Raoul Vaneigem interview

This is a really good interview with Raoul Vaneigem, taken from the online journal e-flux, which I found just as I started re-reading 'the revolution of everyday life'.
I don't agree with everything he says but it's difficult to find fault with someone who has stuck to his guns over the decades. I particularly like this phrase, 'The term “situationist” was ever only a token of identification'. I can identify with this as that is the only way that I would say, 'I am a marxist'

Hans Ulrich Obrist: I just visited Edouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, who have written an appeal to Barack Obama. What would your appeal and/or advice be to Obama?
Raoul Vaneigem: I refuse to cultivate any relationship whatsoever with people of power. I agree with the Zapatistas from Chiapas who want nothing to do with either the state or its masters, the multinational mafias. I call for civil disobedience so that local communities can form, coordinate, and begin self-producing natural power, a more natural form of farming, and public services that are finally liberated from the scams of government by the Left or the Right. On the other hand, I welcome the appeal by Chamoiseau, Glissant, and their friends for the creation of an existence in which the poetry of a life rediscovered will put an end to the deadly stranglehold of the commodity.

The view from Wigan...

is not a particularly exciting one, but this is where I've been staying for the last couple of weeks while visiting family in Britain.

Not the view from my sister's house

Things haven't changed massively here since I left three years ago. Just more of the same. The coalition seems determined to follow New Zealand's economic and social policies, namely, hollowing out the economy and destroying social welfare along with union rights.

It's strange going back to places you grew up in when so much time has passed. It's around thirty years or so  since I lived in my Dad's house for any length of time but the three years in New Zealand have given it the quality of a black and white film. Any idea of confronting the ghosts of the past, part of the reason for going, and laying them to rest was just impossible. The past still lives there and weighs heavily on the heads of the living or something...

I was feeling pretty depressed by this as I was watching the England game on Friday night when I had what can only be described as a spiritual experience: I suddenly had the impression that all the thoughts and feelings related to everything in my past that had screwed me up was being sucked out of me and I didn't need to even think about it anymore as it didn't matter. The past was over I could now move on. So I am.