In military terminology, a Theatre of Operations represents the territory in which an armed conflict takes place; a theater both in terms of tactical performance, as in the technologies of vision required to organize all bodies and assemblages against a clear horizon, a proscenium stage of sorts, which aims for complete identification of the enemy and the territory. Before mass media, the art of theater had been one of the most effective weapons for contouring the subject. The language and gestures of the characters of a play gave way for new understandings and behaviors, just like the dramaturgy of war shapes the soldier and liturgy shapes the devotee.
On the matter of the subject, or rather, that of the production of subjectivity, we should first consider the screens of mediation which configure the notion of self within a framework of performance enacted on the social realm. When we speak about the active process of colonization (from now on we will call it Empire*) we are referring both to the screens which configure the new colonized subjectivities, separating them from their territory and its ghosts, and the screens which mediate the territory itself as a separate, neutral entity. Colonization was possible due to the technological advances which expanded Empire’s field of vision. Here, the territory becomes a map with clear contours, and everything inside it becomes a resource. This is a moment of mass expropriation from land, but also from the presence that each body carries within, a denial of agency and immediacy, and a complete negation of the realm of the unseen. The Enlightenment cemented this process, binding everything it could identify into describable concepts adhered to a language embedded in Law, and thus conjuring its most prominent endeavor: the nation-state.
Empire needs the constant innovation of technologies of vision, for surveillance and identification, but also as forms of transmission and as vessels of representation. It needs every subject to be represented within its formulations, or at least to want to be part of them. It needs Citizens*. We could argue that the citizen is the homeless performer which resulted out of centuries of evictions, who wanders alone, within the demarcations of wage labor, private property and debt. A global malaise of mass absence, citizens find refuge in the images which mediate their desire and the fractured ethics of their political regime. But the eyes become tired and vision gets blurry. Language can no longer mediate the present, it can only create an infinite amount of screens, of algo-rhythmic sequences of images and words.
Those who live on the margins of citizenship and refuse its assimilation understand that joy cannot be contained within the dispositions of Empire, but that every attempt to make a new territory within the field of vision will inevitably be captured by the hegemon and its institutions. And yet, every moment is an opportunity to open new zones of opacity, of awareness of our presence.
Saying NO, refusing identity, visibility and the moral logics of production. Refusing competition. Doing nothing. Choosing opacity and liberating desire from image. Refusing to kiss ass, or to employ words which mean nothing to us, and which only force our assimilation, refusing to participate in activities which alienate us, and instead look for ways to have fun, to find each other, to build friendships, to train ourselves for the magical events of love and trust, but also to heal from the sad defeat of betrayal; to learn to walk with our eyes closed, in unison with the presences around us, all the bodies and the ghosts that dance between them; to understand that the swerve eventually bears repetition, and that every new ethical field which we share can eventually become our territory, these are all practices which affirm our presence.
Anybody who has been part of a riot and felt the weight of immediacy as the police advanced, understands the magnitude of their presence. Anybody who’s ever said NO to their employer, understands the magnitude of their voice. What if 10 people stood in front of the National Palace, doing nothing? What if 1 million did the same? What could happen then?
*The use of the terms Empire and citizen on this text make reference to the works of anarchist group Tiqqun.
