Monday, June 29, 2009

Instead of a Conclusion



The text below, "Instead of a Conclusion, appears as the last chapter in the first proper book (to my knowledge) about December's insurrection published in Greece. Although the translation from Greek to English, done by a wonderful comrade, has already set these words in a new motion, I can't help but feel a paternalistic urge to guide their further movement. Of course, words are like children, they'll go where they go despite anyone's futile wish, but this fact does nothing to quiet the reservations that come with posting "Instead of a Conclusion" to be read by the milieu in the States. More specifically, I worry as to whether its even worth presenting a text that celebrates barricades to readers that condemn their constructions in Chicago streets. In my eyes, what could only be worse is for "Instead of a Conclusion" to be looked at as an exotic applause to blockades, riots, and street fights only in places and lives far from our own. Gladly and on the other hand, there were those who neglected the banal criticism from the "anarcho-liberals" and erected barricades to for once impede the State's grip on their entire existence. Let be. For better or for worse, a split is inevitable. A split so that the tired discussion about whether or not to build barricades can be silenced like a drunk giving an inappropriate eulogy at a solemn funeral. A scission so that we get on with the important questions, refuse to consider the morality of barricades, and only correctly concern ourselves with how to make them taller, stronger, more terrible, so that metropolitan avenues can become as uncontrollable as an element of nature. So, while suppressing any false sense of guardianship, I send "Instead of a Conclusion" to only those who build barricades for the sake of barricades. Enjoy!


(the wonderful comrade reading the text in Greek)



Instead of a Conclusion

For if there is something to be won it is dignity, for if life has to be laughter and a laughter will bury them, then you have to create the conditions to laugh.

For burning souls should not comply to moulds, for we don't fit anymore within the limits of narrow fucking microcosms, for sickness lurks everywhere. We saw, we dreamt and lived feral yells, we blocked roads with barricades of craze and desire, we addressed to deaf ears numerous times, we bled with wild joy, we followed, we incarnated and created the wild dream and the experience (sometimes they don't differ from each other) of uprising, of this seductive goddess who haunts our heads for years now. Our necks that we risked, risk, and will risk... For there is nothing left to lose apart from self-respect, self-respect, which is tried, which is won and lost every hour and moment, every moment and second, with an action, with a glance, a consequence of clear and outright choice, which tries all the time to be better, more comprehensible, more dangerous... We sharpened knives that first hurt us when we judged ourselves inadequate. We extinguished our thirst with sea water a lot of times, knowing that in a few moments we would be more thirsty, sickly to some extent with an insatiable desire for clash, for revolt, for truth...

Let be, what counts is the derive in the oceans. Their waves raise and drop, crush, crash, and obliterate the castaways in a vortex. But the wave is us. The wild power that springs from the being of the liberated turns into a rough sea that will avenge with a rage that only an uncontrollable element of nature can have. It will avenge for centuries of coercion, it will extinguish kingdoms of exploitation in murky abysses, it will drown in blood the ones that have be drowned and then... Then it will relish, it will relish her dead, her jailed children living again, breathing again, getting lost in incredible dizzy color formations in her moist whirling and free embrace. Our sea is revolution, our insurgent sea is here, it always has been... SWIM...

- a comrade, July 5, 2005

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