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Las Zapatistas, political theory, trip
Mar. 4th, 2014 09:51 pmFor those interested in Las Zapatistas and my upcoming trip.
In further preparation for my trip, I just read the introduction to Thomas Nail's "Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari and Zapatismo."
It's essentially in two parts. The first on the theory of Deleuze and Guattari and the second on the Zapatistas. I have to admit that I had some trouble with the first part. I'd never encountered Deleuze and Guattari before, so it was a sort of crash course. They sound like post-modern political thinkers, and I also have not read very much explicitly political theory, so there was that hurdle to jump over as well. I'll admit that, my note to myself on the PDF next to the following sentence:
was simply, "What?"
The second part, addressing the actions and organization of Las Zapatistas, the philosophy called Zapatismo, was easier to follow and get something from. With acknowledgment of criticism, Nail argues that the Zapatistas are engaging in a new form of revolution, and one that has been successful for them for the past decade and more. They are (again, in a somewhat post-modern way) rejecting concern with either living as part of the state, or directly overthrowing it. Rather, they mean to create autonomous modes of governance for themselves without regard to the state.
Moreover, that governance is non-representational; that is, people will not be represented in government by politicians. Instead, they speak with their own voice, directly, via a system of "rotational governance" where everyone cycles through positions of governance. They explicitly reject the solidarity of homogeneity, and feel that they gain power from diverse viewpoints of sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, and others. Nail argues that, rather than a traditional representational government, or a sort of ungoverned anarchy, Zapatismo creates "a participatory and revolutionary body politic...built and sustained through an expressive process whose founding conditions are constantly undergoing a high degree of direct and immanent transformation by the various practices and people who are also transformed, to varying degrees, by its deployment."
Admitting that this sounds like some kind of governmental singularity that changes forms as fast as they come into existence, I really like the concept here. It sounds really great, but I can't quite get my head around just what it *is*. Nail claims that one of the primary characteristics of this kind of governance is its ability to connect with other revolutionary groups across the world in networks of mutual learning and support. He says it can be part of "the world's organized struggles against neoliberalism." But can this sort of thing scale up beyond a particular region? Or is that even a valid question in this discussion of autonomous, independent but similarly-purposed revolutionary units?
I still have a lot of questions about Las Zapatistas.
---
In any event, I plan to make copious notes about what I do and see, the people I talk to, and everything else about my trip. I'm processing a collection in the archives right now that includes a lot of field notes from a past professor's anthropological work and it's kind of inspiring. I want to observe, observe, talk, and observe some more, write it all down, and see what kind of insights become apparent after the fact when I can sit down and synthesize my experiences along with other reference material!
In further preparation for my trip, I just read the introduction to Thomas Nail's "Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari and Zapatismo."
It's essentially in two parts. The first on the theory of Deleuze and Guattari and the second on the Zapatistas. I have to admit that I had some trouble with the first part. I'd never encountered Deleuze and Guattari before, so it was a sort of crash course. They sound like post-modern political thinkers, and I also have not read very much explicitly political theory, so there was that hurdle to jump over as well. I'll admit that, my note to myself on the PDF next to the following sentence:
"This is because, for individuals to attain the point where they are seized by their preindividual determination and, thus, by the power of the One-All - of which they are, at the start, only meager local configurations - they have to go beyond their limits and endure the transfixion and disintegration of their actuality by infinite virtuality, which is actuality's veritable being."
was simply, "What?"
The second part, addressing the actions and organization of Las Zapatistas, the philosophy called Zapatismo, was easier to follow and get something from. With acknowledgment of criticism, Nail argues that the Zapatistas are engaging in a new form of revolution, and one that has been successful for them for the past decade and more. They are (again, in a somewhat post-modern way) rejecting concern with either living as part of the state, or directly overthrowing it. Rather, they mean to create autonomous modes of governance for themselves without regard to the state.
Moreover, that governance is non-representational; that is, people will not be represented in government by politicians. Instead, they speak with their own voice, directly, via a system of "rotational governance" where everyone cycles through positions of governance. They explicitly reject the solidarity of homogeneity, and feel that they gain power from diverse viewpoints of sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, and others. Nail argues that, rather than a traditional representational government, or a sort of ungoverned anarchy, Zapatismo creates "a participatory and revolutionary body politic...built and sustained through an expressive process whose founding conditions are constantly undergoing a high degree of direct and immanent transformation by the various practices and people who are also transformed, to varying degrees, by its deployment."
Admitting that this sounds like some kind of governmental singularity that changes forms as fast as they come into existence, I really like the concept here. It sounds really great, but I can't quite get my head around just what it *is*. Nail claims that one of the primary characteristics of this kind of governance is its ability to connect with other revolutionary groups across the world in networks of mutual learning and support. He says it can be part of "the world's organized struggles against neoliberalism." But can this sort of thing scale up beyond a particular region? Or is that even a valid question in this discussion of autonomous, independent but similarly-purposed revolutionary units?
I still have a lot of questions about Las Zapatistas.
---
In any event, I plan to make copious notes about what I do and see, the people I talk to, and everything else about my trip. I'm processing a collection in the archives right now that includes a lot of field notes from a past professor's anthropological work and it's kind of inspiring. I want to observe, observe, talk, and observe some more, write it all down, and see what kind of insights become apparent after the fact when I can sit down and synthesize my experiences along with other reference material!
