Mutinies

"…the coalition of mutineers against orthodoxies. Mutiny is my best bet because mutiny is immune to doctrine. A mutiny begins with individuals who are fed up, not with ideologies that are force-fed. A mutiny doesn't have a program so much as a set of grievances. Its aims beyond that are vague, but that very vagueness may be to its advantage, since beyond specific programs, it undermines the whole range of attitudes that produced the grievances in question. A mutiny is a moving target--because it has no set ideological objectives it mutates so quickly and unpredictably that it's hard to destroy. A mutiny mobilizes people of many differing political persuasions. Revolutions may begin with mutinies but revolutions either fail, or turn into mirrors of regimes they've destroyed, while the subterranean effects of a mutiny on the culture may be enduring. The anti-Vietnam War movement was a mutiny, Paris in sixty-eight was a mutiny, the Civil Rights Movement was a mutiny. So, À la Bastille!"

-- from À la Bastille, collected in Ronald Sukenick's Narralogues: Truth in Fiction

And #OWS? Is it already a secondary shudder?

Keywords: Ron Sukenick, Narralogues, #OWS, politics, fiction