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Notes on the Context and Positions of Hello

Wed, 02/06/2013 - 12:01 -- Anonymous (not verified)

In its look, organization, and some of its concerns, the recently published pamphlet Hello could be a distant echo of the Call, which is now ten years old. From this we might surmise that there is an intention on the part of its author to update the Call, to modify its position, or at least to echo its rhetorical force and its anonymous spread. I do not think Hello can be reduced to a repetition of or response to the Call; but the connection allows for some context for Hello.

One way to discern the positions at work in Hello would be to consider how it might be connected to the texts gathered in the 2011 collection Communization and its Discontents. I will not be the first to note that the Call, Tiqqun, and especially anyone moved or excited by reading them appear as the proximate enemy in the pieces in the first part of that collection, especially the prominently placed “What are we to do?” by Endnotes. There is probably but one text in the rest of the collection that presents any of the above-mentioned in a positive light. There, are, of course, details and debates as to how the various writers involved and invoked in the collection conceive communization, but, at a macro-level, the first lesson of the “communization debate” as framed here seems to boil down to grasping that it is Call/Tiqqun/their fans vs. everyone else. Once that distinction is made, the debate may proceed with due seriousness. The entire collection may perhaps be seen as a corrective that attempts to respond to enthusiasm for the Call and Tiqqun’s writings, as they gain increasing prominence in the US (and perhaps the Anglosphere generally).

Due to its family resemblance to the Call, Hello will be perceived as being on the “Tiqqun side” of the communization debate (considered in its macro form). Its writer may have taken this into account, since Hello will frustrate those who share the position elaborated most prominently by Endnotes in Communization and its Discontents.

Call and Hello both set out from an analysis of the situation: not the constructed situation, but what can be known in one’s everyday life. Though Hello does not use this term, it discusses the communicative (or usually non-communicative) situations of everyday life from the title on. Their skepticism is first of all a skepticism about communication and connections with others. Beginning from the situation, the Call advances to organization, to communes; Hello proposes, after its relentless questioning of all social and political life, including friendship, moralism, organization, and representation, what it calls “commitment to commitment.” This phrase seems to refer to a moment anterior to forming a position; it is something more on the order of a criterion concerning positions. That said, one can discern positions in Hello despite the lack of familiar jargon. And in these positions we might locate, not so much a new contribution to the “communization debate” as a strange response to or intervention into it.

First, Hello has an individualist/egoist streak that is illegible in terms of the positions set out in Communization and its Discontents as well as the Call. Hello evidences this in its concern with moralism as well as in its reiteration of the classic egoist’s troublemaking stance that one is free to leave a project at any time. One is reminded of the way Debord dismisses individualist anarchism out of hand in Society of the Spectacle, even though the individualist/egoist practice of joining and leaving groups more or less at will (announced as far back as Stirner) provides a glaring contrast with and problematization of the problems of all the groups and parties Debord criticizes in the long fourth chapter of his book, but also, pre-emptively, of the workers’ councils themselves, well before Théorie Communiste or anyone else pointed out that they retained the form of capitalist management, merely swapping out the managers.

Second, Hello also has an even more prominent nihilist position, evident first of all in its silence concerning organization and utter skepticism towards representation and all political forms, parliamentary or extraparliamentary. Not to speak of the business about everything and Everything! This nihilism appears somewhat more subtly in its “corrosive” skepticism about historical justifications and explanations (though Hello contradictorily indulges in some of that in first proposition and elsewhere): this includes the sorts of periodizations all marxists and most communists engage in. Conversely, what is more certain in Hello, namely, the communicative situation or its impossibility, their immediate surroundings and personal relations, will seem trivial for Endnotes and company. For Endnotes such evidences amount to “the self-affirmation of a self-identifying radical milieu.”[1] On the other hand, given the fact that it is so critical of everything from the individual’s comfort in belonging (to a couple, for example), to crews or groups, to subcultures and, yes, milieus, could one not say that Hello has absorbed this critique, and opted for a highly skeptical relation to the milieu rather than its infinitely more vague alternatives?

This last issue is perhaps the crux of the “debate” from the point of view of Hello. The pamphlet does seem to advocate some version of friendship and perhaps, as “commitment to commitment,” some version of adherence to the milieu (though it never uses this term positively). This as opposed to... the mysterious mass deployment of communizing measures by the soon-not-to-be proletariat. But it will be difficult to associate Hello entirely with Endnotes’ real or imagined antagonists, because it does not advocate sharing, withdrawal, or making communes in any way. Hello is openly anti-political, and there is nothing of what Endnotes refers to as “alternativism” in it. (“Alternativism” is defined as “practices which aim to establish liberated areas outside of capitalist domination.”)

For Endnotes, the Call falls into the trap of not naming capitalism in favor of “an ill-defined generic nobodaddy (capitalism, civilization, empire etc.) that is to be undone by —at the worst points of Call—the Authentic Ones who have forged ‘intense’ friendships, and who still really feel despite the badness of the world,” and not discussing a praxis at the level of the totality. The same criticism could be leveled at Hello, with its playful opposition to everything/Everything—but this leads to the oddest thing about it. It begins in agreement about the second point, deeply questioning friendship and communication, and then precariously reconstructs them at the end. This could be because more than capitalism is at stake. Could this be the third and most subtle position at work in Hello, an unstated but influential green or anti-civilization perspective?[2] From this point of view Hello might be suggesting that something greater than what any history or periodization could name is at stake. Perhaps for them nothing is comprehensible at the level of the totality; Everything is by definition ill-defined. (From this point of view one could even interpret the references to an Outside and especially the conclusion of Hello as mysticism.)

Hello is, in the realm of manifestos, minimalistic: it only calls out what its author says they have done, and greets others from that situation. Its apparent positions are ways to maneuver towards that greeting. Its attractiveness, its potential success, is that it requires less belief (and, incidentally, less study) than the positions of Endnotes and company to be entertained. But is the author totally skeptical about mass action, or do they just see what they are doing as so separate from such events that they prefer not to comment on them?[3] One might say the Hello position is one so skeptical that it is not disposed to talk about mass anything. It remains concerned with the communicative situation itself, and how we are bound or unbound in it (the entire matter might be described as a bifurcation between two uses of the prefix com-; one might instructively consult the respective etymologies of commune and commit).

 


[1] One wonders if all of the spite directed at such a milieu or milieus on their part has to do with 1) nostalgia, however well hidden or repressed, for the vanguard 2) resentment, however well hidden or repressed, about the non-dissolution of the focused radical acts of such milieus into a mass scale (“the level of the totality”).

[2] The title Communization and its Discontents echoes the well-known title given by James Strachey to his English translation of Freud’s pessimistic Civilization and its Discontents. The German title of the latter might more literally be rendered The Uneasiness in Culture. This uneasiness, Unbehagen, manifests sometimes as a guilty conscience, sometimes as inexplicable anxiety, and is, Freud proposes, something like the price one pays for belonging to Kultur, civilization. Well, Hello seems concerned precisely with that feeling of uneasiness, guilt, or anxiety; its anti-politics perhaps begins there, perhaps, in a refusal to carry on as though that feeling were not there.

[3] The same question could be asked of the non-connection between communization theory and communizing measures, at least according to the usual predictions on who might undertake the latter.

From The Anvil

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Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I haven't read even heard of this...would someone post a link to it?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

As far as I'm aware, it isn't online. I would post the contact info contained in the pamphlet, but not sure if that's cool.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

End of last year/*shrug*, just gotta know people, or something.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

It was published a few weeks ago and, from what I gather, the goal seems to be to get it everywhere. It'll come to you eventually, I'm sure. For what it's worth, I thought it was really good.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Annoying. Guess I'll have to be content with reviews since I don't live in the NE or the PNW.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

You. I like you.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I like you too

Submitted by Bubblegum Pete (not verified) on

I hate everyone.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

If you don't like Call it's probably because Call is correct. I read a bit of Call and wasn't impressed either. It seemed like they were saying if you wanna be a fash, that's fine, because the system is so overreaching, that even fascism is indistinguishable from any variety of leftist cults in terms of the fundamental social relations. I'm kinda skeptical of this notion insofar as I am reading it correctly. And I will say I never got through the whole thing. But ultimately they seem to be saying forms of capital are still capital. I don't know.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

good comment, but I think it could be greatly improved by getting rid of the first few sentences, leaving only the conclusion "I don't know."

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Same to you. You may as well have written, "I know better, I simply choose not to." Try helping, you fucking worthless shiteating rapist. Let's face facts. The person writing this probably has at least a rape accusation against him. Second, if you don't like this sort of invective, try suggesting how the comment could be improved. Or you could continue raping people. Your choice. I'm on the side against rape.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

me too

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

What's CaiD? And where does Whitherburo fall into this scheme?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Communization and its Discontents. I don't much like it either but I would still recommend reading it. I don't think Whitherburo is worth reading although I agree with its positions more.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Sexy Pic

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

shut the fuck up

Submitted by ??? (not verified) on

can I just say something not related to any current post...? when the fuck will the rest of older posts on @news be retrieved? right now, the older links do not work

worker and other comrades: isn't it time you get back to work???

Submitted by worker on

1) put new theme into place (hard part)
2) start uploading older data (less hard part)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

comrades, yes: start uploading older data!!
we really need the old material from time to time (not kidding)
obviously it's not I who work on this hard task, so you might just say I demand too much.. but I do recall an encouraging note that @news will be restored if you know what i mean (i feel we're in an intermediate phase for ages) aahh... so many years, and where is all that now..

love to worker and their awesome pals :-)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Will this text be understandable to the regular person / radical?
Also, will it not have a super-fucking-condescending-and-pretentious tone to it?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

lolz. Who cares?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

There is no jargon, and I felt like the text was pretty welcoming. It does require some thinking though.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

could someone at least scan the thing in or is this like some mysterious guy chain letter shit

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Mysterious guy chain letter shit. You'll find a copy eventually.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

fuck this.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Dear Invisible Committee,
"the entire matter might be described as a bifurcation between two uses of the prefix com-; one might instructively consult the respective etymologies of commune and commit"

What about "com" in communication, although I too will need a copy to put this review in context. PDF is fine, thanks.

Thanks,
Joseph Script

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

but seriously...someone please scan this shit nau. Austin TX I'm looking at you (yall just did a reading group on it, right?)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Hey, so how's it feel like being totally ignored. I'm just saying because everything I read coming out of Texas is pure garbage. I guess you have to deal in garbage to be listened to over there?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

regardless, your TX shit-talk isn't going to motivate them to listen to me.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

You're ... kidding. It doesn't get more closed-loop subcultural than this .. posting editorials online of a pamphlet that you have to "know people" to have actually read. Congratulations, you've literally become the cartoonish stereotype that people like Kevin Keating never shut the fuck up about.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Did you see the link for a free copy (plus postage) of the publication?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

So the use of snail mail is supposed to filter out all the kids with short attention spans then? Clever but you still end up with a very small pool to splash around in.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Well, I think it's sort of addressed to people who find themselves dwelling in the "radical milieu"...could be wrong though.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I mean that as in, there's a reason people in the "Tiqqun camp" or whatever continue to speak to/address/communicate with the anarchist circles in the US. There seems to be an urging for people to flee/leave the radical milieu.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Yeah right, flee the milieu and then form some sort of romanticized communal cult and then begin to contact and work with other cells ... oh wait, that's just the same "radical milieu". Well that saved a lot of time! Nevermind, just keep doing what you're doing folks! (mostly nothing)

Ignore the Tiqqunlickers. (we already were)

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

well i think that's part of the tension this text is trying to address. how do you flee without becoming another milieu or "losing your weapons"? What is authentic/real/genuine communication? Everything seems to be a part of the spectacle, even ones own personal and intimate relationships (friendships included). What do you do when there is no physical utopia, oasis, or "safe haven" to go to? When all you have are sterile or self-serving clique social groups ("radical milieus)" to be a part of/learn to play their game/get exiled from/conform to/etc? Is there a way to decisively intervene in them? What gestures, signals, or words do you look for? So much now is image and lip service...

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

and here's why I hate the masturbatory metaphysics of Tiqqun. Paralysis through analysis. Not that I don't ponder the meaning of it all sometimes but I can do that with down time. There's real work that needs doing too. The grim realities waiting when you examine people too closely aren't a shocker anymore, I'm just throwing in with whoever's keeping busy and making a dent. There's plenty of perfectly good reasons to lose all faith in people and stay home drinking but as a philosophical matter of taste, I choose not to.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

how do you know that we/they/you/anyone are not doing anything? No one is arguing for paralysis or intellectual masturbation. That seems to be a common concept deployed against anyone whose analysis or perspective we don't like or requires us to actually think and reflect or that disturbs the rail that our train was comfortably moving along on. Everything you're saying is self-apparent and your position appears to be devolving into one of the right to not think or reflect and just do.

If Tiqqun or Hello or whatever writings are making you feel paralyzed then maybe you have some serious reflection to be doing.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I don't feel paralyzed friend ... but IMHO the "Tiqqun tendency" which admittedly I've mostly been exposed to third and fourth-rate bastardizations of, this side of the pond, seems to always lead to this futility-of-it-all set of conclusions. everything is just the spectacle, everything is just a copy of a copy of a copy and we live in the perpetual now where nothing means anything, people are shambling mindless zombie husks incapable of autonomy and there's no point to any active resistance so you should focus on creating your little narcissistic bubble in which to dwell.

Well I say fuck all that noise ... "smart people" blinding themselves with ego while the world burns. I prefer tangibles to theory exactly because I've wasted years talking in circles when I could have been learning useful skills. Trappings of the ivory tower, you know? That was what made me feel paralyzed. Also, you're a condescending dickhead.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

diffferent condescending dickhead here: I don't think you understand Tiqqun, and you might feel differently or at least be able to make a better criticism if you actually read it.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

do we all see yet how fucking difficult it is to communicate in this day and age?

Hello!
Hello?

Is anyone out there?...

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Yes, I'm here dealing with things I left behind a few months ago. I was hoping to focus on some favorite obsessions when all this shit came back again. How you doin?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I have a copy, if nobody else does anything by tomorrow I'll at least type up the content (the thing is pretty short) and post it on that @news etherpad service nobody uses, assuming it's still there.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Sweet thanks! (I'm the jerk that mentioned Keating earlier)

Submitted by gel-oberon 3 on

Can you put it in a blender and serve it to me as a smoothy? I like my fruit puréed.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

that just made it even more funny, and it was a pretty god joke in the first place. I am prepared to forgive them

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

welp, nobody has done shit about it and it's a day later. can we collect on that promise now?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I think it's cool to have to make an effort to read something...

Not in a subcultural way either, it just makes the text that much more potent.

Think punk before the internet.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

... not a subculture huh? You sound like a yuppie with a fancy wine cellar. Shit isn't qualitatively better just because it's a pain in the ass to get your hands on it.

Submitted by paul (not verified) on

Absolute drivel. Why restrict access to objects when the means exist to distribute them freely to anyone? Why work for things when they could be made freely available? If your reasoning is correct, the "owners" and distributors of this text are merely affirming the capitalist ideology of work and exchange, while cashing in on their cultural capital.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

post this god damn mother fuckin shit to the internet!
NAOW!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

reading through all of the comments and the original piece,
i would really like to see this - there is literally no chance of
it reaching this hellhole of a prison island.

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