There is nothing new when someone affirms that the nihilistic tyranny of
the spectacle can be faced and fought by “talking big and
telling tall stories,” i.e. by raising a whirl of fibs and
lies “till a communication short-circuit dissipates the
virtual world and the real one will settle again” (Paul
Virilio). In fact, a radical criticism of the world order, and even the
right to criticize, was an achievement of the
“plagiarist” pirates of the past centuries,
i.e. by rascals, buffoons and court
jesters.
The social conflict of the Middle Ages was similar to that of the present
day: the language of the powers that be (that is the language as Law, State
and Identity) was objected, perverted and subverted by the words of the
detournement, by parody and the plagiarism, by a 'resistance through lies'
which was used to keep the language in motion as well as to frustrate all
authoritarian codification. Tramps, tumblers and criminals deviated from
the “straight path” of the high poem of
chivalry in order to practice such minor literary genres as satire, coarse
songs and blasphemous prayers, preserving the linguistic
cross-fertilisation. Thanks to them, the dialect of each class, rank or
profession might cross and modify one another. The XVIth century novel
“Gargantua et Pantagruel” by
François Rabelais owed to this practice of the
“merry prank” its radicalism and its
subversive change, which consists of “breaking all
hierarchical false links between ideals and things by destroying any
ideological partition between them” (M. Bakhtin).
In plain words, it was necessary to free every thing and let them naturally
link up each other, however strange this might seem in the light of
Tradition and customary connections. It was necessary to enable things to
come into contact one another with all their concreteness and variety, in
order to reapproach what had been fallaciously divided and redivide what
had been fallaciously approached. It was a question of “a
radical scepticism about direct speaking and its seriousness, a scepticism
which went so far as to negate any possibility that direct speaking
couldn't be false” (M. Bakhtin). Rabelais, Villon and their
anonymous predecessors did not put their feet down trying to state Truth in
a world of lies: quite the contrary, they worked to
“circumvent” any official truth and
dismember it from the inside by carrying its logic to paradox.
Today, on this analogy, it's question of preventing the writing of an
informal constitution which submits the general intellect to a system based
on exploitation and ecocide. The struggle is still against the language of
the powers that be, in order to create by merry pranks new links between
things (i.e. networking) and break any
old hierarchy.
As Rabelais emphasized in his works that the Middle Ages was over and that
new social relations were beating up the inertial force of the feudal
world, so we have to point out that wagework has become unnecessary, that
information and technology must belong to everybody, and so on.
However, it is insufficient to wait for a 'short-circuit' or to hope for
cathartic explosions: rather, we must create a scientiphic strategy of the
merry prank. In the mid-eighties cyberpunk propagated an interesting
metaphor, according to which information is a bank that we have to force
open in the name of a free admittance to the data, challenging their
secrecy. That was correct, yet the 1989 Amsterdam
ICATA
(an international conference on the alternative use of technology) had also
stated that “any information is in the meantime
deformation, the right of the former is inseparable from that of the
latter, which belongs to the whole world… We should subvert
the conventional channels by means of detournements and surrealistic
changes of the events in order to raise chaos, rumours and waste which in
their turn shall be regarded as carriers of information.”
This provocative use of the term 'right' had to cause a breakdown in the
liberal phraseology, as though we used the term 'non-statal public sphere.'
Actually, those who decided to follow that statement opened breaches in the
liberal-democratici horizon which had limited any discussion on
'infoglasnost' and the cybermedia up to that time. Those XIXth century
rascals and buffoons weren't interested in the myth of a
“new new frontier:” rather, they decided to
deal with rumours, noises and interferences, just standing in the dark
shadows which the information outgrowth couldn't help throwing on the
capitalist society, i.e. the symptoms
of a psychochemical illness. The morals of those who ride the waves of the
digital ocean are necessarily provisional. Especially in Italy, some called
all this 'Transmaniacality' (see the 1979 John Shirley
S-F novel
“Transmaniacon”). In the depths of the
informal 'network of events' which these teams of mind invaders are setting
up, one of the most interesting practices of merry prank is the so-called
MULTIPLE NAME, a
technique particularly improved by the
NEOISTS. An important
multiple name was
KAREN ELIOT.
The Luther Blissett Project has been launched in the Summer '94 by an
international gang of revolutionaries, mail artists, poets, performers,
underground 'zines, cybernauts and squatters. A multiple name, if it was
used outside small circles of radicals, would be a practical solution of
problems such as the relation between community and individual, or the
quest for identity. All the debates on the necessity of a 'Nomadology' and
all idle talk on 'situations' are superseded by this concept. Luther
Blissett is a -dividual, because the character has many personalities and
reputations; Luther Blissett is also a con-dividual, because many
individuals share the name; Luther Blissett is a multitude as well as a
'decentralized subject,' a project aiming to what Karl Marx called
'Gemeinwesen' (i.e. the common essence of the Wo/Mankind, the awareness of
the global community).
Luther Blissett is not an (anti)artist like KAREN ELIOT: s/he's a cultural
terrorist who supports the religious programme of the
NEOIST ALLIANCE.
Sabotages, hoaxes, urban legends, performances, magazines, bulletin boards
and TV or radio broadcasts are
spreading the name all over the world. Especially in Italy, this merry
prank is reaching new heights of subversion and mythopoiesis.
Anyone can become Luther Blissett simply by adopting the name. Become
Luther Blissett.
