It was good to see it coming, but we must become

monstrous enough against it

Untimely notes on The New Abduction of Europe meeting
Francesco Salvini
Raúl Sánchez Cedillo

Late in 2013, we concluded our cry against the New

Abduction of Europe calling for the monsters of the old
country to gather in Madrid and imagine alter-realities for our
lives:

There is no political reinvention of Europe without a

reinvention of freedom and equality, capable of
corresponding to the needs, creativity and desires of the new
subjects of social cooperation [...] laying the basis for new
constellations of solidarity toward the South and the East.

Uprising against the attempt of abduction imposed by the 1%,

these Europas cannot be disciplined anymore: the present is
our kairos for monstrous metamorphoses. Hydras,
chupacabras, medusas, aatxes, banshees, golems, marids,
bordas. Monstrous descendants of Gaia: new bodies of
Europas, inventing myths to be imagined, territories to be
inhabited, fleshes to be incarnated.

Today, we can confirm that the crisis of European democracy

was not just a temporary thing, that it was not only about the
economy or the havoc of speculative financial dynamics. The
wounds to the European project were profound and no
organised and/or institutional bodies were responding to the
looming threats triggered by the systemic crisis of 2008, one
that we are still experiencing with no prospects of going
anywhere beyond what, years before its onslaught, Beverly
Silver and Giovanni Arrighi called a coming period of
systemic chaos.​ Instead, these 3 years have proven that from
now on democracy in Europe is something that comes second
for the ruling elites: first is financial dominion through debt
and rent hierarchies, and then, if it is appropriate for the sake
of the stability of that very regime of financial dominion,
comes a certain degree of constitutional democracy without
any real content (like, say, human rights for minorities and
refugees). This amounts to the worst european tragedy since
the 50’s and the Cold War. Nonetheless, we may still be in
time to prevent a european catastrophe like the ones that
shaped its XXth century.

The New Abduction of Europe​, the hybrid event we proposed

to and organised together with l’Internationale confederation,
was precisely an attempt at exploring those looming threats
for democracy and emancipation in Europe: we did not need a
showcase of critical opinions, but rather a material and
complex assemblage of practices and experiences, capable of
mingling together different social, political and institutional
actors from all across the real fabrics of the european
millefeuille. It was meant to be a very practical thing.
We tried, and partly failed, to involve these monstrous
practices in a collective effort of social imagination, but also
in a critical commitment for social change. This we did by
organising a series of workshops where activists, artists,
cultural managers and, more in general, a social network of
collectivities could deal with those questions we identified as
crucial, back in late 2013.

Debt, democracy, commons, crisis, technopolitics, war and

revolution were some of the issues we started to discuss.
Charters1, networks, campaigns were the tools we started to
build and use. These words moved from the public events, to
the panels and workshops, into the corridors of the social
spaces involved in the events, becoming a common ground for
discussing what was at stake in the period ahead.

The European regime of indebtedness and impoverishment of

whole populations and countries was the most translucent
surface and the brightest appearance of a constitutional crisis
in the material composition of constitutional democracies in
Europe2. Europe understood as a recent and fragile attempt of
sustaining a common welfare and make it durable. An attempt
that belongs to contemporaneity: one that emerged as
response to the violence of war, the desperation of human

1
We did start the work on a Charter for Europe in the “democracy” workshop, and a version of it has
been published in L’Internationale blog:
http://www.internationaleonline.org/research/real_democracy/8_charter_for_europe_1_2
2
​The crisis of the underlying assumptions of constitutional democracies in Europe: mainly a nearly
universal welfare state from health to education to reproductive rights, together with the effectiveness
of constitutional checks and balances both in every european country and in the UE as a whole,
experience and of the social movements of ​labour, care,
peace and solidarity​ that cried for dignity and humanity after
the dramatic events of World War II. But also Europe as an
attempt of the contemporary to question and challenge the
endless repetition of dominance and dispossession operated by
the European elites towards the rest of the world.

Of course, we missed many tensions of the crisis in those

days. Some of them, we were just incapable of settling them
down. Others, we could not hold as single issues in a specific
space. Many have raised as ulterior dynamics of crisis with
incredible violence in the last few years, like the war in
Ucraine or the infamy of the european treatment of refugee
people fleeing from the imperial wars throughout the world.

Fueled by the theological injunction of austerity, we witness

how corruption and authoritarianism, the dramatic escalation
of racism, the dreadful emergence of energetic poverty, the
violence of gender relations in the realms of private lives, the
rising fragilities in health and, especially in mental distress,
are taking the lead. These terrains inevitably​ ​constitute the
sandy surfaces on which where we are moving today, in the
attempt at exploring the broken Europe that lies before our
eyes. Words to be repeated as frightful and yet mindful
mantras to avoid feeling trapped by the vertigo of an
impending catastrophe.
The destinies of Europe are linked to the rise of ​new commons
of production and reproduction. Commons that have to be, we
affirm, monstrous and machinic if we want to imagine a
different mode of organisation in social life. In other words,
Europe is not only a space that cannot exist without the
commons, but also the reverse is true. This machinic,
monstrous and contemporary Europe is the very taboo of
political life these days. After the 15M explosion in Spain,
and its cry of “¡Democracia real ya!”, we sort of experience
the fact that democracy was entering a new phase of its
political and historical meaning. And we experienced it
through commoning in the streets and the networks.

We need to become hopeful monsters if we want to challenge

the sorcery of a European political space possessed by
ethno-nationalisms and new fascisms while it remains
regulated by financial overlords. Monsters capable of
affirming the immense richness of plurality to constitute a
different present; monstrous capable of breaking the spell of
homogeneity, the enchantment of identity and the ultimate
damnation of european supremacy. The nightmares of total
sovereignty can be defused by the monstrous institutions of
the commons. But they cannot avoid performing and
organising networks of counter-powers lest they succumb to
the spell of the theological-political destinies of emancipation,
either defeat or corruption. We must keep contributing to this
project.