by kuda.org and Group for Conceptual Politics
What does the act of translation and publishing of a lesser-known writer (pardon?) mean in the usual circles circuiting our scene and in its leading discourses? Is it important to mention that at all, or is it more reasonable to let the network machine give its image of busy rustling gears? If so, and it is so, then for what reasons? What would mean to introduce into the field, by translation, and then to be, a ‘minor writer’, i.e. not to be a writer from other writers? Does by translating, in fact, a foreign language in the mother tongue is being formed and in what way? What does it mean to translate in that case? To translate concepts/notions rather than words? Not to forget the goal of this work which is not consonance of the original and its translation. To locate why some place is a place of im-possible production. To translate and introduce the practice, whose poet/writer/theorist knows that he is simultaneously (its) the gears, the mechanic, the operator, and the victim, and from there to enter into one prescriptive, which always means not only description of the situation, but also a decision, break, jump; break, jump, decision. The practice of translation as a micro-politics: a practical-conceptual and theoretical-conceptual practice.
Located on a rocker(s) between theoretical, scientific (analytical) discourse and subjectivity in politics, political-theoretically we would insist on “questioning of production relations”, when it comes to any kind of production – material, theoretical, artistic, of translating, i.e., on “questioning of our own practice”. To insist on the analytical autonomy of instances, to move-apart of any impact, occupation, from the inside and out. So we would say, when it comes to the artistic production, groping the borders of our own thoughts, that: what provides a break from the political norm in the field of politics is a politics of the artist that recognizes his/hers own relations of production and opposes it to the politics which is localized in the artistic field, which supports that relation. First of all, by opposing the political of the state, which was by its function of reproduction in terms of being a carrier of ideological and repressive apparatus, present in all relations of production in which arts as a practice is being realized too. It is a political break with the political norms in art through the break with the artistic norms which are supported by that political system. Etc. etc. Why insist on the (analytical) autonomy of instances? Insisting on, the necessity of, the autonomy of art so there would no longer be art as an institutionalized and separated practice. For the abolition of the division of labour, here and now.
Analysis of the field and theoretical insight is one and the same, but could they break specific production relations and change a given situation? More specifically, the question of place of politics is being posed. We’ve already had to take a step further and say that politics, political practice, one that is opposed to the politics of the state, must belong to the order of thinking. Below that one we can go no further. But then what about theoretical class analysis? Do we leave it to the science, science that neither no longer dwells at the university nor in research institutions, while at the same time its epigones flow into alternative fields of theoretical production? That is where we start from when we say that questioning our own production relations is a condition and a limit of that very production. We are locating ourselves on, so to speak, the border between thinking of theoretical class analysis and the production of nondialectized subjectivity, weighing affectivity – its harnessing and its emancipatory potential.
Then, is it not that ‘questioning of our own production,’ dictates a consciousness about conditions of that production (class consciousness), a ‘thinking of the real’ and circulation of scientific and political concepts ([vanishing] class [extinction of] the state, as concepts of political consciousness)? On the one hand, there is the objective consciousness as a product of the material conditions of production. That is the false consciousness that is truthful consciousness of one false movement. Consciousness of the apparent objective movement recorded at the enchanted surface. On the other hand, there is consciousness that belongs to the order of the subjective as a view of the world, at best, as a consciousness that reveals antagonism of the reality, by confining political and prescriptive space. But that subjective space of consciousness has its object-allies: consciousness specifies and circumscribed by the class objects; consciousness which leads to the party in politics and to the state in history. Consciousness as desubjectivizing-objective-objectality. The problem is that of “about” in the consciousness of something, by which the relation of subjective and objective; of thought and its object, is still not left behind; while political consciousness makes no space for thinking of politics and to politics as thinking.
We’ve heard about taking control over the reproduction of the labour force, through the care for the public services, through unions, through changing of laws by renewing them, through the state. But, the state cannot be a sphere in which politics in interiority is realized. If this is the case, emphasizing the taking control over, then we have reproduction of reproduction – doubling, and not repeating. Scientific extracurricular discourse, and not thoughtability of thinking. What is then left? ‘Taking control’ over the ‘production of subjectivity’, digging deep into affectivity/affects? The starting point would be: Politics in the order of thinking. And what about affectivity, whether it belongs to the modality of thinking?
A hiding/tannery that awaits those who are bringing their own skin into the market, going skittishly, resisting, unlike significantly smiled capitalists, which the first one follow. Behind them there is none? Strike, union, and then those who advocate taking over of control, who with their litanies capture a proletariat into identity-determinations, overdetermining them by their own ideology; propagate their own subjectification into proletariat (by this, the concept of comradeship is being discharged, lost in importance, because its only realization – is colloquial utilization) and make the workers, those people, the masters of the world … and yet they are wrong. Behind them are already flushing secretaries, clerks, professional politicians, all modern sultans for whom they pave the way to power. Often those who are realizing the description of the labour issues are those that the way is being paved for. A conveyor-belt of social mobility and maturation. Into? Institutions, holders of defensive self-preservation of individual and instigators of passion for the function. Such descriptions of real social situations/relations belongs to the domain of representations, and not in the destruction of the structure which requires deliberate lack of descriptive social criticism. And prescription. How to break the petrified and hardening image of oneself?
The intellectual work of the keepers-of-secret-of-knowledge assaults manual labour and simultaneously dominates both the intellectual and manual labour by building political and ideological structure of production relations. As the pair productive/non-productive labour can not be reduced to the division of intellectual/manual labour because they are operating on a different plane, so expropriation of the means of production is not an equivalent to dispossession of knowledge. labour of disjunction. And vice versa. Synthesis. Tight-synthesis-of-disjunction. ‘Dirty hands’ and ‘clean hands’ – does that really have nothing to do with the division of intellectual and manual labour. ‘Sterile hands’ and the head disturbed with ‘the secret of knowledge’ which reproduces ideological relations and subordinates by control and supervision. All this is called the ‘politicization’ of key issues. And then everyone are being double recuperated – the self is being recuperated by non-questioning of their own production relations and historical subject of struggles is being objectified/ objectalized by the desire to join the total production worker. Knowledge that is intellectualizing, that serves the separation by dispossession. Knowledge that renders intellectual and manual labour, dispossesses, disjoins by educating and paternalizing. Knowledge that forces us to ‘talk nice’ and to respond to the polis; knowledge that forces us to ‘write respectably and reverently’ and to respond to the academy. What if we would say that there is no single thing there to know in order to demand equality?
Expropriation of knowledge and reproduction of domination-subordination. We would like a non-knowledge, apart from the competitive knowledge at the left, and that knowledge produces competitive isolation of connectivity and like-ing; delirium of desire to belong and fear of (self-) isolation. What kind of knowledge is that which does not contain its own critique? Knowledge which is subdued to political and ideological conditions of its constitution, so that those conditions are again and again reproduced, without reaching the limit of those conditions which then is being broken through. Limit of analysis and theory of politics? Maybe. But certainly the limit of competitive mastering over concepts and of limiting thoughts by endless accumulation of concepts; suspension of affectivity as a form of thinking. We didn’t feel emancipated by knowledge of our condition: workers enquiries and empirical litanies of oppression made us more worried; a worried that made us depressed. Simply or extremely complicated, there should not be change in what we think, but the way we look at our thinking. Thinking of thinking. We refer to the terrible pressure on the flow of thought that [must be] thought.
What is this ‘organization’ that does not contain in itself its own critique? ‘Organization’ which is subdued to political and ideological conditions of its constitution, so that those conditions are again and again reproduced, without reaching the limit of those conditions which then is being broken through. Groupusqul, ourganization certainly not. An organization that we are interested in does not deal with ‘the question of the organization’ in that as it is focused on those practices that are committed to the relation-between and which go beyond the hardening of individual identity. ‘Organization’ as super-ego and the place of pseudo-collectivity. There was always something bigger than the group and its works, something wider and more ventilated than the individual possession of knowledge. Something about a group that is away from entrepreneurship; from practice based on goals and of achieving them; from responding to the invitations coming from polis, academia, instituted-logical-knowledge; from ideology dictated this- or that-high monthly income, or lack of the same; from the inner (moral) discipline/ironing. But, something about a group that is approaching to affectivity as what immediately precedes any differentiation (inside and outside [by surplus value, by subsumption-production of the subject by capital]).
And so we come to the form. Of writing. Of uttering. In an academic environment which is marked by the siege over alternative political, theoretical and practical organization. Subsumption of alternative scene and taking over of academic patterns – with its production relations and form of the writing. Academic form of text/lecture becomes accepted and common, and also, and in that way, from the extra-academic field there is coming contribution of reproduction of the overall system. Scientism which formulates the situation (and not that possible) – etatistic discourse. Then it all dilutes in the newspaper articles. To be understandable – to whom? To be understandable in theoretical production which requires referral patterns, understanding and abandoning the previous theoretical work, and then saturation is not possible, rather only an admission of defeat and anti-production of indisposition. What does it mean to break with this form? ‘Affective’ writing, returning to his old texts that are not regarded as outdated (as opposed to their abandonment); writing poetry without formality, poetry of self-exiled and banished; vibration of intensities of the language. Affectivity of affectivity. This is not doubling but repetition. Affectivity in interiority. The autonomy of affect.