In reply to Queer/Toxic

Posted on 03/11/2013 by queer (in) crisis
12 March 2013
Some thoughts on the occupation as dead end:
By way of linking toxic assets to occupation, we can think of evicted homeowners as occupying their recently foreclosed homes. At this point the asset is toxic. Prior to this, people were being “allowed” to remain in homes where they had stopped paying the mortgage and banks were sitting on the foreclosure process. To what extent is the occupation permitted or allowed, and to what extent does that permission occur as neutralization? How does the asset metaphor work in this instant (the current occupation of the Conference Centre at Sussex University)?
Let us consider this occupation in terms of symbolic capital. The university transforms student activism into symbolic capital that is then used to leverage potential investment by future students. With the increase in fees, the university’s potential for political prestige is materialised as more money in the back pockets of the administrators. Our intimate crises become tradable cash prospects. How can we damage the brand?
If the occupied space is a loan, in what sense is it not performing? Management have loaned the occupiers the space in order that they further the image and credence of the university through practice—let us call this political investiture. This credit-debt contract is then sold on to potential new students, or those about to invest in the university, as an unreality or an action stripped of meaning. The actual space, or the conference centre, exists as collateral in this production of symbolic capital. How can we realise this potential toxicity of this credit-debt asset? How can we make this their (management and/or prospective students’) crisis? Either we must actually win whereby the assets become toxic, or we stop acting politically in this space at all—we demonstrate an inability to pay back the loan under the terms set. We occupy a foreclosed space. By that we mean an immediate end to the symbolic meaning of the occupation and a return to its material basis. While the space is being used for great things such as teach-ins &c., it is paying on its loan by contributing to the political prestige of the university’s image—its toxicity is merely a potentiality.
To what extent is it helpful to think of the management as invested in the political traditions and reputations of the university? Do not imagine that the university exists for management as anything other than a bullet-point in their curricula vitae, or securitisation on their escalating mortgages. To what extent is the conference centre occupation performing as an asset, and why does management continue to extend the terms of the loan? On the one hand, the VC has openly accredited the occupation to the university’s legacy of radicalism, invented as that is. The administration refuse to recognise loss; there is zero political will for open acknowledgement of toxicity, and thus toxicity remains a potentiality. On the other hand, this management of crisis always threatens to become the crisis of management, those in Sussex House. A toxic asset is an asset in crisis, positioned just at the edge of liability. Toxic assets always stand on the edge of death, where death occurs as the loss of capital, or capital’s loss. Management are managing their own death; they are lying about the value of the occupation—meaning is being stripped from action. When we push the boundaries of this form they are quick to reconfigure themselves to contain us. Tradition and reputation occur as a process of recuperation. As UC President Mark Yudof once said, ‘being president of the University of California is like being manager of a cemetery’. The political tradition of the university’s dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the brain of the current student “activists”. Our political actions have been commodified and our activities become dead labour.
To reiterate, we call all those in the occupation to reconsider the value of their political actions on-campus. It is time to move away from the chauvinism of demos and the soft nationalism of “Sussex united”. Stop grandstanding in general assemblies. Refuse image. Work silently.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

6 Responses to In reply to Queer/Toxic

  1. ishan says:
    03/12/2013 at 7:29 pm

    I just read you very interesting article in queerincrisis about the occupation. First up its really well written- and i especially agree with this line: “Management are managing their own death; they are lying about the value of the occupation—meaning is being stripped from action. When we push the boundaries of this form they are quick to reconfigure themselves to contain us”

    Could I ask though what was the initial motivations for your criticisms about current practice? In the sense do you think now that the occupation is 5 weeks through it has descended into some kind of ‘chauvinism’ or tub-thumping? I only ask this because in some sense I often felt a similar way about the student movement of 2010- for all the confidence and LOUDNESS of it, and its ability to inspire and galvanise consciousness, it seemed to have its demise written into its very content. And thus the deflation felt by thousands after its failure, after its dimission by the government.

    I figured from your article that mainly, by continuing the occupation in its current guise, the management (and by extension capital) have no reason to fear it- the occupiers are ‘revaluing’ the university’s symbolic capital in some way, by re-affirming its image and political reputation as a ‘radical’ left uni.

    I have sympathy with this position for sure, and I think it has ramifications for the broader arc of radical left organisation, action and ideas. Weirdly, when I was a PhD student, i refrained from overt activism because i felt this way- that for all the genuine effort and progressive ideals that stood behind it, we were in some way digging our graves. But now im out i think i rediscovered my younger political ‘self’ but in an older, more weary way. We can stay quiet and aware for sure- and sabotage, sabotage, definitely. But then where does the narrative go, how do we, for want of a better use of words, ‘raise awareness’?

    Its a difficult one for sure- will be interesting to see what the occupiers think of your piece (i know from experience how hard it is to go against the grain). But i really did enjoy it- and important use of financial metaphors, especially as that is here the entire edifice hinges upon anyway

    solidarity,
    Ishan

    Reply
    • queer (in) crisis says:
      03/13/2013 at 3:05 pm

      Thanks for the response Ishan. The following does not answer everything, but merely explores the “demo” as form. The initial motivations for my criticism stem from experience at the demos. Constantly referring to themselves as a movement, one sustained by an insistence on mobilization, the occupiers place undue emphasis on the demo as a form of action. James Butler puts it like this,

      Marches are supposed to be shows of strength. Indeed, they often are most effective when they signal the possibility of anger spilling over into generalised excess or violence, unpalatable though that might seem. Certainly, sheer numbers seem no reliable measure of efficacy: the march against the Iraq war being the oft-cited example in this case. They can certainly build some much-needed sense of solidarity for those opposed to austerity, but even those who find themselves buoyed by listening to the usual parade of damp dignitaries are likely to admit that it won’t, in itself, do much good. Of course, the TUC speaks about marches like this as a kind of three-dimensional lobbying, or a moral pressure on politicians to serve the ‘real’ interests of their electors. This reduction of political activity to a system of lobbying via moral shame is more widespread – many also talk about strike action or more targeted protest action in the same way. But it’s a rare case where mere moral embarrassment can avert economic policy or force a capitalist employer to behave better – were it otherwise, we’d already be living post-capitalism.

      It might be sufficient, then, to say that marches are fine (and the angrier, the better), but diluting them of any political potency by putting the smiling mug of Ed Miliband at the front, and seeing them in isolation as the only action available to us is dangerous, and, worse, ineffectual.

      This insistence on the demo as form means that any further action must come as its result. Under the guise of a point of entry for others through its affective and visual qualities, the determinative or permissive quality of the demo limits the possibility for action after it. I see this insistence on the promissory within the campaign as a comfortable delay or distancing from a commitment to action and its possible ramifications- a fear. Perhaps I ought to clarify what is meant by chauvinism. I see the soft nationalism of occupiers in chants such as “Sussex united, will never be defeated” as a symptom of patriotism concerning an unreal brand. That is, the students seem to understand the university community as an homogenized-sovereign with a coherent identity that they caught up in navigating and reconstructing. They understand the worker’s struggle as a struggle by the worker to retain their pride in working for the university itself rather than at the university- the value of the job will be depreciated by this process of privatisation. But also the actions of those occupiers about to perform an action only become permissible through the quantitative demonstration of support by that sovereign. This means that the heuristic individuals are constantly checked by a need for validation distorting and constraining the possible modes of action.

      Reply
  2. Edona says:
    03/13/2013 at 4:37 am

    Really excellent and reflective piece and fully agree that posturing and image-obsession are corrosive to any movement and totally behind sabotage on every level, but still think that the success of this campaign depends upon strike action from staff.

    Reply
  3. Ishan says:
    03/13/2013 at 3:57 pm

    thanks for the response- it recalls to mind a quote by Terry Eagleton:
    “We stumble upon the contradiction of all utopianism, that its very images of social harmony threaten to hijack the radical impulses they hope to promote.” (from the Ideology of the Aesthetic)

    Reply

  4. Pingback: Where next for the anti-outsourcing campaign at the University of Sussex? | antiuk

  5. Niclas y Glais says:
    03/18/2013 at 2:35 am

    I’d critique that this view takes the spectacle – capital’s inversion of the real into illusion and of the illusions into real things (real phantoms as Marx says) – as the actuality of the struggle. Whilst the university, media etc.’s spectacle certainly turns the struggle into an advert and commodity as you describe, I believe the occupations actual uninverted reality has been one of toxicity if only in the way it breaks barriers between atomised individuals (student militancy has gone nicely hand in hand with increasing worker militancy), and challenges private property (even if this challenge becomes neutralised, literally by security at the doors) and valorisation.

    Not that the real phantoms aren’t an issue – the portrait of us by “them” is an actual objective force in reality (today the blind painters were MTV) – and a need to promote this spectacle is still certainly internalised within occupiers. Not that capital doesn’t loom – the space functioning as a place where the university holds seminars as part of student’s degrees as part of the production of their labour-power does have a sense of irony (especially when simultaneously there is disruption of lectures). And when considering the reality of present struggle, what is one to expect but this and students using it as a space to fulfill deadlines (again capital hanging over us, creating its dead-time)? It’s possible to ask too much, though this is all we can keep doing.

    But the space certainly remains one of reflexive praxis, as ideas and aims are collectively critiqued around common aims which have not been ruined by usual sectarianism (perhaps we have the SWPs fragmentation to thank, but also a developing understanding of the failure of pointless tactics as the movement progresses (be they petitions, AGMs, giving official unions the golden opportunity (in October) and persistent badgering to strike)). If only as a microcosm of somewhat unalienated, uncommanded labour (“we need to tidy up…let’s tidy up”) or as a shadow of a future without dead-time with hippies in a corner of campus, it’s worth a smile. There has been a diversity of tactics, and whilst the space could be seen as co-opted for pointless things like the Alice in Wonderland caucus-race for our glorious charity organisation (the Student’s Union) this has rarely been mutually exclusive to more concrete actions. As we keep moving up the rungs of the escalation ladder yet nothing changes disillusionment is easy, but meh, as in general, capital keeps stalking and we keep grave digging.

    In short I don’t think what I’m saying amounts to much disagreement, other than a slightly less pessimistic view, perhaps from an insider caught a bit more in the hype. Escalation yes, sabotage yes, toxicity, yes, yes yes….

    Ishan: There’s no “quiet and aware”. To sabotage is to “raise awareness”; acting is what makes noise. The more we hunt the elusive ghost of class consciousness the more we forget that struggle has little to do with, or is even antithetical to enlightening the souls of proles who haven’t heard the Good News. Have you ever read nihilist communism?

    Reply

Leave a comment