This episode features writer and editor John Klima from Electric Velocipede, his story “Life’s Simple Pleasures,” a short piece entitled “Editors Never Sleep,” and George Cohan’s “Life’s a Very Funny Proposition After All” circa 1909. Consider emailing info@dietsoap.org if you’ve been listening. Click here for Diet Soap #3 at Podomatic.
Yesterday I spoke to four writers via Skype and will be putting together these conversations for our new podcast in the next month. Look forward to hearing from Darin Bradley, Bill Brown, Eileen Gunn, and Chelsea Martin.
Television is designed to arouse the most perverse, sadistic, acquisitive drives. I mean, a child’s television program is a real vision of hell, and it’s only because we are so used to these things that we pass them over. If any of the people who have had visions of hell, like Virgil or Dante or Homer, were to see these things it would scare them into fits.
Generalised secrecy stands behind the spectacle, as the decisive complement of all it displays and, in the last analysis, as its most important operation.
The simple fact of being without reply has given to the false an entirely new quality. At a stroke it is truth which has almost everywhere ceased to exist or, at best, has been reduced to the status of pure hypothesis that can never be demonstrated. The false without reply has succeeded in making public opinion disappear: first it found itself incapable of making itself heard and then very quickly dissolved altogether. This evidently has significant consequences for politics, the applied sciences, the justice system and artistic knowledge.
The construction of a present where fashion itself, from clothes to music, has come to a halt, which wants to forget the past and no longer seems to believe in a future, is achieved by the ceaseless circular passage of information, always returning to the same short list of trivialities, passionately proclaimed as major discoveries. Meanwhile news of what is genuinely important, of what is actually changing, comes rarely, and then in fits and starts. It always concerns this world’s apparent condemnation of its own existence, the stages in its programmed self-destruction.
The second Diet Soap podcast includes the story “A Mouth is a Hole is a Vista” by John Schumate, Ken Knabb’s letter to a Spanish contact on the subject of peak oil, a Goldman Sach’s conspiracy collage, a tribute to JG Ballard, and an interview with Miriam M. Lain about the Titanic. You can find the podcast here or at itunes.
I just got off the phone with John Klima and I’ll probably be editing the conversation and putting it up on the podcast in the next two weeks. It was a pleasure talking to him. And everyone should check out his ‘zine electricvelocipede and buy some back issues to help keep it going.
While it turns out that the Rexroth essay was protected by copyright, Knabb’s permission to reprint from his website still applies to everything else to be found there, and so I choose this quick letter by Knabb as a replacement.
[Response to a query about “the extent to which Debord subscribed to the notion that capitalism had solved its objective, or economic contradictions.”]
Debord (and the situs in general) did not believe that capitalism had definitively resolved all of its contradictions. They pointed out that it had partially or temporarily resolved some of them — e.g., “objectively” through New Deal-type state intervention that served as a corrective to the previously unregulated economic anarchy, and “subjectively” through the development of the spectacle and the general reorientation toward “consumer” concerns (see SOS #43).
Contrary to the ignorant and mendacious pseudocritiques by Dauvé [Gilles Dauvé, a.k.a. Jean Barrot] and others, it is clear that Debord was quite knowledgeable about Marxian economic theory, even if he didn’t yap about it all the time or clutter up his writings with lengthy undigested excerpts from Capital.
In SOS #82 he ridicules the notion that economic crises are scientifically predictable, and in SOS #88 he notes that, predictable or not, such crises alone will not suffice to bring about a revolution. In SIA p. 228 [Situationist International Anthology, new edition pp. 291-292] he ridicules the ultraleftists who are locked into this fetish (he is talking about people’s retrospective debate on what “caused” May 68):
Overcome by their shock in May, all the researchers of historical nothingness have admitted that no one had in any way foreseen what occurred. We must acknowledge a sort of exception to this in the case of all the sects of “resurrected Bolsheviks,” of whom it is fair to say that for the last thirty years they have not for one instant ceased heralding the imminence of the revolution of 1917. But they too were badly mistaken: this was not at all 1917 and in any case they were hardly equal to Lenin. As for the remains of the old non-Trotskyist ultraleft, they still needed at least a major economic crisis. They made any revolutionary moment contingent on its return, and saw nothing coming. Now that they have admitted that there was a revolutionary crisis in May they have to prove that some sort of invisible economic crisis was taking place in early 1968. As clueless and complacent as always, they are earnestly working on this problem, producing diagrams of increases in prices and unemployment. For them an economic crisis is no longer that terribly conspicuous objective reality that was so extensively experienced and described up through 1929, but rather a sort of eucharistic presence that is one of the foundations of their religion.
See also SIA 269-270 [new ed. 346-347].
I express the same point in Joy of Revolution (Public Secrets, pp. 11-12):
If history followed the complacent opinions of official commentators, there would never have been any revolutions. In any given situation there are always plenty of ideologists ready to declare that no radical change is possible. If the economy is functioning well, they will claim that revolution depends on economic crises; if there is an economic crisis, others will just as confidently declare that revolution is impossible because people are too busy worrying about making ends meet. The former types, surprised by the May 1968 revolt, tried to retrospectively uncover the invisible crisis that their ideology insists must have been there. The latter contend that the situationist perspective has been refuted by the worsened economic conditions since that time. Actually, the situationists simply noted that the widespread achievement of capitalist abundance had demonstrated that guaranteed survival was no substitute for real life. The periodic ups and downs of the economy have no bearing on that conclusion. The fact that a few people at the top have recently managed to siphon off a yet larger portion of the social wealth, driving increasing numbers of people into the streets and terrorizing the rest of the population lest they succumb to the same fate, makes the feasibility of a postscarcity society less evident; but the material prerequisites are still present. The economic crises held up as evidence that we need to “lower our expectations” are actually caused by over-production and lack of work. The ultimate absurdity of the present system is that unemployment is seen as a problem, with potentially labor-saving technologies being directed toward creating new jobs to replace the old ones they render unnecessary. The problem is not that so many people don’t have jobs, but that so many people still do. We need to raise our expectations, not lower them.
See also SIA 332 [new ed. 423]:
While the Stalinist monster haunted working-class consciousness, capitalism was becoming bureaucratized and overdeveloped, resolving its internal crises and proudly proclaiming this new victory to be permanent. [i.e. the implication is that this resolution/victory is not permanent]
And SIA 337-338 [new ed. 430-431]:
The developing concentration of capitalism and the diversification of its global operation have given rise, on one hand, to the forced consumption of commodities produced in abundance, and on the other, to the control of the economy (and all of life) by bureaucrats who own the state; as well as to direct and indirect colonialism. But this system is far from having found a permanent solution to the incessant revolutionary crises of the historical epoch that began two centuries ago, for a new critical phase has opened: from Berkeley to Warsaw, from the Asturias to the Kivu, the system is being refuted and combated. . . . The factors involved in this historical problem are the rapid extension and modernization of the fundamental contradictions within the present system and between that system and human desires. The social force that has an interest in resolving these contradictions — and the only force that is capable of resolving them — is the mass of workers who are powerless over the use of their own lives, deprived of any control over the fantastic accumulation of material possibilities that they produce. Such a resolution has already been prefigured in the emergence of democratic workers councils that make all decisions for themselves. The only intelligent venture within the present imbecilized world is for this new proletariat to carry out this project by forming itself into a class unmediated by any leadership.
Here and there there are other similar statements to the effect that there are still contradictions of various sorts (not just economic) and that they will not be definitively resolved short of a revolution.
Congratulations to Camille Alexa. Her book “Push the Sky” has a great cover and will be available in two short months. Stay tuned for more info.
I recently asked Ken Knabb, an author and radical theorist who is probably best known for his translations of Guy Debord, if he’d be interested in being interviewed for the Diet Soap podcast and was told that he thinks his writings and translations speak for themselves. So, while he has no desire to be interviewed, he did say I could reprint anything I like from his books or his website. I’ll be doing that. Here is a bit from his website on the subject of Peak Oil.
[Reply to a Spanish contact (I have slightly corrected his English style): “I write to ask you what you think about ‘peak oil.’ I guess you know what I’m talking about: the end of cheap oil and the collapse of global capitalism. . . . I think we cannot ignore the facts: the market economy is going to collapse in a few years. It seems that history is finally proving right all the people who tried to radically change the roots of society. But as we know, we have not succeeded. Market economy rules the world, and everyone is addicted to its paradigms. But now it will be every year more clear that this system is built on a big lie which cannot be believed anymore. It seems strange to me that people like you and me, who call themselves ‘revolutionary,’ don’t see the completely new situation we are in. Today more than ever there is the need to go out of the market economy and create and organize new ways of living, without any dependency on the system. It’s futile to try to reform or subvert capitalist society today: this society is going to collapse in a few years. We have to spread the reasons why it is going to collapse (the irrationality of capitalism and the market economy) and quickly organize the alternatives, but now it’s not a matter of our ‘desires’ as it was for the situationists, it’s not only the mediocrity of modern society, now it’s almost a matter of survival! Councilist organization, self-management practice, and autonomous values are today a matter of survival for the whole society! . . . Don’t you think that revolutionary theory has to meet with these facts? I do think we have to check and reform our theories due to this completely new situation we are entering: the global decline of capitalism.”]
I am aware of the peak oil theory, and also of some other views that question that theory. In either case, I question whether our situation is “completely new.” It has been evident for at least the last 50 years that humanity is facing a series of crises of various overlapping kinds (ecological, economic, socio-political, “psycho-spiritual”) that will lead to global ecological disaster if we do not succeed in radically transforming the present social system. The situationists and others referred to this unavoidable choice (see, for example, The Real Split in the International ##15-18, 1972) and Rexroth evoked it even earlier and more often (see, for example, the two articles on ecology at www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sf/1968-69.htm). There were differences of prognosis, some thinking that nuclear war would destroy the world within a decade or two, others that overpopulation would do so within the next half-century, others that the ecological point of no return had already been passed, though its ultimate effects would not be evident till some time later (Rexroth tended toward this latter view).
My point here is not that these earlier prognoses were wrong. (They were mostly on the right track, but other factors entered in to postpone the disasters for a few more decades.) It is to point out that people have a tendency to focus on some particular crisis and to panic — “Alas! This is the ultimate threat, and it’s coming right away! We must immediately drop everything else to avert it! We’re fighting for our very survival, hence we don’t have time to fight for the quality of our lives!” But as the situationists pointed out, if we merely fight for survival, we remain on the defensive, stuck on the terrain of the system, and thus we will inevitably fail. It is only by fighting for real life — for a truly satisfying, qualitatively different mode of life and society — that we can really challenge the mindlessly destructive forces and tendencies that are leading toward global disaster. As Vaneigem put it, “We can survive only as antisurvivors.” [www.bopsecrets.org/SI/8.basic2.htm #16] I expanded on that point in one of my leaflets 15 years ago:
One of the May 1968 graffiti was: Be realistic, demand the impossible. “Constructive alternatives” within the context of the present social order are at best limited, temporary, ambiguous; they tend to be coopted and become part of the problem. We may be forced to deal with certain urgent issues such as war or environmental threats, but if we accept the system’s own terms and confine ourselves to merely reacting to each new mess produced by it, we will never overcome it. Ultimately we can solve survival issues only by refusing to be blackmailed by them, by aggressively going beyond them to challenge the whole anachronistic social organization of life. Movements that limit themselves to cringing defensive protests will not even achieve the pitiful survival goals they set for themselves. [www.bopsecrets.org/PS/buddhists.htm]
It may be that the peak oil theory is right and we will experience some severe social collapse in the near future. Or it may be that its critics are right and that other factors will mitigate or postpone that collapse for some time (so that it is, say, 30 years away instead of 10). In that case, some other disaster may come first (global warming, the destruction of the oceans, some combination of increased environmental poisoning and/or famines and/or diseases, a chain reaction of wars or of insane fascistic or fundamentalist mass movements, etc.). These and many other crises and potential disasters have been around for many decades. They are indeed serious. We have to address them. But we have to address them all at once, as part of a comprehensive, holistic perspective. This is why I am leery of any tendency to make a fetish out of any one particular crisis. Such notions tend to make people panic and thus ignore other equally important factors. A crude example: if people see peak oil as the problem, they will tend to support some politician who promises to deal with it better than other politicians, even though all these politicians help maintain many other aspects of the system that is ultimately responsible for these crises.
I agree with you that it is important to call attention to these impending crises, but I think that (1) we should not be stuck too exclusively in one prognosis (“The system will collapse in the following way, within the following time frame, due to peak oil”) and (2) we have to be careful not to fall into the trap of our desperation giving rise to simplistic alternatives. When you say: “Today more than ever there is the need to go out of the market economy and create and organize new ways of living, without any dependency on the system,” it sounds like you’re suggesting notions such as going off to create a country commune that raises its own food, etc. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to do that if such projects appeal to you, but I don’t think that such things represent a genuine escape from the system. The system itself, with all its cities and factories etc., must ultimately be dealt with. It will not just neatly collapse, leaving people free to set up nice alternative ecological lifestyles “outside” of it. You are right that it is not enough to just “reform” it. It must be actively and creatively transformed from top to bottom. This is a very complex project, and we may not succeed. But I don’t think that anything less will work. When people fetishize some bad thing (“This is the crucial problem, so urgent that everything else pales by comparison!”) then they tend to rally to some alternative, equally simplistic fetish (“We must all immediately stop driving, raise our own food, form country communes, become vegan . . .”) which tends to produce a narrow, sectarian, survivalist mentality among a supposedly enlightened minority (“We are doing our part, but all those other clueless people are still living within the system”) while leaving the system free to grind on in its destructive way.
To sum up: I agree that our theories must address these kinds of crises. But I do not agree that these crises are “completely new.” They have been around for some time now, and certain theories, including (in rather different ways) that of the situationists and that of Rexroth, have already addressed them pretty profoundly and explicitly.
“Tell me about your book,” says Kitty, stroking the cat lying upon her lap.
“The book is a Menippean satire, with countless lowlife characters, a Satyricon for the twenty-first century, the influences are Petronius, Lucian, Rabelais, Sterne, the bible, Gogol, Joyce, Max Miller, Norman Wisdom, Benny Hill, Donald McGill and the Beano,” I say full of ebullience. But I’m lying. I’ve only filled half of a page. Maybe she will read it and help me. Kitty yawns, Carter yawns. “Tocqueville,” I call, pointing teasingly with my forefinger. Tocqueville jumps off Kitty’s lap and lazily walks over to the point, he sniffs, intrigued, but realizes that there is no reward and goes off in a sulk. To change the subject I say, “On the pyramid of the moon thousands were sacrificed to placate the gods but still the rain fell on Peru and with the rain their civilization fell but Vico and Spengler could have told them about how civilizations inevitably fall without all the blood shed and tears.” Kitty watches Tocqueville and grunts. Sometimes Tocqueville disappoints her.
Kitty says, “Silly Carter.”
“Do you want a beer?” I ask. I know I want a beer but I’m not too sure about Kitty.
“No,” says Kitty.
“I’m going to have a cup of tea,” I say.
“Do me an ice tea, no ice,” says Kitty. The peccant cat follows me into the kitchen meowing constantly.
“Feed Carter,” says Kitty.
***
There is nothing on the television, which always depresses me, I think I will watch cable news, twenty four hour news how can you be depressed, we are lucky, it is the best of ages, simply the best, we have anything we want and need. There is a knock on the door, I wait coolly for Kitty to say, “The taxi’s here.” She doesn’t say the taxi’s here, instead she says, “It’s for you.” We are going to a very important celebration of the Arts at the McGlohon Theatre. I am looking forward to the cheese and wine. We are very excited, we hope to meet some very important people. I am wearing my best suit and Kitty is in pearls. We hope to impress. Intrigued, I leave the safety of the bedroom and lugubriously saunter down the stairs to the front door.
“He’s here,” says Kitty and walks away from the door.
It is Kowwowski. He lives underneath us.
Watching Kitty walking away I realize that she is a phantasmagoria. She is not the only one, everybody is that hangs around me, Tim, Macy, Larry, Beth, Carol and Carter, they are nothing more than pencil marks. My neighbors that I never see are also spooks, they make noise but I never see them, the people that hold me up when I buy my coffee are ghouls, the old lady that I stand up for on the bus so that she can sit is nothing more than a sheet undulating giving the impression of life, the driver that cuts me off is only a simulacrum, the lady on the other side of the phone is nothing more than altered wind, those people that email me, robots. I ask myself is it only vicissitude that plays with me, is it the same sheet undulating, only Kowwowski is concrete.
“Be quick,” says Kitty, “the taxi will soon be here.” Kitty turns off the television.
Sometimes we leave the television on, we believe the noise scares off burglars, I think sometimes Kitty leaves on the television for Tocqueville. “It’s only Kowwowski,” I say. “I hope you have a few dollars for the taxi,” says Kitty. I check my wallet, I have two twenties.
Kowwowski looks sick. This is not incongruous, everybody has the façade of sickness. It is the fear. We are living in the red. I could be looking in the mirror. That hue of green and yellow, the furrowed brow, the chapped skin, the dry lips.
“Tybalt, I need to ask you a favor,” says Kowwowski.
***
I am always on 485, always caught in a traffic jam, always going north, always going south, always listening to the radio, always seeing crosses made of flowers indicating death, always cursing, always careening to miss the object in the road, always guessing what the road kill is, always dreaming of stars looking the shattered windscreens, always thinking about the broken down cars, always dreaming of helping, always watching a man stroll with a petrol can in his hand, is a killer, a loser, a bum, an office manager, always wishing that I wasn’t on 485, always wishing I had stopped at McDonalds before getting on 485, always filled with fear that a drunk is behind or in front of me, always scared that the truck’s wheels are about to explode, always on the look out for the cops, always speeding, always cutting in front of other drivers, always eying the other drivers, always wondering where they are going, where they have been, what they are like in the sack, are they junkies, have they got a gambling problem, how much money they have in the bank, why they pick their noses, who they are talking to, wondering why they have not crashed and smashed their heads open and split their brains when they are applying lipstick, I am always wishing the cops would appear and pull over the sportscar, I am always on 485, always blinded by the trucks, always wishing the sun wouldn’t blind me, always hoping the rain would stop, always cussing, always smoking, always desiring a cool beer, always honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk honk, always hoping for something incongruous, always hoping to yaw, always lunting, always, always turning the dial, always pressing my foot down on the gas, always on 485.
***
“I’m depressed,” says Kowwowski.
“We are all sad!” I shout. “That’s life! The Greeks were sad! The Romans were sad! It’s nothing new. The Greeks had a bull. The Brazen Bull it was called. Its inventor was a man by the name of Perillos. It was for criminals that had offended the State. The offender was placed inside the brazen bull. It was life like in size. Under the bronze bull a fire was lit. It was a slow death. Reeds would be placed inside the bull’s nostrils and this amplified the offender’s wild screams. The screams could be heard throughout the city. Terrible. It was a very slow slow death. And we call the Greeks the inventors of reason. Begin inside that bull would make you sad, but I don’t see any bulls on Trade and Tryon.”
***
I am reading Rabelais, lying on the bed.
“Hey Tybalt,” says Kitty.
“What do you want?” I ask, not skipping a word.
“You’ve left me a present,” says Kitty.
“Happy birthday, babe,” I say not skipping a word.
“You best get in here and flush,” says Kitty.
I know that I have to put the book down and climb off the bed and go into the restroom and flush the toilet. It is hard work to climb off and back onto the bed and pick up the book. Wait, something perplexing stops me from reading.
Kitty is still asleep with her bottom sticking up in the air. I put down the book. Kitty is pushing out those Zs. I pick up the book and started to read again. I stop and put the book down, I can’t get my head around it. I’ve had too much caffeine.
Kitty stirs. She turns and smiles and says, “good morning.” Not wanting to alarm her I say good morning.
“I need a cup of coffee,” says Kitty yawning. “Let me finish this page and I’ll make you a cup of coffee,” I say picking the book back up. Kitty yawning slowly climbs out of the bed. I watch her over the book enter the bathroom.
It comes to me this time, clear, simple even. I had entered the not yet. Not yet happened. My mind is being blown to bits. I was in the future. I had been in the not yet and now she is, we are, it is all too much.
“Hey Tybalt!” calls Kitty.
“What do you want?” I ask knowing the answer.
“You’ve left me a present,” says Kitty.
“Happy birthday babe,” I say, not believing my ears.
“You best get in here and flush,” says Kitty.
***
“What’s for tea?” asks Kitty.
I’ve not had time to cook so I answer, “Red Lobster or Applebees.”
“Carter! Carter!” shouts Kitty making her way into the kitchen. “How many pages have you accomplished?” asks Kitty still looking for the cat.
“One,” I answer.
END