comunismo ingl.qxd
24.06.07
16:58
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Mode of aesthetic resistance INTERVIEW/CHARITY SCRIBNER
How can we use the word “communism” today without falling into the trap of nostalgia or irony? Here I follow Marx in my thinking. Today, as was the case a century ago, we can understand communism as a state that can only be approached after the exhaustion of capitalism. In 2007, we remain in the long decay of late capitalism. In your essay “Buildings on Fire” you wrote about how the avant-garde and violent political action are related, but you were talking about the past. How do you picture this situation today? In that article I point out the Red Army Faction’s misappropriation and distortion of situationist principles. I am discussing the 1970s. Fortunately today most political activists have learned from the RAF’s mistakes. One interesting post-situationist group of activists is Retort. The German philosopher Klaus Theweleit talks about abstract radicalism. The presence of a political discourse at art exhibitions and Biennials around the world can be seen as politics or as a performance? I would call Theweleit a social historian or a cultural historian,
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