Misrule, punks and ravers

Peasantpunk, expressive incompetence, contrarianism on a budget, metis farming, the feast of fools in suburbia, crusty rituals for the churchless, oxytocin fixes



On the Feast of Fools aesthetic, some particular subcultures of DIY subversion, and apparently opposed to (or symbiotic with) the large-scale society.

Consider the Situationist International, the Temporary Autonomous Zone (Bey 2003). See also timeless works of art.

Prefigurative politics

A related concept but probably not quite what I am interested in here

Yates (2015):

The notion of ‘prefigurative politics’ is becoming established in this debate and refers to scenarios where protesters express the political ‘ends’ of their actions through their ‘means’, or where they create experimental or ‘alternative’ social arrangements or institutions. Both meanings share the idea that prefiguration anticipates or partially actualises goals sought by movements. This article uses narratives and observations gathered in social movement ‘free spaces’, autonomous social centres in Barcelona, to evaluate, critique and rearticulate the concept. Participants' attention to the ‘means’ through which protest is carried out and emphasis on projects such as experimentation with alternative social and organisational forms suggest they engage in prefigurative politics.

Against legibility

See legibility.

Cat and Girl, Masters of the universe

Makers

See making.

Incoming

  • Life on the Grid (part 1) - by Roger’s Bacon

    To review: growing up in simplistic spatial environments and using GPS has given you brain damage and life has become a soul-crushing video game utterly devoid of mystery or adventure. We are trapped in the Grid like an insect in the spider’s web; vigorous struggle will only serve to entangle us further. To extricate ourselves, we must, as individuals, gently subvert the very foundations of the Grid, which is nothing external but a facet of human nature: the impulse towards control, the systematizing instinct, the part of us that abhors anomaly and ambiguity and seeks to eradicate them. What begins as an earnest attempt to break free can so easily slip back into a self-imposed system of rules and practices with standards to be met and schedules to be followed. For that reason I am hesitant to provide any concrete suggestions—they will only serve to constrain your thinking. For now, there is perhaps only one thing that can be said: if you want to get off the grid, then get lost.

  • The Dance of No Tomorrow: The socio-political hardships of Tbilisi’s electronic music scene — Naja Orashvili et al sound interesting.

Historical fools’s societies

Surprisingly hard to research in English by naïve googling. Not even that easy in French.

When reading about the Mattachine Society we learn that the French had Sociétés Joyeuses, but no one seems to have an encyclopedia entry for this concept. Britannica mentions Enfants sans Souci as an example, and refer briefly to the Feast of Fools

There are examples given: La Farce de maître Pathelin and Confrérie des Conards.

TODO: download images from Narrenschiff as illustrations.

References

Aziz, Haris, and Florian Brandl. 2012. Existence of Stability in Hedonic Coalition Formation Games.” arXiv.
Bey, Hakim. 2003. TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Autonomedia.
Branwen, Gwern. 2009. The Melancholy of Subculture Society,” January.
Currid-Halkett, Elizabeth. 2017. Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class. 1st edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Enders, Jody. 2011. “The Farce of the Fart” and Other Ribaldries: Twelve Medieval French Plays in Modern English. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Gelder, Ken. 2007. Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice. Routledge.
Lena, Jennifer C. 2012. Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
Martin-Iverson, Sean, U. M. Rodrigues, and B. Smaill. 2008. ‘C’mon Commodify Us!’: Commodity Fetishism and Resistant Practice in the Bandung DIY Hardcore Scene’.” Youth, Media and Culture in the Asia Pacific Region, 177–94.
Murphy, Ryan H. 2020. Markets Against Modernity: Ecological Irrationality, Public and Private. Capitalist Thought : Studies in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.
Rao, Vijayendra. 2005. Symbolic Public Goods and the Coordination of Collective Action: A Comparison of Local Development in India and Indonesia.” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, no. 3685.
Yates, Luke. 2015. Rethinking Prefiguration: Alternatives, Micropolitics and Goals in Social Movements.” Social Movement Studies 14 (1): 1–21.

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