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ECOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
pass before our eyes. Instead, we may address the necessity of a single issue,
presenting a wider sufficient condition for a free society in the process.
Thinking through each particular moment of unfreedom opens the way to
consider the widest vista of freedom imaginable.
It is vital that we begin to think along coherent revolutionary lines. In this
age of incoherence, our thinking about social and political change often tends
to be scattered and fragmented. The spectacle of the nightly news does not
assist us in understanding the crucial link between real political power and the
struggle for social and ecological justice. Instead, we are expected to sit back
and watch the parade of incoherent events presented to us as disparate and
nnmUi-ed as the commercials that flicker by every four to seven minutes.
To create coherence in the age of incoherence is a highly oppositional
act. By clearly conveying the ‘logic’ that underlies this irrational world, we
actually lessen the overwhelming burden of social disorientation. To see how
one crisis emerges from the other—to think rationally—opens the way to
understand how one phase of reconstruction may emerge from the other
allowing us to gradually transform society as a whole.
A crucial component of any illustrative opposition is a process of
education in which we recover a sense of theoretical and historical integrity. In
this spirit, we may create study-groups and centers for radical education,
forums in which we may think through the moments of illustrative opposition,
educating ourselves in revolutionary history, awakening ourselves to the
possibilities for social and political reconstruction.
Illustrative opposition, then, is not merely an instrumental means-ends
approach to social or political activism. Rather, it represents a comprehensive
and utopian analytics made visible. The illustrations that we paint represent
valuable ends in themselves; they represent an ongoing challenge to the
institutions that oppress us, a challenge that shows the world that opposition is
alive, well, and will not go away. Our illustrative actions must curb the steady
tide of social and political injustice that gathers strength daily. As we begin to
popularize the demand for direct political power over our everyday lives, the
horizon of social and ecological justice no longer recedes into the distance, but
rather, calls out to us, yearning passionately for its own actualization.