Sorry for the late reply, thanks for the kind words. In terms of sycophant, I know it’s a strong word, but Im trying to imply that I see that we have a greater problem in the New School than the occupiers. And I see that as a kind of sycophantic culture (also operating in greater society). One in which that kind of disposition is encouraged, or shaped, so that it becomes a prominent part of ones ‘habitus’. I have caught myself in the years of being at the New School, as acting like a sycophant, and it disgusts me. Maybe I am projecting? So I am not labeling you a sycophant or any student. I am pointing to what I see as a systemic problem where it has become standard operating procedure for students to not critically question their professors or the administration. As I mentioned before I see myself as being complicit in this problem.

In terms of the letter, I do not think discussion is ‘stifled’. That would be too easy a problem. Its much more sinister than that. I think that it at best promotes a very limited form of discussion and knowledge. The letter, not with conscious intent, is an example of implicit social control. It in a sense uses the incident as away to direct critical attention away from the New School. And it rationalizes the existence of the New School by way of what I see as a kind of crude ‘othering’. The “real enemies” are out ‘there’ not here. I for one believe that we all have ‘real enemies’ operating within our own minds, within our institutions and in every realm of existence. What this means is that we must be constantly self critical even if it makes us uncomfortable or uncertain. I urge you to read Foucault’s discussion of Parthesia in ‘Fearless Speech’. With regard to your last question I do not think that I challenge “official knowledge” sufficiently. Nor do I think I speak my mind in a way that poses any real challenge. Once again I see myself as being part of a larger problem that I only slightly understand.

Best,

David Peppas

(In the memory of Vladimir Ilyich, who in spite of everything was a great political man)

The Occupation of Wall Street has already done important things. It has put the very important issue of inequality on the collective American agenda. It has experimented in forms of direct democracy, and in ways of seriously influencing the political system outside the official channels. In my opinion it has the potential of becoming more then the forerunner, but also a key component of a new American movement for more democracy and more justice. As all movements it must confront its own worst tendencies to realize its genuine potential.

By tendencies I mean strategies rather than people or individuals or groups. Such a negative strategy is symbolized by the slogan that appeared just before the taking of a part of the new School: “occupy everything”. I regard it as a childhood ailment not to denigrate any participants or to represent their age (they were adults!), but to indicate problems of an early, developmental phase that can be easily overcome.

“Occupy everything” is a deeply military metaphor, incompatible with a non-violent movement aiming to raise moral as well as political consciousness. The idea of “seizing public or quasi-public spaces to make broad claims about the overall (mis)direction of our society” cannot be justified as a general right in the name of which the law is violated to transform or improve it. It is incompatible with productively addressing “the public at large”. Finally, and most clearly “occupy everything” is deeply contradictory with the creative slogan “we are 99%.”

Occupation as against sit in is a military metaphor. It easily calls in mind the occupation of Iraq, and of the West Bank of the Jordan River. Sit in means that those who rightly belong take up space, non-violently, space where they have a right to be and to stay in civil disobedience, accepting to pay a price when arrested to bear moral witness to unjust laws the need to be changed. Occupation means the forcible taking and holding of territory. Literally speaking, while most of the events taking place over all over the country were sit ins, despite their name, a few were attempted and (mostly) failed occupations. Sit-ins can lead to only one-sided use of open force, while occupations involve two-sided violence. We can have sit ins in the space and territory of friends, but it is always the territory of enemies that is occupied.

Words matter. While an occupation can be effectively a sit-in, and a sit-in can be an occupation, or be turned into one, when the word “occupy” is used that in itself produces facts and outcomes. The general claim made by Nancy Fraser that OWS implies the strategy (and implicitly the right) of “seizing public or quasi-public spaces” is just a slightly limited version of “occupy everything”. It means that not only the New School’s space, but that of Stuyvesant High, public schools, hospitals and offices dedicated to the administration of essential public goods and services could be rightly seized if the purpose was to elevate and open up public discussion. The very spaces of public discussion could be seized to facilitate another discussion. Such an idea leads to deep conflicts between the occupiers and those whose activities, rights and forms of publicness are being forcibly displaced. When in sit ins or in civil disobedience rights are violated, these are rights that are exclusionary and oppressive that in themselves involve the denial of rights more universal and more justified. This cannot be said about all social space, and their relevant rights holders. Rights can be calimed only to the extent that they do not violate other rights without serious reason, above all identical rights. For example, the rights that are constitutive of the public sphere and without which it cannot ultimately exist, ought not be violated in the name of the very same rights. That is why occupying hospitals, or schools or spaces of public learning or discussion are unjustified, unless it is by their own participants who are being denied important rights. But then the occupation would be a sit-in. When parts of OWS march over to the New School and occupy part of it, they are not occupying a space whose owners or holders or participants have denied them any rights. On the contrary the right to freely assemble, and speak has been granted to them over and over again by that very institution. To occupy that institution is to imagine it as an enemy, and unfortunately to turn it into an enemy. To occupy in the name of its very participants in the face of their opposition, or: without their democratic decision can never be made acceptable.

Equally important, occupation that aggressively sets the interests and needs and opinions of people on the same level, here students and students, against one another cannot be a strategy in the name of 99%. (Even faculty belong to the 99%, I would add, though here some rhetorics have put us on the other side.) Speaking in the name of 99% is based on a fiction, but it is a productive fiction as long as the interests of 99% are rigorously kept in mind. Opening up friend and enemy relations among us means that the movement suddenly is acting in the name of a much smaller percentage than 99. If all public and quasi-public spaces can be occupied, the 99% turns into .00001% and the 1% turns into 99. A popular strategy turns into a narrowly elitist one. The results, if “occupy everything” became a general strategy would be disastrous, mostly for the activists themselves. But we would all lose the potential I am speaking about.

It was perhaps right to use the military metaphor in the case of Wall Street (that could of course not be occupied, among other things because it is ultimately a virtual space), because that 1% itself acts like an exploitative, occupying force with respect to the rest of society. Zuccotti Park was a symbol of nearby Wall Street, and a park where few other rights were at stake. A better slogan would have been better, but we are now stuck with “occupy”. But extending the idea to everything, or all public and quasi-public space (whatever the last phrase means) is a disaster. This strategy emerged as a result of a temporary defeat, the police attack on the park. If continued the real 99% (or htose who more successfully speak in its name) will crush the imaginary and symbolic one, even if it is against some of its interests. It is by no means the only strategy available. OWS is not ultimately an occupation, that was at best a temporary strategy, but a proto movement, a potential part of a new American movement for economic justice. A movement can use demonstrations, open public and intellectual discussion, exemplary acts, forms of art and performance (politization of art, rather than the aesthetization of politics pushed by some!) and even generating new and better forms of organization and leadership to do what only movements can do: help transform the political culture and influence the direction of more formal political development.

A childhood ailment can kill, as well as immunize. People speak of the Occupation of the New School as an important learning experience. I hope this is indeed the result.

The end game, of course, was disheartening. I had hoped as you did that the students would use Kellen for real cultural experimentation and learning. I was very disappointed, as I imagine you must have been. Unlike you, I can’t write this all off as a great educational exercise, though. The possible lessons are too muddled, at least for me, to be understood. And bad art may have its uses, but it also has its limits, especially if you take the graffiti of the occupation as art, as you have suggested it should be.