'Preliminary' Thoughts on the Student Strikes:
In some ways it seems odd to call the anti-austerity student strikes of 2015 that have started in Montréal and Québec in the past month or so a "strike". Strikes are often seen as (quasi-)legitimate bargaining tools as part of the negotiating activity of a union on behalf of employees with the employer. The student strike, on the other hand, features students who withdraw their academic labour of attending class, classes for which they (and the government/taxpayers) have paid. The administrators of the universities are not (always) the targets of such strike actions. In addition, the strikes must picket classrooms to prevent professors from being able to give class, and yet the faculty are not the target of the strike either. So whereas a labour strike withdraws labour to directly target and pressure the employer, the student strike withdraws academic labour to take to the streets to, shall we say, protest the government's austerity mandates.
It may be said, in response, that the student strike is not targeting the faculty, administrators, or students, analogous to clients or customers who are also affected by a labour strike but are not the direct target. Nonetheless, it does seem odd, and makes many ambivalent about the chosen course of action, when students are picketing to prevent classes from occurring, particularly when the classroom situation is precarious and universities are under fire, in terms of deprived budgets, pressures to transition towards becoming 'practical' job-creation/training centers, the shift from permanent tenured positions to precarious limited-term, sessional instruction, etc.
It may be responded that pressure is being put on the government: the cost to man the helicopters above the protests, the cost for police time, police resources, detention costs, etc. In times of austerity, surely putting pressure on economically is a tactic. Or it may be responded that the student strike is to free people and get them on the streets. However, readings along these lines I think miss something essential of the student movement. Yes there are ambiguous relations involved, and yes the actions can be read along economic lines, and yes the strikes free people for the streets (but then why cancel class? why not just go before/after class?), but all of these readings miss, I think, the symbolic stakes involved here. This activity is more than an economic calculation or a bargaining move, or an unthought, under-thought commotion by students. Rather, it is a symbolic activity with symbolic stakes.
The taking of the streets, the forced appearance of students, is an appearance of students as political actors. This appearance is also a challenge, the call to duel, the poisonous gift to the government and to economic forces: rather than on a model of one-to-one exchange, it is a challenge posed to the government to which it must react.
And react it has. Its reaction has been to (attempt to) incite further reaction: it aims to remove agency and action by turning them into reaction. I had predicted at the outset that the police would have a heavy-handed response. My reasoning was that it seemed to me, from an outsider perspective, that the public in Québec got angry during 2012 in part due to the 'delayed' response to the student movement, the prolonged nature of the protests that went on night after night. However, this time around, if the police crack down on the movement, repressively, aggressively, off the bat, violently -- and if this was supported by the public -- then it would be a clever political move. (Of course I do not know if the public will tolerate it or not, in the long run. And I do not think the students will be easily discouraged.)
In support of this prediction, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think there are many who think in the following way: I always follow the law. These protests are illegal. (--- Unless the protestors submit their itinerary in advance in accordance with bylaw P-6, passed during the 2012 movements, the police declare the protest illegal. Protestors often refuse, as P-6's intention and result is to disrupt any disruption: a march that is approved of is not an intervention: it is a parade. The police block the streets for you: you are a temporary alternation in the regular general circulation and flows in the city, but you are not an intervention, not an appearance. P-6 makes the march calculable in advance, circumscribing it. Anyway, to continue:) Because the protests are illegal--and moreover, even if they weren't--the protestors should be punished. However, our system of detention and arrêt itself is too kind, too gentle. These protestors anger me (here I am still projecting my voice) because I have followed the law: the law is there for everyone, equally: it maintains order! ...I have had to suffer, willingly, by following the law (--the law is always a 'traumatic' event: imposing itself, without reason, without rationale) and everyone should do as I do! There should be no exceptions. Therefore, the police are legitimized (by me, by us, by our voice) to wield the batons, to wield pepper spray, to wield rubber bullets, to use whatever means necessary to restore order (i.e., the general circulatory flow). (In other words, the ressentiment of such people matches (in a 'degraded' sense, i.e., from the moral to the legal law) Nietzsche's characterization of Kant: I am good at following the law, so everyone should do so.)
...However. To make the 'us' feel satiated, though, to be in good conscience, it would be best if there were first an expression of senseless 'violence' on the protestors' side: broken windows...or some such thing.
This is the kind of provocation the police can hope for.
Such 'violence' by those beneath the law brings down violence from those outside-astride it (i.e., the police). And so the goal is to violently provoke 'violence' that begets violence: yes, this is what 'we' want. Vindication.
However, we should remember that the police are by no means the target of the movement.
Let us return for a second: why call it a strike? This introduces a risk and a promise: a promise, in that it suggests that it is legitimated in the way a labour strike is; a risk, in that it may bring down the labour strike in status (i.e., "those labour strikes are only mobs, just like students!"). However, of course, that risk is already being run down: in an era of closely legislated strike and labour movement, in an era of relentless attacks on organized labour, in an era of the threat of huge fines for unions if they do not adhere to various regulations --- in other words, that unions must adhere to a general circulatory flow that is circumscribed, prescribed, and increasingly constricted --- perhaps the risk is not so great: perhaps the promise and risk are the chance for us now to rethink 'strike': that a strike in all cases emerges from the rivers of discontent, and is not a bargaining chip, or not merely such; that a strike matches its name: that it is or can be incendiary.
Just as the stakes are not really economic, so too the police response is not. The helicopters in the air are a demonstration of excess. Buoyed in the air by funds being denied through austerity measures, the helicopters are lifted above the protestors, yes as panopticon, but also as reminder: there is a literal and figurative space, an infinite uncrossable distance, between citizen and state. The helicopter flies on symbolic stakes.
It is important to recall the symbolic. By symbolic, I do not mean 'X represents Y', as in the cross is a symbol for X,Y,Z. Rather, I'm pointing to a power, a force, a subterranean force. I'm pointing to the power that is expressed in recognition, acknowledgment, greeting, rejection: when someone nods do you respond (and, if you see it, you always respond: so: how do you respond); when someone gives you a gift, how do you respond? When someone insults you, slights you, what do you do. You are called, and must respond. This is the symbolic. It is not an economic exchange of one insult for another. It is knowing how to respond to the situation and what is called for, it is knowing the weight, the pressure, of various gestures. It is the 'logic' of challenge-duel-gift.
To this end, all of this is highly contextual. Anything I muse here must be rethought within the Québec context, with which I am not sufficiently familiar. The Québec context includes the history of movements here; the political landscapes; the social landscapes; the media landscapes; and so on.
Given that, I wonder. I wonder about the symbolic stakes, and tactics that could be used. I do not think that protest as general circulatory movement is sufficient. I also definitely do not think that smashing windows (property damage) as advocated during e.g., G-20, anti-Olympic protests, is helpful (this does not escape the general circulation: the response from such an action is incredibly predictable in every sense). Rather, I wonder about crossing boundaries and lines. For instance, the police have been wearing camo pants and ballcaps in Montréal for a while now: this is due to their protests against austerity cuts from city hall. They have even co-opted the carré rouge with words over top (on n'a rien volé), pasted all over buses, metro trains, buildings. What if, at the protests, students showed up with camo pants and ballcaps on?
Furthermore, we know that police have weapons perfected for streets. Is taking to the streets always the best tactic? What of buildings, rail lines, underground walkways?... How does circulation flow?
These are probably just cheap musings, but it seems that what is needed is creativity. I feel like thinkers (and we're all thinkers) need to put their heads together and think through the symbolic stakes on the line, and how to take advantage of them. I do not think that trench warfare, lined up facing the cops, is necessarily sufficient. (Nor do I think provocation of the police is the best strategy: I saw a photo from 2012 with protestors dangling donuts by fishing lines in front of police.) I do not know what is sufficient.
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