Dog Bites

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

-- UC Berkeley rhetoric and comparative literature professor Judith Butler, winner of Philosophy and Literature's fourth annual Bad Writing Contest

SUV-PF: Not Such a Big Bunch of Chickenshit Crybabies
Recently, one insight into the contingent possibility of structure to which we have been privy is that, in San Francisco at least, it sure doesn't take very long for a radical group to become, well, part of the establishment.

Of course, that may just be a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation. But when Dog Bites agreed to meet with the Sport Utility Vehicle Proliferation Fellowship's spokesperson, Lee, to hear more about his group's ideology, it struck us that a bare four months had elapsed from the formation of the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project to the formation of its self-proclaimed counterorganization.

And the backlash has only just begun.
"I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that Nestor Makhno doesn't even live in the city," Lee told us over a beer at the Latin American Club.

Um, but Lee -- first names only, please -- doesn't actually own a sport utility vehicle, either. "Some of my friends do. They said, 'You can borrow my SUV and pull up and park on the sidewalk,' " he confessed.

To try to impress us? That's so sweet.
Wearing a Minnesota Vikings baseball hat (he's not from there; he's from Petaluma, and has lived in San Francisco for seven months), Lee sized us up and admitted the truth.

There isn't actually an SUV-PF.
A frustrated screenwriter when not at his day job, Lee wrote the manifesto as a joke. "My intention was to kind of dig at people and get them riled up," he said. "I feel like it kind of would have been better if I had felt that way."

Or maybe not. After all, this is a document that demands, "All San Francisco businesses shall be converted to drive-throughs so that we will not have to LEAVE our climate-controlled chambers, thus eliminating the possibility of having to engage in interaction with people outside the realm of our socio-economic sphere."

But Lee said he does have serious quibbles with the MYEP's methods -- vandalizing cars in the Mission, he argues, only creates more rifts in a community already troubled by gang warfare, drug dealing, and, of course, owner-move-in evictions. "The biggest problem with what that Nestor guy is doing is that he's perpetuating what's going on. The idea of a community -- I feel like that's fundamental to any place. Everything's so fragmented. Nobody knows what their neighbors are doing."

Of course, Dog Bites observes knowledgeably, capital is understood to structure human relations. Right?

Nestor Checks In
Let's see: It was Sept. 2 when we published the text of the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project's vandalism-promoting posters. It was Dec. 17 when we received the Sport Utility Vehicle Proliferation Fellowship manifesto. As Lee himself observed, "San Francisco is a funny place. To get two people to agree on anything is virtually impossible."

But Nestor Makhno, quite naturally, was vexed to hear of Lee's comments. "It sounds like he has just absolutely no analysis whatsoever," he huffed. "Really, his main political failing is that he's just not funny enough."

Ooooooooh.
As for the rumor about Nestor's not living in San Francisco? "I have to say, I'm deeply hurt that anyone would think that," he said. "I mean, I've lived in the Mission for over a decade."

Though Nestor viewed Lee's arguments as unworthy of much debate, he did respond to the contention that the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project is fostering distrust. "People don't trust each other in a society based on buying and selling," he retorted. "That's putting the cart before the horse."

Poetry Corner
Frequent Dog Bites correspondent Steven Appleton has taken the time to compose a first for this column: a poem. We're very flattered -- after all, Valentine's Day is a whole two weeks off! -- but think that there's no reason for, say, Jewel to get nervous just yet.

"Ode to Mission Yuppies"
I do not own an SUV
I do not eat at Fleur de Lys
I do not ski on Aspen slopes
I do not climb up corporate ropes
I do not own a home, I rent
Each month my cash is always spent
But Makhno and his ilk would say
I am a yuppie all the way
A white man who works downtown
A corporate shill, a dunce, a clown
At least I do not vandalize
Another person's property
In some misguided exercise
To promulgate my bigotry.