Crasses et Voluptés

Sam Durant, Landscape Art Sign (Emory Douglas), 2003 at the Wrong Gallery

We propose an esoteric hermeneutical exegesis of the Surrealist slogan “Mort aux vaches!” We take it to refer not to the deaths of individual cops (“cows” in the argot of the period)–mere leftist revenge fantasy–petty reverse sadism–but rather to the death of the image of the flic, the inner Control & its myriad reflections in the NoPlace Place of the media–the “gray room” as Burroughs calls it. Self-censorship, fear of one's own desires, “conscience” as the interiorized voice of consensus- authority. To assassinate these “security forces” would indeed release floods of libidinal energy, but not the violent running-amok predicted by the theory of Law 'n' Order.

Nietzschean “self-overcoming” provides the principle of organization for the free spirit (as also for anarchist society, at least in theory). In the police-state personality, libidinal energy is dammed & diverted toward self-repression; any threat to Control results in spasms of violence. In the free-spirit personality, energy flows unimpeded & therefore turbulently but gently–its chaos finds its strange attractor, allowing new spontaneous orders to emerge.

In this sense, then, we call for a boycott of the image of the Cop, & a moratorium on its production in art. In this sense…

MORT AUX VACHES!