Homage to great wanderers & restless minds

"Only those thoughts that come when you are walking have any value” (Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols)

”Not to find one’s way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance – nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city – as one loses oneself in a forest – that calls for quite a different schooling. Then, signboards and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest, like the startling call of a bittern in the distance, like the sudden stillness of a clearing with a lily standing erect at its centre. Paris taught me this art of straying...” (Benjamin, One-Way Street)

"In middle age Bob became increasingly eccentric. He dressed strangely, often slept with his clothes on and started to wander around on the streets all alone. He liked to explore socially backward parts of the city, especially ethnic areas where he wouldn't necessarily be recognized. He also prowled around in the wealthy areas of Los Angeles not far from where he was living. One day when Ted Perlman came back home to his house in San Fernando Valley he caught sight of what he thought was a bum sitting on the pavement. Perlman was about to ask him to leave when he realized it was Bob. 'I thought I should drop by and see you and Peggi.’ 'How long have you been sitting here?' Perlman asked. 'An hour and a half maybe. I've been looking around at the area', Bob replied" (Howard Sounes' Dylan biography)

“The world must be known through the legs and the genitals. Friends and lovers are the best media for learning about the world, something money cannot buy. It’s something you create with your lower half.” (Shimada Masahiko)

“It’s good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.” (Anatole France)


Here's to Cisco an' Sonny an' Leadbelly too,
An' to all the good people that traveled with you.
Walter Benjamin, Bob Dylan, Robert Musil, James Joyce, Murakami Haruki, Louis Aragon, Guy Debord, Charles Baudelaire, Jack Kerouac, Rimbaud, Socrates, and Chaplin.
The wanderer as media, the isôrô artist, the marebito, the outsider, the visiting stranger, the disappearing holy man. Yes, here's to your hearts and hands...
All ye who come with the dust and are gone with the wind.

Credits to the owners of the images & thanx to Eva (from whose refrigerator door I stole one of the quotations). And apologies to all you other great wonders & wanderers. I’m sorry for only mentioning celebrities. My homage goes via them to you.

War or commons: Part 1

The mental no-man’s-land

To me, a no-man’s-land is not simply a place. Above all, it is a wellspring. Something takes place there, something which doesn’t happen anywhere else. It’s a place “outside” our quotidian, ordered life – life as ordered by the system of statuses and institutionalized relations. It’s the peace where creation takes place, or, in other words, where we find the peace to create.

Consider this again: it’s where we find the peace to create. This means that to a certain extent, the no-man’s-land is a mental operation. Imagine that you’re drawing a sketch. You shut out daily concerns and focus on what appears. What we shut out or "bracket" is daily business – our appointments and wallets, and the entire ordering of the world in terms of status, identity, or friends and foes that tends to occupy so much of our thinking in everyday life, but which now falls away as something irrelevant.

Let us imagine a person who is able to look at the world with the eyes of a sketcher not just for a limited period of time, but constantly. Such a person is a permanent inhabitant of the no-man’s-land. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to call such a person a saint.

A no-man’s-land is also where we return to recover. It is sleep, death, and rebirth.

A friend of mine once called café conversations a pause or break in social life. I’m not sure this holds for all café conversations, but it certainly does for some. In those, the face and gestures of the person you are talking to, the acquaintances that suddenly arrive, everything including every single little stain of coffee takes on something of the peace of a no-man’s-land.


The spatial no-man’s land

Visiting no-man’s-land usually also involves a physical or spatial movement. The reason is that space – at least social space – tends to privilege certain ways of perception. A super market privileges the vantage point of the consumer (or seller if we are employees), a school that of a pupil or teacher, and so on. A no-man’s-land, by contrast, is a place that doesn’t privilege any particular vantage point over any others. It is pristine in the sense that no particular use or function has been decided for it – perhaps because it’s too barren, distant or inaccessible, or because it has lost its earlier function. In short, it is a place that has escaped social definition. It’s Chuang-tzu’s tree, too big and crooked to be useful.

This, I think, is also why it offers peace – the peace that allows you to feel that rare breeze that only blows there and nowhere else.

Let me return to an example I mentioned in my previous post. Renamed Nike Park and with an entrance fee, Miyashita Park will turn into a space that privileges the vantage point of the consumer, into a consumer’s land that will be part and parcel of the rest of Shibuya rather than desolate but tolerant no-man’s land (akichi, as Ogawa Tetsuo calls it) it has been until now.

Or take the example of university researchers whose creativity evaporates as soon as they arrive at their work-place. The more employees are subordinated to social definitions casting them into certain roles, the less will they be able to feel the breeze of no-man’s-land. Markets and universities are both examples of institutions and needless to say institutions tend to imprison us in parts of ourselves. The name we give that part is role, status, occupation, or – most insidious of all – identity.

The aesthetics of blankness and emptiness in some squathouses has much to do, I suspect, with the preference for spaces lacking social definition. Describing some New York squathouses, David Graeber points out that in many rooms

...everything is empty functionality: empty rooms with often black walls, full of very large objects that are dangerous to move around – booms, trestles, machinery – or, in other rooms, white rooms containing nothing at all. It is radically different than offices, or domestic spaces, where everything is essentially created for comfort or convenience or efficiency. Such spaces already suggest their use to you. These kind don’t. (Graeber 2009:276).

Suggesting that this might indeed be the architecture most attuned to autonomy, he adds: "Everything is what you make of it” (ibid). He also writes that many of these places remind him of construction sites, places that seem only half finished, and that as yet have not been assigned any place in the spectacle. Often they are located in ”the grimiest, most unlovely places”: warehouses, loft apartments over workshops, places that look half like a factory half like a stage set – ”all these are things you’re not normally supposed to remember even exist” (ibid 279).

It's a mistake to believe that society is nothing but institutions. There are plenty of spaces whithout institutions, places that seem by-passed by social definitions and where identities too crumble. I'm not just talking about deserts or squathouses.  I'm talking about the undiscovered Northwest Passages of the city that Debord was looking for during his dérives. I'm talking about "thomassons" (explanation here). I'm talking about alleyways and rooftops, about forgotten nooks and crannies.

And let's not forget that places can be robbed of their social definitions, détourned, turned into completely different things. For sheer pleasure, let me quote Vaneigem:

One evening, as night fell, my friends and I wandered into the Palais de Justice in Brussels. The building is a monstrosity, crushing the poor quarters beneath it and standing guard over the fashionable Avenue Louise – out of which, some day, we will make a breathtakingly beautiful wasteland. As we drifted through the labyrinth of corridors, staircases and suite after suite of rooms, we discussed what could be done to make the place habitable; for a time we occupied the enemy’s territory; through the power of our imagination we transformed the thieves’ den into a fantastic funfair, into a sunny pleasure dome, where the most amazing adventures would, for the first time, be really lived. (Vaneigem 2001:264)

The social no-man’s-land

I’ve mentioned the mental and spatial aspects of the no-man’s-land. A third important aspect is the social. Even a no-man’s-land is inherently social. It may have escaped social definition, but it is still a field for human relations. Of course, somewhere it might still be possible to find a no-man’s-land completely empty of other people – like a desert or an old forgotten ruin, or like the island Robinson Crusoe arrived at. But if you found your way there, others will too. It may function as a hideout for a while, but hardly for long. People live in deserts too, eyes are spying at you in the ruin, and Crusoe will never cease finding traces of feet in the sand. So a no-man’s-land will generally also be a social space. And here we arrive at what I, as I sociologist, find most interesting about no-man’s-land.

What do human relations look like when things are for free, in a “commons”? Is it possible to keep the no-man’s-land open, as a kind of “everyman’s land”, and, if so, how? Or will it turn into a battle-field, an arena of a war of all against all, the result of which will be its transformation into “somebody’s land” or – in analogy with what Hobbes says about the state – into public or state-owned land?

Sure, I know. Difficult questions.


Dominium and usus

The first problem we should look into is of course if what we think is empty land is really empty. When the Japanese authorities opened up the land of the Ainu (present-day Hokkaido) for settlement in 1869, they assumed that the land was an un-occupied “terra nullius” which they sold off to Japanese settlers as private property. The Ainu were stripped of the mountains, rivers and forests which they had used for fishing and hunting for ages. Likewise, the frontier regions of America or Lapland were seen as no-man’s-land despite the presence of Native Americans and Same people who used the land for their living. The fact that native populations were using the land was seen as irrelevant to the question of ownership or property.

To the use the terms of medieval jurisprudence, usus or the actual manipulation or consumption of the land, was separated from dominium, or the rights of ownership. This is noteworthy, since – at least as far as I know – usus and dominium have usually both been considered valid aspects of any claim to control of property in Western legal thinking. Although I’ll have to look into it further, the absolute privileging of dominium over usus probably only comes with the predominance of capitalism in European economies after the end of the Middle Ages.

When Nike buys the naming rights of Miyashita Park and decides to charge an entrance fee it is acting much like the old colonial settlers – totally disregarding the question of usus, or the actual use of the park by the homeless, movement activists and others citizens, and defending itself by referring to the agreement with the ward concerning dominium, the formal rights of property. Nike is of course not alone. The privatization of the common is already a neoliberal specialty, its hat trick for magically producing profit. Referring to David Harvey, Hardt & Negri describe this with the nice term “accumulation by dispossession”: “a form of appropriation that involves not primarily the generation of wealth but rather taking possession of existing wealth, usually from the poor or the public sector, through legal or illegal means, and most often in situations where the limits of legality are unclear” (Hardt & Negri 2009:231).

But we shouldn’t forget that evil multinationals aren’t the only ones guilty of this operation. “This land is your land, this land is my land” – Woody Guthrie’s song would have been wonderful if only the land of plenty which he sang about had really been virgin land. As it is, it’s the only one of his songs I feel uncomfortable with.

Whenever we discover a piece of no-man’s-land we must ask ourselves who else might also be using the land, even if that person or those people don’t stand as its formal owner. In other words, the important question is not only that of dominium, but also that of usus. Are there homeless people or squatters we are driving away by our activities? The decision in 2007 to hold an art exhibition under the R246 overpass in Tokyo that lead to the eviction of the homeless who were living there is a case in point (info in Japanese here). We shouldn’t forget nature either. Animals and plants, rivers and mountains have rights.

This is all the more important in cases of squatting or other forms of inhabiting no-man’s-land. Squatters generally make a point of rejecting the notion that somebody’s dominium or formal ownership of a property prevents others from using it. As long as a property is not used, it is considered free and open, regardless of dominium. If capitalism is a system that tries to base an entire economy on dominium, or the right over the exchange value of goods, squatters can be seen as a movement that tries to achieve the very opposite: an economy based wholly on usus, or use-value. Capitalism wants to own, caring little for use. Squatters want to use, even though they know that others own.

This, however, only makes it all the more imperative for squatters to settle the question of how to regulate or share the use of the occupied land or building fairly. How, for instance, will it deal with newcomers or others who want to join in? In the name of what right does it become possible for inhabitants to say “mine” or “yours”? If new rights are established on the basis of use, how do we prevent these rights from replicating the form of dominium? Or if we choose to regard all of the occupied space as a common, how to we regulate its use, how do we share the burdens, and so on?

Sure, the problem of sharing probably only emerges in acute form when there is competition about scarce resources. In Schlaraffenland, perhaps it would no longer be any point in insisting on dominium. As I’ve stated earlier, much of what constitutes the common or “no-man’s-land” is abundant – things like air, sunshine, language and information – or else so little in demand that there isn't much competition about it. But can we really live on air, information and leftovers alone?

By the way, as far as I know medieval legal thought doesn’t offer any clues to the problem of how to share scarce goods. The Pope Gregory IV declared that the Franciscans, being a mendicant order with poverty as central value, should retain usus but renounce every kind dominium. In reality, however, the things used by the order were not limited to the bare necessities, but included vast possessions over which the order retained dominium-like control in the name of usus. Later Gandhi echoed the pope when he explained that the teaching of nonpossession meant that those who desired salvation “should act like the trustee, who, though having control over great possessions, regards not a iota of them as his own” (See Turner 2007: 151, 198). Like the famous Stoic maxim “habere ut non” – “Have as if you did not have” – these ideas functioned as moral injunctions to people who were more or less secure in their possessions that they should be humble and not take their possession for granted. They say nothing about actually sharing their wealth with others or about what form such sharing should take. Where desire as such is denied, like in Stoicism or monastic orders, the problem of the competition for scarce goods can be circumvented, but the problem of how actual sharing should be done remains.

(To be continued)

Public space and no-man’s-land

The riverbank

I’ve always liked the Kamo River – walking along it, sitting down and reading a book on the riverbank, listening to the sound of its water. It’s a place for lovable eccentricities. Today I passed by an elderly man reciting some kind of incantation as if practicing for some ritual, or perhaps he did it just for fun. Once I heard a man practicing a Nô recital. Young men and women playing or practicing musical instruments can be seen and heard almost daily. In the summers children play in the water. There are performers and people doing gymnastics. Demonstrators often gather on the river bank. As it gets dark, the lovers come. And of course this is where the homeless live. For some reason the riverbed has become associated in my mind with the Ganges and I wonder if the expression “the ghats of Kyoto” wouldn’t be an apt description to describe the riverbank.

One reason I like the place is its character of no-man’s-land. By no-man’s-land I mean something different from a public space. We are apt to think of public spaces as free and open, but that is often far from the case. Let me illustrate. Whenever we venture out into the public, we often feel that we need to dress up. We need to shave, or put on make-up. The public requires us to behave in a certain manner. The riverbank, by contrast, is a place where formal dress feels out of place. Here we can behave casually, button up, and relax. Despite the eccentricities, the riverbed is a quotidian place, a place for eating one’s lunch box, for jogging or walking a dog. There is a sense of freedom here that stems from the fact that the riverbed, although not private, nevertheless doesn’t qualify as public either. What distinguishes the no-man’s-land is that it is not claimed by anybody, although it can of course formally be somebody’s property. It is a deserted land, a wasteland. Figuratively, the desert can be seen as the quintessential no-man’s-land. What I am trying to get at is rather close to the Japanese akichi which means “empty lot”, “unused or uninhabited land”, but which literally means open land.

The no-man’s-land is free and open since no one wants to claim it. Waste and garbage, things that are free to pick up for anyone who feels like it, belong to the world of no-man’s-land. Huge chunks of the Internet are a no-man’s-land, materials free to use for anyone. Everything than can be freely shared belongs to no-man’s-land. Children are the natural inhabitants of no-man’s-land. Anyone can address a child, because the law that strangers shouldn’t be addressed doesn’t apply to them. No-man’s-land is the “commons”, the riches of nature and society that are there for anyone to enjoy. In general, it is what is free, what is abundant and in free supply, or so worthless that no one wants it: the leftovers.


Wastelands and parks

Sure, the riverbank too is regulated, controlled, and under “public” care. There are imposing signs along the Kamo declaring it a “beautification enforcement area”. The lawns are mowed, the road is paved for much of the stretch near the city center, and fireworks have recently been forbidden. Worse: fences have been erected under some bridges to prevent the homeless from setting up tents or cardboard houses. I admit that the riverbanks are far from a perfect example of a no-man’s-land, but they nevertheless, I feel, possess enough of that quality to give us an idea of what a no-man’s-land might be like and how it differs from quintessential public spaces like parks and squares.

Squares are rare in Japan. Parks are more common. I truly appreciate all parks. Parks can be wonderful if you need a rest from the frenzy of comsumtion going on alongs the streets or in the malls. Anywhere a child can run freely is a good place. But it's a mistake to believe that parks are the quintessence of a free and open place. Regulations exist everywhere. Some of the more monumental or famous parks – like Yoyogi Park in Tokyo or Maruyama Park in Kyoto – have a showcase quality which tends to make people control themselves in spite of themselves. Simply being there entails a feeling of being restricted that stems from being in the “public eye”. Neighborhood parks may have a more casual atmosphere by virtue of being somewhat “out of the public eye”, but are often small and a bit cramped (space often being dominated by facilities such as playgrounds or small baseball arenas). Still these parks are a haven compared to places like Tennôji Park in Osaka, in which the ostensible defense of the public has totally destroyed the public character of the park itself, which has been turned into little but a system of fortifications to shut out the homeless, charging entrance fees and surrounding the park with high walls, taking care in the process not to leave any space for tents next to the wall. As these examples demonstrate, the fact that a space is public does not mean that it is open or free from control. Far from it. It means that it is under public administration (public usually meaning local or municipal authorities), something which is not at all incompatible with tight control. ”Even public property is defined by the right to exclude – and by the monopolity right of use. The difference is that this right is held by the state, and the monopoly is often... defined as ’the people’” (Don Mitchell & Lynn Staeheli, "Clean and Safe? Property Redevelopment, Public Space, and Homelessness in Downtown San Diego”, in S. Low & N. Smith, eds., The Politics of Public Space, Routledge, 2006, p. 149).

In writing about akichi and parks, I am inspired by a short essay by Ogawa Tetsuo, a painter living in the “tent village” of Yoyogi Park. Ogawa is one of the leading voices protesting against the “Nike-fication” of Miyashita Park in Shibuya. Nike-fication refers to the fact that the naming rights to the park have been bought by Nike. Renamed Nike Park, the new park will charge an entrance fee from visitors and the homeless who live there will be evicted. As Ogawa writes in his essay, Shibuya Ward defends its decision to sell the naming rights by claiming that the park is not used today. For instance, no kids can be seen at the playing ground. What’s interesting with Ogawa’s article is that he doesn’t defend the park by invoking the usual and quite reasonable arguments that its role as a “public garden” (the literal translation of kôen, the Japanese word for park) will be damaged by charging fees and evicting homeless, that the project amounts to opening the park only for “consumers” rather than “citizens” (and this in Shibuya of all places, which is already thoroughly commercialized), or by pointing out that it obviously wrong to claim that it is not in use today – it is often used, for instance, as the point of departure of street demonstrations. Instead he states that the reason he likes Miyashita Park “is that it is more like a wasteland [akichi] than a park”. He prefers it to be a wasteland than a park, pointing out that the character “kô” in the word kôen has strong connotations of public authority. It’s only because it has remained a wasteland so long that the homeless have been able to build their huts there. “I happen to like Miyashita Park being just like that”, Ogawa writes, adding that he things that “culture and art are born out of wastelands” (Ogawa Tetsuo 2009). While this advocacy of wastelands may seem a bit puzzling to readers at first glance, the pieces fall into place, I think, the moment we that his ideal is not that of a public space but that of no-man's-land.


Outcastes, outskirts, and water

There is one more important difference between public spaces and no-man’s-lands. Quintessential examples of the former – such as parks or squares – are often embedded in the midst of the city. Furthermore, they are officially recognized, part of the official maps, objects that very much bask in the “public eye”, being fully integrated and at home in official discourse. No-man’s-lands, by contrast, are often passed by in silence. Often they are located at the city’s margins and they are seldom given official recognition.

I think a useful comparison can be made here with the outcaste (eta / hinin) villages of the Edo Period, which were unmarked on official maps. A pattern exists in old Japanese cities whereby things and activities considered unclean or polluting were relegated to the outskirts. Thus Edo relegated its theatres and brothels (the famous Yoshiwara) to its north-eastern outskirts, where they shared space with the crematorium in Nippori and the execution grounds of Kozukappara. They also shared space with the great temple Sensôji in Asakusa (Hur 2000). The history of how Buddhism was involved in purifications and protection against pollution is long and complex and I won’t go into it here, but a fascinating tendency needs to be pointed out whereby Buddhism, far from merely protecting against pollution as its other, actually itself took on part of the quality of pollution. We can see this in the fact that hinin [non-human], a term later adopted for the so-called outcastes, was also used in a wider sense in which it included wandering monks in medieval times. Here we shouldn’t forget that it was only rather late in history – probably in the Edo period – that pollution (kegare) took on a one-sidedly negative meaning as something to be shunned and despised. For much of its earlier history, as the historian Amino Yoshihiko points out, so-called pollution was also considered a source of superhuman power, a quality close to holiness, and therefore something to be respected and awed. Thus the medieval “outcastes” were often affiliated with temples, serving as temple guards or local policemen, calling themselves “servants of the Gods and Buddhas” and sometimes led festival processions and purification rites (Amino 2001).

The literary historian Maeda Ai uses the expression “the Edo of water” in discussing the north-eastern outskirts of Edo with its closeness to rivers, the sea and the marshlands. I think it is not quite a coincidence that we encounter riverbanks here again. There was a clear connection between rivers and outcastes, as can be seen in the expression kawaramono, the people of the riverbanks, which was an old word used for the outcastes. The origin appears to be that many daimyô (feudal lords) enticed outcastes who were engaged in the leather trade – a craft that was in great demand to supply the needs of the military – to settle in their castle-towns by granting them tax-free land. Often they had to settle outside the town proper on dry riverbeds, which was considered a natural work environment for skinners and tanners since they needed water for their craft. Not all riverbank dwellers were leather workers. On the riverbanks they would intermingle with other marginalized groups such as religious mendicants, beggars, lepers and entertainers (Anderson 2000:33f).

This proves that it was not necessarily practical circumstances that had to do with leather trade that attracted them to the river. Another reason was probably that riverbanks were a comparatively free and unregulated area. The changing and unstable nature of riverbanks - which would shift each time water levels rose or fell or the river changed its course - ensured that they would remain a man's-land outside the boundaries of property.

In Kyoto too, the outcastes often settled along on river banks. Interestingly, the very first mention of a settlement of outcastes in Japanese sources (the Engishiki from 927) speak of them as living along the triangular riverbank just south of the Shimogamo Shrine, where the Takano river joins the Kamo, many of them taking the guise of monks (rôsô, later to be known as hinin) in order to escape taxes and other duties. Later a big settlement known as Amabe would appear on the Kamo riverbank near Shijô. Mentioned for the first time in 1196, it was in existence until the late 16th century when it was ordered to relocate by Hideyoshi. In sources we can again see that the inhabitants of the river beds engaged in a variety of crafts, such as selling food or catching birds (Yamamoto 2009:97f, Uesugi 1997:192f, Uesugi 2000:47ff).

Reading descriptions of these riverbed settlements, I can’t help recalling the motley scenes of the Kamo riverbed nowadays, especially near the city centre where a variety of performers use the riverbank as their stage. Take for instance this participant report after the “skirt demonstration” in Kyoto on the 19th of September last year.

After the demonstration we had a party at the Kamo riverbank. As visitors to Kyoto know, this riverbank is a favorite gathering place for young people and many other parties were also going on. The Amateur Riot’s [Shirôto no ran] street parties are much talked about today, but in Kyoto I’d like to stress that it’s part of the everyday to have parties on the Kamo riverbank. Unrelated to us, there were also guitarists practicing there, and if you listened you could hear that their level was pretty high… (Seki 2008)

In general, the freedom enjoyed by outcaste groups at medieval times seems to have been considerably greater than it would later be during the Edo period, and at this time they could still move around with relative freedom, change occupations and marry people of other social groups. We can also note that religion played an important role in undergirding the sense of freedom from surrounding society offered by the riverbanks where the outcastes lived. According to Amino, riverbanks were considered to be a place of muen, or no-relation, meaning that as you entered them you left behind all secular ties, including the hierarchies and the status system of the surrounding society. This quality of muen was linked not only to riverbanks, but also to cross-roads, mountains and trees, all of which were considered a form of “limen” or “threshold” mediating between different worlds. Muen was seen as a property of Buddhist temples, as could be seen in the fact that temples and monasteries could function as an asylum in medieval times for people escaping the law. Most famously, we see the quality of muen at work in the so-called enkiri-dera (temples for breaking off relations) where until modern times women escaping their husbands could find a sanctuary and a get a divorce if they managed to reach the temple precincts (Amino 1996).


Nature and the limits of the city

Parks are fully integrated in the cities, while no-man’s-lands exist on the margins. What’s wonderful with the river, is that it exists as a margin or a "limen" in the very midst of the city, as a place where the more or less homogeneous city surface suddenly ends, yielding up unexpectedly to a very different world. The margin, and the limits of the city’s power, are literally palpable. Descending from the noisy streets to the riverbank, you suddenly feel isolated from the rest of the city as if by an invisible wall. It is quiet, almost rural. The traffic noise has almost died away and instead your ears fill with the beautiful sound of running water. Sure, the lawns are cut, but along the water is a big stretch of wild uncut grass. The river itself is dotted with islands of unkempt vegetation. There are unexpectedly many birds: white herons standing in the water or circling above it are common, as are ducks of various kinds, kites, crows and other birds. Under the bridges are bats. Fishes can be clearly seen in the water. Signs along the way warn the pedestrians about snakes in the grass. Above all, the power of nature can be felt in the construction of the riverbank itself, which is designed as a bulwark against floodings (the Kamo regularly caused deaths by floodings even into the 1970s, Yamamoto 2009:46). Clearly, there are dangers here – something that’s not yet been totally domesticated and pacified. Looking at children bathing in the water or elderly men fishing along the shores something of the blessings that the river brings can also be felt, although these blessings must have been much more important in pre-modern times. These blessings included not just fish and water, but also the social blessing of traffic and transport. Thinking of the lively traffic of boats that must have existed here once, I am reminded again of the role of rivers as thresholds, as introducers of the other, as gateways to strange things and commodities and tidings. And the riverbanks were the places where the boats would land, and they were places for farewells too. What a difference to those domesticated parks that are safely ensconced in the middle - especially those that surround themselves by walls and shut out the disliked other!


The strange love of riverbeds

What strange attraction is it that makes the “incompetent man” (munô no hito) in Tsuge Yoshiharu’s manga with the same name spend his days at a dry riverdbed, collecting stones which he fruitlessly tries to sell to passers-by? This manga is remarkable for the helplessness and weakness of its protagonist, who dreams of success but has lost all self-respect and basically knows that he will fail whatever he does. He has a wife and a child, and in their eyes he is a worthless good-for-nothing unable to feed the family. What makes him drawn to the water? Is he a modern outcaste? Is he perhaps a ghost of Sai no kawara, the riverbank of Hell, where according to Buddhist scriptures children fruitlessly pile up towers of stones while demons constantly knock them over? Yes, perhaps a ghost – because surely the ghost is a standard literary stand-in for a traumatized person. If so, is he waiting for that magical dialectical moment when whatever traumas he is burdened with will loosen their grip and – as Sawaragi Noi prophesizes in a discussion of this manga in relation to the Shinjuku Riots in 1968 (Sawaragi 2005:191) – the stone he has picked up will turn into a stone thrown at the police? (Does this sound abrupt? Well, maybe it is. But let me add, just in passing, that at least one participant of the Shinjuku Riots describes the place of the riots as muen: "That day, that place, for a moment, became a kind of place for muen or asylum" (Kubo 2009:39). Amino himself suggests that muen may have been an important inspiration for egalitarianism of the late medieval uprisings and popular leagues (ikki).)

No-one can count on dialectics, least of all – I guess – a traumatized person. But still, it is possible to find in literature an unmistakable longing, even adoration, for no-man’s-lands. Murakami Haruki’s predilection for empty, deserted houses (akiya) is well known. Surely, there is a longing for the desert. Surely, there is relief in nothingness. Surely, we all secretly long for a place, sometimes, away from all advertisements, all TV programs, all mobile phones, all cars, all watches, all wallets.

But sometimes the dialectics works. Dear reader, what better day than today to walk out into the city without your wallet, without your watch, and of course without your mobile phone? Experience your helplessness, your feeling of irrelevance to the machine, feel like air. And then, perhaps, suddenly you will see things you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. Things beyond the advertisements, price tags, and brands which no longer mean anything to you. You begin to hear and feel not the spectacle, but the common, the things that are free or unwanted. The sun, the air, the pebbles, the dust, the sounds of humming machines and clattering heels, all these strange wonderful faces that would have deserved to become portraits and these unforgettable voices that assail you from all sides, soft like silver. The smell of the morning light! The brilliance of dirt! You are ready to live.


How to defend a no-man's-land

The no-man's-land is part of the commons. The commons – as Hardt and Negri point out in their new book – is not just the wealth of the material world of nature, the air, the sunshine, water and fruits. It is also something social, all those things such as language and knowledge that constitute the shared presuppositions for social interaction. Interestingly, the latter form of commons, the “artificial commons”, envelops us as a new form of nature, most of all perhaps in the big city. It is a wasteland – the negative “externalities” of the market such as pollution, noise, dangerous neighborhoods or shocking encounters. But it is also a positive, generating force which we all draw on whenever we think, talk or try to be creative – languages, images, habits, stimulating atmosphere and closeness to friends. Unlike the oppressive and reified “second nature” so lamented by Lukács, this is not a mute, immobile nature against which we feel powerless. It is productive and nourishing, like real nature. It is not a nature that just exists like fate, seemingly independently of us. We can produce it – the words, the shareware, the messages, the music, the entire “commons” – and the marvelous thing is that it will still feel like nature. And it gives us relief, at least as long as it is commons and can be shared for free. And when capital expropriates it, we are not defenseless, because we can produce it anew, a new common.

Hardt and Negri warn us, however, that the negative aspects of the commons are overwhelming. The majority of spontaneous encounters with others in a metropolis are conflictive and destructive. If we react by withdrawing, closing off contact, and walking silently by, then we close ourselves off from the common as well. Shocks can come in many guises: conflicts can always occur, sometimes in the guise of strifes about space, sometimes they stem from capitalism's attempts to expropriate the fruits of its creativity, through patents and copyrights and other new enclosures. In the face of this risk of a “degeneration” of the commons, Hardt and Negri can only, rather tamely, urge us to remain open and try to maintain joy. The problem what we can really do about the shocks that make us withdraw from this shared nature remains. If it is so vulnerable, is it not bound after all to suffer the fate of constant destruction, like the “aura” described by Benjamin? How can we counteract that?

The difficulties of maintaining a no-man's-land are illustrated in an essay by Ogawa Kyôhei (1997), who together with a few friends opened a squat house called Kinji House in an empty building at Kyoto University for a few months in 1995. Reading material about this “experiment in many small loves”, as one participant put it, I can sense the strong excitement and curiosity among participants for “what will become of it”, that liminal feeling that things have suddenly become possible. Participants are there, part of it, yet things are already so big and developing so fast that no one knows what will become of it all (Bzw, I think a good maxim for life would be: Always let yourself be drawn to such places!). At the same time, Ogawa’s article is sadly honest about the outcome of the experiment. “Kinji aimed at becoming a square [hiroba] but failed and ended up as a wasteland [akichi]”, he quotes one of the participants. Part of the failure, according to this view, would be the failure to produce a genuine "public" (which I take "square" to refer to). Although I lack any personal experience of Kinji, I wonder if producing a wasteland really must be considered a bad thing. By opening up the empty building, they turned it into a commons, and whatever it was that caught their imagination, it happened in that common, it sprang from that commons, in a house which they had turned into a no-man’s-land. It may be unintended, but Ogawa Tetsuo’s words that “culture and art are born out of wastelands” almost sound like an attempt to console and give proper praise to the participants in this formless evanescent thing called Kinji.

If the no-man’s-land, or commons, survives primarily by being passed over, unused and unclaimed, then it seems that defending a no-man’s-land against appropriations or incursions is a near impossibility. Why? Because to defend it is to claim it, to define it, to seek to arrest it in a certain vision, to reify it. It means to give a form to whatever is formless and evanescent, and whenever you try to do that, strife about what this form should be are almost certainly bound to occur.

So how can we defend it? I don’t know, but perhaps the only way to really defend it is to create it, to do things that create it anew or regenerate it. Surely, there's also a bright side to the story of Kinji, since it shows how this creation can happen.

References

Amino, Yoshihiko (1996) Muen-Kugai-Raku: Nihon chûsei no jiyû to heiwa (Muen, Kugai, Raku: Freedom and Peace in Medieval Japan), Tokyo: Heibonsha.

Amino, Yoshihiko (2001) Rekishi o kangaeru hinto (Hints for thinking about history), Tokyo: Shinchôsha.

Andersson, René (2000) Burakumin and Shimazaki Tôson’s Hakai, Lund: Lund University.

Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio (2009) Commonwealth, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Hur, Nam-lin (2000) Prayer and Play in Late Tokugawa Japan: Asakusa Sensôji and Edo Society, Carmbride, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press.

Kubo, Takashi (2008) “Jakki suru gunshû: ‘68.10.21’ no sôbô e” (The crowd as agent, the features of 68.10.21), pp 30-42, Anakizumu No. 11.

Maeda, Ai (2004) Text and the City: Essays on Japanese Modernity, Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Ogawa, Kyôhei (1997) “Hiroba to akichi: Bonboyâju to Kinji no tochû hôkoku” (Square and no-man’s-land: halfway report from the bon voyage to Kinji), pp 225-235, Gendai Shisô 25:5.

Ogawa, Tetsuo (2009) “Motto akichi o! Miyashita kôen ga naiki kôen ni” (More empty land! Miyashita Park will become Nike Park), pp 185, Impaction 170 (August).

Seki, Yuki (2008) “Sukâto demo wa daiseikô”, blog 20080921, http://www.n-yuki.net/blog.php?itemid=211, accessed 2009/09/07

Tsuge, Yoshiharu (1998) Munô no hito, Hi no tawamure (The Incompetent Man, A Day’s Whims), Tokyo: Shinchôsha.

Uesugi, Satoshi (1997) Burakushi ga wakaru (Understanding the history of buraku), Tokyo: San’ichishobô.

Uesugi, Satoshi (2008) Tennôsei to buraku sabetsu – Kenryoku to kegare (The emperor system and the discrimination of buraku: power and defilement), Tokyo: Kaihô shuppansha.

Yamamoto, Naotomo (2009) Shiryô de yomu burakushi (History of buraku as read in the sources), Tokyo: Gendai shokan.

Rivers and lakes

The famous "Hyônenzu" (Gourd and catfish, ink painting by Josetsu, probably dating from the early 15th century, detail shown above) is often descriped as one of the most enigmatic artworks of Japan.

I recently came across an article by the historian Higashijima Makoto which throws an interesting light on this painting. It discusses the idea of "rivers and lakes" (gôko or kôko) as an early form of public in Japan. Higahijima shows that the expression "rivers and lakes" was popular in the Meiji era when it was used much like we would use "public sphere" today. Thus participants in the movement for freedom and popular rights were called "wanderes of rivers and lakes", to publish something was called "asking the rivers and lakes", the expression "learned men of rivers and lakes" corresponded to a Lesepublikum, newspapers used "rivers and lakes" in their names etc.

The expression itself derives from Zen Buddhism and is closely linked to the idea of wandering about without fixed abode or home. In medieval Japan it was used for instance in the expression, "the scattered people of rivers and lakes" (gôko sanjin), which stood for people not bound by village society, travelling freely and transcending the community, and who were often despised by the people of the community. According to a 16th century Japanese-Portugese dictionary, "scattered people" was a derogatory term for people lacking a domicile, while "rives and lakes" itself stood for despised or humble people of no account. Travelling artists were part of this group. Needless to say, it also appears close to the group of Japanese outcasts ("hinin", or non-human, a term which in medieval times was used in a broad sense for all people who moved outside the life of the settled community, such as monks, beggars, artists, lepers etc).

Among medieval Zen monks, however, the wandering among "rivers and lakes" was not despised at all, but a wistfully glorified ideal. Thus we find the monk Gidô Shûshin (1325-1388) in his old age rejecting the prestigious office of head priest of Nanzenji with the following verse:

To an old man like me, a head priest is a fish in a small pond.
What bliss to be set free and depart for the rivers and lakes!

「老来にして住院するは小池の魚、江湖に放ち向かわば楽有余」

Here wandering among "rivers and lakes" obviously connotes freedom. The bliss of “rivers and lakes” also became a popular motif in Zen inspired painting. A famous example is Sesshû’s “Haboku sansui” (1495)

To Zen monks, Higashijima writes, landscapes like these "were an image of freedom, of a utopian world".

Another popular way of expressing this idea of freedom was by depicting a fisherman and a fish, and here we arrive at Josetsu’s "Hyounenzu", which is often interpreted as a picture of a man who tries to catch a fish in a gourd. In the light of Gidô's rejection of the shôgun's offer, Higashijima writes, the man is the shôgun and the fish is the Zen monk.

We can add, I think, that Nanzenji can be seen as the gourd. Gido rejected the offer in 1386, and earlier the same year Nanzenji had been elevated to top of the hierarchy of Rinzai Zen temples in Japan, in rank even exceeding the "five mountains", i.e. five main Rinzai Zen temples in Kyoto. This, I think, is an important part of the background to why Gidô describes it as a "small pond". Small ponds that appear big are in fact the best traps.

A friend who is teaching at a university in Sweden once told me about how anxious he felt everytime he left the department for a longer period of time, since power struggles were constantly going on and he never knew what the situation would be like when he returned. There are few things I dislike so much as power struggles. Struggles can be important, but not power struggles, struggles for power. I abhor them, not only for the pain they inflict, but also because of what they do with people who get caught up in them. Institutions have a way of imposing themselves on us as if they were the entire world, but in reality they are nothing but gourds or small ponds. Freedom is the big sea.


References

Higashijima, Makoto (2002) “Kô wa paburikku ka?” (Is ‘kô’ the ‘public’?), pp 37-48, in Sasaki, Takeshi & Kim, Tae-Chang (eds) Kôkyô tetsugaku, Vol. 3: Nihon ni okeru kô to shi, Tokyo: Tôkyô daigaku shuppankai (University of Tokyo Press).

The Riots 7: Do you think we might join hands?

Here’s another long entry, which I write to follow up my previous notes on riots and bring them a little closer to if not a conclusion, then at least a semblance of order.

Part I: Negri, the Invisible Committee, and Rancière on the riots

So I am suggesting that the riots could be seen as part of a striving for autonomy. Fine, but haven’t I left a whole lot of questions unanswered? If the rioters are out after autonomy in the face of the spectacle, pride in the face of exclusion and the police, purveyors of an economy of “theft and gift” in the face of the neoliberal market, wouldn't then solidarity with the precarity movement – at least with its anarchist or autonomous wing – appear natural, logical? Why then don’t we see much more cooperation and solidarity between them? Are the differences between the “autonomy” of the rioters and that championed by the activists too great, perhaps even unbridgeable? A clue to this can be gained from what the activists and intellectuals of this movement themselves have to say about the riots.

Let us start by listening to what some of the more well-known intellectuals. I don’t think there is any more need for me to pay any further homage to Badiou (see this previous entry). I will instead give some (brief) attention to Negri, Rancière and the Invisible Committee. I can state already here that I am critical of all of them.


Negri

This interview with Negri – conducted at the time of the Paris riots in 2005 – is perhaps best known for his statement that the cars burned because their owners didn’t go out to defend them. As a whole the interview offers an instructive contrast to Badiou. Like Badiou, Negri is an enthusiastic supporter of the rioters (albeit with reservations: it fails to qualify fully as a proper “insurrection”), but for different reasons. To Negri, the rioters are in need of a theorist since they lack political awareness: “This movement wants something, but it does not yet know what it wants” (Negri 2005). He has no qualms about stepping in as their interpreter. The riot, he states, is above all a revolt against the neo-liberal Empire (that is how I understand his talk about the “crisis of Fordism”, “economic globalization” and “neoliberal cuts in public spending”).

This interpretation is substantiated somewhat in Commonwealth (coauthored with Hardt, 2009), but the basic message is similar: the "urban jacquerie" of the 2005 riots was an expression of indignation in the banliues, the “emblematic space of the precarious worker”. But as a challenge to empire it is insufficient. A revolution needs institutions to make itsself lasting and effective and ways must therefore be found of moving from jacqueri to organization (Hardt & Negri 2009:239, 245f, 259).

While not necessarily wrong, this is a perfect example of an ideological explanation: an explanation that could have been made without listening to the rioters themselves, that fits the theory just a little bit too well, and which teaches us nothing about the riots. In fact, it is highly predictable to anyone familiar with Negri’s theories. Despite the frequent appearance of the riots in the book, I can't help suspecting that the riots never mattered much to Negri, at least not the way Seattle or Genova did. An example of this is that they appear to have left no imprint on his and Hardt’s theory of the “three cycles” of protest in the anti-globalization movement (the first inaugurated by Seattle, the second by the anti-war mobilizations in the wake of 9.11, and the third by Heiligendamm). Let me conclude by saying that I think the texts by Negri mentioned here exemplify a widespread tendency among radical intellectuals to close their ears to the rioters. As far as I can judge, the latter have been quite ready to formulate their demands verbally, above all their complaints against the police. Instead of taking them on their word, however, commentators have been prone to lament their lack of political awareness, meaning a lack of explicit antagonism against neo-liberalism or global capitalism. As I’ve already stated, I believe that Badiou is one of the few radical intellectuals who has been honest enough to see the riots as fully justified even if they’re “only” motivated by a desire to get back at the police for once, or, in other words, even if the rioters lack all but the most rudimentary awareness of or interest in global capitalism.

The invisible committee

The “invisible committee” is already famous as the collective author of The Coming Insurrection and as a group that carries on the Situationist legacy in France. Unlike Negri, the authors of this book explicitly accord the “flames of November 2005” an exemplary, paradigmatic value. “Those first joyous fires were the baptism of a decade full of promise” (The Invisible Committee 2009:24). The book is full of statements endorsing the riots. For instance, seeing teachers whining about their school being burned downn on the evening news, the authors “remember how many times, as children, we dreamed of doing exactly this” (Ibid 38). Above all, the tactics of the rioters offers a model to be followed:

Not making ourselves visible, but instead turning the anonymity to which we’ve been relegated to our advantage, and through conspiracy, nocturnal or faceless actions, creating an invulnerable position of attack. The fires of November 2005 offer a model for this. No leader, no demands, no organization, but words, gestures, complicities. To be socially nothing is not a humiliating condition… but is on the contrary the condition for maximum freedom of action. (Ibid. 113)

However, I am skeptical of the authors’ idea of these riots. I see the riots as rooted in a desire to act out anger, get revenge and restore pride. I don’t see them as a model for any calculating, strategic plotting to topple the spectacle as the authors of this book seem to do. It's easy to feel sympathy for Coupat – one of the alleged authors – after his arrest, but I feel far less sympathy for the book. To be frank, I’m a bit downcast at what these authors have done to the Situationist legacy. No longer is the spectacle to be combated through détournements, shocking happenings or poetic terrorism. The structure is to be physically immobilized by striking at its vulnerable supply lines, in the style of guerillas. Sabotage becomes the primary means of liberation, a far more non-communicative means of combat that any of the Situationists’ acts of symbolic violence. I may be naïve, but I really like the ideal of everyone – and I mean everyone – having fun together. This is an ideal the Invisible Committee has thrown on the garbage heap.


Rancière

If we turn to Rancière, finally, we find a rather hesitant and ambivalent attitude to the 2005 riots. On the one hand, he believes that the riots come short of real political action since they have failed to put forward a “political proposition” directed at their opponents with whom they share the social field (Rancière 2006a). They are therefore lacking something – a kind of verbal self-consciousness – that would be necessary for true politics. But on the other hand we should remember, as he stresses in another piece that also briefly touches on the riots, that politics to him is about the configuration of the “sensible”, of what can be perceived as possible. It is not something purely or merely verbal. It has to do with the senses. Politics is not simply a clash of words. It starts with “dissensus”, the contention that “there is not one reality”. Far more than being a merely verbal disagreement, dissensus is about “reframing the very field of the given, of the sensible, the intelligible and, consequently, the possible. It is about putting in the unique common world of the consensual logics several worlds, conflicting worlds” (ibid 2006b). To Rancière, such a clash of worlds happens above all through the process of “subjectivization”, the self-definition in public of previously neglected or invisible groups (the “part of the uncounted”) which upsets the field since they refuse pregiven categories. Applying these ideas to the 2005 riots, he opposes interpretations such as Finkelkrauts (see my discussion in this entry), who see the rioters as guided by a consumerist ideology. These voices all sees the rioters as caught up in a single “world” or “police” taken as a configuration of the possible, a neoliberal world in which the market is absolute or a given. What emerges from Rancière's texts is therefore a deeply ambivalent picture. Doesn’t his rejection of interpretations such as Finkelkraut’s imply that the riots have at least taken important steps towards a true “politics” in his sense? He claims not to regard the riots as politics, but this seems unfair from the point of view of his own theory of politics as the emergence of other worlds. At the very least, one should concede that they meant a big no, the appearance of a huge “dissensus” that shook the established field.


The contrast to the Situationist International

What triggered my excursus into what these radical intellectuals have had to say about the riots was the obvious overlap between some of their concepts and what the rioters seemed to be doing. For instance, the seemingly pointless burning of cars can easily be understood as taking pleasure in the confrontation itself, regardless of future goals. Isn’t this similar to Negri’s strategy of autonomous separation, desertion or exodus rather than dialectical conflict? Isn’t he too interested in delineating the idea of a social movement less interested in appealing to or demanding things from authorities than in the creative formation of a new life, in being able to lead their own life while having as much fun as one can, without having to feel like victims? Aren’t autonomists and rioters alike groping for forms of public confrontation that eschew classical forms of “voice” and political participation? Aren’t they both rushing in the direction of an exit or desertion of the established field of political dialogue – an exit which, however, doesn’t take the form of quietly withdrawing to some alternative sphere of living, enclave, or subculture, but which instead, in the manner of Rancière’s “politics” always simultaneously involves a challenge and confrontation that necessarily appears provocative and outrageous from the point of view of the existing “police”? Despite this overlap, however, none of the radical intellectuals discussed above seem interested in discussing these similarities.

This attitude contrasts to that of the Situationist International, which in 1965 greeted the Watts riots in L.A. as a “rebellion against the commodity” driven by the “demand to really life” which momentarily realized an economy of “theft and gift”. The important thing was that this was done “in festive celebration, in playful self-assertion, in the potlatch of destruction. People who destroy commodities show their human superiority over commodities” (Situanionist International 2006:197). Famously, they also wrote that the riot was the first rebellion in history to justify itself with the argument that there was no air conditioning during a heat wave” (Ibid 200). That is to say: the Watts rioters didn’t riot because they were victims, because they lacked something which the state could give them. They rioted because it was their pleasure, because they were no slaves, but free people who didn’t have to put up with anything. I feel a great deal of sympathy for this way of looking at the riots. Unfortunately, however, it’s not easy to come across similar views today of the riots in recent years in the banlieus or suburbs of Europe.


Part II: A way towards convergence

So is there any prospect of a fruitful convergence, alliance or even fusion between the movement of the immigrant youth and that of autonomist radicals? Here I can only sketch an answer. I take for granted that the reader will understand that most sketches end up in the waste basket.

To the "progressive" Left an alliance between a variety of immigrant organizations or immigrant movements is certainly possible and the fact that such alliances already exist is a welcome development. But whatever was expressed in the "movement" of the rioters, and I for one can't help feeling that this "something" was extraordinarily important, appears to me to be rather far from the "progressivist" camp. Commentators have already pointed out a number of differences between what we can call the standpoint of the "rioters" and that of the "leftists".

For instance, Alain Touraine points out two differences between the suburban riots of 2005 and the wave of student protest which erupted the same year. The first is the difference in social position.

The immigrants are wholly disoriented and set fire to cars since they can’t articulate themselves and lack advocates. The students by contrast are far more privileged and receive enormous support through their unions. Despite this the immigrants and the students share the feeling of discrimination and exclusion: the suburban youth have already stood outside society for a long time, while the students fear an impeded future, which could just as well turn them into excluded tomorrow. (Touraine 2006)

This portrayal of the student protesters is in keeping with his disparaging view of today’s precarity movement as driven less by political hopes than by fear of the future, by the desire to protect the rights and concessions they have already won. This difference in social position is important. However, it is also important to point out that this defensive posture is not shared by the autonomist/anarchist wing of the precarity movement. Unlike workers and students fearful to lose their privileges, this wing ought to be a a possible ally of the immigrant youth. In Japan too it is possible to discern two wings of the precarity movement: one making up the so-called “anti-poverty” movement and the other being animated rather by what could be called a “viva poverty” ethos (a largely anarchist ethnos which I’ve already given some glimpses of in connection with Dame-ren and Kubikubi Café).

Touraine also points to a second difference, namely that suburban riots are better seen as cultural struggles than as social movements. While the rioters rebel against social and economic exclusion, the exclusion is also experienced as cultural and the protest against poverty is therefore also a call for cultural recognition (Touraine 2006). This statement is vague, but as I’ve remarked in my previous entry, I agree that culture plays an important role in the riots, albeit a should underline that this is better seen as a wholly new culture, a culture in the process of being produced, rather than any stereotypical cultural essence. I don’t believe at all that a recognition of culture as a central element of struggle should be an impediment to cooperation between rioters and activists. I won’t enter into the difficult question of how compatible the various version of an alternative culture are that these groups may produce. Certainly there is a risk of cultural collisions – for instance regarding limitations on the freedom of women – but there are also signs of new cultures and lifestyles being born which are shared across ethnic borderlines.

A third possible difference is indicated in the rather condescending view of the riots that can be found among many commentators on the Left. We have already seen that Touraine describes the riots as “wholly disoriented” and lacking the ability to articulate their demands. Comments like that are surprisingly common. Negri and Ranciêre make similar comments, as we recall. And Zizek writes that “the recent revolt was just an outburst with no pretense to any kind of positive vision” (Zizek). Wiewiorka remarks that the riots “produce no discourse… they are typically crisis behaviours, and not at all a movement” (Wieviorka 2005). Even Lapeyronnie, one of their most understanding interpreters, thinks that the alienation of the rioters from the political system means that they remain caught in a helpless dependence on the political system from which they try to elicit understanding and concessions (Lapeyronnie 2006). The list can be made to go on and one. I’ve already stated several times that I believe that views like these are unfair, especially among activists of autonomous persuation who are the ones who more than anyone have advocated strategies of exodus, flight and desertion as better suited to the resistance of the multitudes than using established channels of protest. To the extent that the riots were motivated by being loyal to one’s desires – for instance, restoring one’s sense of pride by making fools of the police and authorities – they share the motivations of much anarchist and autonomist activism.

To summarize so far, I believe that the differences which various commentators have pointed out between the rioters and precarity activists are valid above all for those precarity activists engaged in the kind of struggle highlighted by what I have called the “progressive” interpretation, that is, the movement for social inclusion, for gaining or preserving a variety of rights and guarantees or livelihood and official support. If one instead compares the rioters to the activists oriented towards anarchism or autonomy, the differences almost melt away. Doesn't this suggest an affinity? Just as there are ways in which a "progressive" left might join hands with "respectable" immigrant organizations, might there not be room for a comraderie of rioters and autonomists? I am not saying, as the Invisible Committee, that the tactics of rioting is always right. I think that depends on the degree of oppression. All I'm saying is that I do think it would be good if the marginals, minorities, the discriminated and the dropouts could come together and help each other a little more often - and that the obstacles might be less serious than we think.


Part III: Freeters and immigrants

I will finish the entry by stating briefly why I believe that the problem of the solidarity between freeters and immigrants will become more pressing in Japan in the future. Here is my prognosis. After the media and opinion storm which has been continually growing in strength in recent years against the “reforms that went too far” – a common expression used for the deregulations and privatizations which reached a climax under the premiership of Koizumi – Japanese authorities are bound to take at least some measures to ameliorate the working conditions or freeters and other irregular workers in Japan. To the extent that their situation improves, it seems logical to expect that companies will respond by increasing the flow of immigrant labour. The DJP – the most important governing party in Japan – will probably welcome that development and may also try to further it through legislation. How will the freeters active in the precarity movement respond to this situation? Two difficulties can be predicted. Firstly, it may be harder to gain the support of the general public when the “victims” of precarity are no longer Japanese. There is a danger of growing nationalism. Already today groups like Zaitokukai (see this previous entry) have appeared. Secondly, there will be difficulties in creating a sense of solidarity within the movement between freeters and immigrant workers. Until now, freeters have been able to portray themselves as marginals and excluded. “Poverty” has been a personally directly felt (“mijika na”) problem, a problem of which they could feel themselves to be the direct victims or people most directed concerned (“tôjisha”). Among freeter activists there is also a rather widespread distrust against philanthropy and people who “support others” out of “compassion” or idealistic motives (“dôjô shite hito o tasukete ageru”). Being a “tôjisha”, a directly concerned victim, is often said to the most authentic way of participating in a movement. However, isn’t there a risk that this rejection of “compassion” and “helping others” will be used to justify cold-heartedness and indifference to the situation of immigrant workers? If freeter should concern themselves only with their “own” problems, should they simply drop out of the movement when their own situation improves? Will they be able to shed the jargon about the primacy of being a “tôjisha”, or will they perhaps be able to formulate some new conceptual framework in which they and immigrants will both be “tôjisha”?


References

Hardt, Michael & Negri, Antonio (2009) Commonwealth, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Negri (2005) “Finally a Little Revolt”, interviewed by Jacopo Iacoboni (orig. La Stampa 2005-11-12)

Invisible Committee, The (2009) The Coming Insurrection, Los Angeles: semiotext(e).

Rancière (2006a) “Our police order: What can be said, seen, and done”, interview by Truls Lie, Eurozine (contribution by Le Monde diplomatique)

Rancière (2006b) “Misadventures of Universality”, paper presented at the Moscow Biennale's Conference on Philosophy, Politics, and Art, 17 November 2006

Situationist International (2006) “The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy”, pp 194-203, in Knabb, Ken (ed. & tr.) Situationist International Anthology, Berkeley: the Bureau of Public Secrets.

Touraine (2006) “Explosion möglich”, Die Zeit 2006-03-23, Nr. 13-23 (March)

Wieviorka, Michel (2005) “Violence in France”

Zizek, “Some Politically Incorrect Reflections on Violence in France & Related Matters”

The Riots 6: Culture

Let me return to where I left off in "The Riots 5" and focus a little bit more on the role of the concept of culture in the interpretations of the riots.

One reason I’ve chosen to focus on culture is my impression that that it’s been neglected for a long time by the Left. Placing importance on culture, however, doesn’t necessarily imply nationalism or communitarianism, or what I’ve called culturalism. Neither does it have to imply any demotion of the importance of socio-economic factors. Culture can be seen as an important element in all revolt as well as in all attempts to secure autonomous spheres of living.

It’s time, therefore, to clarify that the culturalist interpretation is not alone in paying attention to culture. What characterizes this interpretation is that it reifies the cultures of immigrant populations, essentializes them, and believes that such essences somehow “explain” the riots. The most glaring weakness of culturalism is that the so-called “failure” of the integration of immigrant populations is taken as a corroboration of the persistence of (virtually ahistorical and indestructible) cultural essences or “traditions”. It overlooks the fact that immigrant cultures are created or reshaped in the host country. No culture, and especially no immigrant culture, is ever intact, and immigrant communities are practically always marked by a tremendous destruction of tradition, including the erosion of parental authority.

A first step towards correcting the culturalist interpretation would be to pay attention to what Durkheim called “anomie”, a state in which cultural norms are no longer binding and in which individuals suffer from a lack of cultural guidance. As many sociologists who have employed or elaborated on this concept point out, it is a useful tool not only for explaining suicide (as in Durkheim’s famous study), but also many other forms of criminal or “deviant” behavior. One of my favorite examples of good use of this concept is Inoue Shun’s interpretation of the character Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: the white colonizer who ends up as a brutal mass-killer despite his reputation back in Belgium as an eloquent humanitarian. Put simply, all norms – including the veneer of “civilization” which Kurtz managed to maintain as long as he was surrounded by his familiar European environment – need a social environment and bereft of that environment anomie occurs. That was no humanitarian “core” to Kurtz’ personality, but neither is there any core to the personality of any of us, since we all need society or social interaction to maintain our civilized facades. The concept of anomie, when put into use in a social interactionist context, is simply an enormously useful tool when it comes to understanding not only how seemingly civilized Europeans could turn into barbarians as soon they became colonial overlords, but also what happens to immigrants who are more or less forcefully uprooted from the contexts which once maintained their “traditions” and at the same time prevented by social exclusion from finding suitable substitutes in the countries where they end up. In such a context, the new norms that they manage to construct by themselves, by discovering new solidarities between themselves and new ways of living, in fact offer the best hope not only for them when it comes to leading meaningful lives but also for their “integration” into the surrounding society.

But the correction of the culturalist interpretation cannot stop here. In fact, the conservative discourse has hardly disregarded the factor of anomie. Indeed, as soon as a riot occurs, the familiar lament about moral crisis, societal breakdown and mindless hooliganism is never far away. What the conservative discourse does, however, is that as soon as the problem of anomie pops up, it tends to switch over from a culturalist to a security interpretation. Anomie becomes viewed as the seedbed of crime which needs to be contained and mastered. Rather than disregarding anomie, the conservative discourse tends to oscillate incoherently between the images of widespread normlessness and the existence of intact foreign cultures rejecting mainstream values, in the process conjuring up a horror fantasy worthy of prewar anti-semitism at its most grotesque: jihadist imams and juvenile gangsters fused into a single person.

Against this kind of scaremongering one should point out that the rioting youth already appears to have taken great strides in overcoming anomie. The organized, ritual character of the riots has often been pointed out, a fact which is perhaps most strikingly evinced in the controlled character of the violence, which is practically never aimed at humans, only at things such as cars and public buildings (see for instance this article by Lapeyronnie for an analysis of this).

But how do we go on? To start with I think we can agree that culture needs to be addressed a lot more by writers critical of the conservative discourse. If we look at the advocates of what I have been calling the “progressive” interpretation, I can’t help feeling that their way of addressing the issue of culture is often both unconvincing and unhelpful. I do find points of interest in their writings, especially when they are based on extensive research – like say the works of Gilles Kepel, who I think has made very important contributions and whose warning that the “fate of Islam” to a great extent will depend on the outcome of the “most important battle in the war for Muslim minds during the next decade will be fought not in Palestine or Iraq but in these communities of believers on the outskirts of London, Paris, and other European cities” (Kepel 2004:8). However, Kepel’s focus seems to be exclusively on whether or not “Muslims” will be able to endorse the already pre-existent democratic values of the European host societies. This blindness for whatever novelty in terms of culture or values that might be born out of this “war” is unfortunate, but reflects a widespread tendency among “progressive” thinkers to focus almost entirely on the “democratic” or “republican” values of the host culture and their fondness for the claim that the rioters of the banlieus are in fact animated by precisely these values and that the riots are therefore in keeping with the best of European traditions. Thus Emmanuel Todd argues that the young people rioted precisely because they had integrated the republican model, including “fundamental values of French society” such as freedom and equality.

I am convinced on the contrary that the phenomenon is typically French. The racially mixed young people of the Seine Saint-Denis fall under a tradition of social uprising which is frequent in French history. Their violence represents also the disintegration of the African and North African families in contact with the French values of equality. (Todd 2005)

With their revolt, the insurgent youth have integrated into the French tradition. And they're treated by the police just like any other revolutionaries. Despite Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy’s absurd rhetoric, the police and the population haven't lost their nerve. If the events can be brought to an end more or less peacefully, France will wake up and say to itself: this revolt doesn't mean the failure of the French model. On the contrary, it shows that it works. Because that's what we call assimilation in French. (Interview Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 12.11.2005, quoted here)

I have the impression that statement like this have become a kind of staple argument among progressive thinkers. Thus Ulrich Bech too argues that the riots are not caused by a lack of integration. On the contrary:

These assimilated youths whose parents were immigrants scarcely differ in their desires and attitudes from their peers in their country of immigration. They are closely affiliated. And this is precisely what makes the racism of their exclusion so terribly bitter for these very heterogenous youth groups, and so scandalous for everyone else. The paradox is this: a lack of integration in the parent generation defuses, and successful integration of the second generation intensifies the problems and conflicts. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15.11.2005, quoted here)

Similarly Sébastien Peyrat claims that the young rioters are inspired more by the slogans of the French revolution – freedom, equality and brotherhood – than by the traditions of their countries of origin (Dagens Nyheter 2005-11-04).

These arguments might seem striking, but I can’t help feeling that they are rather empty of content – like so many readymade rejoinders you can use in a debate. The reason is that what counts are French (or Swedish, German or European) values is itself highly malleable and that the very constitution of a “tradition” can only be made in retrospect. Today the labour movement is certainly considered to be in agreement with fundamental European values, but was it a hundred years ago? How fundamental were the values of freedom and equality in 1789? Here’s a harder nut for you to crack: was the autonomia movement in Italy in the 70’s in agreement with European “tradition”? Were the black panthers in agreement with American democracy? In fact, the very idea of a “tradition”, or reassuring people that nothing fundamental is changing or that the riots don’t really challenge anything fundamental, is an anti-concept. It is an anti-concept since it is too blunt, too empty and too malleable to be used as a tool for thinking.

Let me point out that my intention is not to criticize Todd or Beck or anyone else in particular, only a certain rhetorical figure, a kind of staple argument that I think is being heard perhaps a little bit too often by critics on the Left and which I think is unhelpful for the simple reason that it cannot withstand being thought about.

So how should culture be thought about? Here is my suggestion: rather than seeing the riots as caused by cultural essences or by anomie, and rather than seeing them simply as a continuation of a “revolutionary” European tradition stemming from 1789, I would like to see them quite simply as the expression of a process of cultural creation. As Todd explains, they originate in the encounter with local European values and circumstances. They don’t spring out of any finished ethnic communities. They don’t reflect action patterns or norms of the countries of origin. They are ad hoc, created here. The creation of novelty is reflected in the emergence of new languages and of new solidarities based on the shared sense of marginalization and exclusion. Leaving the banlieus, they enter France. Leaving Rinkeby or Angered or Rosengård, they enter Sweden. If progressives stress the fundamental agreement between this process of cultural creation and the host societies, it can just as well be interpreted as a move towards autonomy, in the sense of being an attempt to walk for oneself, without maps or models. The rioters are not driven by hatred of the West, but neither are they “integrated”. What do I know about the wonderful variety of tongues in which they get their ideas? Freedom from the spectacle – isn’t that the flip side of not being “successfully integrated”?

But I won’t end here. What could I reply to a person who pointed out that an autonomy marked by misery, poverty, criminality, violence, war, unemployment, escalating prejudice and conflict would be crippled, never free of anomie or the drawbacks of exclusion? To revolt may be good and justified, but won’t it antagonize the inhabitants or the surrounding mainstream society, inflaming racism and prejudice? But is the response of mainstream society really the responsibility of the rioters? Isn’t the question of how mainstream "Swedes" or “French” should react a question the members of these mainstream populations ought to pose to themselves? I don’t have any illusions. I am sure that many Swedes who could have sympathized or identified with rebellious youngsters of their own colour – thinking “this could have been me” or “this could have been my children” – are unable to feel the same closeness to immigrants. But even if I don’t have illusions, I have hope. I hope that despite the geographical and cultural distance that separates them from the refugee, they will still be able to think that this could have been me. I wasn’t born in Afghanistan or Bosnia. I wasn’t born a Jew under Hitler, but I could have been - if fate had willed differently. In another time or another place, I could have been anyone of the people I am now in a position to help. Now let me finish with a piece of preaching: whenever you feel threatened by someone, ask yourself if you would like to change places with him. If not, is he really an enemy?

References

Inoue, Shun (1985) “A Choice of Nightmares: On Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”, pp 335-49, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 6.

Kepel, Gilles (2004) The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West, Cambridge, Mass. & London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Lapeyronnie, Didier (2006) “Primitive Revolt in the French Banlieues: Essay on the Fall 2005 Riots”

Todd, Emmanuel (2005) ”Interwiew on the ’French riots’”

A prey

Yesterday the TV (I forgot which channel) happened to be switched on while I was working. The head of a murdered woman has been found in northern Hiroshima prefecture. I seems to be the head of a 19 year old student from Shimane, Hiraoka Miyako, who was reported missing some days ago. We see photographs of the dead woman, people who knew her are interviewed, more and more details about her life are revealed. We learn that she was a good and diligent student, interested in issues such as global poverty, that she participated in an NGO-led study circle and that she dreamed of travelling abroad. But suddenly, we are told, she quit her study circle. We get to hear intimations, suggestions of rumours, people seeing her with unknown men. Without telling us anything explicitly, we are obviously led to believe that she "got herself into trouble"...

Let me ask you a few things, journalists.

If she "got herself into trouble", are we perhaps to conclude that it was her own fault that she got murdered?

If somebody gets murdered, is it the victim who is to be judged or is it the perpetrator?

If somebody gets murdered, is it normal procedure to start digging up every little detail of her life and make it public? Is it decent to offer her up to the TV viewers for public dissection?

If somebody gets murdered, does she lose all her rights?

The murdered girl was a victim. A victim such as anyone of us could one day be. To associate with unknown people is normal. We've all got the right to do that. To change one's interests is normal. To get oneself into trouble is also fully normal. We have all done that. Yes, each one of us, even you. The murdered girl just happened to get killed. It could have happened to any one of us.

If we get killed, would we want journalists like you to report about our lives?

I am questioning your professional ethics here, journalists. Please think about what I'm writing. Just give it a minute. And ask yourself if you are proud of what you are doing.

Chin wa ningen ni arazu

Did anyone forget Hirohito's (Emperor Showa's) "declaration of humanity" was just a personal declaration that didn't include his ancestors?

Outside Meiji Shrine in Tokyo we read: "Deities enshrined: Emperor Meiji and his consort Empress Shôken". Here's another reminder. Last month there was a festival here in Kyoto called the "Festival of the Ages" (Jidai matsuri). It consists in a long procession of historical figures and ends with, or rather culminates in, two mikoshi (portable shrines) enshrining two deities: emperor Kammu and emperor Kômei.

Oh, if anyone's interested in the scholastic niceities surrounding the entire issue of the emperor and the purportedly secular postwar Japanese state, there are lots of good literature around. A good place to start is Fujitani Takashi's Splendid Monarchy and "Electronic Pageantry", his article about the Shôwa emperor's funeral in the Journal of Asian Studies 1992, 51:4. Or why not Kitano Homare's recent essay in the August issue of Impaction if you read Japanese? And if you think this is just a Japanese problem, read Kantorowicz' The King's Two Bodies...

But this is not the place to get too un-whimsical. Here's my (very democratic) solution: why don't we all get divine? Let the emperors be "akitsukami", "arahitogami" or "ikikami" if they want too. Why not? Of course the emperors are gods. We are all gods!

Chin wa ningen ni arazu!