The Tactics of Camping
by Eric Kluitenberg, June 20, 2012.
Yes We Camp!
Michel de Certeau observed that the tactics employed by the ‘weak’ are always on the watch for opportunities, and that these opportunities must be seized “on the wing”. Tactics, de Certeau writes, have no base at their disposal from where they can capitalise on their advantages, prepare their expansions, or secure their independence from circumstances. Instead tactics ‘insinuate’ themselves into the places of others. They operate on the terrain of strategic power, ‘fragmentarily’, without taking it over in its entirety. Whatever these tactics win, they cannot keep. [1]
Hence, tactics are always nomadic.
The Spanish elections of 2011 certainly presented one such opportunity to appropriate the moment and a strategic space tactically. The spill-over of resentment over youth unemployment, political inaction and incompetence, and the continuing spectre of austerity sparked a spontaneous anti-movement; the Indignado, the outraged. The Indignado started massive street protests taking the city squares in cities all over Spain by camping on them, repurposing the strategic space for civic deliberation and protest.
Perhaps most remarkable about this ‘anti-movement’ is precisely its refusal to be or become a movement. In their manifesto for Real Democracy they write: “We are ordinary people. We are like you: people, who get up every morning to study, work or find a job, people who have family and friends. People, who work hard every day to provide a better future for those around us.” [2] And in the call for nothing less than #Globalrevolution the initiators identify themselves as “the the outraged, the anonymous, the voiceless”, who no longer gaze at vertical power, but instead look sideways, horizontally: “No political party, association or trade union represents us. Nor do we want them to, because each and every one of us speaks for her or himself.” [3]
When scrutinising the websites and resources that are connected to the central anchoring point, http://takethesquare.net/, no final set of principles or demands can be found, except for a call to involvement in working towards a ‘better world’ that puts ‘people and nature’ before ‘economic interests’, and >useful documents< that can guide the process of bottom-up, collective decision making, avoiding the need for leadership or ‘organisation’. “The time has come for the woman and man in the street to take back their public spaces to debate and build a new future together.” [4]
http://takethesquare.wordpress.com/useful-documents/
