Garland, C. (2013) ‘As Barriers Fall, Contingency Becomes Possibility: Protest Resisting and Escaping Containment and Categorization’, paper presented 'Protests as Events / Events as Protests A one day symposium for academics and activists', 12 June 2013, Leeds Metropolitan University

Protests as Events / Events as Protests A one day symposium for academics and activists 12th June 2013, Leeds Metropolitan University ‘As Barriers Fall, Contingency Becomes Possibility: Protest Resisting and Escaping Containment and Categorization’ Christian Garland, Institut fur Kritische Theorie, Freie Universität Berlin Protest can be seen as a crystallization of ‘actually existing’ societal discontent and antagonism, which is more or less visible in a specific time and place, becoming an event in the process. Protest as event, is in this sense, one in which barriers fall and the contingency of different agents - none more so, than those ‘in’ and ‘outside’ an (anti) political milieu - are dissolved by collective action, communal endeavour, and the shared thrill of opposition and resistance. This conceptualisation of protests as events /events as protests, looks at how barriers that may have existed between participants before involvement in an event, can and frequently do, fall as different subjectivies coalesce and their experience is shared. This paper will aim to sketch how such confluences create new possibilities for those engaged in them, and how these can be seen as a form of resistance to and escape from strategies of containment and categorization by powers operating against them. Indeed, the division of those engaged in protest into spurious categories based on their identifiable affiliations, is the favoured tactic of the state and media to contain and isolate protestors within this same arbitrary categorization of the ‘protestor’ who is politicised, but whose concerns and discontent are otherwise something completely separate from the general population. When, however, protest becomes an event, in which barriers fall and common linkages are made, it becomes far more difficult for those involved to be isolated by categorization and contained and neutralised as harmless; crucially also, participation is opened up to all those previously ‘outside’ (anti) political activity, newly emboldened and ‘politicised’ by their involvement, so further dissolving former separations. This paper will aim to sketch how protest as event can enter an unchartered realm of event as protest, resisting categorization and escaping containment. Antagonism become visible, discontent made manifest It is possible to speak of protest ‘at’ an existing state-of-things, ‘against’ this same dismal ‘fact’, that is ‘actually existing’ social reality, one or another aspect of it, whether that be an institution, political party, policy, law, past or present event, or capitalism itself. So, from protests as events/events as protests, it can be understood that a specific space -time of a particular protest/event may be identified with a specific group, or coalescence of groups, but the indefinite and unknown temporality of the experiences that give rise to them and the breaking of arbitrarily imposed boundaries that the event can be seen to be part of, are an on going process. Indeed, as many of us will be aware, the developmental stages of specific mobilizations, their planning, and all of the networking and organisation involved, will frequently be undertaken by activists or militants - those already politicized and who are more or less conscious of what they are involved in, and what effect they hope it will have. In this, there can of course be seen a radical difference between what remains of the traditional left, and the ultra left and anarchist movements, in the ‘theory’ they apply, and the practice this reflects. Orthodox Marxism, and what in the UK context is familiarly known as Trotskyism, takes the role of activist or militant, that is, cadre as given, it is also not seen as problematic, that there should be such a separation between specialists and the untutored masses. However unorthodox Marxist accounts of ‘practice’, as for other libertarian communist perspectives, taking up Marx’s original maxim, “The emancipation of the proletariat must be the work of the proletariat itself”, sees such a division as inherently problematic, and one that should, as far as possible be overcome. The inherent problematic of protests as events being something separate from those not already involved, and so becoming self-enclosed, is of course an always pressing difficulty, but one many activists/militants have sought to address. On a ‘macro’ or larger scale, this can be seen in the ‘summit crashing’ of the alter-globalization movement, at the very end of the Twentieth Century, and the first few years of the Twenty First, a movement which of course had been around far longer than the worldwide public visibility the protests at the WTO summit in Seattle and subsequent mobilizations brought and which remains unbowed, despite the necessarily ephemeral nature of the tactic. Again, as plenty of those present will know well, the major mobilizations have had an effect far beyond the actual, immediate physical protests/events. Seattle (1999) and of course Genoa (2001), but all the subsequent mobilizations against the WTO, IMF, World Bank, G8, etc. - the supra state political institutions facilitating capitalist globalization - at least into the middle of last decade, and before 2008, have helped refocus and shift popular understanding of what Globalization actually is, and the effects this has - and is having. Such an observation should not be taken to mean unqualified support for the alter-Globalization movement, which needs to understand, as Aufheben noted at the time it was somewhat eclipsed by the ‘War on Terror’, that “connections need to be made with the struggles of the wider proletariat.” The many different participants of ‘the movement’, of course include as many different perspectives, some simply at the radical limits of left-leaning liberalism - that is, far from radical and severely limited. This paper is not the place for long critical excurses into the different, sometimes quite fractious, tendencies present in the alter-globalization movement, but they are touched on here, to give an example of some of the problems involved in the specifics of protest. Writing at the time (2001) of the protests organized against the ‘Summit of the Americas’ of the FTAA in Quebec, Naomi Klein noted, “Sure there were well-organized groups in Quebec City: The unions had buses, matching placards and a parade route; the "black bloc" of anarchists had gas masks and radio links. But, for days, the streets were also filled with people who simply said to a friend, "Let's go to Quebec," and with Quebec City residents who said, "Let's go outside." They didn't join one big protest, they participated in a moment.” Klein, N. (2001) The Bonding Properties of Tear Gas http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2001/04/bonding-properties-tear-gas The participation in ‘a moment’ is the nature of protests/events, and the above quote is neatly illustrative of that, and the way that in the example it cites, a very ‘activist’ or ‘movement’ event became much more open-ended and ‘unparticularized’ by absorbing the interest and participation of wider society in the city in which it occurred. Klein’s article also summarises well, how protests as events, can and do radicalise, both elements already involved but much less radical and far less aware of exactly what they are up against, and even more significantly, those ‘outside’ the movement, and thus not seen as ‘politicized’ by many within it. Indeed, “Many good people have come from Trot and liberal backgrounds,” Tommy (2001) Trots and Liberals p.108 in On fire - The battle of Genoa and the anti-capitalist movement (One Off Press) as has been noted in the published reflections on Genoa, but as the same author also rightly notes, “We have to dare to dream, we have to dare to step outside the established boundaries.” This stepping outside of established boundaries, is what can make protests so energising, and the same radicalising force which overwhelms their containment and categorization. The point at which ‘events’ overtake the temporality of ‘protests’ as specific and clearly defined outlets for limited discontent - of course clearly defined and limited by the state, but also participants sometimes - is when they spread beyond any spatial confinement, because they are ‘everywhere’, and by that is meant the specific discontent that is crystallized among relatively few participants, becomes manifest generally among many. Again, this can and does happen, but sadly doesn’t much of the time, to take the UK example here: “Certainly, in the UK there have been only a few links with struggles around and against wage labour. Of course, the impulse of many taking part in the mobilizations springs from their everyday disgust at the dull compulsion of a world dominated by capital: a world of work, ecological destruction, poverty etc. But the 'movement' still does not exist as an everyday effort to resist the conditions of life determined by wage labour.” Anti-capitalism as an ideology…and as a movement? Anon. (2001) in Aufheben #10 (2002) http://libcom.org/library/anti-capitalist-aufheben-10 The same ‘isolated’ or ‘contained-as-protest’ nature of ‘movement’-oriented events, may be especially apparent in the UK, but is observable in the US and Continental Europe too, with the caveat, that to make that observation is not meant to undermine the efforts of those activists involved, rather that resisting and escaping containment and categorization, is best attained when it is no longer a matter of ‘just’ militants, because that definition is rendered largely irrelevant by the activity of many. Quoting the same article from Aufheben is once again apt here, “It is police action, again, that has sometimes contributed to the breaking down of this kind of separation. Mayday 2001 in London, was promoted as an anti-capitalist event, and pre-hyped by the police to such a degree that otherwise 'non-political' working class youth saw it as an opportunity to have a go at property and the hated cops -much more noticeably than at Mayday 2000.” Ibid. The particular example used here, is not to emphasize ‘violence’ as somehow preferable or always needed, because as Massimo De Angelis argues, it is important for those ‘in’ the movement not “to take a clear position, to draw lines in the sand, to define, to classify, and to be precise.” De Angelis, M. (2001) From Movement to Society p.108 in One Fire There are of course a whole raft of issues on tactics, and reflection and debate on differences within ‘the movement’ - even among the most radical elements - are continuous and on going, but what is under discussion here, is a movement event responding to the experience of a section of wider society, in this case that of working class youth, and the experience of objectification by day-to-day capitalist social relations: property relations upheld and protected by the state. Still to come: ‘The real movement which abolishes the present state of things’ Marx, K. (1845) [5.Development of the Productive Forces as a Material Premise of Communism] in The German Ideology http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm In the last five-six years, we have entered a crisis - of capitalism - unseen before. The crisis of capital is of course easily identified as an ‘economic crisis’ or worse a ‘financial crisis’, both terms may well be applicable and are, however the crisis we are living through is much more than that, and would indeed seem to be The Breakdown of a Relationship Screamin’ Alice (2008) The Breakdown of a Relationship? Reflections on the Crisis http://endnotes.org.uk/articles/15, that is, the capital-labour relation, the class relation. When this is considered, the apparent lack of sustained and coherent response from the side of labour, is better understood, and by that is meant one which convincingly poses a threat to capital. The last thirty or so years of capital’s re-composition and restructuring have fragmented and atomised labour to the point of any kind of collective action becoming very difficult, if not impossible - and that is not meant as some nostalgic longing for unionised full-employment, or Social Democracy or bureaucratized sectional ‘struggles’ - but to understand that class struggle has never gone away, nor could it, however much capital wishes it could bring that about. Indeed, the “now hidden now open fight”, takes on a character unfamiliar to both sides, and for the side of labour, the proletariat, ways of contesting the class relation, are in very many ways, as yet unknown. What then, is the point of this in relation to protest, to protest as events? Explaining the uncertain and seemingly tentative nature of movements of opposition and resistance to capital in crisis, can be seen as authentic expressions of efforts at contestation, with ‘the best weapons’ (so far) that are available, so for example in austerity-scarred Europe, unionized strike action that only reaches stalemate, or riots combusting across cities in the Mediterranean countries that burn out or are extinguished as fast as they appear, but the misery of austerity continuing on and on unabated, and largely unchanged. Taking the example of working class youth in the UK, finding reasons from its own experience for participation in Mayday 2001, is again useful here. That working class youth responded to the ‘event’ in the way that it did, was because the protest as event/event as protest responded to the first-hand experience of working class youth, that being the daily misery of life defined by capital and policed by the state, something that on generalized scale, a social scale, remains as yet unseen, but which will indeed “result from the premises now in existence.” Ibid. 4