Reason and Intellectuals and ....

[Jonathan Broad (NC)]

I can think of no better way to thank you for your reply, H. Curtiss, than
to reply in kind.  You have justified my hopes for this thread, and put to
shame my doubts.  So allow me to cut immediately (thank heaven) to the
heart of the matter--

On Thu, 31 Jul 1997, H. Curtiss Leung wrote:

> 	I guess this hinges on how you define prole, then.  I take it to
> mean: somebody who sells their labor-power -- and has to sell it.  However,
> this doesn't exhaust that person's identity; it's only one category of
> many into which somebody can simultaneously fall.  Which leads me to
> your comments on:
> 
> > 
> > Ken's honest puzzlement about what constitutes a "working class" person as
> > distinct from a "black" or "lesbian" person is in the right direction,
> > especially as this affects the possibilities of organization.  Liberal
> > capitalism exploits these differences in what Leclau and Mouffe (Hegemony
> > and Socialist Strategy) call "subject positions".  My use of
> > "articulation", which it seems I might never be able to..articulate..stems
> > from considerations I have given to that book.  Since socialism seems to
> > contain some nasty totalizing temptations, I think it is necessary to
> > emphasize its "radical democratic" aspects.  Liberal democracy shackles
> > our ability to "develop" in terms of our own interests, simply because the
> > means to do so is legally, economically, and culturally withheld or broken
> > up into pieces and given to hostile "subject positions".  
> 
> 	Do you know Adorno's essay "Melange" in _Minima Moralia_?  He
> starts from the opposite proposition -- that so-called "equality" is
> the ideology by which people are hobbled and integrated into capitalism --
> but ends up with something that, I think, may be a clue to your notion
> of "articulation": "An emancipated society, on the other hand, would
> not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the
> reconciliation of differences.

The Adorno I've read is limited to NEGATIVE DIALECTICS, which I consumed
quite a while ago, and before I'd read any Hegel (strike that--I've read
The DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT and a few odd articles here and there), but
I think I'll pursue your connection here.  The idea that "Equality" is the
ideological cement that liberal thought pours over economic/cultural
strife and segregation is another way of looking at the point I'd been
making.  Equality that is "in name only" is worse than useless as far as
the social process of articulation is concerned, since it encourages the
solidification and isolation of subject positions and blatantly ignores
the substantive conditions (in other words, the actual material,
organizational, and communicative conditions) which make even personal,
"private" identities a social activity.  The truly unfortunate "politics
of identity" which has been raging uncritically in America for some time
now is a perfect example of these destructive liberal pursuits. 
Authenticity becomes the focal point of discussion (?), rather than why
these sorts of distinctions are important to the lives of the people who
use them to articulate their position in society.  This serves to jam the
lines of mass communication, while simultaneously dividing people into
fixed and market-ready "classes" of "individuals".  H&A's vision of the
high-rise where everyone is watching the same television show in the
"privacy" of their own apartments (in DofE) is one-upped by the
contemporary scene, where the black females (age 15-30) are watching
"Moesha", the white males (age 15-45) watch "Star Trek Voyager", and
lesbians (age 20-45) are watching "Ellen".  What must, _must_ be kept in 
mind, however, is that _both_ of these visions are totally complicit in
the kind of liberal dialogue that supports their evaluation (either
negative or positive).  The fact of the matter is that while this
"scene" is true in the dreams of ad execs, and mildly efficacious at the 
point of purchase, from the perspective of those actually caught in the
work/consumption cycle the "culture" of mass media is a fairly fluid and 
interchangable (and dispensible) bit of entertainment that we try to
steal (by not succumbing to advertisemtne, which pays for television
programming) and that we use as a recreational drug.  As for me, I try
to watch programs not aimed at my "tastes" so that I can get a better
idea of the machinations of the real identity politicians like J. Walter 
Thomson and associates, while I am making dinner.  The only, and
cruelest, example I can think of where ad strategy meets real life is
the case when young black men murder other young black men for their
Nikes--thankfully a rare occurence.  Liberal conceptions of identity
must resisted and where possible, subverted and confused.  As I stated: 
 	

 > > ...Are you black?  What else are 
> > you?  Once you have more than one identity, these positions can be
> > negotiated and antagonisms can be worked out, both internally between
> > members of the gay community, for example (as to the question, who is gay
> > and who isn't?) and between different groups.  
> 
> I understand you to mean that these negotiations can occur because 
> acknowledging that one person can "occupy" more than one "subject
> position" can be universally recognized without subordinating any actual 
> individual differences.  (anybody out there who thinks they've
> wrapped their brain around Adorno's notion of non-identity care to 
> comment?)

This brings me to the quote from Minima Moralia that you cited.  I find
its language a trifle confusing, because if Adorno is using the words
"universal" and "reconciliation" at all in the same way that Hegel used
them, he is not actually distinguishing between anything.  However, I
understand Adorno's efforts in Negative Dialectics to be a purgation of
the "statist" or "totalizing" tendencies of Hegel's thought via an
inversion (perhaps subversion) of Hegel's shibboleth: "the union of union
and nonunion" or "the identity of identity and difference".  In my
opinion, it is neccesary to do more than conceptually attack Hegel--a
shift in language is required to prevent confusion and to promote a clear
alternative to Hegel's dialectics.  (Again, I must say that Emmanuel
Levinas has accomplished this, in my opinion, in a way far more useful to
the radical community than Derrida or the Frankfurt school.
Unfortunately, Levinas is still widely subsumed under the "precursors to
Derrida" category and thus is not read attentively by those I feel would
most benefit.  This is the case because Levinas articulates himself
primarily in the language of phenomenology.)

The universal that Adorno speaks of in opposition to the state of totality
runs rather immediately into the problem that there are some subject
positions which simply cannot immediately (or even for a long time) be
reconciled to each other.  Christian fundamentalism and the homosexual
"lifestyle", for example.  These sorts of oppositions must be subverted
where possible, and there are an infinite number of possible ways to do
this (given time, which is the rub), but what happens when the inevitable
"situation" arises?  Liberal state and corporate strategy thrives on such
conflicts--the one suppressing certain outcomes and the other exploiting
the firsts restriction of the conflict to the ideological by marketing
identities to both sides.  It is urgent that radical thought abandon the
premises of liberal/capitalist social organization (primarily territorial
in both the literal and "fixed identity" sense of the word) to find other
ways of dealing with subject/subject opposition.  The starting point for
me is the premise that subject positions are overlapping, temporary (in
the strong sense of this word, meaning "indefinite"), and dependent on
social articulation for their significance.  In other words, radical
culture must develop a sense of patience, without for a moment forgetting
that when action must be taken, timing is everything.  Radical democracy
is for me the opening of a new field of social development, actual and
reflexive social articulation.  And articulation is impossible with a
"justice" that is afraid of every ambiguity that threatens the eternal
applicability of its "law".  As radicals know, justice is far more
important than the law of the land.

Yet what radicals run into in their own articulations is the monolithicity
of "the system", "capital", "exploitation", and those individuals and
groups we identify as perpetuating these institutions.  What I would argue
is that we too must be willing to submit to the sense of justice we apply
to those we are obliged to oppose.  We must recognize that this opposition
is a risk we must take, not for our own sake, but for the sake of peace.
At least, this is my own feeling on the matter.  Violence, in my opinion,
is the absolute last resort.  I would even advance the claim that violence
is never justified, although sometimes neccessary when true silence
threatens to overcome us--when extermination, in the fiercest and most
total sense of the word, shows its face.  This is one lesson our century
has taught, and we will never be able to repay our debt to those that paid
the price for us to learn it.  I do what I do, speak to make peace,
because it is the only thing I believe can even approach a state of
justice vis a vis all the throats that have been reduced to screams of
rage, pain, and finally silence.  All the radicals I have met or read seem
to be motivated by something similar, and that is why I find community
with them and hope for humanity.

What this amounts to is a difficulty I have in thinking in terms of
the "universal" which might reconcile human difference.  Unless we think
of this universal in terms of time.  The sorts of nasty oppositions I have
been speaking of, which are the glue of liberal and capitialist
institutions although for different reasons, can only be brought into an
articulatory position by a strategy which emphasizes subversion, patience,
peace, and a reflexive sense of justice which a radical takes upon him or
herself because the "enemy" is unwilling to do so.  The power of
domination is insurmountable--in the immediate.  The gun compels, because
life is precious if bittersweet.  But that is only one way of looking at a
situation, one that emphasizes history as an absolute succession of
instants encapsulating everybody.  From that point of view, the victor is
always victorious--nothing can be done for the lost, because they did not
survive.  A radical picture of history must resist this perspective, and
not give in to the melancholy it provokes.  Precisely _because_ the
victors survived means that justice is still possible, even obligatory.
Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History, esp. parts VII and VIII,
are difinitive for me in this matter.  He quotes Flaubert saying "few will
guess how sad one sad one had to be in order to resuscitate Carthage" and
declares that historical materialism (of which he had a fairly
idiosyncratic view) must dissociate itself as far as possible from this
view, because it is the task of radical thought to brush history against
the grain.  Orthodox liberalism regards conflict as endemic, given, and
inevitable, and its institutions require it to flourish.  I say deprive
these institutions of the pleasure, and work with the real problems in
front of you.  Protest, organize, march, help people out, talk, eat
injustice and blows for lunch and never waver from the task--prove history
wrong.


> > These groups are never
> > "classes", in my opinion, but aggregates, which can contain mutually
> > exclusive identities, and _must_find ways of containing these peripheral
> > elements, if the proccess is not to decay into exploitable "oppositions".
> 
> Whoa!  "Contain these peripheral elements"?  You're scaring me.

If I was speaking of a class or system, then the efforts of said identity
to "contain" its recalcitrant subjects would be (and is) very scary
indeed.  But an aggregate which considered itself as such can only contain
is members by half-ignoring a potential conflict and half-opening itself
to "other" ways of (non) identifying its members.  All I meant to say is
that when an aggregate turns into a totality, it loses its (re)flexibility
and either violence or compromise under threat of violence becomes likely.
And compromise is a word with two very different meanings, which to me
means that the word itself is..compromised.

> > Individuals and individual acts are the foundation of social
> > action and organization, but you are correct that deprived of a real
> > social context (even an email list _can_ serve as one), articulation
> > becomes nostalgic monologue and impotent rage.  I suffered of this all day
> > at work due to the postings of Ralph et al., because I couldn't defend
> > myself (I chose to go to bed, because 5:30 comes too early), and I felt
> > compelled to do so.  So I deferred and reassured myself that the
> > opportunity to represent itself.  I can only "temporarily"
> >  be deprived of my voice, but life is full of such "not yets", thankfully
> > including the "I'm not yet dead" which has brought me back to this thread
> > against my better judgement.  In a nutshell, H. Curtiss, I agree with you.
> > 
> 
> 	Thanks -- but don't you think that disagreement plays a vital
> role here?  Without it, doesn't cooperation decay into that totalizing
> tendency?

Hows this--I don't agree with you carte blanche.  I agreed with one thing
you said in that post, and that motivated me to write to you, "against my
better judgement", which had been telling me that sparring accomplishes
nothing and worse yet eats into my faith in language to not only make
peace, but fascinate and reproduce itself in endless variety.  In the end
it isn't about agreement or disaggreement to me, since the former is only
an opportunity to consolidate and better articulate the things I hold
dear, and the latter is just the potential to listen, perhaps to change my
mind on the basis of a compelling voice or perhaps to reply and begin all
over again.  Both are neccessary--but in this case I'm just glad that my
snotty "better judgement" was been successfully proved wrong again.
Because that persuades me to continue risking the ambivalence of agreement
and the hostility of disapproval.  In spite of the lessons of
history.  Thanks.

	Jonathan Broad

	"The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of
	emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule.  We must
	attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight.
	Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real
	state of emergency..." (Benjamin, _Illuminations_, p.257)