ABSTRACT
The first of the two chapters on unlicensed print culture in the aftermath of The Martial Law shows how the social media form and the prefigurative politics it projected were central to confronting the underground’s most important political dilemma: how to reconcile conspiracy and democracy? Against the proponents of the general strike, the resilience of the unlicensed print culture tipped the balance in favor of the strategy of the underground society. It demonstrated that a movement of small, self-reliant and loosely connected groups could counteract normalization and regain civic agency through faits accomplis, without disciplined hierarchies of command and without an ultimate horizon of a final showdown, finding empowerment in freedom of initiative actualized in the here and now.
