Sunday, February 05, 2006
(5:01 PM) | Matt Christie:
The Politics of 1999
**Updated 2.11.06: With Semi-Spurious Addendum; Prohibition on Commenting Now Lifted!!**"Never before has there been anything like the protests in Seattle."-so sayeth Robert Newman
Foreword : Forewarning: You Don't Connect the Dots
The argument of this post is elsewhere. Quite specifically, in two places. I shall insist on this. Do not come here looking for an argument; this is not the room. The "serious" seriosity that prides itself on all or murder, the McSweeney's cutesy blather and the endless chatter all may be found aplenty, if that is what you crave. What's left, you say? This post is left, simply asking you to watch two movies. In this day and age, this is asking very little. So if you please, no whining.
I would say this post is full of prohibitions. This post is saying, don't use the phrase "the politics of '68," self-evidently, ever. As synonymous with "symbolic politics," even less impressive. It is not helpful, just as all "isms" are not helpful. Using such language may make you a suitable candidate for the cable news, provided you have the requisite false teeth, but in general it reflects quite poorly. This is not to wax nostalgic. From what I understand, the sixties were a mess. They ended even more messily. What came after was not much to brag about. I once read this book, What the Sixties Meant, and What They Mean to Us Now and it was terrible. These sorts of books are, without fail, deeply unhelpful. There are more unhelpful terms, but once you start to list them it is hard to stop. This post has limits. But I wouldn't dream of defending any of that abstractly, by itself, because we know where that will get us. The argument for this post is elsewhere, based firmly in reality, as the philistine might say. It is in two places.
Chapter One: You Denigrate Our Alliance
Something the triangulators never seem to understand: without its more radical element providing a crucial impetus, the global justice movement is dead in the water. And without massive infiltration of the New Left (now well-documented) on the part of government agents acting under the auspices of COINTELPRO and other programs since made illegal (wishful thinking, as it would seem now, to place such faith in law)...things very well may not have been so bloody in Chicago.) And this movement is truly global, in re-sponse to global capital, if it is anything at all. Maybe you will say, this post it is a dreamer. Well watch these two films, and then decide.
It is a movement only--in those brief moments when habitual sneers, however entirely earned, like "the politics of '68," are put aside for something more like humility, if not outright acknowledgement of being a little late, damn; we're sorry, to the party--when mainstream environmental activists, workers and trade unionists join hands with the college kids, when the labor movement marches in defiance of police orders, and in solidarity with the more radical environmental movement, with the anti-war movement, with those unjustly poisoned, beaten and arrested, especially when our corporate democracy is forced to show its quasi-fascist underside, declaring martial law and invoking states of exception.
Street theatre alone is not an end in itself, for sure. The State tactics learned since '68, the unprecedented powers consolidated since, and the further militarization of every aspect of our lives, are more serious than a skit, and demand an institutional as well as demonstrative solidarity response. Chicago '68 convinced a lot of people to abandon the institution route altogether. This was unfortunate. But today, as much as they would like to, International ANSWER does not own this movement. Neither does United For Peace and Justice, though they are far, far better at not playing into the hands of those who would reduce it to cliché.
But in fact there is no movement without the kids, and not just because they are the future, but because without critical mass and truly democratic cross-movement solidarity, such as that which gained international attention in closing down the WTO talks on November 30, in Seattle, 1999, and more significantly a) gave courage to the so-called "third world" representatives to speak up, inside the buildings, and against an unfair agenda, and b) virtually overnight, changed the way former Director-General of the WTO Michael Moore himself began to talk about its mission - in short, without such demand, power is unconcerned for justice. There is some truth in slogans yet.
Fair trade, much less an open democracy, will not happen by itself. It most certainly won't happen with the crazy militarist, neophyte DLC Republicans currently calling themselves Democrats today. At best, you will have a scheduled, claustrophobic march, within sheep pens and under continuous surveillance, photos being added to your file, no news coverage, and not even a memorial in 20 years time to pin to your solemn chest. You will also have the usual undercover infiltration and provocations to violence, in which case some big teeth hairspray people may indeed show up.
Don't get me wrong; I didn't vote for Nader, last time (though it hardly would've mattered). Like most things, this all has very little to do with Ralph Nader.
The crucial point about solidarity may be found here. That is the first 'place.' Watch it, if you would wish to talk or know about such things. Is it melodramatic at moments? Sure. Does the point it makes about global cross-movement solidarity still stand regardless? You bet. Has the self-critical capacity of justice movements signalled a moving on from the 60's? Let us hope. Have enough people learned about the true stakes of such a struggle from this experience, and about what constitutes a helpful versus a deeply unhelpful approach? Apparently not.
Chapter Two: You Dignify Their Make-Believe Alliance
Perhaps a most grateful link to Digby (and to this) are in order. What we have here is a clash of para-digms, not quite real but also more than real; (I like to think of it as the waste, floating alongside the Princess Cruise ship, but that's just me). The media, feeling rightfully obsolete in this age of unprecedented propaganda, reinvents itself as porn. Later, a group of neoconservative interests, whose faces and history should certainly be familiar to you by now, seeks to hijack the debate entirely by, among other things, exponentially upping the stakes.
There's is a reaction to a post-modern crisis or condition, the nuances and implications of which post-modern theorists have been trying to understand and analyze for some time. This does not mean that they are inherently on the same side, the theorists and the neocons. That is an anti-intellectual leap of some laziness. It's true a lot of theory-heads went into advertising. This speaks to the adaptability of capital, and the pressures of survival; it does not condemn "Theory," not with any of its six letters capitalized. Theory is a word some students of so-called "continental" philosophers have taken up, often in the past, as offering some orienting or at times polemical potential, it is true. To reduce actual philosophy (of the interesting sort, that is) to this become-pejorative, popular word, "Theory" is as lazy as refusing to read (as in really read) Schmitt or Heidegger or deMan "because they were fascist." It is time we reconciled with the contradictions and complexities of that era, and its nostalgic sequel the Cold War, at last, and without minimizing or failing to read entirely. Otherwise, we seem rather destined to repeat them.
The Pomo-Neocons did not invent this post-modern condition, they are merely exploiting it, and in the most cynical of manners. They are very deliberately finding a way to re-ignite (or rather re-invent) old and cold antagnonisms (this is apparently so much a part of who they are, it is all they know how to do), and so in the process re-assert the authority of a dying paradigm, one that deserves to be rendered obsolete if ever there was.
And yet, how odd, that the mentality which sold the Cold War relied so much on dread, indeed above all else, of having to repeat something we had thought (or was it only dreamed) the second World War had forever ended. "Living through that once was enough, thank you very much," they said. And yet, the ideology of the Cold War––witness those like Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice especially, as they went about in their last act together, decades ago, squinting out contempt, repeatedly, blatantly lying and exaggerating outrageously the Soviet threat––the ideology raised the stakes even higher, and demanded nothing less than that they stay that way, at least, lest politicians lose their paradigmatic power. And so playing on the fear of having to repeat something unprecedentedly awful, or rather, exploiting this fear for unprecedented political maneuverability and quasi-fascistic revolution, all but ensures a continuous upping of the stakes--if not the end of any future in itself. (But hell, let them gamble for a little while longer; anyway the tragedy/thriller is more arresting than the romance/comedy, suspect as we might that the second deadly farce is on its way.) At times, it may seem as though the sole mission of this "President" is to ensure that the damage is so great that we never may emerge from this vengeful cycle; some contours of the story are indeed as old as politics and drama itself.
To avert the final tragedy, or, to perform the work of mourning, will require the courage to, among other things, speak literally again. This is the second point, or 'place.' Also, to a convenient degree, from the perspective of this lazy author, made elsewhere (though, as with the former, there are certainly points of possible contention, and complication). But first, like I said, you need to watch these two important films.
There is a sense in which every time Bush says "9/11" he is saying, "forget about 11/30." Every time Bush says "terrorist" he is thinking of political dissent, no matter whose. It could be a Gay Pride rally, or Cindy Sheehan, or a French anti-Monsanto activist; they are all the same 'of enemy or not at all' to Bush. In fact, every American is the enemy. Your potential for being a friend these days, in any promising sense, is rather exponentially decreasing, and if this doesn't spell the death of freedom, then what does? In order for this "President" to stay in power, the real terrorists within radical political Islam–our dear former necessary "friends"–must never really lose.
It should be beyond obvious, of course, that such symbolic "threats" as Cindy Sheehan, even when added to the mix of Saudi Arabians with box-cutters and the fellow fundamentalists for whom we have now successfully created a perma-war-playground in Iraq, are not worth the exchange of what might still prove, despite all odds, to be an exemplary nation's hard-earned promise of freedom (yes, that is a sort of silly post, but then perhaps Americans are at heart still more skeptical and self-critical than this, or than their surface-level recourse to jingoism may sometimes show).
In a sense, every time Bush says "terror," he is saying, don't watch these two films. Don't do it. Unfortunately for W., prohibition contains within itself the subversive seeds of desire. Don't watch these two films. Don't watch these two films. Don't Watch these two films. don't Watch These Two Films! And so you see. If we are to accept that George W. Bush (the man distinguished from his father only by virtue of this missing initial, "H") is the proper stand-in for the big father/torturer in the sky--and everything he says demands this--then like all noughty children who begin to question, let us break this rule. Let us watch these two films.
The impetus behind the endless war on terror is elsewhere. It is a distraction like none before; revolutionary, radical and disastrous. But to mistake this reactionary battle for the one that really counts, one that began by taking back the streets of the world, in response to Clinton's "free trade" panacea/compromise of corporate mergers, is equally disastrous, and--lest it still need be said--provincial.
Afterword : Please
Once again, all this post is saying is, watch these two films:
1) "This is What Democracy Looks Like"
2) "The Power of Nightmares"
Then we can begin to talk.
This is a very reasonable demand. The first film has been made into a dvd, which you may order from their website for the price of a good scholarly book. It should be cheaper, yes. I'd try The Amazon. The second is free online, hosted by Information Clearing House, and I've been linking to the video, the transcripts and the reviews on the sidebar of my own blog for quite some time. You could conceivably watch both in the course of one evening, especially if, say, you were to swear off blogging for said evening.
Once you've met this basic requirement, then, I think, you'll be ready to progress on to Chris Marker, particularly "Grin Without a Cat." And then we could begin to talk, perhaps as productive friends. Forgive me, in the meantime, for not wishing to summarize with absolute conclusiveness (and inevitable triviality) precisely why and how I think these three important films are so important, or indeed nothing less than essential background for any knowledgeable discussion of "symbolic politics."
Reading Acid Dreams and Lockdown America would also, yes, be a productive place to start, but far be it from this 'blog' to implore fellow 'bloggers' to read something from a book (this post, after all, does have limits).
Semi-Spurious Addendum: An anecdotal note from S. Squibb:
yes, i think Critchley did arrive after you left. The philosophy department was kind enough to invite me to dinner with he and they after the fact, perhaps as evidence of some divinely corrupting influence on the political science department. the highlight of the whole experience was Michael Mcarthy, who, upon the completion of Critchley's lecture, waited a moment, raised his hand, recounted everything the man had sad, in literally one eighth the time, using formulations and references twice as clear. Even Critchley was amazed. His topic was some strategic fashionista coupling of Badiou and Levinas, said he wanted to create a new moral discourse tailor-made to the Seattle anti-capitalist activists, thereby absolving them of their trademark conceptual incoherence. The whole thing smacked of cursuory scholarship and naked opportunism... as though such a thing makes a difference outside of the small insulated constiuency of continental universitheory.
So I asked the guy, both then and on the way to dinner, about how he could, with any shred of fidelity, do so much violence to Levinas, turning his ideas into little more than a politcal slogan, effectively leveling the distinction between Levinas account of the face to face and 'all power to the workers councils.' His response was, roughly, because he could, and then he started in on the "Heidegger minus the question of being" routine. All he was interested in was hitting the right combination of theoretical notes to write the perfect piece of poplitcal agit-prop discourse, trying to make himself a top-forty theorist.The whole thing seemed so sad, really. A balding, former stud trying despartely to mine Levinas and Seattle for any modicum of relevance which he could smelt into something like genuine influence. What was clear was that nobody had any idea about the conditions they found themselves in, not Critchley, not Seattle, nobody. Theory, activism, higher education... all were dead forms that day.
[...]
....not to be read as a peace offering to any Hackneyed know-nothing theory haters, as it was, in the final analysis, the man's betrayal of Levinas in pursuit of some spectacle-renown that set me off in the first place. That and his absolute, and total disrespect for the study of politics. I remember I asked him at dinner, 'why do you seek to make Levinas into a marketable political commodity? if all you're looking for is a new marketable political vocabulary, an account of power that people will buy, well we already have that, its called poltical science." and he said, "well that's a pretty optimistic view of political science isn't it?" and everybody, I mean everybody, the entire philosophy department laughed. All of them. Now look, I know political science as an institutionalized study is pretty ridiculous, I majored in it because it was easy, and I liked enough of the classes. Thus it would be the most tolerable and lowest impact major in terms of the number of requirements it would place on my other studies, I had come to Vassar, after all, chiefly because it allowed me to do what I want. That's not the point, the point is, had Critchley ever even opened a political science book, or better yet, a political economy book, he would realize the absolute ridiculousness of what he was trying to do with Levinas. The foolishness of it. In terms of scholarship, philosophy is harder than politics, absolutely, much much harder, and more rewarding. However, scholarship is the form apropriate to philosophy, in the way that liquid is appropriate to thirst, it is not the proper form of poltics. Politics is the study of something else, something exterior, philosophy is coterminus with its study. This is what Critchley and Micheal Dillon and David Cambell and all the other idiot brits who want to make political demands out of Derrida and Levinas and Heidegger miss so fundamentally - the ideas can't surive the move between one realm and another. More to the point, then they are no longer the ideas themselves, but appear stripped and naked, made to stand up for whatever it is these idiots think they might mean in the poltical realm. All three of those thinkers were accounting for ideas qua ideas, you might say, not simply making new ones. Conintental thought is not politics new line of cars. The distance between the two is vast, and when it is crossed the results often look very different. If these people would look around, they would find that there have been Derridean readings of the poltical, (Alexander Wendt's The Social Theory of international realations is one) but they don't stand up and wave their hands and say here we are! he we are mighty philosophy! we understand! we get it! And so philosophy thinks the scholarly vocabulary of politcs has been standing still, but it hasn't. I'm not saying it can't improve, certainly it can, but the point is that that sort of scholarship, that sort of speaking, of poltics and of philosophy, can misread each other very easily. And then they think the other is just inspid. (or as Benhabib said when I asked her about poltical economy, over tea and crumpets one morning in Blegen, 'reductive,') And slowly they creep into each others realm and start saying very silly, silly things. Has Negri ever read Hayek? I doubt it. But he probably should before he starts calling himself a communist and making everybody look stupid, and his excuse, like Critchley's, that poltical science is beneath him, is, quite frankly, no longer acceptable. I think a lot of this goes back to my rant yesterday, what makes this total lack of cross-pollination possible, even demands it, is the university system. But here we go again...
So yes, I am flattered by your request, and by all means note bene away. But I just wanted to make it clear, or try again, I guess, to flesh out my would be objections to what is sometimes called Theory. Ironically, as I preach open-mindeness between these two disciplines, I have not spoken of the conservatives [and liberals] who lead the anti-theory charge, I have nothing to say to them. I wouldn't know where to begin.
All best
s
