Divine Occupation: The Politics of Messianic Insurrections – 3/3

Mótus IV

Following the disastrous Tuesday night GA the President and Provost appeared Wednesday afternoon around noon and presented their proposal to have the occupation leave forthwith. In exchange, they would open the Kellen Gallery in 2 W 13th and allow students to use that space until December 21st as an alternate organizing space. The restrictions were no smoking or drinking, no sleeping, and no painting on the walls. We would have to deal with security in the building still in order to keep it open 24 hours, and we couldn’t block the windows completely. Given these restrictions, it was clear the occupation would not be able to continue in the from it had presently taken. The offer was seen as a tasteless compromise by the hardliners, going against the very insurrectionary “propaganda of the deed” action which the occupation represented. As they wrote on the eve of Thanks-taking over at the Sacred Conspiracy blog:

Walking by the location offered by the New School administration, 2 West 13th Street, we saw the results of the most superficial expression of participatory democracy: a list of rules, and an empty space waiting for its subjects.

It is clear that this occupation was never about or for students; it was to destroy student-identity politics. This occupation’s affiliation and solidarity with the All-NYC Student General Assembly often served only to confuse its participants, as well as everyone else. A student can only be talked to as a student, which is exactly what we saw from the administration – what began as a patronizing tacit support, led to a condescending theater of negotiation. We are not students, workers, activists, or anything else. We are angry, and we want it all.

What the collaborationists among us have failed to understand, and what they have obscured in their communications with comrades and the wider public, is that we didn’t need to form a movement if we wanted to maintain a culture of compromise in the university, in the workplace, in the home, in the street – this is what we were already doing. If some want to continue, they can feel free. Anyone looking to experiment with other options is welcome to join us in this occupation, 90 5th Avenue, and all the other occupations we expect to see soon.

It’s clear we have a different view of things. And as posts like this from within the movement make clear, there are some serious disagreements about political views and actions. I think we all agree that there are lots of compromises in the university. Social justice is one of them. Liberatory education is another. Creativity and inspiration are a third and fourth. Intellectual challenge is a fifth. An affordable education is a sixth. Sufficient critical training in teaching and writing are probably seven and eight. Throw in unstable job security and potential workplace rollbacks for the unionized security and maintenance staff at New School and you have nine and ten. I could go in, but you get the point.

But I disagree that we “collaborationists” don’t want to change things, as is suggested here, or don’t have just as radical a critique of systems of power and oppression as they claim to. We just see a different way of how to change things. I have no problem saying that many of us opposed to this insurrectionary tendency have an equally sharp analysis of capitalism, and we also bring an intersectional perspective and commitment to social justice organizing that you lack with your rigid dogmatism–your Marxism and your divine political terror; your détournement and empty dialectics; your sharpie insurrections and dialectical negations of time; all you who say “Occupy Everything” and claim a post-identity class identity which transcends all other politics; all you who want to burn bridges, rather than build them; with all of you I wonder this, did you enjoy your little game? Are you ready to stop throwing your anti-capitalist tantrums yet? Our $30,000 a year private education privilege is screaming out, but I’m not sure you can hear it? I know a lot of us sure can, and it’s not very pretty to watch.

After all, when the politics are reduced to this, what room is there to talk any more?

Greetings ENEMIES.

We are writing to you with bellies full of TURKEY.

We are the bureaucrats. We are the collaborationists. We are the hypocritical professors, and these are our empty words.

What do we demand? Nothing less than the destruction of the foundations of LIFE ITSELF.

To the Autonomous Occupation: We reject your absurd anachronistic monarchism. It became clear during the occupation that you were royalist SWINE (no wonder you sought to kill the PIG, the only force that challenged the supremacy of your LORD).

And now you have established a state of exclusion. Truly, you are SOVEREIGN.

YET YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE OUR PANOPTICON! (Picture! Picture! Picture!)

Your crypto-feudal-nostalgic-aristocratism is no match for our identitarian-logocentric-bureaucratism. Prepare to drown in the black sea of our corruption and oppression, little LITTLE island.

Picture.

Yours Sincerely,

The Bureaucrats. And the Collaborationists. And your parents.

How does one argue with a politics like that? How does one work with a politics like that? What the hell kind of politics is that? Whatever it is, this is what finally killed the occupation. It’s final death throws on the internet read like a bad soap opera as the following threat was issued, only to be vacated a few hours later:

Unwilling to sacrifice our dignity by surrendering a space we have taken and transformed with full legitimacy, we have chosen to barricade all entrances to this space and will defend it by all means available to us. Our contempt for private property and the legalisms used to defend it is total. No longer will they erect walls, deny access and suffocate and constrain our lives, without a forceful and energetic response. We challenge the NYPD to attempt to gain entry into a space that has proudly denied the pigs, the media and the press access to it during its week-long existence.

Later that morning a group who I am sure is involved with this same story so far appeared in Kellen Gallery and turned what had been the beginning of a second student organizing space, albeit a temporary one, into a jumble of paint and slogans similar to the walls of 90 5th. Here’s a shot of the space early Thursday morning.

And here is a view of that space from the side Friday morning. This is looking in from the large gallery windows of the 2 W 13th building. The blank spot in the back right hand side of the frame is where the picture above shows. Apparently the posters were “liberated” to send us a message. I’m not sure what the message was, but I hope they had fun. I won’t bother to mention that the paint supplies they used in the space were purchased by one of their hated “bureaucratic collaborators” so people could continue making art in the space. I hope capitalist painting supplies won’t taint the revolution.

There is so much more I could write, but it’s been a long few days. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode, where we find out what happens to the Kellen Gallery and the future of the student movement at New School…