I hadn’t planned on writing more about my ‘Framing Militancy’ piece, as it’s part of a larger project I’m working towards, and was intending on withholding till later. And I doubt I’ll have much time to respond to comments unfortunately. But it seems (to my complete surprise) to have generated a number of comments and discussions (see Graham Harman [1, 2, 3], Levi Bryant [1, 2], Ian Bogost, Pete Wolfendale, Dominic Fox, critical comments on militant dysphoria by Ads without Products, and closely related stuff by Alex at An und fur sich). In light of that, it may be worthwhile to try and clarify some aspects of it. I do this, as well, at the risk of clarifying too much, and negating what people have found useful in it. [Also, I owe the inspiration for the title of this post all to Alex Williams.]
First, and something I should have been clearer about in the paper and at the conference, is the motive for writing the paper.
The first reason is the complete dearth of effective political action in the contemporary world. As Mark Fisher pointed out at the conference, millions marched to protest the Iraq War, and Bush’s reaction was to say (paraphrasing) ‘This is great – this freedom to protest is what we want to give to the Iraqis.’ Presumably, the freedom to protest without effect is what he meant. It’s not the only example either. The G20 protests, both in the UK and in Pittsburgh recently, have been wildly ineffective and made a sum total of zero difference. The mass uproar against the bank bailouts stalled, but never stopped, the bailout package in the US. And despite the massive show of support, and the huge effort on the part of the organizers, the recent UC walkout and occupation appear likely to change nothing. What’s the alternative to protest? Well, we can use our hard-fought right to vote! Of course, as Obama’s presidency is making clear (in case there was any doubt), the difference between conservatives and liberals, left and right, is becoming increasingly difficult to discern. It’s a common complaint, but it’s true that voting in developed countries has become pointless, as nothing fundamental is ever placed up for contestation. And as the uproar of insanity over US healthcare reform makes clear, even the slightest proposed changes are met with crys of ‘fascism’, ‘socialist’, and worse. So our intuitive notions of what politics means are all failing to actually do politics.
The second reason is my (and perhaps it’s different for others) complete inability to imagine anything that might classically fit the term ‘revolution’ happening in the present age. Let’s think about some of the varieties of revolution. (1) A regime revolution, where one group of leaders is overthrown by another – whether it be class-based, religiously-based, or whatever – is not going to happen outside of a select few, largely tiny countries. Honduras and Thailand have both experienced recent coups, but these are not societies which are going to effect a large difference in the world. An Iranian revolution is still a possibility, and would have rather large-scale effects, perhaps proving my thesis wrong. But a revolution in a developed Western country seems extremely far-fetched. (2) What then, about a political revolution, where one system of government is replaced by another? Outside of forced interventions by America, this seems unlikely as well. The closest that may occur is various authoritarian and monarchical governments progressively incorporating aspects of democratic governance, but this is not revolution in any standard sense of the word. And again, this is not going to occur in a developed Western country. (3) Finally, there’s cultural revolution, which might encompass a mass shift in popular consciousness such that previous givens of political life are quickly overturned. There’s an argument to be made here that something akin to this is happening in the sphere of environmentalism. The massive change in public and political discourse on the environment has been quite impressive over the past decade, and is a testament to the environmental movement’s work. But this significant change in public perception has yet to be matched by any significant change in policy. The Kyoto protocol has largely failed, and there is mass uncertainty over the outcome of the upcoming Copenhagen conference. Ultimately, the same economic interests – business or personal – dominate the calculations involved in how important the environment is. So for all of it’s significant effects, the climate movement has still yet to really revolutionize mass consciousness.
Now clearly, reform is not a sufficient answer to these problems, most obviously with regards to the climate question. As Anthony Paul Smith has noted elsewhere, some sort of ‘revolution’ is necessary. Yet if the classical idea of revolution – as the sudden and abrupt shift from one system to another – is unimaginable, what are we left with? My paper was an attempt to answer this question, signalling at least one potential way to square the circle. As Alex Williams astutely pointed out to me, it’s a type of slow-motion revolution that I’m calling for, or as I’ve called it above, a liquid revolution. The idea that revolution has to occur ‘all at once’ is a residue of folk politics – a notion of politics derived from our intuitive relation to the world, one where change has to be readily apparent in order for it to register. The sort of work I’m proposing is less intuitive, less based on immediate reactions, and less short-sighted. (A full analysis of ‘folk politics’ and its foundation in ‘folk psychology’ would be necessary here, but I hope to flesh it out in future work.)
Let me note one final consequence of my piece. I was asked at the conference, ‘who would be the collective agency which carried out this project?’, and I didn’t have a good answer at the time. But on reflection, one of the significant points of my piece is that it doesn’t require a mass uprising, it doesn’t require class consciousness, and it doesn’t require coordinating a mass majority. It can be small groups, working in local communities to create social services for their neighbours and families. It can be small groups of activists, struggling to change the public discourse on issues, framing them in ways more conducive to change. (Think, for example, if Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen are successful in their project to change how a nation’s economy is measured – from GDP to a more fruitful measure. A small technical reform in a key measurement can have vast consequences.) It can be small groups, occupying a factory and publicizing their actions. It can be small groups of martyrs like Neda, mobilizing mass support from around the world. None of these, individually, may be sufficient, but working to create conjunctions between these efforts can create resonances beyond their individual means. The multitude, in other words, has to be actively created, connected and organized.
It is interesting that in your portrayals of the absolute impotency of radical change, less than twenty people flew a few airplanes into social/symbolic targets and RADICALLY (though not constructively) changed the entire geopolitical world. I personally find revolutions everywhere, especially as technology remolds the habits of both mind and body.
Agreed, I think the 9/11 attacks were a violent and reprehensible version of what I’m talking about. But as the example with Stiglitz and Sen shows, the tactics are equally applicable to legislative and academic work.
In a closer sense “revolution” denotes a national uprising causing a change of the social order. Although this is a narrow fixture it overdetermines the meaning of the term, which also gives meaning to some sort of radical political action. Maybe I’m missing something but isn’t the point of political metaphysics finding a change that determines all other changes? It is not so much about admitting that there are radical changes of various sorts and categories but seeing the underlying pattern and eventually seeing another yet unrealized pattern as well.
Did revolution occur “all at one” in the great theorists of revolution though? I’m not sure that you don’t already have a lot of allies in political theory here from Lenin to Negri.
I don’t have my Negri or Lenin books around to check, but you may be right. That being said, I’d argue that their idea of revolution is still beholden to the first 2 versions I cited, right? An overthrow of the state machinery, or a complete replacement of it – neither of which I think are viable or even morally endorsable (in most situations) concepts of ‘revolution’ now. Granted, historical revolutions tend to take time (the Iranian revolution took 2 years to ferment, I believe), but what we’d actually call the revolutionary aspect of that time period tends to occur incredibly quickly. What I’m trying to get away from is the sense that unless you’re working directly for some sort of radical revolution, you’re merely supporting the present situation. Working for key reforms can be as directly opposed to the current world, as can any naively revolutionary party.
Nick: “What I’m trying to get away from is the sense that unless you’re working directly for some sort of radical revolution, you’re merely supporting the present situation. Working for key reforms can be as directly opposed to the current world, as can any naively revolutionary party.”
Kvond: I suspect that it goes even further than this. Working towards some time of immense, radical break/transformation actually can be working towards the preservation of the status quo, as one perpetuates what one “hates” by investing in it as an enemy, and sealing off, as best you can, the notion of dialogue or shared world processes.
Yes, really good point. Alex talks about this somewhat in his talk too, with the idea that militant dysphoria has a tendency to want to self-perpetuate itself as a sort of pure negativity unbound from any positive system.
Even more, at least in some persons, there is an unconscious drive to actually shore up the enemy, to keep it standing, just so one can be opposed to it.
I think it was you that directed my attention to The Scientific Way of Warfare (forgive me if it was not). The book lead me to read the military strategist John Boyd, on whom I would like to eventually post. It is interesting, Boyd, when he sought to familiarize himself with the huge history of miltary strategy, from the Greeks to Vietnam, decided to read BACKWARDS in time, not forwards, from last to first, that way the continuitiies would be brought out instead of distinctlive breaks. In a certain sense revolutionary thinking is too caught up in the game of prophesy, trying to read forwards and skipping to the next chapter. Instead really it is the continuities that should compose our powerful action, I would suspect. A continuity does not mean that NOTHING, or even NOTHING IMPORTANT has changed.
I think that Lenin (to a lesser extent) and Negri (to a greater extent) understand that the first two revolutions have some relation to the third. Negri’s early work on Descartes and Spinoza, for example, should be read together with the more “concrete” work of Insurgencies. I’m sympathetic to what you’re saying about reform, actually, but I still think that often what is needed is more radical (in the technical sense of the term) in terms of creating conditions for reform. I’m not sure that formulation makes sense, but I’m thinking of the way that even some of the most small-scale reforms seem to be impossible within the current politic constellation of cultural and material situations. Interested to see what you develop for sure.
I’m on a Stengerian roll these days and her recent books ‘Capitalist Sorcery (in transs with Palgrave) and ‘A Time of Disasters: resisting the impending barbarism.’ would be v. relevant to your interests.
‘From Marx’s definition of the proletariat as having
nothing but its chains to lose, to Negri’s definition of the multitude, theory then
appears as a ‘‘theatre of concepts’’, identifying the pure conceptual instance that
is entitled to raise a worthy standard in a confrontation that is also the begetting
of a finally reconciled humanity. Such a theatre does not however offer what
non-modern traditions, which know about sorcery, know how to cultivate: arts
of protection against capture.’ (Stengers, Experimenting with Refrains). This essay is online and published in the journal ‘Subjectivity’.
The conclusion to Chaosmosis is pretty dark ;’all the disciplines will have to combine their creativity to ward off the ordeals of barbarimsm….’
“I understand quite well that when they are called out to a fire, fire-fighters
hurry without slowing down and wondering about their own role and subjective
stance. But the point is that nobody really calls us out. We are rather, as readers
of this journal, or writing in it, part of those few who inherit a tradition in
which ideas and words do matter, which gives ideas and words some power to
contribute towards changing, in one small way or another, situations. This is
one of our common attachments, what is common between me and any reader
who is still reading me at this stage of my text; and not to explicitly recognize
and cultivate this subjective stance may well be compared with experimental
scientists failing to explicitly present themselves in terms of the possibility of
achievement that has them thinking and imagining together, using instead
general, neutral themes like ‘‘objectivity’’. This is why I claim that we have to
take care of our own mental and collective ecologies, not as an egotistic move
(singing like Nero, while the world is burning) but because it is what we depend
upon. And this means reclaiming an ecology that gives the situations we
confront the power to have us thinking feeling, imagining, and not theorizing
about them. In this I am a Marxist – the point is to ‘‘change the world, not to
understand it’’, but I add that this implies giving to the world the power to
change us, to ‘‘force’’ our thinking.” (Stengers, Exp. with Refrains).
Thanks Paul, it sounds pretty interesting. By the way, do you know when Capitalist Sorcery will be translated? There’s far too little of Stengers translated at this point!
while it’s clear that you are trying to think beyond ‘class consciousness’ or cultural discourses, can you clarify in what sense you see militant dyphoria, or ‘contractive framing’, etc, as in excess of ‘consciousness’?
-k
Ha, Kieran, you always ask the tough questions.
Let me see if I can untangle some of the threads tying that idea together…
First, there’s the basic sort of ontology that’s being presumed in this work – a collective of human and nonhuman, material and expressive asssemblages. What ’causes’ militant dysphoria isn’t reducible to the human or consciousness. (Though that does need some theoretical justification, but the basic lineaments are in Deleuze and Latour I believe. And yeah, some theoretical work needs to be done to tie them together too, despite their proximity in the notion of networks/assemblages. As Graham has made clear, Latour is not at all a philosopher of becoming, though I think this can be re-fashioned.)
Second, there’s the empirical example I gestured to in the paper – where Callon discusses all the material components that are necessary for a commodity to become ‘calculatable’, and thus allowing a calculative subject to arise in the first place. In terms of militant dysphoria, the point being that in order for the world to appear militantly dsyphoric at all, there needs to be a whole system of tools, components, actors that frame the world as such. That aspect needs its own, largely empirical, study, though hints of it can be found in existing literature. Studies of terrorism show that geographical dispersion, and the physical segregation of social networks, play a large role in radicalization, for example. Madrassas and the actual texts and habits born out of them might form another key component. We might look at the technological tools that allow militancy to arise, such as the communicational tools (e.g. Twitter in the Iran revolts). We could also look at the actual conduits through which a dysphoric state is constructed, and then the ways in which it becomes militant.
I’m not totally satisfied with either of those answers though, but hopefully they indicate what I’m getting at. There’s a whole metaphysical aspect to your question that I’m still struggling with myself, so I’m not fully sure of an answer yet.
How are the dysphoric and the euphoric mode connected? Are they just dual in that the dysphoric mode tends to evacuate objects from the frame whereas the euphoric mode pulls them in trying to rearrange and reassemble them by the guidance / constraints of the frame?
One might also ask how frames are related to models and if they are not essentially the same?
Kay,
I admit I don’t fully know. I think the basic idea of framing can be productively applied to a euphoric mode too, but it would take some re-working. It wasn’t my focus in the paper (it being a response to Dominic’s book Militant Dysphoria), but I don’t see any a priori reason it couldn’t be reconfigured in terms of framing.
I’m not sure what you mean here by ‘models’ though, so I can’t say there.
‘La Sorcellerie Capitaliste’ will be published in 2010 but prob. not till later in the year.
With a bit of luck the sequel ‘A Time of Disasters’ may also come out in10. It’s quite short.
If you can understand French there are a number of vids with Stengers:
http://intercession.over-blog.org/categorie-10385566.html
Actually, some are in English – the ones recorded in the USA.
” What would happen,
what would be the response of the academic milieu to those who dared to propose some continuity between the ultimate triumph of the witch hunters –
the fact that we have lost the active memory of the eradication of European witches, that is the memory that something was indeed eradicated – and critical
(de)constructionist theory? We have become used toMichel Foucault’s ‘‘shocking’’ ways of questioning our modern pride in matters such as psychiatry
or penal practices. But the shock now may well be addressed even to academic followers of Foucault, those who have turned his production of destabilizing,
and even frightening, demands for lucidity into a ‘‘we know better’’ industry.
What I am attempting however is not the ‘‘I know better’’ counter-move of assimilating social theory and witch hunting. I am attempting to slow down and
question the way we are ourselves constructed, with the modern refrain ‘‘they believed/we know’’ – and the possibility of ‘‘putting at a distance’’, which this
refrain entails.
If a milieu must be described in terms of encounters, nourishing ones, challenging ones, toxic ones, Starhawk’s challenge may possibly cause some
readers to speculatively activate their memory and imagination regarding encounters where they learnt the codes of our academic milieu: maybe a few
derisive remarks, knowing smiles, offhand judgments, often made about somebody else, which have nevertheless got the subtle power to pervade and
infect our thinking life, to shape the way we frame and address our questions.” (Stengers, experimenting with refrains).
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Hi Nick, I’m the John who moaned at you after you gave your paper.
You wrote – (2) What then, about a political revolution, where one system of government is replaced by another? Outside of forced interventions by America, this seems unlikely as well. The closest that may occur is various authoritarian and monarchical governments progressively incorporating aspects of democratic governance, but this is not revolution in any standard sense of the word. And again, this is not going to occur in a developed Western country.
It is barely thirty years since Spain was transformed from a fascist regime into a democracy in a period which some claim was merely three years, but all agree was very short. This was not merely ‘progressively incorporating aspects of democratic governance’ but something much more fundamental to the political system of the country and which, at the time, faced a great deal of internal opposition. Surely this is a recent example of a political revolution in a developed Western country and makes me question your confidence that such things are now impossible.
I’m also unconvinced by the claim that because some demonstrations have little or no effect, it follows that all demonstrations are politically ineffective. More recent history: Here in the UK, it is only twenty years since a concerted campaign of non-payment coupled with mass demonstrations and rioting forced the government to abandon the Poll Tax.
I do agree with what you say about small groups and local levels and the need to form alliances between them, but this is a standard Leftist tactic anyway. After all, it’s how the Trade Unions started.
Hi John, good to see you online.
Hmm, I have a couple reactions to your first two points. My first reaction is that a lot has changed in 20-30 years, particularly with the rise of the neoliberal consensus (even in the face of its crisis, the policy responses seem to be aimed at saving neoliberalism, and not at changing it; i.e. it is dominant and unquestioned at the highest levels of power). That being said, the polarization that’s occuring presently in the US, with rabid right-wingers stirring up the otherwise rather lazy American public, is a prelude in many historical mass uprisings and political upheavals. It’s not hard for me to imagine something going quite wrong in the US, and in that sense, to see a potential for radical political change (albeit perhaps not revolution).
Now, this belief that revolution is nigh impossible in developed Western countries may be a product of my age as well – I’ve never lived through times where a highly developed country has overturned it’s system. I don’t know. Admittedly I’d need to do more historical research to grasp the potential for such an event. But I do think the fact that your examples are all quite old – even 20 years is a long time in our modern age – is I think also an important fact. If it’s been 20 years since demonstrations have effectively worked, I take it that’s a sign we need to do something different.
[EDIT: Let me add an example here. I do think demonstrations can be rejuvenated in the future, though in our particular situation they're largely useless (except to solidify a group identity). But this is the history of every protest and revolt tactic. Take barricades - used in France to struggle against the government; overturned by the creation of cannons able to destroy them; rejuvenated in the recent past as used by native Indians in Canada; and now used by governments to corral protestors into designated 'protest areas'. The same thing can happen with demonstrations, and the key to rejuevenating them is to examine the actual assemblage they currently exist in. This means some mundane, and even obvious, analysis, but that's to be expected.]
As for your third point, well, yes, I think some of my ideas are rather common sense and not particularly novel, but it’s also placed in a theoretical context where these sorts of mundane organizational strategies are looked down upon. Much better to wait for an ‘event’, or produce some ‘revolutionary Act’. In large part, I’m trying to bring the constructive aspects of high theory into the practical, political, and chaotic world. I’m still very much in the midst of trying to work out how exactly, and so I’m really excited about the responses I’ve got so far. Though we can surely disagree about how successful I am :)
I don’t think that 20 years is a particularly long time, even in our modern age. However, that might say something about my age!
Ha! It is true, and in general, I do find the difference between generational presuppositions really fascinating. My generation, for example, is the first to grow up outside the shadow of the Cold War (I was 8 when the USSR collapsed), and I think this has drastically affected our relation to the world.
And now we have a new generation arising where 9/11 is more something taught in school, and less a vivid memory.
hi Nick,
this is going to seem like a hostile question but it’s not meant to be – if you’re setting aside both overthrow and replacement of the state, why keep the word ‘revolution’ at all, and what role does the term serve other than an honorific? (That’s not an argument against your position per se, by the way.)
“a theoretical context where these sorts of mundane organizational strategies are looked down upon” is an apt description, by the way, and expresses a lot of my frustrations. I have an opposite reaction to yours, though, your “trying to bring the constructive aspects of high theory into the practical, political, and chaotic world.” Of course, I do hope you succeed!
Two other things. One, if you’re not already familiar with his work, you might be interested in John Holloway. He’s also trying to get away from the ‘revolution as single event’ idea.
Two, I’ve only just started to read about this (and I’m hostile to it, which is no real reason anyone else should be) but there are traditions of producer co-op socialism in the 19th century US (and I’ve just found also in 20th century India) that you might find interesting. One of the keywords for that is “the cooperative commonwealth,” the idea appears to be that cooperative production arrangements now can grow to challenge capitalist dominance. You might also be interested in the book Black Flame, about anarchism and class, particularly for its discussions of mutualism, which seems little different in practice than this co-op socialism though the theoretical sources may have differed (not sure about that).
Anyway, that’s mostly a digression, I mention it only because what this has helped me start to realize is that the ‘classic’ revolutionaries were not the old radicals of their time, they were in competition with and engaged in debates with other positions which sometimes pre-dated them. It’s only in retrospect that the ‘classic’ positions take on the sheen they have as being the most necessary and thinkable views etc. I dunno if that’s use for what you’re doing here, of course.
cheers,
Nate
Hey Nate, sorry for the delayed response; just been busy the past little while. I don’t take your comments antagonistically at all, so no worries!
On ‘revolution’, my thought is that we still want to retain the word for instances where there’s rather massive changes in the social-political-technological realm. It has some purchase in understanding the fundamental changes that can occur without being indexed solely to something like regime change. So, for instance, we might see the creation of the neoliberal consensus as a revolution within capitalism – one that quite radically shifts the entire configuration of economic and political actors. Although I think it’s mostly a matter of semantics here, so I’m quite happy to let others disagree that that’s ‘revolution’ in their sense.
And much thanks for the references – I’ve seen Holloway’s work around before, but never taken the time to sit down and read it. It definitely sounds like it might have some interesting ideas though. And one of my other incipient projects is to re-think the commons or the public, so this cooperative commonwealth could be really helpful for that!
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