This is a highly moral book. It is written in a kind of theorese, but one I have a lot of patience for, because you can see Certeau struggling to articulate a vocabulary for talking about previously untheorized and largely unconsidered practices--talking, walking, reading, writing, dying.

Certeau's main argument is that by focusing on the production of culture, we characterize human beings as passive consumers instead of active users, and that this is doing ourselves an injustice. The more relevant distinction than production/consumption is strategy/tactic--strategies are the disciplining sets of concepts, ideologies, rules and parameters that make possible or impossible certain kinds of actions and ways of conceiving, and tactics--which in a lovely way Certeau connects with both Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, but also with Kant's notion of logische Takt--logical tact--and metis, the Greek intelligence epitomized by Odysseus (tricky, wrestler of Proteus, etc.) that knows what to do. It's not "appropriateness," because that assumes a strategic outlook--"these are the rules." It's neither tact nor tactic, but a concept breaking down that opposition which I have not come up with a name for yet--tactality? tacticfulness? non-situational metis? Knowing how to improvise?

A tactic depends on a gift economy, where everything's worth is not known. A tactic is distinguished from guerilla warfare by recognizing its weakness, by never seeking to win. There is a lot to say about a tactic. In any case, it's a concept with obvious awesome implications for sticking it to the Man, and Certeau even obligingly lets you know about a sub-concept in France, perruque, which is appropriation of the resources and time of work for your own purposes, be it writing a love poem, checking facebook, stealing staples, or photocopying your buttocks. We be scavengers!

And so on, right? What were we doing, inchoately, with Capture the Flag? Reclaiming urban space and turning it to our own purposes, improvising a game with the city as field of battle. Breaking up the strategic lines of power. If writing is inscription of a master strategy, building an edifice, reading can be tactical, stealing a "white pebble" and taking it home to build a nest. In some ways I wonder what would happen if we were only allowed to talk about our everyday lives using this vocabulary, and only allowed to talk about our intellectual pursuits using the vocabulary of the everyday. ( )

Ahh, French philosophers! They can write and write, and it makes sense while you read it, but then you look at reality around and wonder what all this bullshit is about, put the book down, only to be blindsided by its pertinence at strange and prevenient times throughout the rest of your life. ( )