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What is the relative smallness of the Pyramid when seen from an airplane window a symbol of?

What is “baggage claim” a symbol of?

What is a decorated Christmas tree, when erected in a rental car airport office, a symbol of?

What is the rental car and its smell a symbol of?

What is grass that turns light khaki in the winter a symbol of?

What are apartment complexes for elderly baptists a symbol of?

What are aging grandmothers a symbol of?

What are in-laws a symbol of?

What is the fact that it is easier to engage with a dreary world when I constantly snap pictures of it with the camera mounted on my phone a symbol of?

What is the nervous way the white teenagers eye the black teenagers at the mall a symbol of?

What are Christmas presents, when purchased after Christmas, a symbol of?

What are camouflage jackets, when worn by women who are mothers of young children, a symbol of?

What is the fact that, just like London, the primary indigenous fast food in Memphis is fried chicken and french fries, served in a little cardboard box, a symbol of?

What is the woman sitting in the Barnes and Noble cafe at 10:30 PM reading a book about husbands and infidelity a symbol of?

What are the teenage girls who hang around Barnes and Noble’s cafe on Saturday night a symbol of?

What is the solitary displaced academic who reads Bleak House at the Barnes and Noble cafe until it closes a symbol of?

What is Bleak House a symbol of?

What is the $3.99 fee at Barnes and Noble to use the internet a symbol of?

What is the paid use of the internet at Barnes and Noble a symbol of?

What are blog comments a symbol of?

What is the Barnes and Noble cafe in general a symbol of?

What are photoessays a symbol of?

What are Germans visiting Memphis a symbol of?

What is the “country,” where we are going tomorrow, a symbol of?

What is Walmart a symbol of?

What is “they’ve been troubleshooting it for the last two hours, and they should have the wireless internet running again by tomorrow morning” a symbol of?

What are hotel lobbies a symbol of?

Beyond Christ and the two bad men, one less bad than the other, what are the illuminated crosses that hang over the eastern suburbs of the city at night a symbol of?

…we might start by working the following out:

So much of the quasi-materialist theory of the past, oh, sixty years has staked itself on the promotion of the random wander through city streets as opposed to the technoratic, overly-rational, heartlessly-designed urban plan, and in particular, the plan’s incorporation of tracts of uniform, utilitarian housing developments / projects / estates. The dérive, the tactical - these topographical / metaphorical practices form the underpinnings of Lefebvre’s, Debord’s, SI’s, de Certeau’s theoretical resistance to centralized bureaucratic power.

Today, however, well after Reagan and Thatcher and their descendents have “starved the beast” of government and brought to an end, in the Anglo-American world and, by influence and force, beyond, the actually-existing and potentially-constructed category of the welfare state that was known as social housing, we now know, unlike those who have come before us, the true value of what was once and now is no more provisioned. We read these earlier theorists who had, no doubt, noble intentions, as cringe inwardly, knowing that we smell in their works an ideology better suited to bourgeois gentrification and tower demolition than, you know, the provision of rooves and running water, walls and doors, simple, unglamourous things that just every single one of us are very happy to have. We understand, in short, the inadvertent complicity of previous theories that are dependent upon libertarian visions of urban space, and we cannot help but think that they were written during a period when it was easier to take for granted the fact that these things would continue to be built, and that the people that live in them would never be left to fend for themselves on the open, and irrationally exuberant!, market.

To put it another way, today, given the choice (which is, perhaps, the only choice that we have, and only if we’re lucky and persistent) between the Ideological State Apparatus and the Abolition of the State, we know that we’d take the ISA and work through the problem of the I in it, rather than the latter, which is the path the world has taken since, and we know damn well where that has gotten us and will continue to get us.

We will have to rewrite the whole thing, cognisant of and vigilant about the ennui and disciplinarity, corruption and neglect, that comes of a strong state sector, but even more careful that we know what our true priorities are, in an age where there seems to be only one single priority.

So the question is, I guess, if we were to restart theory, would we have to sell our old, well-marked copies of Debord and de Certeau on Amazon, donate them to the charity shop, in order to get the room we need to work practically, efficaciously? Would we have to banish them to the category of the merely historical document in order to get done what needs to be done?