I enjoy selecting something and then writing something about it, as I read it. I particularly like F\u00e9lix Guattari\u2019s essays, because it\u2019s like you just have something, about something, and that\u2019s it. Okay, I can kind of guess what he might have written, without even looking at the titles, there\u2019s that, fair enough, but the thing is that he has a knack for surprising me. So, yeah, this time I\u2019ll be taking a closer look at \u2018Millions and Millions of Potential Alices\u2019, which is included, for example, in \u2018Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first thing that I noticed was the title. It made me think of Lewis Carroll, but, alas, the footnote (236) indicates that it\u2019s in reference to Radio Alice, a free radio station that operated in Bologna, Italy, in the mid to late 1970s before it was banned. Then I thought, huh, I was wrong, only to find out that I was right. Apparently, it was named in reference to his works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, this essay, I mean his essay, Guattari\u2019s essay, not Carroll\u2019s essay, has to do with guerrilla radio stations or, if you want to keep it civil, independent radio stations. So, Guattari (236) begins his essay by noting that we are taught to think that children should be seen, not heard. Now, he isn\u2019t talking about children, I just made that up. He is talking about people in general, but he is, in fact, pointing out here that this is how people are treated. Why? Well, the thing is that if just about everyone gets to say, just about anything, that might result in some change in society. We can\u2019t have that, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But wasn\u2019t this about radio stations? Ah, yes. It is. He (236) makes another point, adding that people should not be given access radio transmitters, because that way people get to transmit their message to a larger audience than they would just by gathering in a specific place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, to be clear, he is not advocating for any of this. He is, in fact, advocating for the exact opposite. He wants to give people a voice. Oh, and it\u2019s not his voice, nor his friends\u2019 voice, but their own voice. He (236) is simply lampooning how the system works and how people tend to simply access that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cWhat we want are ghettoes \u2013 autonomous if possible \u2013 micro-Gulags, as small as the family, the couple, even the individual, so that everyone is restricted, day and night.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
This is not to say that he reckons that there\u2019s no talk. Oh, no, no. There\u2019s plenty of talk, but it\u2019s all the same and even if it comes from all over, it is, as if, it all came from the same source. He (236) acknowledges this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThey talk, ah yes indeed, they talk all the time. They emit signs, wards, fragments of signs, fragments of wards, all trying to make us accept our roles \u2013 son, wife, father, worker, student \u2013 to get us to sit up and beg, to be disciplined, obedient, hard-working …<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
This is where guerrilla radio stations come in. This is why he (236-237) reckons that it\u2019s important to focus on \u201c[t]he guerrilla war of information<\/em>\u201d that works through \u201c[t]he interruption and subversion of the fluxes of production and the transmission of the signs given by authority<\/em>\u201d. But what does he mean by these guerrilla radio stations? Well, the thing is that anyone could run a radio station, which meant that various political groups ran them, both on the political left and on the political right, as he (237) goes on to acknowledge. That\u2019s, however, not what he (237) is after here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his (237) view, what made Radio Alice a guerrilla radio station was that it was all over the place. It catered to various autonomie<\/em>, which he (236) indicates as referring to \u201cparticular groups of women, young people, homosexuals, etc.\u201d. We could call these autonomie<\/em> minorities and, in a sense, you\u2019d be right, but I think it\u2019s more apt to call them minoritarian<\/em> than minorities, as discussed by him and Deleuze (105-106) in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To put that another way, he (237) points out that the radio station was, in fact, a \u201ccollective utterance\u201d or as he and Deleuze would put it in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, a collective assemblage of enunciation. So, what made that radio station different from the other radio stations was that it was, again, to use the terms used in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, rhizomatic<\/em>. It wasn\u2019t about politics, by which I mean party politics, advocating for the left, the right, or something in between. It had elements of politics and, surely, it was political, considering that, for him and Deleuze, \u201cpolitics precedes being\u201d, as they (203) point out in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, but that wasn\u2019t all it was. In his view (237), it also had elements of \u201ctheory \u2013 technology \u2013 poetry \u2013 imagination \u2013 slogans \u2013 groups \u2013 sex \u2013 solitude \u2013 joy \u2013 despair \u2013 history \u2013 meaning \u2013 nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s also notable, what I believe he (237) is pointing out here, is that the radio station wasn\u2019t simply about leftist politics. He (237) opposes the idea that desire<\/em> must have use or labor value or, even more broadly speaking, that it must be for something. He (237) exemplifies that with reading, noting that it is often thought to serve a purpose, like teaching you something that prepares you for something. Okay, I\u2019d say fair enough. That\u2019s often the case. That\u2019s often why people read something, like, let\u2019s say manuals, but he (237) isn\u2019t so sure, like maybe, maybe not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How is it not about leftist politics? Well, because, as he (237) points out, there\u2019s this \u201cblackmail of poverty\u201d, by which he (238) means that to be someone, you must work. If you don\u2019t work, you\u2019re poor. So, even the leftist is trapped by work. Oh, and to be clear, I don\u2019t think he was against doing things, making things happen. I think he was well aware of this and\/or that must be done in order for us to have nice things, or so to speak. What he (237) is against is making everything revolve around work:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cAll our time has always been devoted to working, eight hours’ work, two hours getting there and back, then relaxing over television and family supper. As far as the police and the law are concerned anything outside this routine is depraved<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
To comment on that, from my point of view, I work, like, all the time. So, yeah, in a sense I am trapped by work. I must work, I must do my hours, even though no one keeps tabs on them, so that I get paid. I\u2019m not poor, but I must work to ward off poverty. I could add here that I know what it\u2019s like not to have a job, been there, didn\u2019t enjoy that, don\u2019t want to do that again, but that\u2019s not exactly what this is about. You don\u2019t have to have been poor, or unemployed, to get it, how working is really about warding off poverty. You get it. You realize that, ah, I have to pay for this, and this, and this, etc., and you can only afford it if you work, or happen to have so much money, or capital, that you don\u2019t have to work. Then again, even then, you need to whatever it is that you need to do to ward off poverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From another perspective, while I realize that, yes, I work too much, I\u2019m not really working. What do I mean? Well, I\u2019m working, yes, but it often has no clear goal. Sometimes it does have that, but, at the same time, it often doesn\u2019t have that, just like Guattari (238) points out. Maybe. Maybe not. I don\u2019t know, nor do I really care. I\u2019m fine with both. Plus, if you insist that everything that you do must have a purpose, you\u2019ll miss out on all kinds of opportunities or, as he and Deleuze call them in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, all these lines of flight<\/em>. Like the only reason, that I can think of, really, that I got interested in virtual reality<\/em> is because I was in some conference that happened to provide the attendees the opportunity to try it out. It had nothing to do with my work then, but I was like, okay, let\u2019s see, let\u2019s just see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, long story short, what matters is that he (238) is objecting to this nine to five life, where you work eight hours per day, five days a week, plus the commute time to and back from work, followed by watching some tv and eating with your family. But why is he objecting to it? What\u2019s the problem? Well, the problem is that you are expected to live your life this way, and love it, while living your life in other ways is deemed to be somehow perverted and warrants correction from the authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He (238) has this simple, yet very apt remark about how \u201c[w]hen people are happy together, it becomes subversive behavior.<\/em>\u201d Think of all those times you\u2019ve been annoyed by rowdy children, teenagers or university students. It\u2019s like how dare they have a good time! Move along! Disperse! There shall be none of this subversive behavior. Not on my watch!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve definitely been annoyed by such, and caused such annoyance, there\u2019s that, but I\u2019ve changed my view on that. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever yelled at anyone, but these days I don\u2019t feel the urge to yell at people like that, like how dare the children play at the playground, how dare the teenagers hang out at the local park or how dare students have a good time at campus. It\u2019s like, come on, just because you\u2019re not having a good time, doesn\u2019t mean that they should be having a good time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What comes after in his essay (238-239), I can\u2019t really comment on it, because I don\u2019t know the specifics, like what went down in 1977, so I\u2019ll leave it up to you to figure that out. Anyway, what\u2019s notable is that they, a bunch of \u201cschool students, feminists, homosexuals, migrant workers from the south\u201d, as well as \u201clower-middle-class bastards, drug addicts, queers, degenerates, layabouts\u201d, as he (238-239) proudly refers to them, were running a guerrilla radio that had irregular broadcasting as opposed to regular broadcasting, by which I mean that they did just about whatever. The authorities didn\u2019t like that, nor their flippancy when it came to public unrest, so the radio was shut down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What drew my attention was how he (239) points out that the people running the radio station were accused of conspiring. He (239) adds to that, yeah, guilty as charged. He (239 reckons it that was exactly what they were doing, in the sense that conspiring means that they were breathing together and not breathing the asphyxiating air of workplaces and homes, as well as couple and family relationships, you know, that nine to five air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This connects to his (238) earlier remark about how hanging out, having a good time, is often considered subversive behavior. The leftists, some of which were there, hence his (238) remark about comrades, wanted change, but, in his (239) view, society only tolerate them if they were party or trade union members. Why? What\u2019s the difference? Well, a random radio station, with no party or trade union affiliation, or, I guess, corporate or state sponsorship was equivalent to a gang running it. It\u2019s unlawful, unorderly, as he (239) points out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What he (239-240) is objecting to here is how the parties, the trade unions and, more broadly speaking, the various committees and councils, claim to speak for the people, yet they are the first ones to cave in and thus betray the people they are supposed to speak for. He (240) also objects to how the people are viewed as being improper, if not uncivilized, and how it is suggested that they should get their act together and just toe the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s also this final part of the essay, in which he (240-241) is super confident that the people will prevail over the parties and trade unions that are in cahoots with the state and corporations. To be clear, none of that happened. In the forty or fifty years, nothing has changed really. It\u2019d be fair to say that things are ever worse in this regard. So, in a way, you could say, ha, you were wrong Guattari.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But was he wrong? Well, that\u2019s the deal. What does he (240) mean by this \u201crevolution quite unlike the revolutions that overturned the history in the past\u201d, \u201cthat will sweep away not only capitalist regimes, but also the bastions of bureaucratic socialism\u201d of various kinds? How can he (240) state that its \u201clines of battle cannot be foretold\u201d, that \u201cthey may cover whole continents\u201d, but that may also \u201cbe concentrated in one urban neighbourhood, one street, one factory, one school\u201d? How does he (240-241) think that \u201c[m]anagers, policemen, politicians, bureaucrats, professors, psychoanalysts\u201d who\u2019ll join forces to stop it cannot stop it, regardless of how \u201cthey sophisticate, diversity, miniaturize their weapons to the n<\/em>th degree\u201d? Well, this revolution that he is (240-241) explaining in his essay is a molecular revolution that cannot be stopped because you can\u2019t really stop it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201c[T]hey will never regain control of that massive movement of escape, the multitude of molecular mutations of desire that have now been let loose.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s like, okay, you can put your finger on it, like to cover a leak, and then fix that leak, but there will always be more, and more leaks. It\u2019s only a matter of time. That\u2019s what he means. That\u2019s why you can\u2019t stop it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He (241) exemplifies this with how the station was closed. It\u2019s like, okay, that\u2019s done. It\u2019s all good now. Except it isn\u2019t. There\u2019s no guarantee, of anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why did I read and go through his essay? Well, simply out of curiosity, there’s that, but that’s only what got me started. As I kept reading, I kept thinking about social media. Now, I don’t mean that a guerrilla radio made me think of social media, but rather what it could be like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think I’ve mentioned this in the past, but yeah, I think Guattari would have been fascinated by the internet, as well as social media, because it is or, rather, could be, revolutionary. Why isn’t it revolutionary? Well, because it’s all, the platforms that people actually use, run by corporations that, well, aren’t interested in any kind of revolutions. It’s all about the money for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Does it mean that it’s all futile then? Well, no. That’s exactly what Guattari ends up pointing out. Okay, you can make it all the same, homogenize and standardize it all you like, but that revolutionary potential is always there. No matter how you police it, how you keep a lid to it, yeah, it’s going to appear somewhere, somehow. It’s always only a matter of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
- Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari ([1980] 1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia<\/em> (B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Guattari, F. [1974] (1984). Millions and Millions of Potential Alices. In F. Guattari, Molecular Revolution: Psychiatry and Politics<\/em> (R. Sheed, Trans.) (pp. 246\u2013241). Harmondsworth, United Kingdom: Penguin Books.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
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