Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 17:56:52 +0300
Subject: LUTHER BLISSETT


LUTHER BLISSETT. NOTES ON THE NATURE OF THE CONSPIRACY
There is nothing new when someone affirms that the nihilistic tyranny of
the spectacle could 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 by the "plagiarist" pirates of the past
centuries, i.e. by rascals, buffoons and court jesters.
 The Middle Age social conflict 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 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 practise such
minor literary genres as satire, coarse songs and blasphemous prayers. So
they saved the linguistic cross-fertilisation.
 Thanks to them, the speaking of each class, rank or profession might cross
and modify one another. The XVIth century novel "Gargantua et Pantagruel"
by Fran=E7ois Rabelais owed to this practice of the "merry prank" its
radicalism and its subversive change which consists in "breaking all
hierarchical false link between ideals and things by destroying any
ideological partition between them" (M. Bakhtin). In plain words, it was
necessary to free anything and let them naturally link up each other,
however strange this might seem considering Tradition and the 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 the direct
speaking and its seriousness, a scepticism which went so far as to negate
any possibility that a 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 used
to "circumvent" any official truth and dismember it from the inside by
carrying its logic to paradox.
Today, on the analogy, it's question of preventing the writing of an
informal constitution which submits the general intellect to a system based
on exploitation and the 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 Age 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 XXIth 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 shades 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.

Emergence della Wo/Men Gemeinwesen

<ADDRESS>NAV0243-AT-IPERBOLE.BOLOGNA.IT</ADDRESS>
HTTP://LINUX1.CISI.UNITO.IT/LUTHER
HTTP://WWW1.IOL.IT/SEXOL/SITUSADE.HTML

Emergence della Wo/Men Gemeinwesen

<ADDRESS>NAV0243-AT-IPERBOLE.BOLOGNA.IT</ADDRESS>
HTTP://LINUX1.CISI.UNITO.IT/LUTHER
HTTP://WWW1.IOL.IT/SEXOL/SITUSADE.HTML




     --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

     ------------------