this is a point that my good friend Rezeya (over on awoo.space, which won't federate with us for some reason) has made several times and each time far more eloquently than i can, but it's where my head's at tonight, so here's my interpretation.
if i'm angry about anything--and i'm angry about a lot of things, and have been for some time--it's that the Opposition has robbed us of the ability to wield surrealism in an offensive manner. Dada is not currently an effective tool to protest war, oppression, poverty and hatred because *shit just keeps getting weirder* and it's impossible to keep up. the goalposts keep getting moved, and then the goalposts morph sideways into giant spindly giraffes and melting clocks.
notice that i'm not saying that the Opposition has "weaponized surrealism and turned it against us," because they're not fucking smart enough to do that, never have been, never will be. they use Dada with all the subtlety and grace of a chimp with a machete defending a pile of cocaine. there's no art there, just screaming and destruction. but at the moment it's just not effective for us to enter the ring by snorting a line and grabbing a bat with a nail through it. right now that monkey has a depressingly solid kill streak. yes, it's got to end sometime. yes, it will certainly break badly for our buddy the machete monkey. it *is* just a question of when. and yet, here we are, waiting.
anyway. just had a night of wondering about how exactly one is supposed to live in times like these, when we can see things are shifting fast everywhere. does it make sense to keep doing what we're doing? in ten years, what would we have asked our past selves to do without, and what to focus on instead? should we eschew pageantry and frivolous joys, or are those the pointless things that we're going to miss most of all?
is there a way to plan ahead in a post-surrealist world?
"Is there a time for keeping your distance?
A time to turn your eyes away?
Is there a time for keeping your head down
For getting on with your day?
"Here she comes...beauty plays the clown
Here she comes, surreal in her crown"
U2 (Passengers), "Miss Sarajevo"
@zx3
i think you've correctly identified that the window for the successful political usage of surrealism or absurdity was fairly brief, and has definitively now closed. have a look at this, it's an essay that keeps rattling around in my brain despite the fact that, like so much Marxist and leftist thought, it offers a better diagnosis than a prescription https://www.weareplanc.org/blog/we-are-all-very-anxious/
@acetone_kitten that is an excellent article, and it absolutely nails the up-to-date anxiety malaise that grips us all in (checks date) six years agoooooooooh fuck
well, maybe somebody took this idea and is running with it.
@zx3
ah yes, tactical and strategic innovation, the thing the contemporary left is known far and wide for
idk if _i'm_ doing that either. but damn i was hoping someone would have better ideas than me, it seemed like a safe bet at the time!