Carnival Against Capital: a Comparison of Bakhtin, Vaneigem and Bey
Carnival against capital: a comparison of Bakhtin, Vaneigem and Bey
GAVIN GRINDON Department of English and American Studies School of Arts, Histories and Cultures University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL ABSTRACT Since the mid 1990s, many anarchists and Marxists, drawing on the writings of Hakim Bey, the Situationist International and Mikhail Bakhtin, have increasingly articulated the concept of ‘carnival’ as a valuable form of resistance that merges the political and the aesthetic. This essay looks at these writings and the cases they make, and examines the extent to which they form a coherent body of thought. The central texts under discussion will be Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World, Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life and Hakim Bey’s TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. It’s a sunny afternoon, and I find myself between two uniformed groups of people, pressed nose to nose (or rather helmet to helmet) against each other, neither side apparently much willing to move. On one side are the police, equipped with the latest in riot gear. Pushing against them are a group of men and women dressed in white overalls, equipped with cycle helmets, rubber rings, bubblewrap and stuffed toys sellotaped together into what seems a surprisingly effective parody of the officers’ protective clothing. Behind them, in the space they’re keeping the police from entering, are a crowd made up of dancing punks, fairies, stilt-walkers, ravers, feminists, anarchists and Marxists of every hue, people in fancy dress, people completely undressed, and a noisy meeting of street drummers, samba bands, and a pedal-powered sound system. There is an equal cacophony of ideologies in this space; black flags, red flags, green flags, flags with stars, multi-coloured gay pride flags and banners demanding liberation for diverse human and animal groups. This is a carnival against capitalism, as if thousands of people had decided to
GAVIN GRINDON Department of English and American Studies School of Arts, Histories and Cultures University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL ABSTRACT Since the mid 1990s, many anarchists and Marxists, drawing on the writings of Hakim Bey, the Situationist International and Mikhail Bakhtin, have increasingly articulated the concept of ‘carnival’ as a valuable form of resistance that merges the political and the aesthetic. This essay looks at these writings and the cases they make, and examines the extent to which they form a coherent body of thought. The central texts under discussion will be Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World, Raoul Vaneigem’s The Revolution of Everyday Life and Hakim Bey’s TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. It’s a sunny afternoon, and I find myself between two uniformed groups of people, pressed nose to nose (or rather helmet to helmet) against each other, neither side apparently much willing to move. On one side are the police, equipped with the latest in riot gear. Pushing against them are a group of men and women dressed in white overalls, equipped with cycle helmets, rubber rings, bubblewrap and stuffed toys sellotaped together into what seems a surprisingly effective parody of the officers’ protective clothing. Behind them, in the space they’re keeping the police from entering, are a crowd made up of dancing punks, fairies, stilt-walkers, ravers, feminists, anarchists and Marxists of every hue, people in fancy dress, people completely undressed, and a noisy meeting of street drummers, samba bands, and a pedal-powered sound system. There is an equal cacophony of ideologies in this space; black flags, red flags, green flags, flags with stars, multi-coloured gay pride flags and banners demanding liberation for diverse human and animal groups. This is a carnival against capitalism, as if thousands of people had decided to