Questions on/from the Riots

Paris, Athens, London,...

It seems that there is an ongoing list of modern capitals in Europe where civil unrest burst out like an explosion.In each case,there are striking similatirities (an of course differences) which seem to compose the syntax of the riots.

The city, the looting, properties in flames, young people with the faces hidden in balaclavas or without, the police special forces, the owners, ...

Then, the analyses start witht he experts (journalists, politicians and community leaders, social scientists... The all try to come with an understanding: the social and political causes of the riots, poverty, economic recession, political disillusion, the end of multiculturalism and tolerance.

The problem with these expressions of civil unrest is the the lact of an organised grammar. In other words, the systematised structural rules that forms a widely accepted body of knowledge seems to fail us. All these acts of violent from all the sides involved: the aggressors, the defenders, the victims, the perpetrators, the neutralists, the observers seem to be unravelled on the surface in a speed and volume (we should relate the latter to globalisation) that impedes the formation of a 'grammatical' structure.

And without a 'grammar' how could we reach a comprehensive language? How do we translate violence into a fruitful framework of analysis of social(?)-some of the reports point exactly to the lack of social solidariy- dissent.

This lack of understanding is not new. Similar, disagreement on the meaning of a social mobilisation could be found in the various movements of 'Indignados'in Spain or in Greece. In those forms of mobilisation the syntax differs but what persists is the multiplicity of interpretations which indicates the lack of an understanding.

What seems to relate the riots and the movements of 'Indignados' is the timing: one of the most difficult time for Europe in terms of its economic existence, its political future and its identity. The idea of Europe as it was cosntructed in the post-war decades and its idealisation if the last decades of the 20th century seems shuttered,at least to a wide majority of its citizens (which categories are these and if they differ from country to country should be examined. Disenchatement and the lack of any new ideal worsen the already hard reality and increase the fear. The management of this fear among, I think lead to these different and even opposing forms of dissent.

In the 'Indignados' the fear is positive;it is mixed with hope,the fear of what will happen next, where things go and the hope of being creative in social togetherness that could bring change. The 'indignados' believe in change they believe in their in peoplehood as the force of history. I am not sure though that each one of them consider change in the same way how the movement could lead to it.

In the riots, the fear is negative; it is pure and simple and for this reason, absolute and devastating. It is the fear with no hope, no thinking of tomorrow or of the other. In this case, the subject lives the moment and lives for the moment, and that is way this subject demands and seizes what he/she was deprives from the past (consumers goods or dignity) and what he/she nomore believes in, ie the future.

In both cases, the fear is present.

And it is present also in the way the state reacts to these cases; with more discourses on order and security that is also based on fear.

So what is the solution?Is there any? Slavoi Zizek (Vioelnce, Six Sideways Reflections)encourages to do nothing.And in the meantime?