With conditions as they are, a different strategy is required.
Chris Gilbert

Chris Gilbert’s Resignation: Service In the Name of Whom?

28 year old 1st Lt. Ehren K. Watada of Honolulu disobeyed orders of deployment in Iraq by tendering his resignation on grounds of moral indignation over the war. The army refused to grant his request and Watada now faces a dishonorable discharge as well as several years in prison for defying commands.

“Never did I imagine my president would lie to go to war, condone torture, spy on Americans, or destroy the career of a CIA agent for political gain. I would rather resign in protest, but the army doesn’t agree.”

No doubt many who read this will praise this young man’s ethics and bravery. Then why is it, in the wake of curator Chris Gilbert’s letter of resignation from the Berkeley Art Museum, has there been a divided response from within progressive art circles with many people questioning this young man’s motivation?

When a soldier walks away from serving in Iraq we praise her or him for the ethical conscience expressed. When a curator walks away from what he believes is service to the same imperial interests he becomes suspect. Why is it so difficult to accept Gilbert's letter at face value? Do we immediately see every player in the art system as inherently flawed and opportunistic, unlike the ethical purity of the soldier? What does this say about the nature the art world as an institution, something we inevitably support through our labors, even when we do so with reservation? I find all of this curious.

In times of past US wars, the art world’s players have protested, even gone on strike against the institutions that fed them. Art Workers Coalition, Black Emergency Coalition, Guerilla Art Action Group, Artists Meeting for Cultural Change among many others directly targeted prominent museums, their wealthy supporters, and their Boards of Directors demanding action in solidarity with those opposed to the War in Vietnam. Something similar happened in the mid-1980s with Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America. Yes, these were collective actions, not individual resignations, or solitary acts of protest, and that is a notable difference with Gilbert’s situation. And yes, the soldier - curator comparison is somewhat of a stretch, I admit, but examples of scientists, or government employees resigning as a response to the current state of US politics are difficult to find. (Although they will no doubt rise in visibility as this horrific war drags on.) And yes, Gilbert’s resignation took place in friendly territory, the people’s republic of Berkeley. Still, I wonder if the museum had been located within a “red” state would people be so quick to doubt the principles behind Gilbert’s actions? Nevertheless, what Gilbert’s letter specifically focuses attention on is the nature of the institutional position he was supposed to uphold: that of a-political, unbiased, cultural administrator.

This was not the first clash between Gilbert and cultural institutions over politics. Prior to his position at the Berkeley Museum of Art he was the Contemporary Curator for the Baltimore Museum of Art (BAM). While employed there Gilbert opened up a breach within that traditionally reserved institution’s edifice with his four-part series entitled Cram Sessions. Inviting collectives, local activists, theorists, and students to participate, including myself, Gilbert produced several temporary, inter-active exhibitions that not only highlighted interventionist modes of art making, but which also began to generate a sustained interactivity with local artists, students, and activists. The museum made it clear this work was not deemed appropriate, yet Gilbert stood his ground right on up to the moment that Berkeley hired him.

There is another angle to this story, a collaborative element in fact. Gilbert’s long-time partner Cira Pascual Marquina was employed by the nearby cultural center known as The Contemporary, which is also in Baltimore. Temporarily crowned “acting director” about a year ago, Pascual Marquina quickly moved to amplify the activity Gilbert had generated at BAM. She chose not to keep the seat warm while the Board of Directors selected a permanent executive, but instead pushed the administrative structure she was handed full-throttle into supporting an intense, summer-long program of critical engagements not set inside the institution, but outside, in the warp and woof of Baltimore’s urban politics. For like other post-industrial cities starting with New York in the 1980s, Baltimore is now undergoing its own version of the neo-liberal makeover. Gentrification, displacement, loft conversions, capital concentration, de-funding of social services, there is no need to elaborate because most of us know the score, even battled it in our own locale. But Pascual Marquina’s project Headquarters is a truly daring effort to redirect institutional funds into local acts of sustainable resistance. One group of artist-interventionists that call themselves Campbaltimore have been meeting for months not with other artists, but with the fragmented array of community housing, labor, and urban activists opposed to the systematic privatization of the city’s resources. Gilbert’s recent actions therefore have a rich and forceful history, one that I wish his passionate letter, no doubt written in collaboration with Pascual Marquina, had made more evident. (Or would more focus on his past career simply added fuel to those who read his act as self-serving?)

Gilbert’s resignation and the letter that explains his deed are part and parcel of one person’s effort to radically transform the role of arts administrator into that of engaged, political participant. I suspect nothing less than that seemed appropriate to him in light of the material he selected, or that selected him, for his inaugural exhibition about current revolutionary circumstances in Venezuela. For despite all of the structural, economic, and historical reasons that efforts to transform the affect of arts administration from one of passivity to passion, from neutrality to commitment, will end in some form of defeat --my own, short-lived curatorial tenure at the New Museum included-- there is every reason to seize these opportunities to reveal, as Gilbert states, the museum’s bourgeois values which are “really in most respects simply the cultural arm of upper-class power.” After all, it is the institutional frame and the servitude it extracts that must be demystified, most especially now, with conditions as they are.

Array

In the Bay Area some of us had a more complex reaction to Chris Gilbert’s resignation. The few who knew his work were excited he was here, and looked forward to considering some of the questions a radical cultural approach will raise about politics, art and the institution. I imagine more people in the Bay Area would have liked to be part of such investigations, but I don't think there was enough effort made for people to find out who he was and what he stood for, before he quit.

The Now Time Venezuela Cycle at the University Art Museum is terrific. It was a super destination to send students to learn about horizontalidad, social organizing and production, collectivity, to discuss individuality, neo-liberalism, engaged media practices etc. Because this programming was so exciting, Gilbert's resignation was disappointing and difficult to reconcile.

Greg Sholette’s comparison of Gilbert with a soldier in Iraq is too much of a stretch for me. The strength of the programming Gilbert managed to present, despite unsurprising conservativism on the part of the museum (regarding curatorial speech) makes it difficult to understand cause for resignation, or to imagine resignation as a form of civil disobedience. There is too large a difference in the roles these two workers (soldier: curator) inhabit; a lot of different grooming and gate-keeping that brings them into position. A person with a PhD cultivates individuality, and can capitalize upon it (resigning from a job to accept another one, based upon precisely this free-thinking quality)… while a soldier is indoctrinated to sublimate his/her individuality (suffering consequences for not doing so). It will take some more argument to convince me of this analogy between a soldier quitting the Iraq battlefield and philosopher curator leaving a post at a university art museum.

I think it is this inconsistent (willful, artistic, subjectively framed, insensitive) way of attending to class and labor etc that needs to be examined. In a friendly way; we don’t have to engage in this as antagonists, but in order to be serious politically... to be taken seriously... we have to acknowledge that actions occur on different scales, and present different alternatives. Of course this is the subject of the show at UAM…

Gilbert is a valuable person to be curating at such an institution (if we have any faith in the dissemination of cultural productions). In his work so far, he has conferred dignity and attention on what I think are important and interesting art practices. He has made some wonderful provocations (in word and deed) as to the possibilities of the institution-- and he managed to get into this influential position despite or because of taking a challenging position toward the institution-- the question is then begged as to what to do with it--

The question is begged: who is this kind of solidarity with? What would be a sincere demonstration of lived politics? of side-by-side-ness in the slobby behemoth of the united states? Could the values and methods discussed in the Now Time presentations have bled out into the exhibition spaces themselves? Could a more formal and material approach have been taken to demonstrate solidarity with Venezuelan people? Could there have been other pressures mobilized upon the University Art Museum by a museum-going public in support of a curator? Such things have been done before in Berkeley. Could, in a more formal manifestation, there have been an insistence the university only purchase Citgo gas for the duration of the exhibition and thus made a more material declaration?

Is solidarity just a declaration or is it something that is cultivated daily? The Venezuelan workers on the Bolivarian process might say that solidarity is a daily demand and a daily attention to your actions and those around you, in the region, the neighborhood and the watershed. In Gilbert’s statement, in a little free book that was distributed inside the exhibition, I read about the attention Venezuelan worker coops take toward nurturing micro-politics and about cogestion, a Venezuelan form of co-management based upon and expressive of the relationships between the factory, workers and surrounding society. In one video I learned that the Cocoa Industrial Coop Unon Cimå shares their cafeteria luncheons with 40 indigent local children. These are small things I learned from Oliver Ressler and Dario’s Azzellini's excellent project --necessarily supported by Chris Gilberts’ commitment to the present time endeavors of these Venezuelan workers.

The Now Time Venezuela exhibition implies these are important things to learn. It demonstrates sympathy and promotes respect for this progressive movement that binds economics with social, cultural and environmental values. It shows the work Venezuelan people are engaging in, and their conditions, and gives insight into their progress. It is not only aligned—it is inspirational. It invokes action and creativity of outlook as the basis of change. And these things are happening now; children with their lunches, managers accountable to workers and to an ecosystem, and all the little details of how people are collectively implementing the integration and distribution of local political, economic and social power, with or without our expressions of solidarity (although there might be an expedient time for us to express solidarity someday through our own actions, on the street and in political chambers).

Without getting into the details of a curatorial statement, there was no question as to the positive orientation toward the subjects and their messages(the Catia TVe and the Factory workers). This exhibition had a large and enthusiastic audience too; you had to wait around to get to sit and use head phones in Oliver and Dario's piece. The place was, for a musuem space like that, packed.

Down stairs in the Catia-TVe exhibit, people were hanging around and talking about many related things while watching the videos (including Gilbert's 'solidarity--' statement) and exchanging phone numbers for further discussions. Spanish speakers were translating and describing the Spanish language community TV videos for English speakers.

The exhibit left no doubt as to the political alliances of the curator and no question of the political commitment of the project, by sheer acknowledgement of the relevance and impact of these curatorial selections. The real loss is that Gilbert perhaps was blind to this, that there was a disconnect between him and his potential supporters. I don't know all that happened of course, but in casually surveying public intellectuals, folks doing political art, community and activist stuff, organizing etc. I found there weren't so many people who knew he was here yet and what he might represent for the area. Only a small spectrum of people here knew his previous work and others didn’t get the opportunity to get acquainted. an issue of speed? Impatience?

There didn’t seem to be any effort to gather people together and discuss the museum’s censorship of his language. There apparently wasn’t any attempt to try engage in some new challenging social relationships as were demonstrated in the videos, characterized in Venezuela as social production.

In the context of Oliver and Dario coming for installation and the opening, there was a little flurry of 'labor in the museum'—some deliberate outreach to local unions, and a very invigorating discussion at the usually sedate Pacific Film Archives auditorium which Gilbert mentions in his letter.

When the Catia-TVe people came, it was fortunate Martha Wallner of Paper Tiger and Deep Dish TV attended the opening. She was then able introduce Ricardo Marquez and Gabriel Gil of Catia TVe to Berkeley Community media, connecting them with those doing similar work (something they were entirely unaware of when the arrived in Berkeley). While here they interviewed Gilbert and they also did an interview with another Berkeley Professor who had been denied tenure but resisted the decision and ultimately suceeded. Can the workers at UAM take over the factory? Was there some other unrevealed factor behind Gilbert’s decision?

I would like to believe that Gilbert is different, and has a distinctively ethical approach. And I think it would be great if this current event led to a broader discussion of ethics and solidarity. But if Gilbert’s actions are simply characterized as heroic.. it does make me feel queasy. Such heroism will leave the uneducated and financial underclasses behind once again.

The Now Time Venezuela program demonstrates an aspiration many of us share for another kind of society, one achieved by an overturning of economic means for new ends, for the development of a new social, economic and cultural productions and relationships.

I think that with all of our education and training, this aspiration for another kind of society would be better served by dialogue and recognition of potential community and alliances rather than an ultimatum.

“ a social production of a company is a new life concept. “ (from Fabricas de Control Obrero)

Gilbert should retract his resignation and face the battle in solidarity with us!
(which is of course a farcical proposition, but it extends a question about who and when and why is solidarity with....)

I would love to hear more from others in response to this as a way of broaching more discussions about social organizing and economic production in relation to individuality as the basis of our current society.

x Tipsy x

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An excellent letter Sarah. Your right, the comparison between a curator resigning and a soldier resigning is distracting and rhetorical, yet in one important way not so different if viewed from an institutional perspective. If we give Gilbert the benefit of the doubt for a moment, and follow his logic, which is that in extraordinary moments even seemingly benign institutions, such as museums, or universities, participate in the pain inflicted afar, then the choice to not serve, weather soldier and curator, winds up having similar ethical dimensions. No, not the same outcomes, not the same level of intensity, not the same potential for violence, but the decision to refuse is not that different. Again, it requires getting past the bad faith response to Gilbert’s action by getting into his position, and asking what options were available to him.

My one serious criticism of his action is that he acted alone, rather than collaboratively as the AWC or GAAG did in the 60s and 70s. That fact is something that needs to be explored, and your point about loosing him from a certain community is therefore very pointed. Still, what is it that made him feel so isolated in the first place? How is the present perhaps different from other, seemingly similar moments of crisis? To answer that we need to ask why the collective, institutional voice of the art world has been so quiet in light of the US instigated violence in Iraq, the overt and covert censorship inside the country, and the threats made by the Bush administration towards certain nations such as Venezuela. -gsholette-

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Sarah – your description of this whole situation's context is really very useful, thanks so much for taking the time to explain things a bit more. This is perhaps irrelevant now Brian (I tried to send this reply over a month ago but its proper completion was thwarted for various personal reasons it feels silly to make recourse to here)... but I had actually taken the high wire act to be the cumulative effect of Gilbert's statements, where a categorical refusal to make 'deals' or 'compromises' with fascism (an ideology we are told he sees instrumentalised in the apparatus of the museum and against which he advocates a 'radical and daily intransigence') can somehow coexist with the assumption that it remains his own personal prerogative to continuously use that context as an instrument for what he is then also in the position to announce and designate as revolutionary curatorship.

I did not take it to be the degree of risk Gilbert might be courting putting on these exhibitions, nor the decision to put his job on the line. I think I would have responded differently were I to be faced with this 'fragile and disjointed' acrobatic act you speak of, but since this and other statements Gilbert has made are nothing if not coherent (and I just can't imagine him rejecting curatorial practice tout court), contrary to what Greg thinks I have no choice but to take them 'at face value'. For me, London based ignoramus that I turn out to be, this means taking in the full modality of this communiqué – with its heroic tone, subjected-centredness ('my project', 'projects like mine', etc.) and extreme sense of certainty – together with its contradictory position on the institution, its totem of collectivity and of course its promise of solidarity.

I'm afraid that even with your caveat Gregory, I'm still pretty lost guessing what might be analogous between this act of refusal and that of a US soldier, member of that standing reserve sent off to Iraq from the poor inner city communities of America like so much expendible material on an assembly line (apart from anything else, his position as Phyllis Wattis MATRIX Curator was hardly the kind of last-chance employment opportunity our global imperialist order pushes these kids towards using the web of socially coercive concepts we know and love as 'further education', 'job security', 'healthcare' and so on...) Yes, everything is connected in the end, the institution of art and the apparatus of the military both serve fascist imperialism, but shouldn't you too consider alternatives to your reading, for example that it might be something other than bad faith that's getting in the way of people being content to draw such an extreme equivalence – like their attempt to get to grips with and act upon the specifics, granularity, whatever, of their own place in that matrix of hell (and thus feeling somehow attacked – if that isn't too extreme a phrase - rather than inspired, by such an unabashedly heroic declaration, the certainty of which implicitly casts less categorical and apparently singular positions as inherently inferior or, more practically interpreted, ineffective...). From where I'm sitting, rather than draw attention to its rarity, rather than draw a parallel with the imho incommensurate act of military refusal, this is better made analogous to – and continuous with - the many other acts of refusal (as most broadly defined) going on 'close to home', in all the myriad camps of symbolic labour that Brian said he was researching and of which we hear too little... ; the academics who persist with their courses when they're boycotted (or sabotaged, or constructively dismissed) for reasons of left-wing bias, the students disregarding cordons on campuses reserved for their 'legitimate public protest', the politicised DiY research groups springing up in educational contexts of various kinds, and yes, even the art workers withdrawing from programmes gradually deemed too suspect to go on lending themselves to... This, and of course, the working class base of that 'home' - which makes many of these lesser acknowledged refusals themselves look like top-line News; the cleaners, catering staff, technical and student assistants...

I'd never attribute it to cynical strategising on either his or your part, and do realise my comment must have come across as flippant but, to return to this phrase, I still feel it's a problematic sleight of hand to accuse those who question his methodology as having bad faith – just like Gilbert does with all those 'on the Left' who seek to define new modes of organisation that don't follow the party/leader form and have in his eyes developed an aestheticised fetish of notions like self-institution, self-organisation, horizontality and so on. Even if I share his impatience with the fuzzier end of such fashions, doesn't presenting the case like this just foster the same argumentative techniques that produce rhetorical blackmail like the warmongerer's 'If you're not with us you're against us?'

I would, in fact, like to feel solidarity with Gilbert's project - and his solidarities... Reading more of his work and statements, I find much to agree with, much to be inspired by... But that's not really the point is it? What we're discussing here, and what I reckon fostered this mistrust Gilbert seems to have encountered way back when, hinges – like Sarah intuits – on this question of what the much touted ethics of solidarity might actually be. When practiced by a museum curator with access to all the tools s/he has, in contact with all the different actors, networks and subjects that s/he is – or could be... Is s/he the only one to decide when they've been practiced, or expressed, or are the objects of this solidarity in the analytical loop too, much as they are in the Freirian filmmaking methodologies he so evocatively describes elsewhere... where cultural products and production is recursively assessed in terms of its effectivity for all parties pulled in (or represented)... These are new – and yes, of course also old – questions, neither answered by the lazy appeal to that old chestnut that everything's touched and traversed by capital, no hands are clean, and so on and so forth... (notice here how reasserting that truth can become a lucrative project in itself; the sadomasochistic pinprick the host institution seeks to receive to be assured everything's still all right as there is 'no outside') nor, in this particular case, the email propagation of a heroic personal refusal in that same landscape – an act which was bound to at least partially eclipse its cause at some point.

It's of course excessive to foist all this on Gilbert's head, but maybe actions like these always open up this long festering can of worms... Enough cultural institutions – including this very small one whose platform we're using here – have become mediators for 'grassroots' political work to a broader audience for it to be naïve, or disingenous, or both to pretend there isn't a significant apparatus emerging for a particular kind of activism-aligned 'critical content'... The fact that this apparatus is plugging itself in, often in gauche ways (but sometimes also intelligently at 'Arm's Length'), to the fascist imperalist museum, and the fact that markets exist for it in cultural economies embedded differently in the neoliberal regime (the UK, say, where relatively generous public funding is still available to institutions as long as they obey certain base operational principles reflective of government policy, and the US, where the same is the case but with donations, corporate sponsorship, and so on – the latter also being an important factor in the British scene, mind you...) means that extreme care needs to be taken vis a vis local conditions...

This is what for me is so interesting about Sarah's conclusion – crazy as she may think it to be. And it reminds me of one last thing... Brian, when you came to London to talk at the Tate Modern a few years back, I had a completely unexpected response to your rabble-rousing talk with Bureau d'Etudes... I didn't manage to express it at the time, but where I had imagined a near automatic agreement with your position, i.e. that Tate Modern should be regarded as fully imbricated in an aggressive project of Blairite neocolonial expansion (in concert with agencies like the British Council; the story will be familiar), instead I felt a kind of deep shock that you, and another French activist sitting in the audience, clearly thought you were enlightening us as to the uncomfortable reality of the museum's 'true being' rather than sharing information with those you had possible solidarities with. (Even if one argues that the presentation may have changed the minds of a couple of unconverted in the audience, it was made with apparently scant concern for the many whose minds didn't necessarily need opening, but who were looking for connections with other struggles, e.g. those battling French neoliberal institutions or the French cultural scene...)

I am bringing this up not because I think I am comparable to a Venezuelan factory worker – that much is obvious – but because of what I regard as the many difficulties inherent in forging 'genuine' solidarities across these planes of war 'we' all traverse (communication, land, technologies, political systems). Maybe exaggerating these difficulties leads to its own kind of paralysis, cynicism even (as may have been evoked by my posting), and we should err towards the positive, the generous, the open... But I still can't help but think this both fudges the issue and leaves the infrastructure of the cultural scene as determined as it ever was by star names, theorists, actors, 'revolutionaries'. In short, the status quo, but different.

My apologies, again, that this took so long... I found it hard to clarify my thoughts at the time – and though finally posting seems less relevant now than it did even then, it also felt like a waste to leave it on a hard disk somewhere.

Pauline

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I regret that my curator-soldier analogy has acted as a lightening rod diverting us from the real storm. My aim was simply to ask that Gilbert’s actions be judged as heartfelt, no less so than anyone who has come to perceive that his or her role in a corrupt system is no longer open to compromise. It is I think worth noting however, that the soon to be Court Marshaled Lt. Watada was not economically coerced into military service from the inner city as are so many who join. He is a college graduate and an officer, the first to refuse service in the current Iraq war. One might say that as a professional soldier he chose to take direct action by eliminating his productivity within the system, instead of for example marching in a rally or other forms of symbolic protest.

To the Gilbert letter now:
1. What about the apparently miniscule fulcrum upon which Gilbert’s resignation pivoted? Was it really a single phrase in a wall label? The proverbial last straw? Or the actions of a man with too short a fuse or too little skill at compromise to achieve a greater, pedagogical goal? Yet if the presence or absence of the expression “solidarity” was indeed so minor, why did the museum’s middle managers object to it? Were they concerned its use would align them to a foreign government in the cross-hairs of the CIA and the State Department, thus tipping their institutional claims of neutrality towards a specific bias? (Recall the not so subtle threat made against the NAACP’s tax exempt status when they had the nerve condemn G.W.Bush’s policies just before the elections in 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7433-2004Oct28.html )

Without second-guessing the circumstances, clearly there was something larger at stake than a word or phrase. (BTW: I have not spoken with Gilbert since he first took his position at UBM.) From Gilbert’s letter he insists it is precisely the issue of false neutrality that his resistance hinged upon. “The museum and the bourgeoisie will always deny _the role of class interests in this: they will always maintain that the _kinds of cultural production they promote are more difficult, smarter, _more sophisticated…” Is it possible to see Gilbert’s argument as centered on his desire to shift the radical spirit of the exhibition from being about him as the visionary curator to the larger institutional frame? In other words, to force it to commit and thus marry the exhibition’s pedagogical content with a far greater force of signification: organizational partisanship directed at the oppressed, rather than the affluent? Does the entire incident perhaps then read differently if seen as exposing the inherent contradictions of post-60s institutional critique?

2. Was Gilbert’s resignation courageous? Was it a tactic worthy of emulation? Or was it too idiosyncratic, too full of bravado to be anything more than what Lenin would have labeled Left Wing Infantile Disorder? I am not entirely sure how to answer these questions except to admit to you that I would not so readily sacrifice my pseudo-Bohemian life style (and permit me tip my hat to the sadomasochistic needs of the art world since the paltry funds I score depend on its seemingly endless endurance of criticism), or to burn my bridges before setting off to teach English in a small Venezuelan village as Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina have done, all in support of the Bolivarian Revolution. I whish them much success, and although each day’s news pushes me closer to agreeing with Gilbert’s analysis that participating in the status quo at this historical juncture is to ignore the ubiquitous stench of “fascist imperialism,” I am not yet prepared for the potential consequences such a singular conclusion brings forth.

3. So where does that leave us? Here on this side of the radicalized shanty-towns of globalization; the civilian-riddled bombing-ranges of the new crusaders; the nameless, displaced “Americans” chewed up by collapsed infrastructure, gentrification, and ecological disaster? You and I of course can turn to the innumerable acts of tactical resistance that do, thankfully, take place in neighborhoods, on campuses, and occasionally even inside exhibition spaces. Certainly these humble gestures and fleeting interventions, which I have praised and occasionally engaged in, do matter. They have from time to time disrupted the symbolic ligaments that animate the menacing armature we clearly oppose. If only momentarily. Still, it is curious you must admit, that our praise seems to converge here, around these diffused acts of micro-resistance, yet when confronted with a head-on and unambiguous act of political opposition the result is uncertain, even divisive? And I mean this with no undertone of satire, no insinuation regarding a lack of faith. For our situation may be the result of nothing more than the old post-modernist condition at play? And maybe Gilbert's letter indicates that it is time to move on?

Yours in privileged solidarity - gregory

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Hey Greg, thanks for replying...

I just worry I haven't made myself clear, since my whole point was to contest this polarity you (still) infer between 'a head-on and unambiguous act of political opposition' and those smaller acts that in my mind involved equatable levels of risk and were by no means conceived as merely 'tactical'. The difference that actually marks our conversation, and examples, is that between those in clear leadership positions (and thanks for pointing that out about Watada - I suspected I'd stretched my descriptions too far), and the 'others' (including these leaders' notional constituency), and that is indeed relevant.

The inherent contradictions of post-60s institutional critique are there for all to see, and I agree we need to move on - in both senses of the term.

Best,
Pauline

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