Jan Harmensz van Biljert, The Feast of the Gods (1635). Collection of the Magnin Museum, in Dijon.

The 2024 Paris Olympics came and went, uninterrupted by several counts of sabotage by various actors. There’s been a diversity of complaints about its content, cost, and impacts.

It's one more example of bread and circus that puts nationalism on steroids which, like beauty pageants, reinforces the outlines of national and gender identities, and bolsters jingoism. In another instance of war by other means, nation-states are pitted against each other. The Apollonian millimetric measurement of performance, and eugenic scrutiny of athletes at the microscopic level, predominates over the Dyonisian bacchanal of athletes from all over fucking, an imaginary which scandalizes the public, as made-up rumors about cardboard beds meant to dissuade sex, and of condoms running out, become popular. Beyond the backstage enjoyment of bacchanal, its mere portrayal on stage was also subject of controversy.

Let's consider concerns over the Olympic's budget being an excessive expenditure on non-essential luxury at the tax-payer's expense, in contrast with support for funding anti-immigration policies, police, and military budgets:

"According to Bataille's theory of consumption, the accursed share is that excessive and non-recuperable part of any economy which must either be spent luxuriously and knowingly in the arts, in non-procreative sexuality, in spectacles and sumptuous monuments, or it is obliviously destined to an outrageous and catastrophic outpouring, in the contemporary age most often in war, or in former ages as destructive and ruinous acts of giving or sacrifice, but always in a manner that threatens the prevailing system."

In principle, anarchists are opposed to states and governing bodies of all sorts, and they don’t need a committee to regulate the throwing of a ball or the jumping of hurdles. But, at least in principle, they aren’t opposed to sports or disruptive sumptuous celebrations. In its day, Bachanalia came to be seen as a scandalous threat, so it was reformed and controlled. During the festivities of Saturnalia there was also a temporary overturning of norms "masters provided table service for their slaves as it was seen as a time of liberty for both slaves and freedmen alike". It also influenced what came to be Christmas traditions, like the appointing of a Lord of Misrule/Abbot of Unreason, now a custom in decline, since it was abolished as it was deemed disruptive. Many of the customs regarding the Lord of Misrule have been incorporated into modern-day Carnival and Mardi Gras celebrations.

What are the differences between games and festivities that the state views as a threat, and those that are state-sanctioned? What are the merits of disrupting latter, versus partaking in them in way that turns them disruptive? How were once disruptive festivities recuperated? What would ontologically anarchist Olympics, Bacchanalia, and Saturnalia be like? What are collective and individual ways to expend the accursed share anarchically?

Listen to the conversation here!

Comments

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/12/2024 - 03:18

there’s merits to international gatherings where people from all over come together, and popular games seem like a good ice-breaker to bridge the language barriers. so is music and dance. i much rather governments waste money on the olympics than anything else on their to-do list, but of course nothing that they do is any good anyhow

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/12/2024 - 03:26

This post and the stoicism one are not beating the 'anarchism is a European niche subculture like rennfaire or theater kids" allegations

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/12/2024 - 04:55

In reply to by anon (not verified)

anarchism is a westernized cultural phenomenon. unlike maoist third-worldists, (most) anarchists aren’t concerned with writing a revisionist history so it can trace back its origins to the global south and have the prolest of ideologies of the oppressed.

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/12/2024 - 11:00

In reply to by anon (not verified)

There's equally many non-Western conservatives out there who'll see marxism as a kind of Western contamination. Many cultures around the world got anarchistic practices and sensibilities; they're just not openly asserted as such.

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/12/2024 - 07:56

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Nah. Poets fuck off... especially the "slam jam" chumps who're just cultural appropriating street culture for a ridiculous attempt at street cred. Same crowd who does graffiti at legally-permitted spaces. Fuck off petty bougie posers, lol

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/12/2024 - 11:11

In reply to by anon (not verified)

You sᴇᴇthᴇ with reᴇssᴇntimᴇnt, like a chud
Of poutineless dumpsters and orgyless faires;
And all that’s smug and boring and gross
Meat in your beard and long nose hairs;
Thus tantrums to that beaten pud
Which anarchyland to based riot spares.

anon (not verified) Tue, 08/13/2024 - 09:31

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Has street culture come from some wild rural area where there barely are streets? No, coz it's a street culture, i.e. grassroots culture emanating from street life in urban or suburban spaces.

Blues music, tho, that's predominantly Black, came from wild rural areas with or without street life.

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/12/2024 - 08:25

Why should we care about Greco-Latin deities and their celebrations? Why should especially non-Western people would? They're meaningless remnants of religiosity when adult children needed to have a cult to justify and organize their doings. Now we have TikTok for mediocre, cringe consumable spectacle...

I give it at that, at least *Liber* celebrations were more about IRL carnal pleasures, which can't be replaced by any crap spectacle like the Olympics and its awful ceremonies for the telly, where you can witness a bunch of privileged art kids having it their way Queer style when in many places of the world queer people are still being repressed and attacked. What has Bacchus done for them? Like Romans once asked... "Where is your God?"

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/12/2024 - 08:51

1. What are the differences between games and festivities that the state views as a threat, and those that are state-sanctioned?

Sometymes there are many differences depending on the game and participants! For one, the state-sanctioned games and festivities are sanctioned by the state and we anarchists tend to not appreciate the co-opting of often meaningful things. It can spoil them!

2. What are the merits of disrupting latter, versus partaking in them in way that turns them disruptive?

Sometimes disruption of things one opposes, overtly OR covertly, can bring enjoyments.

3.. How were once disruptive festivities recuperated?

This would depend on the specific festivity. Holiday discounts on toilet paper for the Jesus holiday turned into a fun and disruptive suburban game of TP!

4. What would ontologically anarchist Olympics, Bacchanalia, and Saturnalia be like?

I do not think you are using that word correctly in this isolated context. Please rephrase your question.

5. What are collective and individual ways to expend the accursed share anarchically?

Collective example: distribution of egg-based meals at a FnB event.

Individual example: inserting soft-boiled eggs into Simone to satisfy her fetish.

Good topic.
Happy Holidays to All

anon (not verified) Mon, 08/12/2024 - 13:22

oh boy, talking about the olympics is just practice for taliking about the election....come on now.

fuck their shit. why do ya'll give it attention?

anon (not verified) Wed, 08/14/2024 - 11:58

In reply to by anon (not verified)

some people who made up their own diction after reading huckleberry finn are younger than 30 these days, and there are rednecks here and there who like to fight their nazi neighbors... or was anno domini MM the cut off year for qualifying as a true "kid"?

anon (not verified) Tue, 08/13/2024 - 13:00

Umm, it's like the pressure of nationalistic spectacles is an energy devoted to reinforcing an ideological proposition,i.e. That all is well and honest in the world with the political economies, when infact it is concealed and compressed into a stifled compressed anxiety only releaved,,,,symbolically, with gold, victory, rivalry and physical toil, or work.

anon (not verified) Fri, 08/16/2024 - 08:15

In reply to by anon (not verified)

We are too far from the same fascistic regimw based on a substitution on ordinary sexuality into sports as discipline, especially performance-centered sports. Sports as play, personal empowerment, or transport, is a different thing.

anon (not verified) Fri, 08/16/2024 - 08:16

In reply to by anon (not verified)

"we are *not" too far"

anon (not verified) Fri, 08/16/2024 - 17:14

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Yeah Reich had a point concerning fascism and the repression of joyful sexuality. His gadgets I never took much attention to, although the "orgone accumulator" fascinated me in my late teens, and I made a small one [well, not THAT small ;) ] to place over my groin area in the hope it would heighten my orgasms *blushes*.
But I was more into his anti-moral/fascist viewpoint.

anon (not verified) Fri, 08/16/2024 - 19:04

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Whatever pertaining to his proto-New Age antics are to be taken with a grain of salt, as likely the guy had turned whacko as result of being cancelled by his conservative academic milieu.

But the FBI going hard after him was a rather puzzling ending... has he tripped over a major wire or was it just the Red Scare?

EmmaAintDead Thu, 08/15/2024 - 19:43

>ctrl+f "moist"
>0 results

Guys? Everyone okay? OP mentioned Bacchanalia and NOBODY has said it?

anon (not verified) Thu, 08/15/2024 - 21:28

In reply to by EmmaAintDead

Oddly enough, my Catholic priest taught me all about Bacchanalianist practises, he confessed to me that his tendencies were homeopathic.

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