Off to London tomorrow
There’s an interesting article from the forthcoming special issue of Radical Philosophy on the ESF. In particular:
In the UK publicity leaflet published in July, international Social Forums were promoted as self-congratulatory spectacle: ‘The ESF emerged from the spectacular success of the WSF… The ESF is a festival of resistance…. celebrating the global movement.’
I wonder if the traditional Left haven’t made something of the same mistake as Fathers 4 Justice, seeing in the party-as-protest tactics of the anti-globalisation movement only their image, the carnival spectacle, and not the underlying political purpose. Because the carnival against capitalism is fundamentally about agency, both in the sense of encouraging everyone to be an active participant rather than passive protest ‘consumer’, and in the sense of creating new forms of action (in which context the protest camp/street party/social centre movement of our movement is interesting). The anti-capitalist movement may be trememndous, but the one thing it isn’t is spectacular.
Anyway, I going down to London tomorrow to play my part in the spectacle of (and around) the ESF. I know some of my readers live in London and/or are likely to be coming down to the ESF: if you’ld like to meet up drop me an e-mail or come by the Indymedia Centre, where I’ll probably be spending most of my time. In particular, the Indymedia party (Lab of Insurrectionary Imagination, Mark Thomas, Rob Newman, No Vox theare/music) on Friday night looks like it will be worth coming to – I’ll be the guy behind the bar, looking a bit like Trotsky.
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