Sleepwalking in a Dialectical Picture, Pt 1: A Conversation With Avery Gordon by Natascha Sadr Hag High Ian

8/7/2019 Sleepwalking in a Dialectical Picture, Pt 1: A Conversation With Avery Gordon by Natascha Sadr Hag High Ian

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Natascha Sadr Haghighian

Sleepwalking ina Dialectical

Picture Puzzle,Part 1: AConversationwith AveryGordon

For my Night School seminar that took place at

the New Museum in New York in October 2008, I

invited Avery Gordon and Tom Keenan to have

conversations in Whole Foods, a huge organic

supermarket around the corner from the New

Museum. The original plan had been to hold the

entire seminar there instead of in the museum's

auditorium, but this plan failed when the

supermarket refused to grant us permission.

Instead, we held our conversations there anddocumented them using wireless microphones

and a spy camera attached to cameraperson

Angela Anderson's shoulder.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe aisles and various spaces of the store

served as a matrix for our conversations. Avery

and I spoke about subjugated knowledges and the

relationship between research and the ability to

act. We considered the apparitional state of

realities with no place in the politics of

representation as a force of agency and change.

As we wandered through sections of the store, a

selection of objects and functions served ascoordinates for our conversation.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe conversation lasted about forty-five

minutes, after which the crew walked back to the

museum, rewound the tape, and screened it in the

New Museum auditorium for the seminar

participants. The screening was then followed by

a discussion.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThis text is a transcript of my conversation

with Avery. The conversation with Tom will follow

in issue #5 of e-flux journal.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ Ð Natascha Sadr HaghighianÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNatascha Sadr Haghighian: Welcome,everybody, to the third part of this seminar. Weare at Whole Foods on Bowery and Houston, andlet me just briefly explain why weÕre here. I seethis conversation held in a store, more preciselyin a grass-roots-organic-movement-turned-major-corporation-type store, not only asrepresenting an urgent question of how to relateknowledge and action in a way that makes senseÐ that creates agency Ð but also as a necessaryshift away from the secure and isolated situation

of an auditorium to a more challenging place thatincorporates the contradictions andincompatibilities of theory in everyday life. I hopethis makes sense. I experience Whole Foods asbeing very representative of everyday struggles,and its confusion with operationalrepresentations (ones that seem to repeatgestures of political agency) raise all the buzzwords of being in the right, on the right side Ðconsuming without shame. How do we deal withsuch distorted representations? How do we readthem, and how do we interact?

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSo, today IÕm very happy to be here withAvery Gordon. You are professor of sociology at

e-flux journal #3 Ñ february 2009 Ê Natascha Sadr Haghig

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Sleepwalking in a

Dialectical Picture Puzzle, Part 1: A Con

versation with Avery Gordon

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Whole Foods aisles

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sitting and having coffee or a meal, or justbrowsing Ð all of which are invited here. Anotherway is to focus on the history of struggles thathave helped to shape the present moment, andthat are also erased in the store, blinded almostby its bright lights.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊYou are asking about the extent to which thepromises of the organic/sustainable foodmovement and the environmental justice

movement are used and/or abused by WholeFoods and others like them (although they arethe biggest of their kind). As youÕve beendiscussing over the past couple of days, itÕs clearthat you have many thoughts on how WholeFoods and the Whole Foods shopping experienceconvince people that they are doing somethingbetter than continuing a consumer capitalismlifestyle that benefits the few rather than themany.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFor me, part of answering this big questionis always to situate the images, signs, or stories

offered in that shadowy social and historicalcontext Ð in the subjugated knowledges that thedominant image, sign, or narrative occludes. AsyouÕve pointed out, Whole Foods is full of quitestriking signs addressing the shopper, such asÒPower to the PeopleÓ or ÒLocal OrganicSustainable.Ó It is also an intensely narrativizedplace: everywhere there are placards withinformation and little tales giving you a storyabout how you should understand the source ofthe products on display (their mode ofproduction and distribution), and how you shouldunderstand your consumption experience.Michael Pollan, in his wonderful book The

OmnivoreÕs Dilemma: A Natural History of Four

Meals, called this elaborate interpellation anddouble fetishization of the commodityÒsupermarket pastoral.Ó (I say ÒdoubleÓ becauseit is not merely that the commodity mystifies orhides the social and labor relations thatproduced it Ð it still does that, and it also makesa fetish of the process by which the commodity ismade to appear to us as a reflection of ourdesires.)ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBut Whole Foods co-exists alongside

movements, activities, and everyday lifepractices that are far more radical than it Ð onesthat are oriented not towards reproducingcapitalist economic and ideological relations,but are oriented towards creating alternativeones. Whole Foods and Òindustrial organicÓ co-exist alongside, for example, my local farmerÕsmarket. The Santa Barbara farmerÕs market hasbeen around for a long time and is a highly valuedlocal institution. The sellers are almost all localor small regional growers, and they haveestablished strict controls over who can sell

what there, especially around the prohibition ofgenetically modified seed. The market

represents the local sustainable-scaled sector ofthe organic food Òindustry.Ó In fact, it reflects thetradition and values of the organic farmingmovement of the 1960s. Most of its growers andsellers would not even like to be called anindustry, with that wordÕs connotations of bigbusiness, monopoly, and production for profit. Ineffect, however, their movement made possibleindustrial organic Ð the Whole Foods model Ð

and what you increasingly see in largesupermarkets.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMy point is that industrial organic grows atthe same time as explosive battles over seeds,for example, not only grow worldwide but alsomodel new political formations and processesgrounded in complex understandings ofknowledge and culture (as with the farmers inIndia and the work of Vandana ShivaÕs researchfoundation and seed banks such as Navdanya).There exist today very profound and far-reachingmovements for environmental justice and

against environmental racism that link foodproduction with the politics of waste andgarbage. What is characteristic about thesemovements is an effort to immediately createand practice alternative ways of living and eatingand cleaning up after ourselves that are outsidecapitalist economic relations.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊYou can see Whole Foods and Navdanya ascontradictions Ð certainly Navdanya is anegation of much of what Whole Foods is andrepresents. I also think itÕs helpful to see them asdistinct Ð part of multiple universes that exist ondifferential and proximate planes. The corporatemodel is far more dominant than that ofindigenous seed banking, so the question thenbecomes: how do we shift the balance towardscommon seed banking and away from finance?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: Munir Fasheh, a Palestinian professorof Mathematics, has spoken of a Òpluralism ofknowledgesÓ (Òknowledges,Ó as opposed to asingular notion of knowledge). Maybe we couldsay that all the knowledges that come out of thedifferent struggles and movements represent apluralist diversity, and in places like WholeFoods, they are being appropriated, monopolized

to serve only one purpose, one model. Thensomething else happens to knowledge and itsagency Ð the struggle becomes also for formerlysubjugated knowledges that were a successfulpart of a previous struggle or movement beforebeing kidnapped and appropriated by corporateinterests. If a sentence like ÒPower to thePeopleÓ is used to advertise a big corporation, itcan be very confusing. But again, the question is:how can the sentence be re-appropriated for thestruggles it was once a part of? How canknowledge be re-contextualized and linked to

action?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ


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ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: Yes, I agree it can be confusing,although itÕs become the stuff of mainstreamadvertising. There was a revolution in advertisingin the United States in the 1960s. As ThomasFrank shows in The Conquest of Cool: Business

Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip

Consumerism, the advertising industry wasexceedingly successful in appropriating thecountercultural, antiestablishment rhetoric and

using it to encourage mass consumption atunprecedented levels. Whether or not Frank iscorrect in also claiming that white youth culturein the 1960s was encouraged or anticipated bythe advertising industry (rather than the otherway around), the basic fact remains that it isroutine for advertising to play with, invent, andsolicit sophisticated notions of representation,imaging, coolness, and politics. The hiring ofuniversity graduates out of art, media, andculture departments began in the late 1950s andearly 1960s, and it is the norm today. Many of

these young people have studied a range ofcritical theories, usually see themselves asÒprogressiveÓ rather than conservative, and, inmy experience, also often believe that they canretain these values within the corporateenvironment, even as they know full well who ishiring them, why, and for what. Advertising, like

the fashion, music, and art industries, has beenappropriating the ÒstreetÓ as the norm for a longtime now, which means that a lot of consumersare highly literate in this kind of languageswitching.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe question I always wonder about is: whatexactly do people (and we should always specifywhich people) do with signs such as ÒPower tothe PeopleÓ when they see them, (if they even

notice them)? Many people have become verysophisticated handlers of the constantsolicitations that surround them, even as theirhistorical consciousness shrinks. I think weknow less than we think we do about how folksreceive these signs and messages, and what theymean to them. At the least, I think itÕs importantto remember that they are advertisements, andto not confuse them with something else Ð totreat them as what they are, a part of theproduction of consumer culture and particularkinds of consumers.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: Right.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: The larger issue, it seems to me, is theextent to which the corporate organicsupermarket and its signs and symbols andfigures (such as ÒRosie the ChickenÓ) create astory, or a set of understandings that excludemore accurate and challenging ones. There is a

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sign that says ÒPower to the People,Ó but no signor placard that also says that Whole Foods owesits existence to those individuals who, in 1969,occupied an abandoned plot of land in Berkeley,California, that had been the subject of stalleddevelopment plans, called it ÒPeopleÕs Park,Ó andthen starting growing food and vegetables to giveaway for free. The popularization of organic foodand healthy eating did not trickle down Ð it

trickled up. For example, the central argument ofFrances Moore LappŽÕs best-selling andvegetarian Diet for a Small Planet, published in1971, was that hunger was not caused byoverpopulation (which was the reigningeugenicist argument), but by food production anddistribution methods that benefit the few in theFirst World. It was her argument that we lacked(and still do) economic and political democracythat captured peopleÕs attention, which shebrought forward as she continued her work. Thestory behind PeopleÕs Park and its failure is too

long and complicated to tell here Ð and today it ismostly the daytime residence for people withouthomes Ð but itÕs worth noting that it is not so farfrom the Whole Foods Berkeley store.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOne prominent sign in the store here is ÒWepay 100% of our health benefits to ouremployees.Ó Indeed, in 2007, Fortune magazine

voted Whole Foods one of the 100 bestcompanies to work for in the United States. TheWhole Foods Web site has considerableinformation describing its corporatemanagement values and how well the companytreats its employees Ð Whole Foods considersitself a model of the Òsocially responsiblebusiness.Ó What youÕre not told is that John Makiis avowedly anti-union. Whole Foods has been

seriously criticized for the variety of ways itsaggressive monopolization, anti-unionism,public misinformation, and profiteering havecontravened its claims of being a companydedicated to community development andplanetary sustainability. (See ÒWhole FoodsMarket: WhatÕs Wrong with Whole FoodsÓ onMichael BluejayÕs site, and Mark T. Harris,ÒWelcome to ÔWhole-MartÕ: Rotten Apples in theSocial Responsibility IndustryÓ). ItÕs not just thatWhole Foods doesnÕt advertise its critics Ð itwould be surprising if they did. ItÕs that whatÕs

hidden behind the ÒPower to the PeopleÓ signand the lifestyle politics is the far more radicalcritique of what Vandana Shiva calls theÒLifelordsÓ: those companies and individualswhose aim is to privatize and sell the commonmeans of life, including food and water. Behindthe lifestyle politics and the signs that announce

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it, is why the Mayor of Philadelphia authorizedthe bombing of the revolutionary group MOVE in1978 (killing 7 adults and 4 children) and why theUnited States government has declared EarthFirst! a terrorist organization.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: Yes. Does that mean that what is to bedone here is to reveal the hidden structures orhidden facts of the place Ð dig out the dirtbehind the silky smooth facade? That would be a

really traditional approach to criticism, to action.Yesterday, in the conversation with Tom Keenanwe found that Ð at least concerning images Ð theact of revealing the truth often doesnÕt have anyeffect any more.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: Well, itÕs interesting that youÕd use theword Òdigging,Ó because I wanted to talk aboutthe Diggers today. But to first address thequestion youÕre asking: I suppose youÕre right todescribe finding out the things behind the thingsÐ identifying whatÕs present and whatÕs absent ina given situation or place Ð as a traditional

method of critical engagement. How one choosesto go about encountering and identifying thethings behind the things (what youÕre calling thestructure) and what one makes of the encounteris, in my opinion, what really matters. Nothing isautomatically changed by traditional methods ofexposure or by untraditional methods either.What to do Ð which includes what you will orwonÕt think in the next moment Ð must be dug upas well. No outcomes are, alas, given in advance.I am interested in and drawn to old forms ofstruggle that repeat over time because I aminterested in time itself, in the continuities of theabuse of power and in the somewhat remarkablerepetition of the struggle against its variedforms. Even if these memories of resistance andstruggle and knowing otherwise are intenselyconstructed and staged, they nonetheless createa force field that connects us through time andspace to others, and to a power we areconstantly denied and told we do not possess:the power to create life on our own terms and tosustain that creation over the long term.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊYouÕve heard me on this point before, but Ithink itÕs crucial to see beyond the constraints of

these constructions to a place where theyÕrethere and powerful, but where they are only onecondition of our being and not entirely in controlof what we are and what our capabilities are.This kind of (in)sight (or second sight) is a realcapacity, and it also changes oneÕs perceptualboundaries and political compass at the sametime. You talked about this in a related wayyesterday when you described the conscious actof not looking at the photographs of the tortureat the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. ThereÕs atremendous power that comes from your

decision to not need to look Ð to reject the claimon you that you must look because the

photographs show how things Òreally are.Ó Thispower is what IÕve called being in-difference,which is not an absence of caring, but is ratherthe presence of a modality of engagement that isautonomous and creative with regard to what youare aiming to achieve, and not derivative of whatyouÕre aiming to replace.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: IÕm thinking of another thing thatMunir Fasheh has suggested, which is the notion

of co-authorship. Maybe it relates to what youÕresaying. He described how, in his homeland ofPalestine, colonization and occupation alsohappened on the level of language andknowledge. He explains how the definition ofwhat is to be known Ð and what the language forthat knowledge should be Ð was defined bycertain institutions that were installed by thecolonial power. He suggests that in order todecolonize oneself, one should only use wordsthat one has a personal experience with. ItÕsquite a radical approach to language. I thought it

was interesting in the sense that, to do this, onewould have to find out first what a word actuallymeans within oneÕs own context, then ask howone might appropriate it for oneÕs own purposes,all in order to finally start using it. And then, juststep by step, oneÕs vocabulary expands. I imaginefeeling speechless at first Ð what are the wordsthat one has personal experience with? If youconsider it as an approach to all kinds ofcolonizations, you notice how hard it must be atfirst, especially in a time when everything thatwe encounter seems to be taken care of in oneway or another, prepared for us Ð not only food.When we go down to the other part of the store,we will see all this produce that has beenprocessed and prepared for us on so many levels.ItÕs all taken care of for us, even the narrativethat comes with the product. You donÕt have todo anything other than select and consume.Decolonizing oneself here would probably meannot using any of these offerings Ð just eatingwhat you can grow or find yourself. Maybe thatmakes it clear how hard it is. To relate this backto other practices, I think a key questionconcerns how to understand and decide what

words one wants to use, what kinds of actionsone wants to take, what kinds of places to go, etcetera. I wonder if you can relate to the idea ofco-authorship at all and what would it mean foryou?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: Do you remember when I first met youand you described a number of your projects tome, including the one at the Berlin Zoo and at thebus stop, with the art funders and curators? Ithought they were so interesting and wonderfuland asked you if youÕd heard of Harold Garfinkeland his ethnomethodological experiments,

because your projects reminded me of what heÕddone. Those experiments engaged a question you


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brought to those projects, and which youÕreasking now. That is: what is the moment at whichinstitutional decorum and the taken-for-grantedreproducibility or sensibility of a given institutionbreaks down? At what point can it be broken?The point cannot be predicted in advance, but weknow it when it happens. At its breaking point, asyou and Garfinkel have both shown, peoplebecome extremely unsettled because the

mechanisms theyÕve relied on to keep thingsrunning smoothly without having to know or thinktoo much about how that actually happens fail.The rigging begins to show and the decorum isbroken. YouÕre asking me now: what are thepoints at which our language fails? At what pointdo we have to learn how to construct a newlanguage for being decolonized? I think youÕreright: we start with speechlessness, and then adegree of self-consciousness of speaking that,characteristically (one hopes in this case aswell), disappears with fluency.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊLet me connect back to the Diggers beforewe go downstairs. The Diggers, or the ÒTrueLevellers,Ó as they called themselves, wereanarchistic, communistic, radically self-governing commoners who appeared among aseries of radical groups, including the originalLevellers and the Ranters who were active duringthe English Civil War in the 1640s and 1650s. Yousent me a quotation by Michael Taussig thatdescribed the person who lives sovereigntybeyond utility results in being branded a hysteric.Certainly, to call sexual libertarians ÒRantersÓ(the Diggers were found guilty of being Rantersas well, even though they did not favor sexualliberty) is to brand them as hysterical. But theidea of living sovereignty beyond utilityexpresses well what the Diggers aimed toachieve. The activities and views of radicalseventeenth-century popular groups during theEnglish Civil War may seem an obscure referencefor us today, but perhaps not! Christopher Hillwrote:

There were ... two revolutions in mid-seventeenth-century England. The one

which succeeded established the sacredrights of property ... gave political power tothe propertied (sovereignty of Parliamentand common law, abolition of prerogativecourts), and removed all impediments tothe triumph of the ideology of the men ofproperty Ð the protestant ethic. There was,however, another revolution which neverhappened, though from time to time itthreatened. This might have establishedcommunal property, a far wider democracyin political and legal institutions, might

have disestablished the state church andrejected the protestant ethic.1

The Diggers were part of this second revolution,part of a fork opened in the historical road, whichhas been erased from an official history thatcelebrates the benefits of capitalistparliamentary democracy over monarchicalabsolutism. The Diggers were called by thatname because they not only believed in equalityof persons Ð in the leveling of inequalities and

indignities between rich and poor and betweenthe powerful and the powerless Ð but they alsoformed radical cooperative communities toprevent the enclosure of common land, and thefurther privatization of property in England. Theywould literally dig up common lands to creategrowing fields, the produce of which they wouldgive away for free, inviting others to join them.They were set upon by the police and the stateand the local landowners, and eventually theirmovement was destroyed. The ideas that guidedthem never disappeared, of course, finding

expression today in the strong movements tostop the privatization of water, air, and the littlepublic land thatÕs left and among those who seeka ÒtrueÓ economic and political equality. TheDiggers produced a number of declarations andmanifestos, and I thought it might make a certainpoint to read from one of them in Whole Foods,where only a faint trace of them can be seen. Dowe have time?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: Yes, sure, but let me add a commentwhile we go down to the food court. Hearing youtalk about the erasure of history in the case ofthese struggles or transformatory processes, Ihave to think back to your involvement withghostly matters. In your book by the same name,you vividly describe how things, entities, eventsthat are deprived of a status in the system ofrecognized history or the acknowledged worldbecome apparitions. It seems to me that it isimportant to talk to these apparitions, and tohear what they have to say ...ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: Yes Ð to talk to them and to listen aswell, because in the listening one figures out howto deal with the impact of people and events andpossibilities that have been violently suppressed

and then return to haunt. ItÕs not merely a matterof telling you the story of the Diggers and abouthow they were murdered and politicallyrepressed and what the implications of the theftof common lands for private gain have been. Thetelling of the story is neither for information perse, nor is it for entertainment Ð the storytellingcreates a connection across time and space sothat we who are living now can work to put anend to the conditions that repeat, and thuscontinue to haunt us.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: The telling of their story is

empowering.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: Yes, itÕs empowering, and itÕs also a way


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of moving backwards and forwards in time insomething of the way Walter Benjamin describedthe movement of a certain kind of historicalagency or even divinity, protecting past andfuture generations, and also catching the liensthat make putting that ÒPower for the PeopleÓsign up in a megastore even possible. Shall I readfrom one of the Digger Manifestoes?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: Yes, please.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: ÒA Declaration from the poor oppressedPeople of England directed to all that callthemselves, or are called Lords of Manors,through this Nation; that have begun to cut, orthat through fear and covetousness, do intend tocut down the Woods and Trees that grow uponthe Commons and Waste LandÓ was written byGerrard Winstanley and published in 1649.Gerrard Winstanley called himself a True Leveller,distinguishing himself from John Lilburne andother more moderate Leveller leaders. TheDiggers were a much smaller group than the not-

very-unified Leveller movement, which historiansnow understand to have consisted of at least twowings: a moderate constitutional wing led byJohn Lilburne and John Wildman, and a moreradical wing situated in the (New Model) Armyand among the general population, especially inLondon. Among the more radical Levellers andthe Diggers, the fight had been Ð and continuedto be Ð for the eradication of private property andtyranny of political rule by the wealthy and thepowerful. Parliament and the Army and thedisposition of the countryÕs property were all tobe fundamentally leveled, with no statusdistinction between rich and poor, noble andcommoner.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe declaration is signed with about twentynames, but there were about 200 people whooccupied St. GeorgeÕs Hill immediately beforethis declaration in Surrey was given:

We whose names are subscribed, do in thename of all the poor oppressed people inEngland, declare unto you that call yourselves lords of Manors, and Lords of theLand ... That the Earth was not made

purposefully for you, to be Lords of it, andwe to be your Slaves, Servants, andBeggers; but it was made to be a commonLivelihood to all, without respect ofpersons: And that your buying and selling ofLand and the Fruits of it, one to another isThe cursed thing, and was brought in byWar; which hath, and still does establishmurder and theft, In the hands of somebranches of Mankinde over others, which isthe greatest outward burden andunrighteous power ... For the power of

inclosing land, [privatizing public orcommon land] and owning Propriety, was

brought into the Creation by your Ancestorsby the Sword; which first did murther theirfellow Creatures, Men, and after plunder orsteal away their Land, and left this Landsuccessively to you, their children. Andtherefore though you did not kill or theeve[although they did!] yet you hold thatcursed thing in your hand by the power ofthe Sword; and so you justifie the wicked

deeds of your Fathers; and that sin of yourFathers should be visited upon the Head ofyou, and your Children, to the third andfourth Generation and longer too, till yourbloody and theeving power be rooted out ofthe Land ... And to prevent your scrupulousObjections, know this, That we Mustneither buy nor sell; Money must not anylonger ... be the great god, that hedges insome, and hedges out others; for Money isbut part of the Earth; And surely, theRighteous Creator ... did never ordain That

unless some of Mankinde, do not bring thatMineral (Silver and Gold) into their hands,to others of their own kinde, that theyshould neither be fed, nor clothed; nosurely, For this was the project of Tyrant-flesh (which Land-lords are branches of) toset his Image upon Money. And they makethis unrighteous Law that none should buyor sell, eat or be clothed, or have anycomfortable Livelihood ... unless they bringthis Image stamped upon Gold or Silveronto their hands.2

In 1649, the Diggers denounce concentratedpower, private property, and the capitalist moneyeconomy, which is not yet dominant, but is in theprocess of becoming so. They see clearly thatviolence and war establishes so-called freecapitalist economies and they will shortlydenounce, equally vigorously, the police power ofthe state and its right to hold to itself a monopolyover the use of force, which Cromwell willestablish as the defining feature ofparliamentary democracy. (There is another verycontemporary lesson of a different sort in the

history of the New Model Army and theremarkable agitation and ferment of democraticideas from its Òmasterless men,Ó to useChristopher HillÕs expression, but another timefor that!)ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: It is very interesting that one of therepresentations of power is an image printed ona piece of metal, right? It never occurred to methat a coin is actually a very powerfulcombination of a valuable material carrying anicon.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: ItÕs the turning of that graven image Ð

money Ð into a deity or a god that theyÕre tryingto warn us against. And so they call first for the


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common land to be named what it is: acommons, property to be used and shared, notavailable for private appropriation and use. Theylost this fight, and by the nineteenth century,England had enclosed or privatized virtually allits older public common lands. They also calledfor true equality Ð the leveling of all status. Theysay: ÒTherefore we are resolved to be cheated nolonger, nor be held under the slavish fear of you

... seeing the Earth was made for us as well as foryou. And if the Common Land belongs to us whoare poor oppressed, surely the woods that growupon the Commons belong to us likewise:therefore we are resolved to try the utmost ... toknow whether we shall be free men, or slaves.Ó3ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: ItÕs all there.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: ItÕs all there, including the analytic coreof whatÕs become the re-emergence of thecommons as a social goal and politicalwatchword for a profoundly radicalenvironmentalism that links a critique of private

property, consumerism, and money worship toself-organized democratic governance withoutwar, without policing, and without the tyrannicalstate. Peter LinebaughÕs most recent book, The

Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons

for All is a brief for this new communing Ð orperhaps we should even call it communism Ðthat is connected, but not bound to the old.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: Reading this declaration here is quitean intense experience and it shows that aconnection across time and space not onlycreates consciousness about the history of thesestruggles, but immediately changes theperception of the present. ItÕs all there Ð you justhave to listen to it. Especially in situations whena serious financial crisis weakens the system tothe degree that a lot of things can happen, thisconnection can be very useful. The newspapersin Europe, at least for a couple of days, weretalking about the end of capitalism. Theircomments actually became more moderate aftera bit, but for at least a few days, mainstreamGerman newspapers were discussing Socialismas a possible alternative. Should we slowly headtowards the exit?

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: Yes.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: I wonder whether, if we are able toconnect more to the apparitional history ofstruggle we might actually be able to react tosituations of crisis in a much more profound andmeaningful way Ð to use them for the things thatwe fight for, and that we think are necessarychanges in this society.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: I think so. We reach back to honor andbring that struggle forward. As we go forward, wehave to make it ours, and it will differ from theDiggers. The forks in the road are always there,

itÕs a matter of whether we take them or not. Andin order to take them we have to accurately

recognize our capabilities Ð ones that, as Imentioned before, are always denied anddiscouraged. ItÕs not as if nobody knows how tolive without property Ð lots of people know howto live that way! Many people Ð most of us, infact Ð know how to build and maintain socialrelationships that are not based on exchangevalue. When I remember this, I am optimistic,because even though most of the people who live

without property are poor and really need some,and even though exchange value is the dominantvalue guiding the organization of much of publiclife, itÕs not a closed situation and we have farmore power to change the situation than weoften presume. The really crucial question is:how invested are you in the perpetuation of whatweÕve got? Being ÒcriticalÓ is no guarantee thatyou are in-different, divested of the systemÕslures and promises and rewards. The question Ialways ask myself is: if all that I can criticizedisappeared tomorrow, can I imagine a

worthwhile and better existence? I alwaysanswer Yes without qualification to that questionÐ even though I can imagine things becomingworse, too!ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊNSH: I guess this leads us back to thenotion of the sovereign individual and life beyondutility that Michael Taussig described inDefacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the

Negative. The sovereign in this sense is thehysteric, the defacer, the masked revolutionarywho is questioning the name of the event: Òwhyis this the name of the event and not somethingelse?Ó As a response to received notions ofreality and truth, the hysteric defamiliarizesthose notions by repeatedly questioning thename of the event Ð by not accepting thenaturalized rule of the things that are put intoplace and that appear to be the only way to dothings. Defacement of the given names of eventsdeconstructs representations of power and takesthem to a domain of life beyond utility.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAG: Yes, I agree.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ×This conversation took place on October 25, 2008 as part ofNight School, an artist project by Anton Vidokle in the form ofa temporary school. A yearlong program of monthly seminarsand workshops, Night School draws upon a group of local andinternational artists, writers, and theorists to conceptualizeand conduct the program.


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Avery Gordon is professor of sociology and law andsociety at the University of California, Santa Barbara,and on the guest faculty at the Centre for ResearchArchitecture, Goldsmiths College, University ofLondon. She is the author of Keeping Good Time:

Reflections on Knowledge, Power and People andGhostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological

Imagination, and the editor (with ChristopherNewfield) of Mapping Multiculturalism and (withMichael Ryan) Body Politics: Disease, Desire, and the

Family , among other works. Her most recent articles

on imprisonment and the War on Terror were publishedin Race & Class and Le Monde Diplomatique. Hercurrent writing aims to comparatively understand thenature of captivity and confinement today, its meansof dispossession, and what is required to abolish it.Since 1997, she has co-hosted No Alibis, a weeklypublic affairs radio program on KCSB 91.9 FM, SantaBarbara.ÊNatascha Sadr Haghighian works in the fields of video,performance, computer, and sound, primarilyconcerned with the sociopolitical implications ofconstructions of vision from a central perspective andwith abstract events within the structure of industrialsociety, as well as with the strategies and returningcirculations that become apparent in them. Ratherthan offer highlights from a CV, Haghighian asksreaders to go to www.bioswop.net, a CV-exchangeplatform where artists and other cultural practitionerscan borrow and lend CVs for various purposes.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1Christopher Hill, The WorldTurned Upside Down:Radical Ideas During the EnglishRevolution (London: TempleSmith, 1972), 15.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ2Seehttp://www.bilderberg.org/land/poor.htm.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ3Ibid.


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Documents

Sleepwalking in a Dialectical Picture, Pt 1: A Conversation With Avery Gordon by Natascha Sadr Hag High Ian