A conversation on nettime, January 2012 (original) (raw)

Nettime-l is a long-running platform for discussion of media and politics. In 2011, two events persuaded some of us that the world was moving again: the 21st January uprising in Egypt’s Tahrir Square which, together with a revolution in Tunisia, seemed to promise an Arab Spring at last; and Occupy Wall Street in New York which promised political movement in the heart of the American Empire. Conversation is one of the two main ways that thought moves, the other being story. Dialectic is its formal expression. New year 2012 opened with some optimism on the left. A thread, 'A movement without demands?', was launched on 5th January, summarising a paper claiming, among other things, that an anarchist movement that made no political demands could not mobilise the social divisions necessary for revolution. Like most nettime conversations, what followed was an exercise in free thinking. I took part. I reproduce an edited version now for several reasons. It may be useful to revisit political ideas aired a full decade ago. We can learn from both positive and negative aspects of what transpired. I don’t expect readers to plough through all 13,000 words. But I guarantee that a selective reading with feed your intellect and perhaps even your politics.

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