On finalizing ‘Police State,’ and on the police-politics distinction

For Another Critique of the Pyramid

As I am finalizing my paper “Police State: The state, student activism, and spaces of politics after 1968 in Mexico City” (an intervention into political geographies of state power, also discussed here and here), I have enjoyed watching and rewatching this interview with Erik Swyngedouw (linked through Stuart Elden’s Progressive Geographies blog).

My formulation of the police-politics distinction (drawing from Rancière) is different than Swyngedouw’s distinction between “politics” and “the political,” but I find it nonetheless complementary. For me, “the police” is a name for the naturalization of inherited political classifications – a configuration of the world available to perception, which discourages politics. “Politics” cannot be pursued through the assertion of identities given by existing police order. To the contrary, politics is beyond what can be counted upon in the existing order; it is by definition unaccounted for. But if unaccounted for, it is also permanently possible. Moments…

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Llamado urgente a acudir al Zócalo 13 septiembre 11 hrs.

Jacques Rancière Interview: “Democracy is not, to begin with, a form of State”

The full interview is here, and I should note that Rancière’s comments are of great interest in light of arguments in this essay I co-authored with Ishan Ashutosh.

Roberto Bolaño died ten years ago today

For Another Critique of the Pyramid

The Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño died ten years ago today, and I’m in the midst of re-reading The Savage Detectives (1998) on the heels of completing my third reading of Amulet (1999). The latter is an elaboration of one short story from the long middle section of The Savage Detectives — a meditation on 1968, youth, and Mexico City. (See a related post from when I was recently reading Amulethere.)

Several months ago, Teo Ballvé posted Roberto Bolaño & Geopolitics on his Territorial Masquerades. More recently, the Los Angeles Review of Books published this essay by Lisa Locascio, inspired by the currently running exhibition “Bolaño Archive. 1977–2003” at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.

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