[My-ci] Beyond the Ruins of the Creative City

[Heur B (van) (VKS)]

Hi Matteo,

I'm a bit puzzled by the aggressiveness of your reaction, especially
since I use similar concepts and theories (incl. Neil Smith, David
Harvey, Sharon Zukin, and Andrej Holm, among others) in my own writing
and even agree with some of the practical actions you propose. In other
words: what is this discussion about? 

If this has been provoked by my own rather direct comments to your text,
I apologize. If this is not the reason and this really is the kind of
self-righteous style you prefer - in which criticism is hardly engaged
with, but ignored by relegating it to the sphere of "academic circles" -
I wish all you good luck. Personally, it reminds me too much of
authoritarian leftist politics I am not too eager to be part of. But
then, yes indeed, I do belief that there are a wide variety of 'polite'
strategies that are ultimately quite effective (btw. non-polite
strategies do not exclude polite strategies - both might be necessary).
Naturally, of course, I'd be happy to discuss this during Winter Camp.


Best,

Bas



-----Original Message-----
From: my-ci-bounces at orgnets.net [mailto:my-ci-bounces at orgnets.net] On
Behalf Of Matteo Pasquinelli
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 2:17 PM
To: my-ci at orgnets.net
Subject: Re: [My-ci] Beyond the Ruins of the Creative City


> but I would say my political position is broadly informed
> by a neomarxist theoretical framework.

Good. The neomarxism. And which one. In my text (that I was asked to  
cut down from 40k to 20k characters to fit a publication - forgive me  
gods of 'good' theory), I try a genealogy of this 'neomarxist'  
approaches to gentrification and of different concepts introduced  
mainly by a branch of the Anglo-American marxism: David Harvey  
('collective symbolic capital'), Neil Smith ('rent gap'), Sharon  
Zukin ('artistic mode of production) and few others form quite a  
literature (if I had 80k maybe I could write a proper dissertation,  
not).

Apart from this, instead of being snobby about the 'good' marxism and  
the bad 'marxism' as it happens often in the old circles, I tried to  
see how this tradition crosses tools introduced by post-Operaismo (or  
autonomous marxism as it's called under other latitudes) in a more  
politicised and engaged way. Carlo Vercellone and Toni Negri wrote  
interesting things about the rent. And we could add also  
unsuspectable people like Nicholas Garr to mention how this awareness  
about the rent mechanisms of knowledge economy does not belong only  
to neomarxism.

Let's try to be constructive, to see how the good parts of each  
theory can fit each other and explain 'numbers' better, instead of  
looking for the perfect intepretation of the marxist dogma. Now  
between let's say Continental and British marxism there is a big  
political difference, but I'm sure 'good theory' has already resolved  
that and found the successful practice. 'Neomarxism' or 'regulatory  
school' sounds a bit nebolous and today doesn't qualify necessarily  
as a good theory, even within academic circles.


> workers to 'join your struggle'. What are you gonna say to them?  
> Please

We organised this event in Berlin where around 50 people came, many  
artists, residents and also activists, without a theoretical  
background, Andrej Holm, Angela Melitopolous and many others were  
there, we had a very long discussion, looking at different strategies  
(not one) and political responses to gentrification and cultural  
production today. Guess what, some people were useful to describe  
situations or concepts that somebody else didn't know very well. The  
level of debate was high even if the functionaries of best theory  
were not there. Some people even understood this idea of sabotage of  
value, that's first made by stock exchange and financial frauds. We  
set up a mailing list and we keep this experiment, as it is the only  
circle in Berlin (sorry for being there, they invited me) where  
artistis are focusing on the issues of gentrification and cultural  
production at that scale, the scale of the art world. Usually, you  
find mainly activists and academics, like in the conference 'Right to  
the City' that however was bigger and interesting. The art scene is  
not my background, anyway, it was an unique experiment for this mix  
of 'workers eager to join the struggle' (?).


> join our quest for the commons? Theoretically I (and most probably  
> many
> cultural workers) fully agree with you, but practically these cultural
> workers need to make a living, they need to pay rent, they are dealing
> with all kinds of problems the abstract quest for the commons does not
> provide any answers to.

True. I wrote a book against this 'hype' of the commons that came out  
this month. However I don't want to mention it in this room as it's  
becoming claustrophobic. The question of a 'productive' notion of the  
common is crucial against partisans of 'capitalism whitout private  
property' like Yoachim Benkler that got a lot of success among  
activists too. Squeezing the issue of the common and the sabotage of  
the rent in a 20k essay covering the problem of 'ruins' in the  
immaterial production, sorry, that's beyond human skill.

However, I believe this list and your political activity on the  
contrary already solve all these contradictions, right? About the  
'poor precarious workers', I'd like to quote Tronti. If the  
precarious cognitive creative workers don't get organised, their  
fault! Cazzi loro! Said that joke, then, I'm open to all the  
hypothesis: unions, new welfare, basic income, new forms of strike,  
new forms of sabotage, etc. But as Brian underlined few posts ago...  
it's funny how in front of the massive fraud of the credit crisis, in  
front of this sabotage of value performed by the stock exchange,  
still we believe in a polite response to neoliberalism, knocking the  
door of Creative Industries or welfare state and claiming money in a  
respectful way. I'm in favor of claiming more money, houses, public  
spaces, but my political experience say that if you don't represent a  
danger for the system, you are never paid back. Do you know any  
polite successfull strategy?


Merry Xmas and merry NeomarXism, M

ps. I quit this exchange here as I don't have to sell anything and  
because I hate pre-emptive misundersandings and people that read  
everything through the lenses of their last dissertation. However I  
take the good critiques and suggestions with me (there were few  
behind the instinctual drive). Expressions like 'You are a funny  
one', 'Keep your eyes on the prize', 'best excuse to visit the city',  
or this pathetic accusation of copy and paste from the web (to an old  
militant of Detroit techno like me!)  considering that we are not  
friend, do not qualify a good 'theoretician', especially a neomarxist  
'comrade', but maybe at Maastricht university they have different  
standards and a successfull revolutionary Politburo. See you soon.






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