İşgal!!!

Occupation...

1.
Occupation is the seizure and transformation of space. Whether as the takeover of a building, roadway or vacant lot, it manifests itself as an interruption, as the subversion of capitalist normality.
2.
An occupation is a physical materialization of our power unfettered by legality or mere process. It is a practical demonstration of our ability to take a space, hold it, and remake it in a way that we choose.
3.
An occupation is not just a means to an end, an “extreme” tactic, or a high rung on the ladder of democratic dissent. Nor is it simply an end in itself. It’s the communication of a will, the staging area for an extension of paralysis, and the manifestation of what we want in the here and now.
Nothing is produced and nothing is represented in occupation: in this sense, it is fundamentally incompatible with the logic of capital. Occupation compels us at the level of pure means, and it is only as such - stripped of functionality, as a gesture - that it has the ability to cause a rupture in the capitalist order of time.
4.
Rather than asserting that ‘another world is possible’ within the very same framework of the world that is given, an occupation exists as a conflictual fabric erupting in this order, within which new subjectivities emerge and create themselves in situations of conflict.
5.
As a rupture the occupation is revelatory, uncovering true lines of division and exposing commonalities. Solidarity is built, opening unforeseen possibilities for communication and common action. On the other hand, masks are pulled back, with bureaucrats and cops exposing their aspirations to merely put the current catastrophe under new management.
6.
Stasis signals the defeat of an occupation; it must spread, and it must deepen. It is dangerous to the reigning order in the connections that can be built between it and other forms of subversion: sabotage, autonomous self-organization, strikes, blockades, and the general illegal practices of life in the metropolis. Between all of these, there is always already communicability.
7.
The death of an occupation is prevented when it is pushed beyond itself, when its interruption of the capitalist order is followed by a relentless counter-movement that deepens the communicability of our power and solidarities through the expansion and connection of conflictual situations. Occupation resonates there, at the level of life lived as power.

jenny and wayne
january 2009

New School İşgalinden....