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Title: Against Amnesia Author: (d)anger Date: 1993 Language: en Topics: AJODA, AJODA #35, amnesia, society Notes: Originally published in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #35 — Winter, ’93
There are moments when life seems entirely impossible. All the crazy
dreams of rebellion disappear. The desire to revolt against the society
of the civilized is lost to futility, the open but empty hand. All of
the late-night laughter filled conversations, the meanderings and
wanderings of those intoxicated with thoughts of adventure, begin to
seem naive and empty. One comes to the conclusion that one is
accomplishing nothing: destruction and creation seem equally without
attraction. One abandons one’s own imagination and returns to the old
trap of fear. The existential idiot occupies one’s head.
Here is the point where the misery of this society completes itself.
This society strengthens itself by continually forcing the individual to
disappear: the individual disappears when the individual gives in to the
misery of this society. One begins to accept the limitations imposed by
this society as one’s own. To experience comes to mean to repeat
oneself. One begins to feel one has nothing to offer in defiance,
nothing to give: every gesture becomes a blank stare. Passion is
pacified. Desire is rationalized away. The forbidden remain forbidden.
This supreme moment of misery marks nothing less than the triumph of
amnesia. Such complete abandonment of life’s adventure is the surrender
of one who has forgotten all previous rebellion and all previous desire
to revolt. Memory has ceased to be a pleasure: the misery of the moment
stretches backwards forever. Amnesia is essential to civilizing human
beings: when one forgets the possibilities (the richness of past,
present, and future) one is domesticated, one disappears.
Amnesia is the colonization of memory. One is forced to forget
everything rebellious about one’s life. The colonized mind is less
likely to imagine a total revolt against this society if all traces of
earlier revolts are suppressed. Everything from simple negative gestures
to the hand in the cookie jar to late night crimes make memory precious
to the individual; as soon as these breaches are forgotten the present
becomes less and less pregnant: the stem of the flower is cut before the
flower blooms. One is in despair over the absence of past freedom simply
because the residue of past freedoms have been purged from one’s memory.
When asked how one knows that freedom is possible the rebel responds
with examples of past freedoms. The rebel remembers the events,
movements, and moments of one’s past that mark breaks with the dominant
order. One knows that freedom is possible because everybody has
experienced freedom: the taste of paradise is in all our mouths. To
forget this is fatal. Amnesia can be combated by constantly digging back
into our memories, by constantly becoming more and more aware of our
mistakes and victories. No, we must not dwell in the past, we must be
cruel with our pasts (and those who would keep us there), and yet we
must be greedy with our pasts (and wary of those who would paint those
pasts with the blackness of misery and impossibilities). Rebels must
return to their own past with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a
knife in the other.
-(d)anger (POB 203, Portland, OR. 97207)