ILLUSTRATIVE OPPOSITION
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addition to issues of environmental and health risk related to genetically
modified foods. It is our hope that people may begin to see themselves as
more than consumers seeking the power to buy safe food. We want to
encourage people to see themselves as citizens who desire the political power
to create a humane and ecological society.
In turn, we are hoping to move discussions surrounding biotechnology
beyond romantic yearnings for a golden age untainted by ‘technology5. In our
actions, the idea of ‘nature5 is taken from the realm of abstraction and is
brought down to the realm of the everyday. The ‘nature5 we invoke is our
bodies walking down a city street and it is the food we buy in the
supermarket. In turn, we show that the cause of ecological injustice is not
abstractions such as ‘civilization5 or ‘industrial society5—but rather, a set of
social relationships called the State and capitalism that appropriate our power
to create cooperative relationships within society and with the rest of the
natural world.
Our group has just begun to think through the process of illustrative
opposition. As a collective of actors and writers, we have chosen to express
our opposition in the form of theater and written text. But as I mentioned
earlier, dissent has a variety of forms. By giving a brief sketch of some of our
first actions, I have tried to depict a ‘work in process5 that aims only to
stimulate conversation, critique, and perhaps action as well. As our group
continues
to
explore
the
relationship
between
direct democracy
and
technology, our actions will hopefully embody an increasingly elaborate
understanding of the necessary and sufficient conditions for creating a free and
ecological society.
As our group knows, revolution cannot be generated from a series of
individual protests against social and ecological injustices. It requires that we
articulate not only what we do not want, but what we desire as well. The
demand for substantive freedom, or the demand for the very substance of what
freedom means, stands in contrast to the demand for negative freedom, which
while necessary, represents an incomplete demand to negate injustice. We
must be able to articulate a substantive vision of the society we desire,
illustrating through our activism, fire social and political freedoms for which we
yearn. We must illustrate a substantive demand for the freedom to create a
society based on a confederated direct democracy, a municipalized economy,
and on a new social and ecological sensibility based on values of cooperation
and mutual-aid.
Through illustrative opposition, we are neither locked into single-issue
activism, nor locked into the stagnation of ‘waiting5 for a local or national
political movement sufficiently comprehensive to address die widest range of
revolutionary desires. To be sure, we cannot sit back and watch urgent crises