| Richard Barbrook on Mon, 1 Dec 1997 23:54:11 +0100 (MET) |
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| Re: <nettime> Richard Barbrook and Luther Blissett |
Hiya, My apologies to those nettimers who are reading a debate about a text which hasn't been yet published. Unfortunately this listserver operates in the ASCII format which makes it very labour intensive to reassign footnotes and correct non-anglophone spellings from a conventional word processor. As I haven't yet finished the piece, I can't be bothered to do this. I'm very happy to send a Word version to anyone on the list who wants to look at it on the understanding that the article is only a draft. As Luther Blissett has gleefully pointed out, there are some errors in the text which need to be uncovered and corrected - especially when corrections reinforce the article as in his point about Guattari's lack of real involvement in Radio Alice despite claims to the contrary in France. So if you want a copy, please send comments back. Even if you all had access to the draft, I'm sure that most people on the list aren't really interested in the ultraleft trainspotting found in our recent mails. I can reply to St. Luther that Bordiga was kicked out of the IIIrd International in 1927 (not 1930) after Lenin's death, but the process was started through a denounciation by the dictator himself in 'Left-wing Communism: an infantile disorder" which was published in 1920. I can also point out that Bordiga pioneered the suicidal sectarian politics imposed by Stalin on the western Communist parties which helped to bring Hitler to power. But what is the point of the argument? Who really cares about this tragic and embarassing moment in the history of the European Left apart from a few people like myself?? As I greatly admire the media pranks of Luther Blissett (particularly against Hakim-fucking-Bey!), I don't even want to slag off my critic in a vicious manner. What I do think is important is that we should free ourselves from defunct ideologies. In 'The Californian Ideology', Andy Cameron and myself pointed out that WIRED were promoting a dated neo-liberal vision for the Net which could not explain how cyberspace had developed - or was likely to evolve in the future. Accused by some critics of being anti-American, I thought that it would be interesting to demolish a European ideology too. Just like our yankee cousins, we also have our own fantasies about cyberspace. Given the uncritical acclaim given to Deleuze and Guattari by many Net activists over here, they seemed like obvious targets to me. People should know about the disastrous role which Guattari played in the free radio movement in France - and therefore question whether his and Deleuze's ideas should be adopted for the Net. If we are serious about reigniting the emancipatory process of modernity, apologists for Nietzsche like D&G should be severely criticised. If I can expose the limitations of the Deleuzoguattarian discourse, the article will have served its purpose. Maybe then we can work out how to intervene with the really existing Net rather than being trapped within neo-liberal or rhizomic fantasies. Later, Richard p.s. Like most members of the Labour party, I voted for Ken Livingstone in the recent executive elections rather than Peter Mandelson, Blair's candidate. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Richard Barbrook Hypermedia Research Centre School of Communications, Design & Media University of Westminster Watford Road Northwick Park HARROW HA1 3TP http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/ +44 (0)171-911-5000 x 4590 ------------------------------------------------------------------- "...the History of the World is nothing but the development of the Idea of Freedom." - Georg Hegel ------------------------------------------------------------------- --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: [email protected]