Invitation
From discontent….
In some places the illusion of social peace, reigning in Europe since several decades, has fallen into pieces, while in other places she only now starts showing cracks. For years revolutionaries and anti-authoritarians have gotten used regarding their struggles as valid attempts to break open the tomb of pacification, or to deepen the tensions heating up here and there. But the ongoing changes seem to open up larger possibilities. While some revolts (not to deny the more circumscribed but equally important conflicts and diffuse revolts) such as in November 2005 (France) or December 2008 (Greece) scare the shadows away as torches of a new anger, the insurrections at the other side of the Mediterranean open up challenges that have been put inside the closet for a long time: the question of insurrection, the question of revolutionary perspectives, by which we mean, the question of a large and profound subversion of the social relationships. During a heated social situation the challenge is most certainly not only to “pour out some more oil on the fire”, but rather knowing how to contribute to making the fire rage towards the direction of freedom.
Regarding these changing social situations, which also put us in front of new obstacles, we consider it important to break open our heads once again, to abandon the models and think about our possibilities for encouragement and contribution to the unleashing of the social storm. The lack of revolutionary perspectives, on a small as well as on a big scale, is risking to push us very fast on a side track where only paralysis is awaiting us.
… towards an opportunity
We think there is a need for practical experiences as well as time and space for the development of revolutionary perspectives. Although situations differ from one to another, it seems to us that the basis from which anarchists and anti-authoritarians from all around depart is more than solid enough to enable a discussion and explore a few directions. For this reason we want this international anarchist bookfair to be one of the hopefully many occasions to go into themes that are not only close to our hearts, but have been put aside for too long. We think putting ourselves again fully on the terrain of the revolutionary hypotheses can make us overcome the relative emptiness of the dead-end and annoying repetition of the activist/militant schemes, of a growing incapacity to put fire to the fuse in social situations which seem more and more unstable, of an ideologizing of certain methods and approaches. … By means of this bookfair we want to create space for discussions and informal encounters between anarchists and anti-authoritarians that try overcoming this emptiness in their practice and ideas, in their activities and struggles.
… and an invitation across the borders
As this short sketch hopefully makes clear, the aim of this meeting is internationalist; because a mutual enrichment across the borders can always be worth it, but especially because the question of revolutionary perspectives is irrevocably leading us towards an overcoming of the local particularities. We’d like to get as much out of this encounter as possible and think written contributions can add to this. Therefore we warmly want to invite all comrades to write contributions to the discussion on beforehand. These contributions will be translated and spread in the coming months before the bookfair.
International Subversive Bookfair
Saterday 15th and Sunday 16th october 2011 in Brussels