serbia – Jana Bacevic

On refusing to be a spectator

Blog, climate change, higher education, Philosophy of social science, Politics, psychoanalysis, Reviews, social theory, Uncategorized

I had a dream.

No, no the Martin Luther King kind of dream, by which I mean I do not think this one will be used to retroactively construct a politics of reconciliation where none are due.

A real dream, like, sleeping n’all. To clarify at the outset, this isn’t in and of itself a matter of particular exceptionality: I do dream relatively regularly, as long as I am not extremely stressed, which now happens rarely and only for very brief periods.

I also pay attention to dreams. This started when I was a child, and reading Freud‘s “Interpretation of dreams” gave me a sense that there is a world beyond our own that we are, nonetheless, (almost) unique authors of. This fascinated me, as it opened the question of existence and multiple planes of reality in ways different than fairytales and fantasy had, and also in ways different than physics (here’s something I’ve written on relational ontology in dreams).

I can also lucid-dream (this isn’t intentional, just something I picked up along the way, mostly as a way of waking myself up from nightmares).

I also learned to ask dreams for guidance.

Yet, my sleep has been surprisingly dream-free of lately. I noticed this about a week ago; I first attributed it to being on holiday (= in Britain, the accepted expression for an out-of-office email responder), which means I have more time for free-flowing thoughts and thus less processing ‘backlog’ to do while asleep, but then I realised it’s probably been close to a month, if not two.

Then I attributed it to the intensity of the events in Belgrade earlier in June (as I’ve described, this did involve a week of severely disrupted sleep), but that in and of itself should only increase the backlog, and thus the quantity of material for processing. More to the point (did I mention I can ask dreams for guidance?), I can ask – by which I mean induce (no, no drugs involved, in case this is what you’re thinking) – dreams, and my subconscious delivers. So I did.

Nada.

Until last night.

The second thing to note is that nothing happens in my dreams – they are usually elements of a conversation or interaction, fragments of a feeling, observations, but there is no major “plot”. I dream of the weather, of course – of storms, hurricanes, floods – but even that is increasingly rare; whatever prophetic meaning those dreams had has been either fulfilled or rendered obsolete. Now, we can talk about whether climate change is an “event” in the Badiousian sense, but at any rate it does not involve (in my dreams, at least) a large amount of conscious agency (I cannot control the weather, for instance).

Most of the time.

Jonathan Lear’s (2006) “Radical hope: Ethics in the face of cultural devastation” opens with these words of Plenty Coups, a Crow elder:

When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.

Lear is exceptional (I mean by standards of white men in the Angloamerican academia) insofar as he refuses to see this as an expression of something else – a reflection of ‘depression’, a metaphor – and asks: what would it mean to take Plenty Coups’ words seriously? In other words, what does it mean for nothing to happen?

What kind of ontological disaster erases the possibility of history?

***

In this dream, I am queuing in a coffee shop. It is a nice place, one of the sort of places people like me tend to feel naturally good in – it’s decked out in wood, spacious, with lots of light & lots of plants. As I approach the counter, though, I realise I am signing up for a petition to obstruct/block a theatre performance – the petition is on a paper napkin and I am signing it in ink, but I already see a few other names (not clear which) above mine. I move back to the front room, as I learn that the venue/café workers are on strike. The tables on the front room are covered with sandwiches – stacks of white subs, mostly wrapped in clear film; these are here to avoid crossing the picket line by getting something from the café.

I don’t know if anything else happens in the dream; my recollection of it ends there.

At first, I was perplexed. I am not a huge fan of theatre – I occasionally see plays but it has certainly not played a major part of my life in any meaningful sense, real (compared to cinema or gigs/concerts, for instance) or symbolic (certainly, I’ve written on performativity and I’ve read my Shakespeare and blah blah but I do not, in fact, see the world – including the social world – as a “stage”).

Sure, I was able to recognise elements of direct organising, but sandwiches?

Digging into the associative chain, sandwiches reminded me of the food redistribution service I was part of while in San Diego; last night, I observed a similar street sleeper distribution service on the rainy, blustery streets of Belfast. Which brought to mind a question:

–> Why have we not organised something similar at Durham University, with food redistribution on the streets of Durham/Newcastle?

Sure, many people take part in different similar initiatives (e.g. Community Kitchen) across the region, but why are we not using the institution as a hub for this kind of thing? It would be a faster, better way to redistribute privilege than either vague gesturing at “widening participation” or feeling upset or guilty about the fact the social composition of the university is at odds with that of the town (something that, by the way, conveniently entirely erases ‘international’ students, who are apparently classless).

Which brought me to the following question:

What would it really mean to interrupt the performance?

–> What if we refused to reproduce the university in response to the human rights violations we see every day?

When students in universities across the UK last summer declared occupations in response to the institutional and national complicity in genocide, there has been some (in my mind, insufficient) support among university staff; but, for most part, the business of the university continued as usual.

What if we stopped the performance?

What if, instead of politely queuing to get our coffees and then sitting back and observing the show, we brought the whole damn thing to a halt?

What if nothing stopped happening, and something happened instead? Would our hearts lift off the ground? (I think so).

***

For a while, there has been – on and off – talk about ‘boycotting the REF’, but it seems that the principal reason (most) people would end the REF is because they do not like it, rather than because ranking and ordering is itself a practice run for ranking and ordering human beings.

Like grading (I’m sorry, Brits, marking).

Like “undeserving migrants”.

Like “sure, Gaza is so sad, but I have to worry about my kids’ scholarships and my mortgage and I’m afraid of getting it wrong if I say something, I mean, this cancel culture has really gone too far and and and”

Which, really, brings me to the following question:

–-> Why have we not declared indefinite strike and refused the reproduction of the university (which, of course, is the means of reproduction of classed, gendered [increasingly, with the new legislation, exclusively cis-gendered] subjects for inclusion into mechanisms and institutions for the (re)production of the militarised state which, as we can so clearly observe, is the guarantor/guardian of the continued extraction of capital, human, fossil, financial, near and far, at no matter what cost?

But anyway, that’s just analysing a dream.

***

One of the usual anarchist/organising principles is to respond with “well, why don’t you do it yourself”. Two observations.

Not everyone is equally positioned to act: as a migrant (and migrant rep), and someone who only recently acquired UK citizenship, I am starkly aware of the contrast between freedoms for those who have the privilege of “full”, meaning unqualified political membership, and those who do not (for instance: most migrants on General Work visas cannot afford to lose their jobs without at the same time losing the right to remain in the UK. In this case, they would also be ineligible for benefits – see “no recourse to public funds” – so much for the myth of the migrant benefits claimant, btw). In this sense, who can afford risking to lose their job, let alone who can afford to risk arrest/conviction, depends not only on financial security, but also – and primarily – on migration status. In this context, it is a durable shock to me that my British colleagues – or others with secure status – are often the most reluctant to act, and most likely to invoke different excuses (see above).
Earlier this summer, I spent a period in Serbia, where a full-scale popular anti-authoritarian revolution/movement has been happening since November (in case you missed it in the news, no idea why this would happen). The movement started as a series of student occupations, but university staff have – almost immediately, and almost unequivocally – expressed solidarity with students, including by stopping teaching (union laws are a bit different in Serbia, but I do not have time to get into this). In response, as a threat/retaliatory measure, the Serbian government (a significant chunk of public universities are financed dominantly, if not exclusively, from the budget) has stopped/curtailed their salaries (the equivalent of pay deductions in response to industrial action in the UK context). For some, this means that they have had 100% pay deductions for three months. Yes, that’s right, British comrades: not three days; not three weeks. Three months.

Excusez-moi, but this makes it a bit harder than usual to hear excuses from significantly better-paid university environments that “people just cannot afford to go on strike”.

For that matter, Serbian public universities are not composed uniquely of artistocracy (remember, we had communism) or plutocracy (they don’t work at universities, they run the country) who can safely afford to dispense with a three-month paycheck; of course, class privilege does exist, and is perhaps most obvious in higher education. What does make a difference is a more distributed/equalised access to housing (not necessarily equitable as such, but nothing compared to the classed horror that is British housing), more affordable childcare and, of course, a strategic and solidaristic approach: choosing when, who, and how can take risks, and of what sort, is a vital part of ensuring any action bears results.

But don’t mind me, I’m just recounting a dream.

***

Let me leave you with the words of CrimethInc, rather than my own:

For the civilian born in captivity and raised on spectatorship and submission, direct action changes everything. The morning she arises to put a plan into motion, she awakens under a different sun-if she has been able to sleep at all, that is- and in a different body, attuned to every detail of the world around her and possessed of the power to change it. She finds her companions endowed with tremendous courage and resourcefulness, equal to monumental challenges and worthy of passionate love. Together, they enter a foreign land where outcomes are uncertain but anything is possible and every minute counts.

***

This, for those of you who keep asking, is what it means to stop the performance. This is what it means to refuse to be a spectator, of your own life, of others’, or of deaths, others’ as well as, inevitably and eventually, your own.

All I am saying is: there should be more names on that sign-up sheet.

Revolutionary time

Blog, history, Politics, Uncategorized

I don’t recall when was the last time I slept throughout the night. The barricades are almost literally under my window; the fact I am between two occupied faculties means I spend most nights at one of the blockades, then being woken up intermittently by garbage trucks (which are sent to clear out the road blocks) and the police (which comes to break the blockades, beat and arrest people). There is also the general noise of a protest movement – whistles, cheers, slogans. I generally let the bin people do their work (in Serbia, these kinds of workers often don’t have a choice), not the police. I got used to the sound of protest, though not sufficiently to not wake up.

A month or even a few weeks ago, this would have been a problem.

For a long time, I’ve been reluctant to write about Serbia, or even answer questions about what is going on. For ethical reasons, I believe in platforming people who are on the ground, and while I am from Serbia – and from Belgrade – I have not lived there for a long time. I resisted being pinned down (domained, as I’ve called it a lifetime ago when I still cared about things such as knowledge production) as being ‘from Serbia’ or a ‘Balkans expert’ or even a ‘post-socialism scholar’ (despite the fact I’ve written a book on Yugoslavia and its successors). Whenever someone asked me for an interpretation or an opinion, I kindly pointed to people who are actually in the region and who I thought knew what they were talking about.

Almost equally importantly, I believe the usefulness of ‘interpretation’ is very limited. The intellectual tendency to focus on knowledge production – on writing, publishing, speaking – in crisis can contribute to the perpetuation of status quo; this isn’t to endorse a simplistic ‘words vs. deeds’ dichotomy nor to elevate action beyond the status of questioning (after all, we must think about what we are doing), but to note that, for most of the past decade, most contexts I have encountered have had an overabundance of critique, and a corresponding dearth of action. I have, in fact, written about that too – a whole PhD and some – but in the past year(s), I’ve become very reluctant to offer any interpretations, and have instead focused on calling upon people to act.

Now I must, though, not because I have an investment into the position of an ‘intellectual’ (you can read about my departure from that position here and here), but because the situation calls for it. Not because it needs interpretation, but because it exceeds it.

So, confession number one: this situation has exceeded my interpretative capacity.

I’m conversant in roughly five disciplines, so this isn’t for a lack of options. Sure, I can give you political philosophy names for what’s going on, and sure, I can also give you a Marxist perspective, or maybe a slightly longer-durée historical/political economy explanation. I can waffle on about semi-periphery, extractivism, necropolitics like a champion (I have). Like a retired lute player, my mind occasionally touches the floating signifiers of the concepts others have used: Badiou’s ‘event’…Žižek’s working through of Lacan’s subjective destitution with a ‘radical act’…Butler’s performative theory of assembly…Honig’s morphing of inoperativity (Agamben) and power of assembly (Butler)…and Clover, Osterweil, everyone on riot.

Unimportant.

None of the concepts match stuff I have seen.

Here, another confession.

Yes, as far as identities are concerned, I am an anarchist, and yes, I am an anthropologist, and yes, I am also a Buddhist, but I have always been ambivalent about the idea that people are inclined to do good in situations of crisis. I believe people are inherently capable of acting in any number of ways – selfish, altruistic, appropriative, non-proprietary, exploitative, generous – and that it is a complex set of circumstances and evaluations decides how they will act in specific situations. Hell, my current research – Uncategorical imperatives – was motivated by the belief we’d better find out how we tend to act (or: morally reason about action) in crises before climate change-driven exploitation and wars collapse into global disorder.

Whoops.

But (trigger warning: a Bladerunner ‘time to die’ monologue)

What I have seen on the barricades (blockades) in Belgrade surpasses what I know about social movements, informal organisation, or human behaviour. Don’t get me wrong – I was in protests since my mid-teens, including in 1996/7, 2000, and many, many other. I have been in protests in Budapest, the UK, the US. I also visited the occupied faculties in Belgrade this winter. I’ve been in protests in early June. I’ve watched, half-crazed with worry, the footage of the 15^th March and 28^th June protests.

This is different.

I have seen examples of mutual aid, solidarity, restraint, and self-organisation that go beyond what textbooks on mutual aid, self-organising, and community building tell you. I have seen examples of courage, protection of the weak, and having each other’s back that I have only seen intermittently before, except that they are now sustained and unquestioned. I have seen or heard, narrated, first-hand, forms of creativity, ingenuity, and resistance that I have read about, but never thought possible. I have seen anarchist theory, in practice.

Confession number three. I never thought this could happen.

Yes, I read the reports, and for a long time, all of that was encouraging, but not impossible. Everything fit the predictable range of human behaviour, one that follows identifying a common enemy, and organising around a similar cause. There was a foreseeable scope of outcomes.

This is different.

Please don’t try to explain, as I still can get angry. It’s different.

One of the things I remember reading (can’t recall the reference – might’ve been Rosa Luxemburg?, and it anyway no longer matters) is that the revolution does not involve only changing the system; it involves changing you. You will, literally, not be the same person after the revolution. We are no longer the same selves, and this is coming from someone who already believes identities are an illusion, and not a very interesting one.

But it is still tangibly different.

I know people tend to lose themselves in historical moments. (Here is Badiou’s event again). I’ve read endless accounts of transformative experiences, from 1917 and 1968 (both in Yugoslav republics – also, my mum participated in it – and beyond), to Occupy, to first environmental protests, Seattle, Gezi Park, Tahrir, you name it. I understand that. But this isn’t a ‘change’, be it ‘regime’ or ‘social’, or even ‘system’. I’ve witnessed happenings – some personal, like love, some interpersonal, like death, some communal, like concerts, some spiritual – that have come close to transcendence. This is not it.

It is also not the (a)voidance of doubt, of incertitude, or anything that seems like discomfort. It is the realisation that this is what we do now. This is how we live. There is no ‘end’ or ‘goal’ or even ‘victory’. There is no teleology.

This is revolutionary time.

Confession number four. I am afraid.

Some days ago – I do not recall when, where, with whom – I was in a protest, and, as is my habit, tried to get the person with me to shift to the fringes. You see, I am uncomfortable in crowds, and my strategy – for close to 30 years now – is to avoid being kettled, so I can quickly run if the cops descend. It has kept me mostly safe, with one small exception.

Now I stand. Not because “the movement” or “the revolution” is transcendent, worth sacrificing for, or because I’ve lost myself in the adrenaline of the crowd. Because this is a choice. A choice that came earlier, and slightly differently, than I expected (I honestly thought I’d die fighting masked government agents in the UK or the US, but here we are). I stand because this is what we do now, and in perpetuity.

P.S. Thought it important to add a few remarks, lest people start thinking I’ve completely lost critical capacity: (no, I’m just very underslept :)) – critical in the sense of critical friend, not as someone who is looking to form an intellectual position. These are meant to highlight some of the areas for further work, especially if/when the blockades morph into more long-term forms of organising:

the fact homophobic language (crowds occasionally chant or spray “gay” as derogatory term for Vučić) regularly makes an appearance should be addressed immediately. homophobia is not funny, not even as a throwback to that mid-90s high-school playground vibe. the country should really move on from there, not only because nobody wants to go back to mid-90s, but also because homophobic violence is still alive in Serbia.
the resurgence of ethnic nationalism, not only in terms of rhetoric (which, even if it is your thing – it certainly isn’t mine – is entirely and utterly politically useless, given that the only national(ist) project Serbia could conceivably pursue entails trying to reclaim Kosovo, which no-one in their right mind would want to do), but also in terms of (again) shouts and slurs; e.g. shouting the derogatory term for Kosovar Albanians at police (reminder, the predecessors of those forces were actually engaged in committing crimes against Kosovar Albanians, so the slur is not only racist/chauvinist, it is self-defeating). Same goes for shouting at police to “go to Kosovo” – it should really go without saying that organising against police repression in your own country makes little sense if you are at the same time encouraging the police to go and repress the people in another.
glorifying masculinism and masculinity – while elements of this tend to be prominent in all protest movements that feature substantial physical labour/force (e.g., flipping over heavy garbage bins, etc.), it tends to erase (a) the fact that most of this work is *also* done collaboratively (in fact, the most recent one I’ve witnessed was performed by a very gender-mixed team) and (b) the relevance of organisational, logistical, and communication labour, most of which seems to be performed by women and non-binary folk. this has been accompanied by an unprecedented platforming of men (as ‘heroes’, speakers, leaders, experts, commentators, whatnot), often with names, while women mostly appear as generic category (“young women [devojke]”, “student [studentkinja]”). While there are good reasons to stick to anonymity in times like these, this should be equal across the board. There is a good lesson to learn from the Zapatistas here, whose ‘Revolutionary law of women’ was the first and integral part of the Chiapas rebellion, not an afterthought.