/lit/ - Literature

Today the barbarians no longer camp at the gates of the City. They already find themselves inside it, because they were born in it. There are no longer cold lands of the North or barren steppes of the East from which to start the invasion. It is necessary to recognize that the barbarians arise from the ranks of the imperial subjects themselves. In other words, the barbarians are everywhere. For ears accustomed to the language of the polis, it is easy to recognize them, because when they express themselves, they stammer. But there is no need to let oneself be fooled by the incomprehensible sound of their voices; there is no need to confuse the one without a language with the one who speaks a different language.

Many barbarians really are deprived of a recognizable language, rendered illiterate by the suppression of their individual awareness — a consequence of the extermination of meaning carried out by the Empire. If one does not know how to talk, it is because one does not know what to say, and vice versa. And one does not know what and how to speak because everything has been banalized, reduced to mere symbol, to appearance. Meaning, which was considered one of the greatest sources of revolt, a radiant fount of energy, has been eroded in the course of the past few decades by a whole company of imperial functionaries (for example, the French structuralist school so dear to the two emissaries). They have shattered, pulverized and minced it in every sphere of knowledge. Ideas that expound and incite to transformative action have been cancelled and replaced by opinions that comment and rivet in conservative contemplation. Where there was once a jungle full of danger because it was wild and luxuriant, a desert has been created. And what does one say, what does one do, in the midst of a desert? Deprived of words with which to express rage for the suffering one has undergone, deprived of hope with which to overcome the emotional anguish that devastates daily existence, deprived of desires with which to struggle against institutional reason, deprived of dreams toward which to reach in order to sweep away the repetition of the existent, many subjects become barbaric in action. Once the tongue is paralyzed, the hands quiver to find relief from frustration. Inhibited from manifesting itself, the compulsion toward the joy of living is turned on its head, becoming its opposite, the death instinct. Violence explodes and, being without meaning, manifests itself in a blind and furious manner, against everything and everyone, overturning every social relationship.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crisso-and-odoteo-barbarians-the-disordered-insurgence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiLVtOWxKQI

>>13919175
history is not dead, affirming things is primitive, but we the barbarians are primitive!

>Simply being physically present at or near the scene of an illegal assembly already constitutes grounds for arrest and detention. When you are sitting on the subway train or the bus home, you never know whether riot squads will storm the vehicle and proceed to beat the life out of everyone on board, whether vigilantes have tipped you off to the cops or are following you home, whether the triads will be out in force where you live late at night. Partisanship renders you into a body that can be maimed, tortured and—it appears—killed by those whose acts are authorized in the name of “order.” As the guardians of order make clear, we are “cockroaches,” pests to be exterminated and disposed of so that business can proceed as usual.

>In addition, professing sympathy for the struggle could very well leave you unemployed if you work for a company that has longstanding ties with the Chinese market. Consider the high-profile case of Cathay Pacific, the upper management of which demanded a list of members of a union that had participated in the movement or helped to leak flight information of the police; this company is carrying out a thoroughgoing purge of partisans among their staff, directed by careerist snitches among the crew.

>Teachers at school who tutored you in algebra just a few months ago could aid in your arrest; principals and heads of departments stand idly by as riot squads seize you and your friends outside your school building. This is the reality that protesters are becoming rapidly habituated to. As a consequence, networks of mutual assistance have rapidly formed to address the situation, offering employment, shelter, transport, and meals to those in need.

>In short: the future, as a horizon of foreseeable advancement, an itinerary of fulfillable and forestalled plans and projections, has collapsed, and we are left consulting, moment by moment, the live maps drawn in real time by volunteer cartographers, telling us which stations to avoid, which roads to take a detour around, which neighborhoods are presently being gassed. Daily life itself becomes a series of tactical maneuvers, everyone having to exercise caution about what they say at lunch in cafés and canteens lest they are overheard and reported, experimenting with different ways to ride the subways for free without being too obvious about it, inventing codes to use on instant messaging or social media that evade quick decryption. It is quite extraordinary that so many are willing to forego the craven comforts and conveniences of the metropolis, the enjoyment of anonymity as they go about their business. It is necessary to find and maintain clandestinity in other ways.

>It is impossible to deny that through it all, a sense of invention and adventure saturates the minutiae of our waking lives.