BLACK ARCHIVE
Quintas-Feiras Negras | Arquitectura e destruição
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Sessão #08 | Motins
Godofredo Pereira
Cooperativa
Gesto | 24.11.2011
"Cities incite riots - and herding people in high
rise reservoirs of social aggression doesn’t help… Locking up cowed hoodies in
overcrowded prisons won’t solve anything. We need to think about public housing
and public space - quickly."
Joseph Rykwert
Arquivo
(vídeos)
BLACK ARCHIVE
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Slavoj Zizek in Wall Street
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We are all losers, but the
true losers are down there on Wall Street. They were bailed out by billions of
our money. We are called socialists, but here there is always socialism for the
rich. They say we don’t respect private property, but in the 2008 financial
crash-down more hard-earned private property was destroyed than if all of us
here were to be destroying it night and day for weeks. They tell you we are
dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely
the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are the awakening from a dream that
is turning into a nightmare.
We are not destroying
anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all
know the classic scene from cartoons. The cat reaches a precipice but it goes
on walking, ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath this ground. Only
when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing
here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street, “Hey, look down!”
In mid-April 2011, the
Chinese government prohibited on TV, films, and novels all stories that contain
alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China. These people
still dream about alternatives, so you have to prohibit this dreaming. Here, we
don’t need a prohibition because the ruling system has even oppressed our
capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to
imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But
you cannot imagine the end of capitalism.
So what are we doing here?
Let me tell you a wonderful, old joke from Communist times. A guy was sent from
East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so
he told his friends: “Let’s establish a code. If a letter you get from me is
written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is
false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue.
It says, this letter: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good
food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments are large and
luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.” This is how we live. We
have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language
to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom—
war on terror and so on—falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here.
You are giving all of us red ink.
There is a danger. Don’t
fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember, carnivals
come cheap. What matters is the day after, when we will have to return to
normal lives. Will there be any changes then? I don’t want you to remember
these days, you know, like “Oh. we were young and it was beautiful.” Remember
that our basic message is “We are allowed to think about alternatives.” If the
rule is broken, we do not live in the best possible world. But there is a
long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know
what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace
capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?
Remember. The problem is not
corruption or greed. The problem is the system. It forces you to be corrupt.
Beware not only of the enemies, but also of false friends who are already
working to dilute this process. In the same way you get coffee without
caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat, they will try to make
this into a harmless, moral protest. A decaffienated process. But the reason we
are here is that we have had enough of a world where, to recycle Coke cans, to
give a couple of dollars for charity, or to buy a Starbucks cappuccino where 1%
goes to third world starving children is enough to make us feel good. After
outsourcing work and torture, after marriage agencies are now outsourcing our
love life, we can see that for a long time, we allow our political engagement
also to be outsourced. We want it back.
We are not Communists if
Communism means a system which collapsed in 1990. Remember that today those
Communists are the most efficient, ruthless Capitalists. In China today, we
have Capitalism which is even more dynamic than your American Capitalism, but
doesn’t need democracy. Which means when you criticize Capitalism, don’t allow
yourself to be blackmailed that you are against democracy. The marriage between
democracy and Capitalism is over. The change is possible.
What do we perceive today as
possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand, in technology and sexuality,
everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the moon, you can become
immortal by biogenetics, you can have sex with animals or whatever, but look at
the field of society and economy. There, almost everything is considered
impossible. You want to raise taxes by little bit for the rich. They tell you
it’s impossible. We lose competitivity. You want more money for health care,
they tell you, “Impossible, this means totalitarian state.” There’s something
wrong in the world, where you are promised to be immortal but cannot spend a
little bit more for healthcare. Maybe we need to set our priorities straight
here. We don’t want higher standard of living. We want a better standard of
living. The only sense in which we are Communists is that we care for the commons.
The commons of nature. The commons of privatized by intellectual property. The
commons of biogenetics. For this, and only for this, we should fight.
Communism failed absolutely,
but the problems of the commons are here. They are telling you we are not
American here. But the conservatives fundamentalists who claim they really are
American have to be reminded of something: What is Christianity? It’s the holy
spirit. What is the holy spirit? It’s an egalitarian community of believers who
are linked by love for each other, and who only have their own freedom and
responsibility to do it. In this sense, the holy spirit is here now. And down
there on Wall Street, there are pagans who are worshipping blasphemous idols.
So all we need is patience. The only thing I’m afraid of is that we will
someday just go home and then we will meet once a year, drinking beer, and
nostaligically remembering “What a nice time we had here.” Promise yourselves
that this will not be the case. We know that people often desire something but
do not really want it. Don’t be afraid to really want what you desire. Thank
you very much.
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09.10.2011
Wall Street, New York
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