“Fools as dull as the heavy thud of a computer on the helmet of a riot cop”
Via No More Big Wheels, an incredible statement from a group calling themselves The Sorbonne Occupation Committee in Exile. Difficult to choose the best bits to quote, but here’s some of them:
By installing their police here, they offered the Sorbonne to all the dispossessed. At this hour when we are writing this the Sorbonne does not belong to the students anymore, it belongs to all those who, by the word or the cocktail, mean to defend it.
…
We are fighting against a law passed with a majority vote by a legitimate parliament. Our simple existence proves that the democratic principle of majority vote is questionable, it proves that the myth of the sovereignty of the general assembly can be usurped. It is part of our struggle to limit, as much as possible, the tyranny of the majority vote. … Once the vote has been cast for a strike until the withdrawal of the law for equal opportunity, the general assemblies should become a space of endless debate, a space for sharing experiences, ideas, and desires, a place where we constitute our strength, not a scene of petty power struggles and intrigues for swaying the decision.
…
They were wandering in anguish of the freedom offered but impossible to grasp, because it was not desired. A week later, after numerous occupations and confrontations with the police, their asserted impotence is finally giving place to an innocent taste for direct action. Pacifism finally becomes what it has never stopped being: a benign existential pathology.
…
We are referring to what did not happen in 68, the revolutionary turmoil that did not take place. By casting us in the past, some would like to extract us from the present situation and to make lose the strategic understanding of it. By treating 68 as a simple student movement, they would like to dismiss the still present menace of what 68 could have been, a savage general strike, a burst of a human strike.
…
The idea of democratically debating every day those who are against the strike on the renewal of the strike is absurd. The strike has never been a democratic practice, but a political accomplished fact, an immediate expropriation, a relationship of power. No one has ever voted the establishment of capitalism. Those who oppose the strike are de facto standing on the other side of the barricade, and the only exchange we could have with them is of insults, punches and rotten eggs. In the face of referendums set up to break the strike, the only thing to do is to abolish them by all means necessary.
…
We are the heirs of the failure of all the “social movements.�
…
None of the “social movements� of recent years has achieved in months of “struggle� what the insurgents of November discretely obtained in three weeks of riots – cuts to public assistance in the affected areas were suspended, funding for local programs was reinstated. All of this without making any demands. Demanding means defining your existence in the mutilating terms of those in power.
…
Even their marshals have a new role, and a new name: they are now the “action division� and are preparing to confront the police if they have to.
…
No one has the right to tell us that what we are doing is “illegitimate.� … Our task from now on is to give means to this struggle with no other limit but what appears to us to be just and joyful.
5 comments
Leave a comment
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
[…] Intriguingly, a group calling themselves the Sorbonne Occupation Committee in Exile, in direct allusion to 1968, has produced a tract in which they appear to have mistaken back issues of the Internationale Situationniste for a style manual [via TWSOC]. Nevertheless, they make some excellent points very clearly (and whoever said that the Situationists didn’t do the same every now and then, anyway?). Particularly I’d like to regurgitate “Revision #1″: Revision #1: We are fighting against a law passed with a majority vote by a legitimate parliament. Our simple existence proves that the democratic principle of majority vote is questionable, it proves that the myth of the sovereignty of the general assembly can be usurped. It is part of our struggle to limit, as much as possible, the tyranny of the majority vote. All that space given to the general assemblies paralyses us and only serves to confer legitimacy on paper to a bunch of wannabe bureaucrats. The assemblies are neutralizing all initiative by establishing a theatrical separation between the word and the act. Once the vote has been cast for a strike until the withdrawal of the law for equal opportunity, the general assemblies should become a space of endless debate, a space for sharing experiences, ideas, and desires, a place where we constitute our strength, not a scene of petty power struggles and intrigues for swaying the decision. […]
Pingback by History : Other » An old one but a good one… @ 3/23/2006 8:23 am
Sadly, I’ve heard various reports from people involved in the actual occupation of the Sorbonne that this is not actually from anyone involved in the occupation (which is now over)… Apparently they were more (neo) Marxist than Situationalist and also, were not so openly for violence (atleast not against people, property and corporate entities are a different story). Apparently it was manufactured by someone else… the question being who?
the speculations are endless… another university occupation that is using the Sorbonne (and the events of ‘68) as a symbol?… some random radical who is all talk and no action?… or a group which has yet to act and is hoping to spark off a revolution using the furvour already ignited, in which case, this is just a manifesto of things yet to come?
PS Great page by the way
Comment by PaxSi @ 3/23/2006 12:01 pm
Yeah, I’d heard that too (see for instance this email). Interesting that it claims to be communique no. 4 as well. Does anyone know anything about communique’s 1-3?
Comment by tim @ 3/23/2006 5:21 pm
Probably my favorite bit is “The strike has never been a democratic practice, but a political accomplished fact, an immediate expropriation, a relationship of power” as it ties in with the compliance with the people’s nondemands. Results trump rhetoric every time (a bit ironic writing about it from “exile”, though).
Comment by Peter @ 3/30/2006 10:14 pm
…manufactured by someone else…
An interesting question that arises here is does it actually matter if it was written by a person who was in the Sorbonne or not? Does it make it any less valid or appropriate (or poetic)? What is ‘authenticity’ when it comes to such things? Is this appropriation of someone else’s action, or a delegation of tasks (after all, its not really fair that they have to do all the work of occupying the universities and writing the manifestos. Come on, lets delegate!) The author is immaterial, we need no charismatic leaders, the message is what matters…
Comment by Moll @ 4/4/2006 5:27 pm