Culture :: Essays
Popular Free Radio
By Félix GuattariThe Evolution of the means of mass communication seems to be going in two directions:
- toward hyper-concentrated systems controlled by the apparatus of state, of monopolies, of big political machines with the aim of shaping opinion and of adapting the attitudes and unconscious schemas of the population to dominant norms,
- toward miniaturized systems that create the possibility of a collective appropriation of the media, that provide real means of communication, not only the "great masses", but also to minorities, to marginalized and deviant groups of all kinds.
On the one hand: always more centralization, conformism, oppression; on the other, the perspective of a new space of freedom, self-management, and the fulfillment of the singularities of desire.
How is that a relatively old technology like radio has set the stage of a breakthrough in this second direction -- in Italy and France -- through the phenomenon of the Free Radio stations? Why not video, which, not long ago, raised so many expectations? Why not cable? Why not Super-8? It would be very difficult to disentangle all the factors that permitted Free radio to take off. Bug there are two factors that seem to demand particular attention:
- with video and film, the technical initiative remains, essentially, the object of big industrial enterprise;
- with Free Radio, an important part of the technology depends on the improvisational ability of its promoters.
For here as elsewhere, the technical choices always conceal political and micro-political choices. For example, in the domain of television, the technical options have all been centered on family or individual consumption. Hence, a very narrow definition of the broadcast framework results (the division of labor between technology, production, and conception of programs; its perpetual reorientation toward the studios as a closed vessel; the national vocation of the programs ...) which leads ineluctably to an absolute passivity of the consumer. Yet nothing, at the outset, imposed such a political choice on the technical level! It was possible right away to conceive of technical equipment for the kind of production and consumption that was adapted to "group-subjects" and not to subjugated groups. But with capitalist and state decision-makers lacking any interest in such an orientation, it is the people "of means" that have triumphed. And today one has a tendency to base the legitimacy of this choice on the nature of things, on the "natural" evolution of the technology.
With Free Radio, we find ourselves before the same type of technicopolitical problem. But here, because of the confrontation with power, it's the people "of lesser means" who assert themselves as if by necessity. In fact, at the present stage, the only way to resist the jamming and the searches is by multiplying the number of transmitters and my miniaturizing the material in order to minimize the risks. (This daily guerilla warfare the airwaves is perfectly compatible with the kind of public airing that takes place whenever the balance of power is poised for it: public broadcasts, national holidays, etc.)
But the point the organizers of the popular Free Radio stations particularly emphasize is that the totality of technical and human means must permit the establishment of a veritable feedback system between the listeners and the broadcast team: whether through direct intervention by phone, through opening studio doors, through interviews or making programs on cassettes by listeners, etc. The Italian experience, in this regard, shows us the immense field of new possibilities that is opened in this way; in particular, the experience of the Bologna group that organized Radio Alice and the journal A Traverso. We realize here that radio constitutes but one element at the heart of an entire range of communication means, from daily, informal encounters in the Piazza Maggiore to the newspaper -- via billboards, mural paintings, posters, leaflets, meetings, community activities, celebrations, etc. We are far, very far from the technocratic conceptions of the French partisans of local radio, who insist, on the contrary, that those who express themselves on the air represent their interests; or from the conceptions of the traditional left, which is concerned above all that only the party line and certain mobilizing propositions be expressed on their wavelengths! (On Italian Free Radio, it is often the case that very serious debate are directly interrupted by violently contradictory, humorous, or even poetico-delirious interventions.) We are equally far from the conceptions of the modernist technicians who declare that what is important today is the content of the broadcasts and the care one brings to the production, and who refer to the entire mythology of the "modern ook" and the "new sound". All these "preliminaries" relative to the quality of the spokesman, to the content of the messages, and to the form of expression, come together here. In effect, the "locals", the militants, and the modernists have this in common: in one way or another, they set themselves up as specialists: specialists of contacts, of watchwords, of culture, of expression... Yet, to be precise, the way opened up by the Free Radio phenomenon seems to go against the whole spirit of specialization. What becomes specific here are the collective arrangements of enunciation that absorb or "traverses" specialties.
Of course, such an assumption of direct speech by social groups of all kinds is not without consequence! It fundamentally endangers all traditional systems of social representation; it puts in doubt a certain conception of the delegate, the deputy, the authorized spokesman, the leader, the journalist ... It is as if, in an immense permanent meeting -- at the surface level of listening -- anyone, even the one who is most hesitant, who has the weakest voice, has the means of expressing himself whenever he desires! In these conditions, one can expect certain truths to find a new substance of expression. Some time ago, Bertrand Boulin launched, on Europe No. 1, a broadcast in the course of which children, coming out after school, could express themselves directly by telephone. the result was absolutely surprising and upsetting! Through thousands of testimonies, certain aspects of the real condition of childhood were revealed, the very accent and tone of which no journalist, educator, or psychologist could otherwise have recognized. But the names, places, and precise circumstances were also communicated: it caused a scandal, a cover-up, and, finally, the neutralization of the broadcast...
To draw up the Cahier de doleance in 1789, the spokesman of the Third Estate literally had to invent a new means of expression, a new language. Today the Fourth Estate is also in search of a sublanguage to bring problems to light that, in reality, concern society as a whole. It is in this context of experimenting with a new type of direct democracy that the question of Free Radio is inscribed. Direct speech, living speech, full of confidence, but also hesitation, contradiction, indeed even nonsense, is the vehicle of desire's considerable burdens. And it is always this aspect of desire that spokesmen, commentators, and bureaucrats of every stamp tend to reduce, to settle. The language of official media is traceable to the police languages of the managerial milieu and the university; it all gets back to a fundamental split between saying and doing according to which only those who are masters of a licit speech have the right to act. Languages of desire, on the other hand, invent new means and have an unstoppable tendency to lead straight to action; they begin by "touching", by causing laughter, by provoking, and then they make one want to "go towards," towards those who speak and towards those stakes that concern them.
One will object that France is not Italy and that there is a great risk in letting the cohorts of private, commercial stations and the sharks of advertisement rush into the breach made in the monopolies of state! It is with this kind of argument that one pretends to denounce Free Radio and to justify maintaining the monopoly, or adjusting it slightly, which would drive the local radios into the service of the bigwigs and under the indirect control of the prefects! it takes a holy dose of bad faith to raise the question of advertising in the context of the development of popular radios. They are clearly two separate problems: on the one hand, there is the question of liquidating the (state) monopoly as the first condition of expanding Free Radio and, on the other, there is the bigger question of how to control commercial advertising -- but wherever it can be found: on walls, in newspapers, on TV, and eventually on Free Radio itself. Why should the issue of intoxication raised by advertising -- supposing the Left had really committed itself to addressing the issue -- imply control, censorship or institutional protection of Free Radio? With lots of money on hand, advertisers are eager to launch numerous private channels. Well! Let's regulate advertising -- indeed, even prohibit it on all the airwaves. It would be very surprising if these people were still prepared to undertake such ventures! Yes, surprising if these people were still prepared to undertake such ventures! Yes, but one will say, the government secretly supports the advertisers (not to mention the local bigwigs) while it represses true Free Radio stations, as we have recently seen with the seizure of materials from Radio 93, Paris Free Radio, and Rocket Radio.
Who will win out in the final analysis: regulation, underground power maneuvers, or an open balance of power? Let the dozen existing Free Radio stations give way to hundreds of new groups and let whole stratas of the population, ever larger and more diversified, begin participating, financing, and protecting these new stations; then we shall see just how strong the present alliance between the government, local notables, and the private sector is! Monopoly and regulation would not really guard the public from a<dvertising anyway -- as we see on TV. And yet, is it not up to the masses themselves to organize against the pollutant of advertising? People are not children -- and besides, children themselves refuse more and more to be treated like irresponsible people! They have no need of any protection, despite themselves, against "bad influences" that might carry them off the trash heap prepared for them by the advertisers! The day they can tune in to a hundred different stations, they will simply choose what suits them! The prudent attitude (at least an amusing one) of the parties of the left and the unions toward Free Radio reveals an outmoded conception of mass intervention in the social sphere. The texts, the petitions, the regulations, the delegations are one thing, but living, social groups taking real control is another. If one really wants to organize a struggle on a grand scale against the advertising blitz, against all forms of physical and moral billy-clubbing, and against all forms of domestication (on which not only the power of the state and the employers rest, but also that of the very organizations that claim to fight them), then one can only hope in the meantime that militant bureaucrats will cease bullying those who are striving, for better or worse, to create a real instrument of struggle against such forms of intimidation and domestication!
(Translated by David Sweet)
