Author Archives: Julius Gavroche

On the Passage of a Few Thousand People Through a Brief Period of Time

The following is a critical description and an analysis of almost four years of political protest in portugal; critical both for its understanding of social movements and as a point of comparison with other contemporaneous movements.  Posted on  libcom.org (07/05/2014), … Continue reading

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The lyricism of revolution: José Afonso

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth. Theodor Adorno If creation is the constitution of new spaces and times, as Gilles Deleuze once said, then the creativity of music and that of politics, if not the same, … Continue reading

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Recuperation as eviction, resistance as occupation

“Spain shows again that it has regained the confidence of the markets.” (Le Monde 04/05/2014)  The interest rate on the spanish debt, at ten years, has dropped below 3%, Madrid’s stock market registers an increase in value of 25.58% over … Continue reading

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An anarchism of the vernacular: James C. Scott’s “Two Cheers for Anarchism”

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it “the way it really was”. … It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Walter Benjamin, Thesis on the Philosophy … Continue reading

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25th of April: Revolutions within a revolution

The portuguese government and opposition parties in parliament today commemorate the forty years of the 25th of April revolution; yet they do so fearful of the very word “revolution”.  To commemorate is already to disarm, to confine the event to … Continue reading

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Pieces of Madrid

The protest, dissidence and creativity of those who rebel in spain against State-Capital continues to weave together forms of life at the margins of/in opposition to domination.  At the heart of all that 15M and parallel movements in the country … Continue reading

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The body as a space of dissidence

… the body is not a thing, it is a situation … Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex The body, we have long learned, is not a mere neutral physical, biological reality, vehicle for an animating soul, or the underlying … Continue reading

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Occupy everthing!

To the question “What is property?”, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon famously answered, “It is theft”.  That it could be taken for a right was already a conceptual confusion, for unlike liberty, equality, integrity of person, the “right” to property was not unqualified.  … Continue reading

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Integral Revolution: Enric Duran

It is difficult to imagine a radical change away from capitalism exclusively through protest.  Even if the taking of the State by an anti-capitalist movement (peacefully or violently) is conceded as a possibility, it is not at all clear how … Continue reading

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Tales of working class heros: Salt of the earth

… from libcom.org: This drama film is one of the first pictures to advance the feminist social and political point of view. Its plot centres on a long and difficult strike, based on the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc … Continue reading

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