(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
If anyone is wondering about Ny Tid's political line, then the front page about the election in Norway, the article about The Summer of Love, for the outsider Ole-Bjornand Erland Kiøsterud's essay whether the importance of the community is a clear indication.
The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's book Community to come more deeply shows an attitude or insight that I as the newspaper editor can agree with. The book was now in Norwegian, but the title should have been the Community Coming, as an "opportunity", not something to happen. (See also essay about Agamben). Agamben's thoughts have their roots in both the philosophy of both German Martin Heideggers and French Emmanuel Levinas.
The point is, as Kiøsterud writes on the basis of Agamben, "to ask again and again what a community can be if it is not to be based on oppression, acquisition and exclusion".
With a political choice at the door, let me refer to the now 75 year old Italian utopia: "The new fact of the policy to come is that this will no longer be a struggle for conquest and control of the state, but a struggle between the state and the non-state (humanity). ”Agamben is strongly critical of our control societies and interfering commercialism. According to him, we now have a "planetary petty bourgeoisie" in which the old classes dissolve. At the same time, both fascism and Nazism still represent "a national petty bourgeoisie that is constantly clinging to an artificial national identity on which they built dreams of bourgeois greatness". Agamben also criticizes our ego and identity cultivation: "The folly of individual existence ... has turned into everyday exhibitionism."
Haven't we heard this criticism before? Yes, but with today's extensive media community, at least large parts of the world's population have become much more consumer and product oriented than before. And this also applies to the self-perception of one's self and others as exploitable "goods".
The question is what community comes when the (post) modern, enlightened Europeans do not believe in traditional communities such as religion, family, nation and ethnicity? In the book, Agamben looks existentially behind whether to be a politically blue, conservative Muslim, American or old communist. In deeper terms, more existentially seeking people are in demand who do not want or be dazzled by power, but choose a basic openness. Being able to stay in the "non-identical" (Levinas) rather than in a fixed identity that does nothing but define you. As Kierkegaard once said, "Don't tighten your travel suit with a hard knot!" We are talking about people who do not judge others by appearance, values or highly identifiable groups.
But with today's refugee situation, population growth and xenophobia, many will shake their heads at such possible open communities. The war on terror has only spiked the fronts, rather than an open humanity. Levinas' hospitality is worse with the vulnerable face of the Other. You also live in an oblivion (Heidegger) where you do not take in the randomness of life. But Agamben's request in the book about the equal attitude, like Heidegger's text about being meek and living fruitfully – is then more and more ecologically conscious, as can the being.
For even with today's Emerging nationalism and established bourgeois selfishness, we see new ecological collectives and yoga culture spread. Globalization has also promoted new peace-seeking non-governmental, solidarity networks. Remember how Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967 was an attempt to show and spread such attitudes in an opener paradigm, where peace and love were the starting point. 100 000 people (see page 16 – 17) demonstrated against war hoaxing with flowers in the streets. As my old professor of philosophy in San Francisco told us during his studies there – the "bourgeois paradigm" was probably too strong to stand by. Flower power and the hippie movement died out. Today, the thinking of such as Agamben, Levinas and Heidegger probably lives better in new ecological movements. Some of us are still moving away from the money gap, the time clip, the popular media and the clumsy military-industrial complex.
En new time – or the community to come – has anarchist traits. I also recall another European, the Greek Yanis Varoufakis who, with his new DiEM25 movement, is trying to help a new community. As mentioned on pages 4 – 5, anarchist inspiration can lead to anti-militarism, non-violent actions, and civil disobedience. We are talking about the opposition to a governance hierarchy, but also the right not to participate. Being able to sign out when enough is enough. If you do not let go of your established social role or identity, the opportunity is there to be part of an upcoming community – which does not include / exclude from whether you are a Jew or a Palestinian, rich or poor – but where you are included as open, only as a human being. A robust, new community in the spirit of Agamben: without stubborn truths, obliviousness or strong identity, but where any one belongs to the open community. For power (the state, capital, military) often makes itself strong if it finds or creates a enemy. The point is that a modern "anarchist" limits this power by making it difficult to control, nationalize or categorize.
The community of minorities, dissidents and vulnerable existences is closest to Ny Tid. Even those who vote for small parties, or know why they do not vote. Good choice!
