Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

roachboy · 09-14-2007, 07:41 AM

so maybe we should wonder what exactly "peaceful" means.
obviously the notion of "violence" is mobile, a political matter: what constitutes violence is a matter of argument or perception. generally, however, folk who talk about social violence build in assumptions about assymetry of power--so it follows that in this case, the greenpeace activists would not be committing anything like a violent act because (a) there is no explicit violence, only inconvenience and potential for physical harm--potential that was not realized in this case and (b) the activists are operating in an assymetrical context. the only feasible way to equalize the power relations involved with the action is to cut it off from all wider contexts, view it in isolation and then construct interpretations based entirely on this narrowed view--which is what this thread is about.

but does this mean that lucifer's interpretation of the action as violence is therefore illegitimate? clearly he felt victimized by the action...and mapping the response onto greenpeace results in the argument that the action is piracy--which operates to the exclusion of considering it a protest action.

so who gets to designate what is and is not violence?
if you push this terminology to include any real or perceived boundary violation, is non-violent protest possible?
but if any boundary violation can be interpreted as violence, then it would follow that political protest itself becomes impossible--because by its nature political protest involves boundary violation. even a licensed demo that walks meekly up a city street between rows of police, beneath rows of fbi arrayed on rooftops taking photographs in the way that the state "security" apparatus has since, say, prague 1968---even that involves boundary violation insofar as it transforms city streets from spaces of flows to spaces of protest and in the process inflicts Inconvenience on Others.
boundaries are maintained then when there is no Inconvenience, and violence is just another word for being put out by the actions of others.
in which case, the "ethical" argument is that there should be no Inconvenience. therefore there should be no political protest.
another way: the argument is that any boundary violation is violence, so therefore private property boundaries are sacrosanct and take priority over the right to protest. any violation of private property is violence, is terrorism: a kid who crosses your lawn on the way to school is a terrorist; a demonstration on the streets is terrorism, greenpeace activists board lucier's ship are terrorists. everyone who fucks with private property is a terrorist.

so a non-violent society, from a bourgeois viewpoint, would be one in which everyone "stayed in their place" and those places were understood as natural boundaries. political actions of any kind would then be violent IF they did not remain the affairs of authorized agents who operated in authorized spaces and did not in so doing pose any Inconvenience--which is apparently, judging from alot of the responses in this thread, the criterion around which distinctions between violence and non-violence are made, once you abstract the notion from wider political arguments and treat it as if it were still meaningful.

that's quite an argument.

the qualifications so far have been mostly on the order of: i support the right to protest in general, but oppose it in particular. so you like the idea of political protest and think that should be enough. we can think about protest, but any given protest is violence.

the other trajectory in the thread has been a strange indirect debate over the validity of the *cause* for greenpeace's actions. this seems entirely beside the point--a better question would have been whether it made sense to board the ship if the coal industry itself was the target. this because the fact that one might disagree with the way greenpeace frames its positions regarding energy production does not in any way impact upon whether greenpeace has the right to protest, to organize and act upon their views, regardless of your agreement with the arguments. that there is a debate about energy sources in this thread is an indication that greenpeace's action was justified because it engendered that conversation about alternatives to coal. so it seems to me that the fact of the debate above over nuclear power concedes the legitimacy of the greenpeace action. it demonstrates that the action was legitimate as a political action. engendering the debate is part of the point of the action--the action is not geared toward the assumption that you would agree with greenpeace necessarily--the action is geared around prompting debate. and it did. so the claims within that debate concerning greenpeace's action itself seem to me empty--you lost the argument when you started debating.

09-14-2007, 07:41 AM	#124 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	so maybe we should wonder what exactly "peaceful" means. obviously the notion of "violence" is mobile, a political matter: what constitutes violence is a matter of argument or perception. generally, however, folk who talk about social violence build in assumptions about assymetry of power--so it follows that in this case, the greenpeace activists would not be committing anything like a violent act because (a) there is no explicit violence, only inconvenience and potential for physical harm--potential that was not realized in this case and (b) the activists are operating in an assymetrical context. the only feasible way to equalize the power relations involved with the action is to cut it off from all wider contexts, view it in isolation and then construct interpretations based entirely on this narrowed view--which is what this thread is about. but does this mean that lucifer's interpretation of the action as violence is therefore illegitimate? clearly he felt victimized by the action...and mapping the response onto greenpeace results in the argument that the action is piracy--which operates to the exclusion of considering it a protest action. so who gets to designate what is and is not violence? if you push this terminology to include any real or perceived boundary violation, is non-violent protest possible? but if any boundary violation can be interpreted as violence, then it would follow that political protest itself becomes impossible--because by its nature political protest involves boundary violation. even a licensed demo that walks meekly up a city street between rows of police, beneath rows of fbi arrayed on rooftops taking photographs in the way that the state "security" apparatus has since, say, prague 1968---even that involves boundary violation insofar as it transforms city streets from spaces of flows to spaces of protest and in the process inflicts Inconvenience on Others. boundaries are maintained then when there is no Inconvenience, and violence is just another word for being put out by the actions of others. in which case, the "ethical" argument is that there should be no Inconvenience. therefore there should be no political protest. another way: the argument is that any boundary violation is violence, so therefore private property boundaries are sacrosanct and take priority over the right to protest. any violation of private property is violence, is terrorism: a kid who crosses your lawn on the way to school is a terrorist; a demonstration on the streets is terrorism, greenpeace activists board lucier's ship are terrorists. everyone who fucks with private property is a terrorist. so a non-violent society, from a bourgeois viewpoint, would be one in which everyone "stayed in their place" and those places were understood as natural boundaries. political actions of any kind would then be violent IF they did not remain the affairs of authorized agents who operated in authorized spaces and did not in so doing pose any Inconvenience--which is apparently, judging from alot of the responses in this thread, the criterion around which distinctions between violence and non-violence are made, once you abstract the notion from wider political arguments and treat it as if it were still meaningful. that's quite an argument. the qualifications so far have been mostly on the order of: i support the right to protest in general, but oppose it in particular. so you like the idea of political protest and think that should be enough. we can think about protest, but any given protest is violence. the other trajectory in the thread has been a strange indirect debate over the validity of the cause for greenpeace's actions. this seems entirely beside the point--a better question would have been whether it made sense to board the ship if the coal industry itself was the target. this because the fact that one might disagree with the way greenpeace frames its positions regarding energy production does not in any way impact upon whether greenpeace has the right to protest, to organize and act upon their views, regardless of your agreement with the arguments. that there is a debate about energy sources in this thread is an indication that greenpeace's action was justified because it engendered that conversation about alternatives to coal. so it seems to me that the fact of the debate above over nuclear power concedes the legitimacy of the greenpeace action. it demonstrates that the action was legitimate as a political action. engendering the debate is part of the point of the action--the action is not geared toward the assumption that you would agree with greenpeace necessarily--the action is geared around prompting debate. and it did. so the claims within that debate concerning greenpeace's action itself seem to me empty--you lost the argument when you started debating. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite