84 (Melucci 1989, 120)

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(Melucci 1989, 120)

In modern society the symbolic terrain can never be divided neatly into the clear-cut symmetry of good and bad, as in a Hollywood western. Instead it presents a complex web of contradiction, ambivalence and plurality of meaning which various actors try to utilize in order to give sense to their action.

Having said that, it has to be recognized that the appeal to nature has played a crucial role in the formation of new conflictual demands. Nature appears as that which resists external pressures, because it lies beyond instrumental rationality. It has the inestimable weight of a ’given entity’ in opposition to the enforced ’socialization’ of identity by the new forms of domination.

But this appeal is also based on the intuition that natural existence is potentially a field for human action, a goal to be attained rather than a given condition. The body, desire, biological identity, and sexuality are all cultural - in the sense of socially generated - representations of the incipient awareness that ’human nature’ can be produced and transformed by social action - that it can be used for ends other than those imposed by the dominant system. [Melucci, Alberto. 1989. Nomads of the Present. London: Hutchinson Radius.]