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Home > Applied Nonexistence - Beyond the Black Bloc: A Critique of its Tactics and Ontology

Applied Nonexistence - Beyond the Black Bloc: A Critique of its Tactics and Ontology Applied Nonexistence - Beyond the Black Bloc: A Critique of its Tactics and Ontology
anon - Mon, 2011-10-03 10:14 Tags: Anarchist Practice[1]Bay Area [2]Criticism [3]

From APPLIED NONEXISTENCE [4] - by Mary Celeste The black bloc is an anachronism relegated to the first decade of this century. However, this is not to say that it is relegated to history ? for it still functions both within the immediacy of our contemporary context (explicitly) and, perhaps more importantly, it still functions mythologically (implicitly). Its mythological functioning has at once circumscribed any presupposition of an authentic tactics, and creates (within the sphere of what we could call sub/counter/alter-cultural production ? which I claim is still well within the purview of an extremely diffuse and rhizomatic late-capitalist schematization) the appearance of efficacy. It is my intention to argue that the mythological functioning of the black bloc is one which incorrectly views itself as fluid and amorphous (the very notion of it existing within a realm purely defined by spontaneity, anonymity, and diffuseness supports this mythologizing claim). Quite contrary to this ?meaning? attributed (mythologically) to the black bloc as a legitimate tactic of resistance or pro-insurrectionary activity, is the unsettling feeling that it (as a tactic) has not evolved (or is not capable of evolving) yet the socio-institutional forces of late-capitalist power flows have adapted in such nuanced ways that they have completely neutralized any notion of authentic potential the black bloc may or may not have ever possessed. Tactically, the black bloc is a constructed medium still trapped within its own internal discursive logic ? and as such it is subject to definitions of its usage by those who purport to use it. Signification functions as fixity, and tactically at least, fixity is already a position of concession.

Let?s start at its beginning. While the black bloc has its historical roots within the late-autonomist and squatter movements in Europe, and it indeed was used in North American actions in the early 1990s ? for the purpose of this argument I want to temporally locate its birth (the singular

event from which the black bloc in North America began to mythologize itself) at the ?Battle of Seattle? anti-WTO demonstrations in 1999. Many North American anarchists point to Seattle as the place where the black bloc actually exerted enough force to influence direct objectives, here namely to shut down the WTO ministerial meetings. Yet what is rather peculiar about the black bloc?s existence at the ?Battle of Seattle? is that while it created a representational other for mainstream media within the context of anticapitalist resistance, it seems that tactically the law enforcement apparatus in Seattle did not regard it with the same sort of fear and caught-unaware bewilderment our collective mythologizing seems to suggest. In Direct Action, David Graeber argues that, ??long before the first window was broken, and just about all eyewitnesses reported that, even after the Black Bloc went into action, the Seattle police never paid much attention to them, but concentrated almost exclusively on attacking those blocking access to the hotel? (464). This is not to claim that police response to black bloc actions didn?t exist, obviously it did, but rather this is to point out that the highest level of tactical response by law enforcement was centered on the defense of the physical spaces where WTO ministerial meetings were occurring and where WTO delegates were staying. What then accounts for the rapid mythologizing which ushered forth from the ?victory? of the anti-WTO black bloc in Seattle? In a word: representation. The images which came from both independent and mainstream media outlets on the events in Seattle ushered in a whole new aesthetic dimension to the ontology of the black bloc, and in so doing, as is often the case with representational imaging, the images were charged with an implicit libidinal energy ? so much so that the term ?riot porn? came into widespread use after the events in Seattle ?99. To appropriate Debord, the black bloc became a mere facet of the totalizing spectacle ? a representation which was framed and contextualized in alterity and otherness, but was still nonetheless apart of the same overarching spectacle. Late-capitalism contends for spaces of resistance, and allowing these spaces to exist (as long as they function within the domain of abstract representation and cultural tropes) reinforces the safety of latecapitalism?s primacy ? akin to the tired metaphors of pressure-valves and whatnot. Within the dialectical discourse between hyperglobalized, multinational, post-industrial, late-capitalism and anticapitalism, the black bloc fulfills a narrative role ? that of the representational other ? and if the black bloc did not exist (speaking here ontologically, not tactically) it would necessarily have to be created to occupy this role. Fast forward through a decade, to what I am positing as the end of a tactical epoch ? the widespread use by law enforcement apparatuses of ?kettling? as a counter-tactic of enclosure and detainment. Like the black bloc, kettling was first used during the mid-?80s autonomist movements in Germany as a response by law enforcement. I do not wish to spend too much time on this point, but it is telling that the black bloc?s most effective physical antithesis appeared roughly around the same time the tactic of the black bloc itself did. This suggests the black bloc, as a tactic never existed in some semblance of pure tactical efficiency, and that from its inception it always contained within it its own ontological opposition. Kettling, coupled with less-visible means of counter-tactical evolution (more effective police infiltration, new methods for positive identification, the development of nonlethal weaponry, etc.) proved to be the death knell for any tactical relevancy the black bloc could hold within the North American context. Refined to the point of extreme efficacy by law enforcement apparatuses in the United Kingdom and used most damagingly within the G20 protests in 2009 and the ?student movement? protests in 2010 (yet

markedly absent in the Tottenham riots of 2011, which speaks volumes about spontaneity), kettling saw its most effective use in North America at the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto. This culmination of counter-tactical evolution over the last decade, displayed how much of a nonthreat the black bloc is within the North American sociopolitical context, and perhaps more frightening, how little the tactic of the black bloc has adapted to the aggressive evolution of the counter-forces positioned against it. The most telling example of the North American black bloc?s own stagnant incapacity, is the public proclamation issued by the Toronto police department almost a year after the 2010 G20 summit, that kettling would, ?not be used again by the Toronto Police Service? (TPS spokeswoman Meaghan Gray, June 21, 2011). The reasoning behind this disavowal of kettling as a tactic was essentially public sentiment against the inherent cruelty of its use as a tactic of control. This at once speaks to kettling?s implicit tactical efficacy, and perhaps more disturbingly, why anticapitalist threats (from a representational standpoint) should not be rendered completely ineffectual. By the TPS acknowledging that kettling went too far (i.e. was too successful), the implicit value-relational role of the black bloc is elucidated. Here then, institutional state apparatuses are acknowledging that the black bloc is not to be eradicated (as our mythology purports) ? but rather, tolerated. Since the black bloc functions as an anticapitalist other, it follows that in the narrative of anticapitalist resistance the hegemony of late-capitalism necessarily needs something akin to the black bloc to occupy the position of ?resistance? and while it possesses the necessary tactical responses to adequately destroy any actual positioning gained by the black bloc it refuses to do so (TPS vowing not to use kettling again) in favor of creating an image where the contestation and conflict between these two opposing forces is somehow real and external to the sociopolitical totality of late-capitalism itself. TPS had to publically denounce the use of a counter-tactic, not because of any liberal pretensions towards humanitarian decency, but rather because their use of highly evolved and coordinated kettling proved to be too effective, so much so that it almost completely neutralized any potentiality the black bloc could actually represent ? and if such potential agency were deemed to be completely irrelevant and hopeless by the individual actors within the ?collective? of the black bloc, the libidinal energy within the black bloc as a legitimate tactic would necessarily transfer to something else, something which the highly stratified forces of power control may not be expecting. Thus, in short, now in an era of highly diffuse power relations which no longer function according to hierarchical tropes (but rather flow in the same nonhierarchical ways we anarchists laud), the tactical games which the North American black bloc engages in are ones of representational conflict and as such represent an implicit stasis as opposed to authentic ?insurrectionary? potential. How then is it to be done? In attempting to articulate a move beyond the black bloc as a tactic, Tiqqun?s notion of Zones of Offensive Opacity (ZOO) is a useful means of contextualizing the ontological character of the black bloc and why, because it is still essentially loaded with many prescriptive signifiers (against X, for Y) it at once enters into a discourse with the state where the boundaries have already been delineated and circumscribed (i.e. the black bloc as a tactic only makes ?sense? within a field of discursive logic which has already been mapped by the state). Thus, the black bloc is fulfilling a role ? and as such it is further ensconcing itself within the trappings of subjectivication. Materially, this is seen in the quick acquiescence of the black bloc to meet its representational other (multinationals, WTO, IMF, the police, etc.) on the physical field of

contestation whose space is already defined and the accompanying rules (or rituals) of which are already established by hegemonic powers. The black bloc errs in that instead of refusing all political (macro, micro, bio, or otherwise) discourse and prescriptive signification it becomes merely another manifestation of representational politics (albeit one which is loaded with an aggressive aesthetics ?which also sadly speaks to its easy commodification, another way in which it is recuperated into the schema of late-capital). Refuse to play on fields, insurrectionary or otherwise, which are already predefined or constructed for you. It is not just a matter of the geospatial, or the physical ? one where the black bloc consistently goes to engage with ? where one sees how the black bloc as a tactic is always contained by law enforcement apparatuses. Perhaps more pressing than the problematic nature of going to and engaging with a physical terrain (streets, urban centers, thoroughfares, etc.) in which ?resistance? takes place, on an already set stage with actors, plot development, climax, and denouement ? is what it means to ontologically agree to these terms. Tiqqun, in How is it to be Done?, write that, ?Zones of Offensive Opacity are not to be created. They are already there, in all relations where bodies are truly put into play. All we have to do is to face and assume the fact that we are part of this opacity. And furnish ourselves with means of extending it, defending it.? The liminal spaces in which the defining encroachments of late-capital have not yet fully appropriated already exist, and it is a matter of finding and defending these spaces rather than engaging with the spaces which have already been fully recuperated into late-capitalist discursive logic ? such as the narrative of the black bloc. Opacity, and invisibility for that matter, are actually sites/positions of departure from prescription ? and as such are genuinely offensive. The black bloc operates under the pretense of anonymity, but this is not the same as opacity, for despite any aspirations to keep the individual anonymous within the collective context of the black bloc, the black bloc as a collective tactical entity clamors for the exact opposite of anonymity ? it yells to be heard, to assert that ?we exist!? In closing, I depart from my original assertion ? one that claimed the black bloc is anachronistic ? for this may be too lenient a critique as it presupposes that at one point in the near-past this tactic held some semblance of relevance. The black bloc has always been a more militant component of the politics of representation, and in order to move beyond this tactic, individual conspirators need to refuse this prescriptive subjectivication no matter how seductive its libidinal draw may be. My purpose here is not to prescriptively offer any alternative to the tactic of the black bloc, but rather to call into question the problematic impulse of any pretense towards creating any viable alternative to it. The negation of such subjectivication is ontological terrorism, one which finds the negative commune situated within the collective refusal of subjectivication, not a further encroachment within it! Refusing to engage in acts of representation, but rather the exploration of the spaces of opacity in which destruction can occur outside of any schematizing logic ? this is the antipolitics of non-subjective refusal. . This content is anti-copyright. Comments are the responsibility of their author.

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[3] http://anarchistnews.org/taxonomy/term/1 [4] http://appliednonexistence.org/?p=208