Rebel-Citizen

The State is the reality of the moral idea.
----Hegel.

The Argentine finds his symbol in the gaucho and not the soldier because the courage ascribed to the former by oral tradition is not in the service of a cause but rather is pure..The State is an abstraction; the Argentine is an individual , not a citizen...We seem to have, then, men who lived in utter poverty, gauchos and others from the banks of the River Plate and the Parma, creating without realizing it, a religion that had its mythology and its martyrs-the hard and blind religion of courage, of being ready to kill and die.A religion as old as the world, but rediscovered in the American republics and lived by herders, stockyard workers, outlaws and hoodlums.
----Borges.

One cannot but help think that in this day and age the only true rebels, outlaws, are the muslims; and this is not because they strive to be so, not because they are reacting to the state, "the system," in the way that a Dylan or a Ginsberg do with their fake pose. The problem for the western anarchist is that for the last two centuries he has been identified, he has identified himself, with the nation-state and her narratives, her victories and her language. And so they are defined by what they revolt against. Freedom is always (or invariably) freedom from something. Is this not, then, just the traditional instability between body and spirit, realism and idealism, Emperor and Pope, translated into the political realm? (G. Steiner: revelation and reason, history and the End of Time).

S.Weil: obligations

From Illuminati: Unrepresentable Citizenship:

Simone Weil: to pass through the threshold one must stop being a social being.."the social is evil".

Two options: Better representation of cultural minorities in institutions, within the system (this is the path of labour, of the trade unions who accepted the fundamental principles of the market but asked for a bigger share of the pie-not how the pie was made) or a refusal of representation, of political practice (that depend on domination -the political-and work-the economic).

The inoperative community is a bastardized surrogate of the people of God. (Blanchot): dreamers, subversives, pluralists. Refusal of the ethical-judicial-in the extreme, the abolition of the State. communism and liberalism are expressions of this (the withering away of..)

Accession to the centre of what was at first perceived as eccentric, the unceasing revolution of one's assumptions, is the modern. On the margins (dihliz) between active and contemplative life, will and vision, past and future. Neither the actor not the spectator. Flexibility and reflective judgement. That way we can see the spectacle from the margins..the privileged position of the exile, the flanneur, the muslim. [Amir: the difference between us Iranians and those in the west is that we know we are sheep..we can see ourselves as sheep!]

There is always, in this way, a critical distance, a distance that is critical. One does not identify with power (see Said: Representations). One remains an amateur, naive, turns one's face away from the common self of the social contract.

The spectator guarantees the plurality of interpretations discussed by the public but doesn't himself-or herself-in them..escapes the collective representation of will.

[It's always amusing to hear journalists and idiots talk about the soldiers as 'our boys'... so many years of the Enlightenment and still so much tribal thinking. The soldier: for Queen and Country! Looking back at yesterday's remarkable press conference I wondered: how many western leaders would talk about "the people", how many about Justice. Fraternity and equality are banished from their lips..all one hears is the empty talk of freedom!]

The community of lovers (saints) vs the society. The apolitical. Arendt: Is the individual a pre-political formulation or is he only constiuted by the political? In which case: what of human rights? Are only citizens afforded them (Nazi Germany)? An axiomatic view of the indivdual as resistance to, or at least a check on, state power

From Luc Nancy's Inoperative Community:Between atomization (a false individualism) and the tendency of a social or institutional representation to force subjectivities together.Bataille: The fundamental right of humans is to signify nothing [to escape imposed meanings, narratives, projects, 'assigned roles' (Levertov), the 'dots or dreams' of planners]. To be or not to be is a political stance , not an ontological description.

Democracy depends on openness-Janus looking-the exiled god of thresholds and beginnings, not on Terminus: god of confines and outcomes. The non-totalizing Utopia within its own horizon.

We tend to think of citizenship in terms of law and equality. Is it possible to think of it in terms of difference and plurality, prior to formalization, institutionalization? A city of deserters [the synthesis of Mecca and Medina].

Recognition without being represented by the State order. A space of freedom to be . In this sense, more than a juridical concept , citizenship is a plural style of life, a mosaic that demonstrates a unitary tonality..communication that is fraternity..that is fraternity among subjects of communication not mediated in the objectification of discourse.

Rimbaud: I is another.

No longer belongs exclusively to a race, territory, ideology: one has become a stranger (to others and oneself). Can there be a city of such beings? Mecca and Medina. [compare with the idolatry of the last century: blood and soil, the sacralization of the nation, of Life.."we love Life, they love Death"!]

The diffusion of sociality in favour of individuality brought about by the state and the capitalist system is of a different order to this individuation: the rule of law, which administratively distributes legality, so as to reintegrate the underprivileged classes within the fiction of a guaranteed community in exchange for the guarantee of renouncing the subversiveness of difference. Whence the cult of belonging: the flag, an anthem, can bring tears to their eyes.

Defection: Exit rather than voice (Hirschman) or/and a degree of self-determination. A multitude and not a people that is identified with one will, the State. But in a time of globalisation it is worth remembering that such a de-linking is exactly what is desired. The market ideal as a false universalism, a de-politicized individual who lives only for the "now". The market sociey (an oxymoron!) as a society of Robinson Crusoes (Gauthier). And this rebellious individual (not citizen), emerging from the Romantic legacy or existentialism, is what is actually sold to the masses..Rebel Sell!

It expresses itself as an ensemble of acting minorities, none of which, however, aspires to transform itself into a majority. It develops a power that refuses to become govt. Very poetical, I'm sure, but what or who is that minority? Does one need a tradition to sustain individuality unless the multitude is fragmented?

Nancy: in-op.the fanatic..the lumpen proletariat