Matt Cole
Communist. Organizer. Writer. Editor. Novara Cadre.
“Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production.” – Marx. Grundrisse.
matt at novaramedia.com
London, UK
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On Militant Poetics and the Physiognomy of Judges
This paper was given at the Militant Politics and Poetry event at Birkbeck College, University of London on 18/05/2013. Fourteen people – mainly poets – were invited to give ten minute papers about the current situation of poetry, theoretical problems, organisational problems, and the current state of politics, law, and violence in the UK. The paper was presented with a handout with pictures of three judges.
“On the terrestrial globe there is an uncounted, unnamed multitude, whose suffering would not be sufficiently allayed by sleep alone. For them wine composes its songs and poems.”[1] Baudelaire’s sentiment requires recomposition today, tracing the relations of a multitude, its suffering under the cutting edge of the newest technologies, and a negative poetry emanating precisely from the objectivity of those technics. For Marx that multitude’s upkeep as paupers counted as ‘faux frais’, an incidental expense, of capitalist production and accumulation.[2] Or rather, capital’s means of disavowal of responsibility for that suffering - the gaol and courtroom – were nothing less to capital than the oil greasing the piston or the bandage covering the stub of the severed finger. These mediations were not, in Marx’s and Baudelaire’s time, capital itself. Together with the suffering Lumpenproletariat whom they would legislate most brutally, the judges of the mid-nineteenth century occupy a liminal position of capitalism: not themselves productive of value, but rather the precondition of generalised exploitation.
Fast-forwarding 150 years, Justice Vos, a high-court judges, gave a lecture for KPMG in the wake of the August riots titled “The Role of UK Judges in the Success of UK PLC.”[3] “I want to address a subject I feel very strongly about.” he begins “It is the question of what can be done to promote the aspects of British business and professional life that are thriving.” continuing, he marks his repression: “our legal system is widely acknowledged to be long on integrity and short on corruption.”[4] - This, in a speech at KPMG on how judges can promote business. The contradiction achieves its highest expression under the proclamation:
We need a Unique Selling Point – the management consultants’ favourite thing. We need to offer something the world needs and cannot get elsewhere, if we are to succeed in the modern world. The USP is the quality and integrity of our professional services.[5]
Sweet selling of integrity, like the Kantian broken promise. The victims of law, the suffering multitude understand this contradiction viscerally. Vos’s speech hints at a history of that last 150 years, in which the violent administration of that multitude has been transformed from a mere incidental cost into an industry at the heart of capitalist accumulation in the UK. It is easy to take from this a history of the reconciliation of two ideals: the administration of so-called justice, and the accumulation of capital. But the interlocking of these concepts never appears: this imageless unfractured monolith. This history of idealised forms leaves no room for poetry to breathe: juridical forms, the value form, the commodity form, poetry must fracture these, speaking the silent mechanism, the history within the machine, under whose dominion this transformation came to pass. Perhaps the poetry of that multitude resides within – or explodes out of – the objectivity of the experience of technics of this juridico-economic synthesis, in the texture of a specific piece of capital: the 21st century judge.
I have spent several months of the last years in court, and want to think through the qualitative strangeness of judges qua capital. They are indeed a strange capital; in each judge the state invests for decades nurturing the latest technological developments in class hatred. This process has natural-historical consequences – traces are left in the extremes of bodily excess and mental poverty. I notice, for example, that judges don’t have lips. I can’t tell how they were removed; more likely they are curled inwards, as the sides of their mouths strain outwards. That effort attempts to provide support for the cheeks – to maintain a semblance of plumpness through taut skin pulled over hard muscle. There is little softness – certainly no passion – only its appearance at a distance, an illusion perpetuated by strain. The foreheads seem to stretch backward while eyebrows furrow in contrary motion. Beneath, eyes are used for pointing. All this straining changes the appearance of aging: skin lacks depth, with the texture of sandpaper but more friable, as if it would disintegrate under your teeth. The skin is always stretched, with a reddish hue: a sign of unjustified, unreasonable health. It is unusual to see health in the old today, particularly amongst those attending court with the misfortune not to be judges. Even where judges are fat, the skin is taut, clinging to them – their faux frais of production are diets and personal trainers. Lips are not required for healthy eating and jogging.
Counterposing this image of health, Walter Benjamin wrote a physiognomy of the Lumpenproletariat in Marseille:
In that little harbour bar, the hashish began to exert its canonical magic […]. It made me into a physiognomist, or at least a contemplator of physiognomies […]. I positively fixed my gaze on the faces that I had around me, some of which were of remarkable coarseness or ugliness. Faces that I would normally have avoided for a twofold reason: I would neither have wished to attract their gaze nor have endured their brutality. […] I now suddenly understood how, to a painter […] ugliness could appear as the true reservoir of beauty – or better, as its treasure chest: a jagged mountain with all the inner gold of beauty gleaming from the wrinkles, glances, features.[6]
Beauty is in the eye of the bekifft. The beauty of the multitude is no longer for them but snatched from their apparent barbarism, by a wandering observer. They, the undernourished, the coarse and broken, they without a name, the depth of those wrinkles in their faces, like mountain crevices, with beauty springing from their depths, in opposition to the tight skin of judges. “The dialectic cannot stop short before the concepts of health and sickness.”[7] Adorno says. The dialectic transposes into the question of physiognomy with which we return to our judges, diagnosing the sickness of the healthy:
The traces of illness give them away: their skin seems covered by a rash printed in regular patterns, like a camouflage of the inorganic. These very people who burst with proofs of exuberant vitality could easily be taken for prepared corpses, […] Underlying the prevalent health is death.[8]
Death was at stake in the autumn of 2011. In Tottenham I saw looted spirits being emptied on to the street, so that the bottles might be used – spiritually – as missiles against the police. As the judge is sucked from the edge of capitalism inwards, wine is emptied from stolen bottles, which fly into the faces of coppers. Baudelaire gives wine a “spiritual voice”, it says “Man, my beloved, I would pour out for you, in spite of my prison of glass and fetters of cork, a song full of brotherhood, a song full of joy, light and hope”.[9] Today only the prison is left: In our miserable times we still have the bottles, shattering. After the riots one of the last remaining traces of humanity of the judges was abolished: courts, for some weeks, functioned all night; the 24-hour judge was born. No more wine and no more night, no place of passion.
One of the most beautiful passages in Adorno’s book, Mahler: A Musical Physiognomydescribes Mahler as a vagrant:
The power of naming is often better protected in kitsch and vulgar music than in a high music that even before the age of radical construction had sacrificed all that to the principle of stylisation. This power is mobilised by Mahler. Free as only one can be who has not himself been entirely swallowed up by culture, in his musical vagrancy he picks up the broken glass by the roadside and holds it up to the sun so that all the colours are refracted.[10]
Within the prevailing crisis all those colours are irrelevant. Only red matters, drawn from the faces with that broken glass, so that the strained skin might at once break, relax. In the combination of the broken glass and the skin of judges’ faces, in this passionate reconciliation, might we not find peace and depth, poetry of a new humanity?
Perhaps this is all caprice. But a militant poetry of the unnamed, uncounted multitude can never be satisfied with monolithic conceptual accounts of the law and capital, but arises in the objectivity of both law and capital at precisely the moment when that objectivity becomes autonomous of its function – in the traces and spaces, natural-historical textures and refuse it leaves behind, as material, out of which this poetry will compose itself.
[1] Charles Baudelaire, ‘Wine and Hashish’ trans. By Maurice Stang, in Hashish, Wine, Opium: essays by Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier, p. 75.
[2] Karl Marx, Capital Volume I, p. 797.
[3] Mr Justice Geoffrey Vos, ‘On the Role of UK Judges in the Success of UK PLC’, KPMG Lecture, 18/10/2011,http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Speeches/justice-vos-speech-kpmg-lecture-2011.pdf
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Benjamin, ‘Hashish in Marseille’ trans. by Edmund Jephcott and Howard Eiland, inOn Hashish, p. 50.
[7] Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 73
[8] Ibid. p. 59.
[9] Baudelaire, ‘Wine and Hashish’, pp. 70-71.
[10] Adorno, Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy, trans. by Edmund Jephcott, p. 36.
WHAT THE FUCK is a discussion, social and working group developed by members of Thames Valley Plan C. We are open for all to join and our aim is to better educate ourselves and inform the development of our politics and strategy for the coming year. Our current ‘theme’ of readings and…
♥
I wish my experience had been quite as ecstatic as the McGinley photo, it wasn’t, and it was fucking grim in many ways, but I think it’s important to lay claim to, and hold on to, moments of resistance in queer lives – even when imperfect, terrifying, or coming (as mine last night did) from somewhere inchoate between fear and rage.
Bash back. X
RYAN (HEAD-BUTT), 1999
That’s not my blood. I was making out with my main squeeze on a stoop in the East Village and some macho jock dickhead walked by and called us fags. I don’t think he expected me to get up in his face. We scrapped a bit and then I head-butted him and could feel his nose break on my forehead. We ran for blocks, laughing at the top of our lungs, and then jumped into bed, where my boyfriend took this picture of me.Reminded of this by my friend @piercepenniless who nutted some prick last night
hey boy,
bourgeois revolutions storm more swiftly from success to success, their dramatic effects outdo each other, men and things seem set in sparkling diamonds, ecstasy is the order of the day – let’s get a drink?
Workin 9 to 5
What a way to make a livin’
Barely gettin by
It’s all takin’
And no givin’
They just use your mind
And they never give you credit
It’s enough to drive you
Crazy if you let it
– Dolly Parton, 9 to 5
Dolly Parton…
- dear worldly realm and deified matter,do you have a critique of Lies vol I? Did you take issue with some representation or argument? Do you have thoughts that expand and enrich anything presented? Do you think there was something said that’s fucked up to say, or something missing that…
‘Science and industry denounced as metaphysics not merely romantic sexual love, but every kind of universal love, for reason displaces all love.’
Theodor Adorno and Marx Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment
‘She had suffered an acute attack of ‘love’- the name given to a disease…
A ‘Benn Diagram’ showing the vast array of speakers for upcoming leftist events (courtesy of David Broder)
‘Arguing With the Phallus: feminist, queer and post colonial theory’ by Jen Campbell #vintagezed
Nigel Falange riding to Westminster in a sedan chair carried by the sweating, gurning, clueless shower of BBC journalists for whom he exerts such a fascination. He daintily extends a boot – British leather, of course – for Nick Robinson to lick. Across the country, moustachioed &…
- circulationwithinmyskull: Early favourite for track of the month. That misery at the bottom of beauty is maybe the greatest bluff…. As of yet I do not know.
(No streaming audio available)681214 plays
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Posts
From their website:
‘The Sitting Room University presents The White Square Society: The ‘Possibility of the Impossible’
A twelve week, seminar-style reading and discussion group focusing on radical political philosophy. The ‘Possibility of the Impossible’ was devised by Matthew Cole from the White Square Society. It was originally held at the Arts Admin Studio in Toynbee Street, London, in collaboration with The Haircut Before The Party; following the success of the course and the strength of the reading list we thought it would be a good idea to run The ‘Possibility of the Impossible’ here in Nottingham.
The first session will be held on the 1st February beginning at 7pm in the Attic Space at
One Thoresby Street. All are welcome whether they are familiar with the subject or not, actively politically engaged or just interested in learning new things. In line with the ethos of the original project we “strongly encourage female, queer, and non-white persons to attend”.For each of the two hour sessions we hope to facilitate and encourage a horizontal, supportive and collective learning environment, we are hoping that each of the sessions will be fully participatory as their success will depend upon explorative dialogue between all those present. This is not a ‘taught course’. We will endeavour to cover all the texts for each week’s session but, obviously due to time, this may not always be possible. Do not worry if you cannot read all of the texts (but great if you can!), please select one or two to engage with for each session. The reading is available here and via USB stick at each of the meetings. If you have any trouble downloading etc then please e-mail us and we can provide the texts: info@sittingroomuniversity.org - we will also endeavour to provide printed copies.’
- Sessions will be held on alternate Wednesdays from 7pm and take place in the Attic Space at One Thorseby Street’ - http://onethoresbystreet.org/- FINAL WEEK [5] - The Call – Occupations, Invention, Tiqqun’s Insurrection
Download
Tiqqun – Call
Tiqqun – Introduction to Civil War
Merrifield - The Coming of The Coming Insurrection: Notes on a Politics of Neocommunism
Alberto Toscano - The War Against Preterrorism
- Week 4. Black like Mao: A Stage of Marxism, Moving Beyond Europe, Beyond Whiteness
Download
Bruno Bosteels & UCFML – Maoism: A Stage of Marxism
Bruno Bosteels & UCFML – Maoism: Marxism of Our Time
Mao Tse-Tung- On Practice
Stuart Hall & Martin Jaques – 1968
C. L. R. James – Black Power
Helly & Esch – Black Like Mao
- Week 3. Sites of Antagonism: Autonomism, Anti-work, Worker-subjects
Mario Tronti – Lenin In England
Alain Badiou - The Factory as Event Site - Why Should the Worker Be a Reference
Antonio Negri – Introduction – ‘Books For Burning’
Antonio Negri – Domination and Sabotage – ‘Books For Burning’
Alberto Toscano – Chronicles of Insurrection- Tronti, Negri and the Subject of Antagonism
- Week 2: Conflict - Bakunin, Lenin, Proletarians
Week 2. Conflict: Bakunin, Lenin, Proletarians
Mikhail Bakunin – The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State
Ann Robertson – The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict
V. I. Lenin – “The April Theses”
V. I. Lenin – Tactics of the Class Struggle of the Proletariat
Alain Badiou - There are no such things as class relations
Slavoj Zizek – How to Begin from the Beginning - Week one: Back to Basics
We are a compressed seminar-style discussion group.
We welcome all who are interested in the idea of egalitarian emancipation, from professional agitators to the teenage rioter. We strongly encourage female, queer, and non-white persons to attend.
We may read one or some or all of the readings each week. All are provided online and via USB stick at the address below.
We meet Tuesdays at 7pm in the Salon known as ‘The Haircut Before The Party’ 26-28 Toynbee Street E1 7NE London UK
The first seminar, we hope participants select a few readings from the following list, downloadable from the link on the sidebar:Marx & Engels – The Communist Manifesto
V. I. Lenin – On Karl Marx: The Marxist Doctrine
Mikhail Bakunin – The State and Marxism
Alain Badiou – Thirty Ways of Easily Recognising an old Marxist
Alain Badiou – The Idea of Communism
- A Call to Begin
‘Let us para-be’, that is our war cry. And better yet: ‘We are nothing, let us para-be the Whole.’[1]
- Badiou
Wherever there is war, there is a war situation as a whole. [2]
- Mao
Where to begin? Is this not the problem of the present? It seems that the movement of teleological Marxism has been historically destroyed—communism has been reduced to a mere “spectre”[3] haunting Europe whilst taking the occasional holiday in the global South. In 1997, Alain Badiou announced that the “era of revolutions is closed.”[4] This may still be the case, for despite the waves of revolt in the early 2000s that led to the overthrow of several governments in the Commonwealth of Independent States (former USSR) and the Balkans, along with the recent waves of revolution sweeping Northern Africa and the Arab world, the dominant paradigm of liberal capitoparliamentarism remains as strong as ever.[5] In 1977, Badiou declared that “Marxism is in crisis,” that it is “atomized,” that to defend it is “to defend a weakness.” The Marxist dream of a new man and a new world has been stifled by its historical failure. Post-Lenin, post-Mao, post-orgy we have arrived at an impasse. However this “crisis of Marxism” is now accompanied by a equally if not more destructive “crisis of capitalism.” Francis Fukuyama has admitted that he was wrong about the “end of history” and had not anticipated “political decay.”[6] Before his death, Milton Friedman had also noted that the famous maxim “privatize, privatize, privatize” was “meaningless without the rule of law.”[7] Yet, despite its empirical financial crisis, as well as the subtle (yet present) ideological crisis, liberal capitoparliamentarism reigns supreme and the militant practice of Marxism still remains somewhat of a continental geist.[8]
In January 1999 Badiou asserted that the problem of the twentieth century bestows upon us, is to exist within the “non-dialectical conjunction” of the unreconciled themes of ‘ending’ and beginning.’[9] Within the twentieth century, they remain unreconciled, which leaves us with a fundamental antagonism—what is called a war, “total and definitive” to “destroy the old wars by total war.” This total war is waged in the name of “the final struggle” to destroy the old and create the new. It has been an absolute war for the subjective paradigm, for both the legacy of the past and the possibility of a future. And yet despite the failure of historical Marxism, there is no true victor. The twentieth century left us with “neither the one nor the multiple,” but rather has “borne a combative conception of existence” in the Two. It would seem, at first glace, that this means we must simply choose sides and take up arms. However, this assessment naively plunges us back into the old paradigm of dialectical materialism. We must rather measure the past, clarify the non-dialectical conjunction of the old war, and “recompose politics from the scarcity of its independent anchoring.”[10] This recomposition of politics must take the two as the starting point and following Hegel, found a new politics on “the third term that marks the gap between the two others.”[11] What is needed today is a concept of the third term that erupts from the gap between the struggle of the old nationalist wars in the twentieth century and the utopian “war to end all wars.” What is needed is a new concept of Marxism, communism, and militancy for the contemporary world. If it is true that communists are, “in the movement of history, the political subject,” then we must study their legacy—as the out-of-place, the illegal force that intervenes in the series of events to galvanize a novel militancy.[12] We must educate ourselves in the politics of egalitarian emancipation. We must lay the groundwork for an intervention. This the point from which we must begin.
[1] Badiou, Alain. Theory of the Subject. Trans. Bruno Bosteels. London: Continuum, 2009. p. 104.
[2] Mao, Zedong. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung. Pei-Ching [i.e. Peking: [Foreign Languages], 1978. p. 183
[3] Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. New York: Routledge, 1994.
[4] Badiou, Alain. “Theorie axiomatique du sujet: Notes du cours 1996-1998.” cited in Hallward, Peter. Badiou: a Subject to Truth. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 2003. p. 41
[5] In most cases, these revolutions were directly or indirectly facilitated by the United States itself, the Project for a New American Century, the IMF, etc. See Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan /Henry Holt, 2007.
[6] Fukuyama, Francis. The Origins of Political Order: from Prehuman times to the French Revolution. London: Profile, 2011.
[7] Milton Fiedman. “Economic Freedom behind the Scenes.” Preface. Economic Freedom of the World 2002 Annual Report. [Vancouver, B.C.]: Fraser Institute, 2002.
[8] However, since 2008, Italy, Greece, and others facing financial collapse have seen nearly unprecedented revolt to ‘austerity’ measures that governments—in the interest of capital—have enforced on the people.
[9] Badiou, Alain. The Century. Oxford: Polity, 2007. p. 37
[10] Badiou, Alain. Theory of the Subject. p. 182.
[11] Badiou uses this formulation in the preface to Logics of Worlds to form the term ‘materialist dialectic’ out of the gap between democratic materialism of the current liberal-capitalist state and the aristocratic idealism of the nihilist heirs to Debord.
[12] Badiou, Alain. Theory of the Subject. p. 183.
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