analyze society. In motion pictures, the exploration of "fun" is delegated to pornography. The cameras that close up on the genitals of men and women penetrating, violating and pleasuring each other are not demonic – they are simply the ciphers of our time. No wonder then that the oft-quoted anti-war slogan that hung off the buildings from Berkley to the Sorbonne during the Vietnam War was poorly re-written before the 2003 Iraq War from "make love not war" to "make the sex not the war."
People today seem unable to understand love as a political concept. Unlike the premodern and religious concepts of love, the modern concept is almost exclusively limited to the bourgeois couple and the claustrophobic confines of the nuclear family. Love has become a strictly private affair. Withdrawal into privacy today means adopting formulas of private authenticity propagated by cinema, television, and advertisement – from taking classes in spiritual enlightenment and following the latest cultural trends and other fashions, to engaging in yoga and jogging. But the ultimate truth of withdrawal into privacy also re-emerges in the public as the confession of intimate secrets on TV shows and the release of amateur pornography. Against this kind of privacy, we should emphasize that, today, the only way of breaking out of the constraints of alienated commodification is to invent a new collectivity. Today more than ever, the only way to have a passionate and fulfilling personal (sexual) relationship is not for the couple to look into each other's eyes forgetting about the world around them while meditating, but, while holding hands, to take their love to serve as the basis for political projects in common and in the construction of a new community.
What are the practices of the political subjects who construct a new community on the basis of their romantic love? The cinema of Chaplin was the last great enterprise of Western culture industry to offer a concrete answer to this question. In Chaplin's movies the protagonist, often a tramp or a ghetto-dwelling Jew, is an outlaw, not in the sense of breaking the law, but based on the very fact of being abandoned by the law. But in his abandonment the protagonist also displays utmost indifference to the law, and transforms everything sacred and "respectable" into childish profanity. It is precisely within this outlawed profanity that Chaplin's "heroes" encounter their beloveds, and tenderly and compassionately cater to them. However, these characters also know that for those living out of law, love is precarious. Their love is never attained but is always required to be reaffirmed – no wonder Chaplin's protagonists treat every encounter as though it is their last. Nothing could be further away from this profane love than the contract of bourgeois marriage. Out of law, out of judgment, and especially out of the bourgeois contract, lovers encounter each other as such: tramps, beggars, abandoned children, and barmaids transform into the "heroes" of romantic epics. This is the sense in which we may say that love is the paradigm of emancipatory politics. Love is the fundamental indifference to the norm of the state; lovers do not forge their relation on the basis of the law – instead they negotiate their ways of life while their loves persist in spite of its precariousness. Love exemplifies the possibility of life out of the violence of law and judgment.
There is no phrase more often said in cinema than "I love you". Even in pornography "I love you" often appears as the pretext to a strip tease routine. The "I love you" that is the justification for a performance is the word becoming flesh: in cinema, there is simply no content in "I love you" other than the routine of the movement of bodies and predictable plots. But the corrupted word that has become profane flesh provides modern humans with an unprecedented opportunity that we should not ignore. Facing degenerate language, modern lovers neither recite poems to each other, nor do they find the "I love you" ever adequate. This is perhaps the reason behind the lovers' insatiable need to cuddle, kiss, and hold hands, as well as to engage in frequent childish gestures when they talk to each other. In their romantic gestures, modern humans touch not this or that word of the corrupted language, but grasp its very communicability. In lovers' kisses and gestures, flesh becomes word. The flesh that has become word is the profane realization of dreams, the incarnation of ideals and the creation of an egalitarian polity that takes the precariousness of life as its condition of possibility. But the flesh that has become word is precisely the domain that cinema can never reach.
I have been traveling for the month of March without a chance to write anything. Now that I have a moment there are too many things to remember, so that only 'chance operations' can determine the retrospective, as John Cage might say. I can tell that this blog is becoming biographical, and therefore drossy/artless in an era of 'crude biographism' (Toscano diagnosis). I will try to keep it interesting, at least by staying off topic
I should start by defending the dictatorship of the proletariat. (You can see already that 'chance operations' truly do take any direction…but in reality they make me stumped, like Mr. Martins in the film version of The Third Man, when the literary critic asks, "do you believe in the stream of consciousness," and Martins becomes speechless; you could say Martins' stream of consciousness seizes when asked about the stream of consciousness, in the same way that nothing operates when I try chance operations. So I will start chronologically, with a conversation I had on the eve of my departure, a late-night chat about the dictatorship of the proletariat…)
I now find that Marx's notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat does not need a new name, despite being nutrition for the Gulag Industry, which in any case should be dismissed because it cheapens horror in order to pedal the capitalist system. First of all, it should be noted that Marx spoke with immense subtlety of the 'dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.' Those who have read the 18th Brumaire know that Marx's notion of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has nothing to do with 'totalitarianism' and everything to do with a bourgeois state that is contradictory and precariously divided. The word "dictatorship" for Marx is not the 20th century Arendtian signifier now synonymous with "totalitarianism." Rather, it refers to a class's ability to dictate the conditions of existence of society through the medium of the state, always contestedly.
In tracing the lineages of the absolutist states of Europe, it becomes clear that the bourgeois revolutions began overturning what today we would call "dictatorships." In other words, for Marx, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat are both versions of the post-absolutist dictatorship of democracy. In the wake of the historical revolutions, modernity is a choice between two forms of democracy: parliamentary-capitalist or council-communist. I highly recommend Kojin Karatani's Transcritique, in this case his chapter on 'Marx and anarchists' (p. 165), where he shows that the difference between the two has been scandalously overplayed, a scandal perhaps started by Bakunin himself when he chose as a line of attack to ally Marx with Lassalle, even while Marx strongly criticized Lassalle for advocating state socialism (see the Critique of the Gotha Program, and in this respect, see Toscano's discussion of 'equality of right' in his paper presented at the Birkbeck conference).
I travelled to London, where I would attend the famous 'On the Idea of Communism' philosophy conference at the Birkbeck Institute. First I reunited in Russell Square with my closest friends, who were travelling from Canada to visit UK family and to hear what the media now dubs the 'super-star philosophers,' particularly Zizek. In Russell Square we watched greedy pigeons imitate Hitchcock's film while learning from Bahram (author of the Seven Theses) that he was swarmed and then harassed in Philadelphia by five members of the US National Guard. Bahram, who is Iranian-Canadian with a dual citizenship, was forced to miss his flight while playing the role of the countryman from Kafka's 'Before the Law' parable. In some anonymous airport back hall, he was literally forced to wait at the door (of law) – although this time with a techno-modern twist: Kafka's 'lowly gatekeeper' was made redundant by an automatic door buzzer.
In the end, Bahram was informed that the 'hang-up' was not his fault but the fault of security in Seattle, who had not properly interrogated him. "In the future," the Philadelphia inspector suggested, "you should always find a security agent and ask him to interrogate you properly…", a piece of advice from which it is tempting to conclude that we truly are in the era of the self-policing of internalized subjects, although it should be added that no level of self-policing could succeed in hiding one's Iranian background – indeed, the police are as 'external' as ever in the racist war on terror.
In Russell Square we also met Alberto Toscano, Badiou's great translator and a great philosopher (or self-described 'anomalous sociologist') in his own right. Before the meeting we already had opinions about the unforgivable hypocrisy of a £100 general public cover fee for the conference, but Toscano revealed some more interesting information. Students at SOAS had threatened to occupy the conference if their demands where not met: 1) broadcast the conference for free in a Birkbeck lobby, 2) allow us to present during the conference on the Free Our Books initiative. In a turn of events, the institutional radicals were being out-radicalled. In the end, after negotiations, the demands were met, and the Free Our Books presentation was one of the best presentations of the conference, in my opinion (the initiative extends the 'hypothesis' of the knowledge commons in the form of a concrete task: to have our universities and institutions free knowledge to the commons).
Thus, although it is little known, the conference narrowly missed the ignominy of an occupation, a crucial reminder that the intellectual left teeters always on the verge of being the figurative Adorno who calls the cops on his students.
The practice in Britain today is to occupy one's institution. This positive repoliticization has taken the form of several dozens of occupations on UK university campuses over the past two months. Across the Atlantic, the occupation maxim was properly taken to its logical end when the ultra-left section of the New York New School occupations asserted that occupations are 'pure means not means for ends'. The latest occupation is the Sheffield occupation, which follows occupations at Oxford, Essex, LSE and many, many others. Although the occupations are single-issue affairs, as international solidarity actions for Gaza, the spirit has carried over to London for the current G-20 meetings (see here for videos, this one , and then here for some standard 'sober' left commentary.
We stayed in a Bloomsbury hostel called 'Generator,' an 800-bed jock-backpacker's after-club romp-room seemingly converted from a laser-tag operation. Therefore we blended in seamlessly, as proven when Andrew was asked by an American girl if he would like to 'bump' her friend. Delightful. Wisconsin fraternity girls are so charming, and sophisticated, too.
I will not write very much about the conference, since a lot has already been written (see especially Steven Shaviro's summary of the conference and of Michael Hardt's talk). Just a few remarks: The Commons – communism is to do with the commons, a category that transcends the concept of "public" in its binary opposition to and dependence upon the "private"; Communism against the state – communism has the state as its foremost antagonist, especially for Judith Balso ("politics is alone") and Badiou ("politics at a distance from the state," "politics without party"), a thesis that nonetheless Zizek, Hallward, Bosteels, and to a less extent Toscano, problematized in their presentations; Communism of the will – I should point out that Peter Hallward's inspiring and innovate exploration of the concept of the will, delivered in the starkly clear language of struggle and popular mobilization, was far more radical than any other single presentation; Gender trouble – the organizers arranged an entirely male dominated conference (subversive 'Fantasy Programme' here). One consequence of patriarchal leanings, among many: due to Badiou's insertion into the place of master-signifier, Judith Balso's presentation was reduced by many to a mere recapitulation of Badiou's philosophy, when in fact it well exceeded Badiou in important ways. And on the other hand, given that Balso is a French writer who has been writing in the name of emancipatory politics since the 1970s, I would be surprised if Badiou has not gained more than one or two ideas from Judith Balso.
Next post: Paris, general strike March 19, CRS violence


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"The lip balm is high quality and Second Story Promotions places a personalized decal (name of practice, address, phone # and decoration on each tube. Just a little hint...if you order two or more flavors at one time...get different colored caps for each flavor so patients can easily see what they are selecting at check-out. I get quality pens from Second Story Promotions too. Not quite as popular as the lip balm, but very nice and again personalized! Thank you Second Story Promotions and keep up the great service!"
"When in need of ideas for "give-aways" for its' annual fundraiser, we turned to Second Story Promotions. With informative and friendly service, they provided assistance in ordering organic sunscreen and lip balm products for the outdoor function. SSP provided great technical expertise to produce design options that translated into attractive labeling, so that ITI could brand the products with its logo. SSP personnel were responsive to quick deadlines, were friendly and pleasant to work with, and delivered a professional solution for our project."
"Second Story Promotions is great to work with! I appreciate their attention to detail and the fact that customer satisfaction is their goal! I would highly recommend this company!"
"A few years ago, we decided to give our patients a gift, we thought about it for a few months, and decided to try lip balm, we chose a couple of flavors and we have stayed with the ICED PEAR, what a great flavor and our patients love it. It even has SPF in it! They come in asking if we have anymore!! Even our male patients like this flavor and keep it in their tackle boxes while they fish, our younger patients even have it in their desks at school, we have found it can be used all year, verses only in the cold months of Michigan (Oct-April)!!! It is really nice to see people use this as we walk around our mall. You can't find this flavor anywhere else!"
"Thanks so much for your help, suggestions and sample designs in the production of the lip balm for our daughter's Wedding Welcome Bag. It was a busy time with everything coming together at the last minute, but it was comforting to know that you were there with a quality product that arrived in plenty of time to add to the rest of their favorite things. We watched as many people came up to Maeg and Greg to say how much they loved the lip balm in that cold, dry elevation at Tahoe. Now it is really fun to see how many of their friends and ours love to carry it with them as a memento of the wedding and to use because it really tastes good and keeps their lips soft! Thanks sooo much. I can't wait to get you involved in our son's wedding Welcome Bag as soon as we know where the wedding is!"
"I purchased customized lip balm from Jessica Kruth at Second Story Promotions this last fall and they are a very hot item with all my realtors, customers, friends, family and even our Fed Ex delivery person. Everyone who takes one thinks they are a great marketing tool and different from anything else that they have ever seen. My sales rep, Jessica Kruth was wonderful to work with and helped me design my entire label on my lip balm. What a great idea to put someone's picture and marketing information on lip balm that you use every day! I would recommend Second Story Promotions to anyone who is in the business to have their products or services marketed unlike anyone else's in the industry and I would also recommend using Jessica Kruth as their Sales Agent. It was a great experience."
"We are fairly new clients of Second Story Promotions. I just wanted to take the time out to say that our patients and staff have all been very pleased with the product we order as well as the friendly and knowledgeable customer service from your staff members. You guys really do provide quality products that our patients seem to really enjoy and compliment. It's been a very nice addition to use your products to promote our business, patients love the give always! Thank you again and we look forward to continuing our business relationship with your company."
"My patients love the lip balm. When they come back for a second visit, they ask for a second one!! I actually carry them around and am using them myself."
"I just wanted to let you know how much our patients love the lip balms. Of all the different types we have tried, yours by far are the highest quality. The toothpaste squeezers have also been a big hit, and we have received so many great reviews on them. It has been such a great marketing tool for our office. Having our logo on these products has been a great way to market our office, as well as giving our dental patients very useful products they can use and also pass along to their friends. It has helped generate new referrals, as well as increasing our customer satisfaction and retention in a very cost effective way. It's great to see the smiles and excitement from our patients when they check out and we are able to thank them by giving them these 'goodies'."
"Thank you for being so easy to work with - you have gone out of your way to provide us with excellent customer service. I will continue to recommend you, your company and your products to our friends and colleagues."


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Shiseido • The Skincare Purifying Mask • Masks
(96 reviews)
Average Rating. | 4.4 |
Would buy this product again. | 82% |
Package Quality | 4.3 |
Price | 3.6 |
Ingredients |
kbono23 on 11/13/2013 12:13:00 AM more reviews by kbono23
Age: 30-35 Skin: Acne-prone, Olive Hair: Brown Eyes: Black
Wow, what a great mask!! deeply cleanses skin, helps keep pores clean, gentle and non irritating!! gorgeous!
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Jhe9488 on 11/4/2013 9:22:00 PM more reviews by Jhe9488
Age: 25-29 Skin: Combination, Fair, Neutral Hair: Black, Straight, Medium Eyes: Brown
This is my holy grail face mask. I have been using it off and on for the past ten years and my skin definitely looks better when I'm using it. I have combination skin, which tends to be oily in the T-zone and normal on my cheeks in the summer and normal on my T-zone and very dry on my cheeks in winter. I have used this mask summer and winter and it does beautifully on my oily patches and dry patches. It usually use it once a week, all over my face after quickly wiping my face with a warm face cloth. I apply a thin layer and it takes about 10ish minutes to dry. It's not uncomfortable while it's on and washes off relatively easily. It clears out my blackheads on my nose and gives good oil control, but it also doesn't dry out my dry areas. It leaves my skin feeling incredibly clean, but not tight, and also really smooth and exfoliated. And as an added bonus,it definitely brightens my complexion. I have some hyperpigmentation from sun damage and right after using this mask, the spots are definitely less noticeable. I definitely recommend this mask and will be repurchasing again and again.
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*TOP REVIEWER* Horny on 7/16/2013 11:23:00 AM more reviews by Horny
Age: 30-35 Skin: Combination, Olive, Warm Hair: Brunette, Wavy, Coarse Eyes: Hazel
I really like this on my sensitive, redness prone skin. I find it very gentle to use, it rinses off easily and doesnt dry my skin out at all. It doesnt irritate, and actually leaves my skin calmer and brighter after use. Recommended!
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ivana89 on 1/14/2013 3:48:00 PM more reviews by ivana89
Age: 19-24 Skin: Combination, Medium Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown
Amazing product. Brightens and lightens the skin, helps fade acne scars and eases down redness. A face mask that has become a staple item in my skincare closet.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
*TOP REVIEWER* sprite26 on 12/28/2012 8:11:00 AM more reviews by sprite26
Age: 36-43 Skin: Combination, Olive Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown
Very creamy and luxurious kaolin mask. I always compare this to Queen Helene's Mint Julep mask because they both basically do the same thing. But the Shiseido mask is gentler and less drying (although it still gets the gunk out of my pores) and also applies more smoothly. Great product for deeper cleansing and acne control, I have been using this off and on for years. Its effectiveness and high quality make it worth the price tag.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
dawnsiow on 6/20/2012 4:30:00 AM more reviews by dawnsiow
Age: 19-24 Skin: Acne-prone, Tan, Warm Hair: Black Eyes: Brown
This is a pretty nice clay mask; I use it at the end of the week or after a long day out in the polluted city. It helps with oil control and leaves my skin really smooth after I use it. Also it hasn't caused any breakouts, and a little bit goes a long way so this tube will last me ages.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
cspence on 4/5/2012 2:18:00 PM more reviews by cspence
Age: 36-43 Skin: Oily Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown
If you have oily skin, this is the mask for you. I have oily and sensitive skin and I bought this on a whim because there are very few clay masks on the market that don't have a whole bunch of junk in them. I wasn't expecting a lot but it did a really good job. I steam my face and then put the mask on and well as using it just after washing the face and it worked really well. It's really expensive in Canada but I have to say, you only need a little and it lasted me well over a year. It really is worth a try.
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Jake84 on 3/4/2012 10:51:00 PM more reviews by Jake84
Age: 25-29 Skin: Oily, Medium Hair: Brunette Eyes: Blue
This is my favorite mask! It is non drying and doesn't make my skin feel tight like other clay masks. Instead, my skin feels soft and renewed after using this product. It has helped with clearing up my pores and blackheads, and clears up any acne that is there on my skin or coming up. Love it!
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husky2301 on 3/3/2012 3:37:00 AM more reviews by husky2301
Age: 30-35 Skin: Combination, Tan Hair: Black Eyes: Brown
I have combination skin which is kinda dry in the winter but still oily in the T-zone. This works so well removing all the gunk but yet doesn't dry out my skin. Note won't work well for oily skin as I get oily in the summer so do anything.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
conceal4ever on 1/28/2012 2:07:00 PM more reviews by conceal4ever
Age: 30-35 Skin: Acne-prone, Fair-Medium Hair: Black Eyes: Brown
I've been buying this for about 10 years now. I don't use it as a mask (it's not a bad mask either) but instead use it to repair blemishes or black heads. It doesn't really make your acne go away, but after you breakout, this does a great job of repairing the skin quickly and lightens the resulting hyperpigmentation.
Once again, I would like to say that it's a very good mask, but this is my secret weapon for healing blemishes quickly so that I can resume my regular skin routine.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
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Chateau Regina Hotel and Suites provides you with a large amount of choice thanks to its extensive selection of rooms. The 2-star rating is indicative of the focus on value for money and quality service.
A restaurant, a bar/lounge and a smoking area are all convenient additions to Chateau Regina Hotel and Suites. An indoor swimming pool, accessible here, is a great place to while away your hours. A dry cleaning/laundry service is part of the list of services that you can benefit from here. There are areas especially set up for having meetings. The hotel's business guests have an advantage, as a conference space is offered here alongside a business center. A total of 155 rooms are available here.
The air always has a nice feel thanks to the air conditioning in Chateau Regina Hotel and Suites. Advantages of the rooms here are services like a wake-up service and a daily housekeeping service. You are also at liberty to make use of free local calls here. You can stay up to date with everything that is happening around the world during your stay in Regina as wireless high-speed Internet access (complimentary) is offered. The rooms in this hotel include a hypo-allergenic bedding set (upon request), a Premium bedding set and a pillowtop mattress. You can make use of a coffee/tea maker, a microwave (upon request) and a refrigerator (upon request) in the rooms.
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Check-in: | From 15:00 Check-out: Until 11:00 |
Internet: | Wireless high-speed Internet access (complimentary), Free wired Internet, Computer Station |
Parking: | Parking (free) |
Pet policy: | Pets allowed Free of charge |
Rooms: | 155 |
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Please provide this reference number to our customer service center representative on request, so we can help you better


text: You knew you wanted to be a photojournalist from the moment you picked up a camera. How do you reconcile your passion for the news with putting your own personal safety at risk, and ultimately, forcing you to live in exile in France? "Before the 2009 election, I spent most of my time following the two candidates who were reformists. People were really happy and hopeful that there would be change in the country. Everyone in Iran had energy and I had this energy too, following the candidates and capturing this energy on camera. There was a big will from the people to make this change, but it didn't happen - the Government remained in power and people began to protest in the street."After the election, the ministry in charge of foreign media correspondents officially banned us from reporting the protests, and my editor advised me to stay at home as it was too dangerous for photographers. There were 3 photographers who were attacked and stabbed. They said stay at home, but I couldn't."I felt this was a very important moment in my country's history and thought I'd better not lose this moment by staying at home, even if they didn't publish my pictures. The only thing I could do was to go out so I did not regret it later." Why were you forced to flee? "I didn't know I was in such big danger. We were getting ready to have a new reformist government and an open atmosphere for reporters and photographers so I was getting ready to re-open our office. But after the election, I didn't know that people would get killed and there was a huge depression in the country. "The government wrote an article about SIPA being the enemy and that anyone who worked for SIPA was a spy. I had two other colleagues working for SIPA who were arrested along with many other photographers."I got arrested in the street. Luckily I didn't have my camera on me at the time, if I did, I would be in jail now. I hid my camera before they could find me. After I was arrested I never went back to home. I called my neighbour and they said government agents had come to my house and had gone through my things. I thought, I will hide and spent time at a safe house, but after some time I felt the owner might report me so I left."I then heard that one of my colleagues who had been arrested was tortured and appeared on television confessing he was a spy. I said to myself, 'I had better not stay'."There are many Iranian journalists who have been forced into exile and are living in Iraq or Turkey. Tell us about your journey to France and what the future holds for you now."On 3 August I fled to Iraq. I had a backpack with a few pieces of clothing, but not my passport or my computer because the Government had taken them. I got in contact with an alcohol smuggler and he helped me to cross the Iran/Iraq border on foot. It took 17 hours."I thought I would go to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) but I was arrested by Iraqi security. They thought I might be an Iranian spy. After 7 hours of interrogation they took me to the UNHCR and I was registered as an asylum seeker on 5 August. For two weeks I slept in the street."Through Reporters Sans Frontiers and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I was able to enter France on 6 November 2009."Right now, I'm living only in the moment. The future seems too dark. The job market has changed for photojournalists all over the world. I was a good photographer and was represented by agency. Here I am just a number until I get permission to stay. I cannot work; I cannot do anything. I just edit my old stories."If I went back to Iran they will catch me and lock me up. Maybe they will release me but I will not be allowed to work."I hope the political situation will change so I can go back and use all the skills I have gained over the years." Why is press freedom important to you? Why is it important for photojournalists to report what they see?"I can write a book about this! People who cannot be in the field need information and it is our role as journalists to provide that information. So we must be free to express what is happening. Otherwise people will lack information and not be able to judge what is really happening. This is not just in Iran; this is everywhere."


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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classifies artificial sweeteners as food additives. The FDA regulates artificial sweeteners and has approved their use in products such as gum, sweets, diet soda, ... read more
I am seeing patients this week right before the Thanksgiving holiday and think Optifast must be magic because everyone is checking in with three to five pounds of weight loss over the ... read more
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Okay, so maybe you are not going back to school but are you including healthy snacks throughout the day as recommended after weight-loss surgery? Five-to-six planned small meals or snacks ... read more
On Oct. 1, Surgical Associates of Fox Valley becomes part of Institute for Health Education Physician Care (CPC). Institute for Health Education Health System welcomes the addition of five surgeons from this practice who grow the ... read more
Anyone who has ever dieted (and who hasn't) faces a new challenge once the "diet" stops and that is maintaining his or her new healthy weight. The National Weight Control ... read more
The Institute for Health Education now offers a new, medically supervised weight-loss program called OPTIFAST beginning Aug. 1. This 26-week program uses a full meal replacement plan that transitions to self-prepared ... read more
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Just when you are going strong with your resolutions and getting in the groove of regular exercise, you wake up one day with a scratchy throat and runny nose. Should ... read more
If you attended the Institute for Health Education Weigh Less, Live More Expo today, hopefully you got to see our fun cooking demo by Registered Dietitian Meg Burnham and try some tasty samples ... read more
According to the USDA, overall food costs are expected to rise 3 to 4 percent in 2013, with meat and dairy expected to rise between 2.5 and 5 percent. If ... read more
If you attended the Institute for Health Education Weigh Less, Live More Expo today, hopefully you got to see our fun cooking demo by Registered Dietitian Meg Burnham and try some tasty samples! ... read more
According to Wikipedia, "A New Year's resolution is a commitment that a person makes to one or more personal goals, projects, or the reforming of a habit. A key element ... read more
CONGRATULATIONS to our 1-Year Membership winners: Jerry Roberts Dale Prindville Tricia Sales Debra Streeter Michael DeMarco Lauren Hamm Diane Walters Kevin Sindelar Andy Resek Lee Vanvooorhees Gretchen Watters Sharon Kubat Lonnie Swan Hendy De La Rosa Tod Kent Kay Meyer Kelli Goff Mike Ullrich Veronica Ferreira Helga Miczek Colleen Craig Adriana Fil John ... read more
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Dr Heydari has a Walk-In Band Fill Clinic most Thursdays from 6:00 - 7:00pm. Please call (815) 477-2615 to verify date. Hedari Health Center 80 N. Virginia Street Crystal Lake, IL 60012
The Institute for Health Education Weight-Loss Surgery Center offers monthly informational sessions to help you decide if bariatric surgery is right for you. Sign up for one of our FREE informational sessions and ... read more
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The New Institute For Health Education offers the most comprehensive medically based weight loss services in McHenry County and northern Kane County. We provide support at every stage of your weight loss, whether you are working toward a total body makeover or simply trying to live a healthier, more active life through diet and exercise. Our full continuum of services includes weight loss surgery, two fitness centers, medical nutrition counseling, wellness screenings, wellness coaching, diabetes centers, and other wellness services.
The Institute for Health Education also offers bariatric weight loss surgery options, including gastric bypass, LAP Band™ surgery, and Realize Band™ surgery, diabetes treatment and education, and enhanced nutrition/diet programs. At the new Health Education Weight-Loss Institute, we help you exceed your weight loss expectations. Call us today to get started!


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December 12, 2013
December 12, 2013
December 12, 2013
December 12, 2013
A lost lamb from Cardiff now making a hash of things as a freelance journalist and broadcaster in London.
World Football and Rugby Columnist, as well as a member of B/R's Breaking News Team.
Follow me on Twitter @TomSunderland_ (https://twitter.com/TomSunderland_).
and a lot of these aren't even reasons to think they're stupid, they're just personality flaws. being an egomaniac? getting arrested? giving stock interviews to reporters because that's what the club trains them to do? bad tattoos? diving? appearing in ads? being jealous?
in what world are those reasons to think someone's stupid? they're personality flaws, matters of opinion, and a desire to make money. you need to look up the definition of stupid if you think those are examples of it
in your article on 20 reasons to think footballers are stupid, the gif for number 3 is a piss-poor example. if you watch it from the reverse-angle, you clearly see he gets clipped. maybe your next article should be "20 reasons to think B/R writers are lazy" number 3 can be your lack of willingness to research your examples
Part of me thought you were really going for "Aww" instead of "awe," but I wanted to play it on the safe side and not potentially embarrass you. Feel free to change that back ... cheers!
I bet CR7 will really regret playing under Carlo Ancelotti (a 2 time CL winning manager, wins leagues everywhere he goes) rather than David Moyes (whose biggest achievement as a manager is landing the job at Man U). Yeah...that piece you wrote on Ronaldo regretting not moving to Man U, was a joke right? Does it intrigue you why all of Man U's summer targets snubbed them?
Hey Tom who do you think will win the Wallabies vs Springboks game tonight. I cannot wait for the All Blacks to challenge this touch Boks side.
Thanks for the reply. Here's to hoping you get the next one. Cheers.
Why don't you do weekly power rankings anymore Tom, Sam Tighe's analysis are great but his rankings are crap tbh. You should be the one doing them!
I did mention that many outlets capitalize it to Rick at the time, but ultimately it's a style issue and having van lower-case is what B/R is doing.
If you Google the player's name then it will almost always become clear which they prefer. For example, searching Robin van Persie always has van as lower-case.
Hey Tom, I don't know if it's written down anywhere, but I recently had a conversation with Rick Seto, who evaluates the editors, and he told me he's trying to get everyone on the same page with van Persie etc. being spelled lower case even without the first name present. Whatever the player's personal preference is what we follow, so van Persie is lower case but someone like Kevin De Bruyne would still have his name capitalised as that's how he spells it.


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How to download Moorsound MP3 audio demo filesFor WINDOWS users: Right click the link and select: 'Save Target As...'For APPLE users: Ctrl click the link and select: 'Download Linked File...'
The Mooresound Stealth Amplifier was uses by Byron Nemeth in the tracking of the new BNG CD on Pacifica Records.Click on any MP3 below to hear the solo Guitar Tones!
Remember Me
Introducing the amazing new Mooresound "Stealth" guitar amp head. The sonic clarity & articulation of the "Stealth" are mind blowing!
Visit the Mooresound Gallery of Amplifier pictures of our latest models, the Mooresound Amplifiers are available in many Cover Options.
MP3 samples of our Amplifiers are available for you to listen to the Dynamic Range of what we do and how we do it.


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Do you ever feel like we are all waiting for life to get amazing?
Waiting for summer vacation.
Waiting for a new promotion or a new car or a bigger house or a kitchen renovation or the snow to fall.
Waiting and waiting……and waiting.
Maybe we're all waiting because we think….that when the waiting is over….whenever what we are waiting for finally happens….
….that's when our amazing life will begin.
But what we miss….what we overlook….is that sometimes we are so focused on the waiting….
….that we miss the amazing that was there all along.Continue reading


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The National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) has won a place in the list of 'Top 100 Asian Universities'. It is the only Pakistani university to achieve this unprecedented honour as per the ranking carried out by the world's most prestigious ranking agency, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), UK.
Keeping up the highest traditions of excellence in providing quality education and research, NUST has attained 84th position in the ranking list of 2011.
Besides overall ranking of the universities, QS also prepares 'Subject-wise Rankings', wherein NUST has been placed in the list of 'Top 100 Asian Universities' in the subjects of IT & Engineering (Ranking 58), and Natural Sciences (Ranking 73). Whereas, in the subjects of Life Sciences and Medicine NUST is placed at the Rank of 102. It speaks volumes of the hard work put in by the NUST management and faculty in terms of improving infrastructure, providing quality education, conducting innovative research, establishing international linkages, engaging in collaborative research with leading international institutions/organisations, participating in international exchange programmes and producing graduates who are welcomed by national/international industry, business, academia and market.
NUST Rector Engineer Muhammad Asghar, has felicitated the NUST administration and faculty of all NUST constituent colleges, institutes and centres for their relentless efforts to achieve excellence in providing quality education to their students and carrying out research of international standards.
Sourc:The news