'Moments of Excess'

international | anti-capitalism | other press

Wednesday November 03, 2004 15:29

by xs

''They carried no baggage regarding ‘what happens’ on a demonstration and this frequently made such demos difficult to police (for both paid cops and organisers) because the new protesters had little knowledge of and respect for the ‘rules’.''

"Moments of Excess"
Leeds Mayday Group

We want to talk about ‘moments of excess’. We think this idea is timely because the tactics of militant protest have recently spread to the Countryside Alliance and Fathers 4 Justice, and this can make it seem as if the direct action movement of the 1990s and the anti-globalisation movement of the 21st century have been usurped or hijacked. By considering moments of excess we can see that, perhaps, what’s really happened is that our global anti-capitalist movement has kept its participants one step ahead. These days we are no longer satisfied with symbolic protest – which can almost be seen as militant lobbying.

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Moments of excess aren’t concerned with developing ideal types or blueprints of how life should be lived. Instead they deal with the possible, and represent practical experiments in new forms of life.

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The recent anti-war movement contained ‘moments of excess’. We saw people demonstrating who’d not been on a demonstration in decades, if ever. Across the UK schoolkids walked out of classes because they heard that ‘something’ was happening’ in town. (Often, nothing was happening… until they turned up and started something!) These people were exposed to new experiences and brought new skills and attitudes, in particular a ‘do what we want’ mentality. They carried no baggage regarding ‘what happens’ on a demonstration and this frequently made such demos difficult to police (for both paid cops and organisers) because the new protesters had little knowledge of and respect for the ‘rules’. As a result new subjectivities were produced.

Another defining characteristic of moments of excess is that existing methods of mediating people’s desires and demands fail. People don’t stop to think what’s possible, what’s realistic – and no ‘expert’ is there to help them keep their feet on the ground. Hence the Paris 1968 slogan ‘Be Realistic, Demand The Impossible’.