post anarchism: a reader
post anarchism: a reader (2011) by duane rousselle and süreyyya evren .. via 236 pg kindle version from anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/duane-rousselle-and-sureyyya-evren-post-anarchism-a-reader]
notes/quotes:
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Soon after David Graeber’s article ‘The New Anarchists’ was published in one of the most prominent Marxist-oriented journals, New Left Review, the term had become widely accepted.[3]
new anarchists.. david graeber..
endnote 3: On the other hand, Graeber rejects the ‘honour’ of being the person who first coined the term. He even denies that he has ever used it: “I never used the expression ‘new anarchist’ myself. It’s in the title of the New Left Review piece, but the magazine makes up the title, not the author. I didn’t object to it but I would never use it as a title in that way. Insofar as I’ve ever consciously designated myself a particular type of anarchist it’s ‘small a’ – which is above all the kind that doesn’t go in for particular sub-identities. (Personal email, 17 November 2007)”
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According to Bourg, the activists of May 1968 were arguing that freedom was not free enough, equality was not equitable enough and imagination was not imaginative enough ..t
legit freedom (equity.. imagination..) will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
15
Todd May wrote his The Political Philosophy of the Poststructuralist Anarchism in 1994, well before the Battle of Seattle – ‘five days that shook the world’, as the title of one collection has it (Cockburn and St. Clair, 2000). Andrew Koch’s early article ‘Poststructuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism’ was also one of the first attempts at a scholarly marriage of post-structuralism and anarchism. Part 1 of our book, ‘When Anarchism Met Post-Structuralism’, is a collection of some of the main pieces which should be regarded as the first attempts to think anarchism together with post-structuralism; this phase of post-anarchism was concerned primarily with exploring the possibilities for a convergence. Koch’s chapter and May’s book were not embraced with great enthusiasm when they were first published; similarly, Hakim Bey’s ‘Post-Anarchism Anarchy’ was not thought to be among this frame of thinking in the 1990s. They were, rather, discoveries of the postanarchism that emerged after Seattle. One of the first scholarly attempts to formulate a ‘post-anarchist’ body of thought, in the mid 1990s, came from Saul Newman, who continued to work on the politics of post-anarchism, took part in debates, clarified and defended his own approach to post-anarchism quite extensively, and was therefore seen as the representative of a theoretically distinguished domain of political theory. Thus, his chapter, ‘Post-Anarchism and Radical Politics Today’, is an important formulation of this standpoint.
battle in seattle.. et al
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This understanding eliminates possible fields of research on different intersections between different anarchisms and thinkers like Bakhtin, who are not directly post-structuralist but had a huge influence on post-structuralism. When the term ‘post-structuralist anarchism’ is preferred, there is no way to think anarchism through hypertext or Cixous or Irigaray or art works or facts from political life or, perhaps most importantly, everyday life. It limits the scope to just some of the possible philosophical works. So, ‘postmodern anarchism’ in this sense sounds more open and effective.
The term ‘postmodern’ is much more flexible. For example, the postmodern matrix of Lewis Call reaches and combines Marcel Mauss, Saussure, Durkheim and Freud on the one hand and cyberpunk, Chomsky and Butler on the other. Using ‘postmodern anarchism’ also enabled Call to extend his work across cultural studies and dedicate a chapter to cyberpunk (Call, 2002). Call depicts postmodern anarchism as an anarchism that seeks to undermine the very theoretical foundations of the capitalist economic order and all associated politics – by using Nietzsche’s anarchy of becoming, Foucault’s anti-humanist micropolitics, Debord’s critique of the spectacle, Baudrillard’s theory of simulation, Lyotard’s ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’ and Deleuze’s rhizomatic nomad thinking; and to show that contemporary popular culture does indeed exhibit a very serious concern for profoundly new forms of radical politics, in this regard he incorporates the cyberpunk fiction of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (Call, 2002: 118–19).
noam chomsky.. bruce sterling.. society of spectacle (book).. gilles deleuze.. rhizomatic learning et al
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Comparing these three expressions, it can be seen that Call’s suggestion of postmodern anarchism was mostly denied by the wider milieu because of the negative connotations that today come with the term ‘postmodern’. Nowadays, ‘postmodern’ is not a respected term for an area for scholarly work, and also for many activists it is symptomatic of post-USSR neoliberal world capitalism. Besides, some well-known anarchist writers of the twentieth century, namely Murray Bookchin, Noam Chomsky and John Zerzan, articulated ruthless criticisms against ‘postmodern thinkers’ and that left an anti-postmodern impulse within anarchism (Bookchin, 1995; Chomsky, 2006; Zerzan, 2002). It is common within anarchist circles to come across anti-postmodern sensibilities, sensibilities which react to Foucault as if he were a petty-bourgeois nihilist, who, having deconstructed everything ends up with nothing to hold on to (Mueller, 2003: 34). And as Tadzio Mueller nicely put it, this criticism is nothing but the theoretical equivalent of the familiar branding of anarchists as brainless ‘rent-a-mob’ types with no positive proposals (ibid.: 34–5).
murray bookchin.. et al .. tadzio müller
oooof.. circling cancerous distraction ness.. academia ness.. defn ia ness.. marsh label law et al
18
Studying the histories of anarchism leads one to consider history’s nature as a form of knowledge and to question how knowledge on anarchism was arrived at.
oi – history ness and intellect ness
22
Generally speaking, post-anarchism is a new and developing current in the world radical political scene, and also in cultural studies. In this reader, we aim to present the major reference points so far, the key theories articulated and the discussions surrounding these theories, and to provide the reader with some insight into these emerging fields of debate.
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Part 1: When Anarchism Met Post-Structuralism
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1. Post-Structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism
Andrew M. Koch
*The problem of defining the ‘proper’ relationship between the individual and the larger community is as old as civilization. Classical and modern political theories have traditionally addressed this problem by grounding descriptive and prescriptive political formulations in conceptions of human nature or human essence. **Questions regarding the aggressiveness, avarice and rationality of the individual have provided the underlying dynamic for the debate regarding the necessity and form of external institutions. In the classical and modern periods, the conflict over how to represent the character of the individual culminated in a variety of competing political formulations. If human beings are self-serving and aggressive, then the strong coercive state becomes necessary. If the individual is shaped by the social body, then community practice becomes the essence and the teleology of human endeavours. If human beings are rational, to the extent that they can formulate a structure for controlling their aggressiveness, conflicts can be mediated. ‘Authority’ becomes a substitute for force, and participation and consent provide the ***legitimacy for collective decisions.
*problem only because in sea world for all of civ
**myth of tragedy and lord ness..
***ooof.. decision making is unmooring us law et al
Within this general framework the writings of classical anarchism can also be examined. The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century anarchists’ attacks on the state were based on a ‘rational’ representation of human nature. Reason, compassion, and gregariousness are essential to this view of anarchism. Not only is the state, as a coercive institution, fundamentally in conflict with this view of human nature, but the rigid monolithic character of its structure inhibits both the spontaneous character of association and the expression of genuine human kindness. And, although the foci of the classical anarchists differ and their prescriptions vary, the general ontological character of their argument is similar.
This chapter explores the origins and evolution of another perspective within the archaeology of ideas. As an epistemological problem, the relationship between the individual and the collective takes on a fundamentally different character. The major question is no longer one of representation but of validity: by what measure can any ontological characterization of essence or nature be justified? Is there any validity to the representation of human nature that underlies state practices?
no legit validity to anything.. all non legit data to date.. all whalespeak
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*Post-structuralism challenges the idea that it is possible to create a stable ontological foundation for the creation of universal statements about human nature. In the relationship between theory and practice, **these foundational claims have been used to legitimate the exercise of power. Without the ability to fix human identity, the political prescriptions that rely on such claims are open to question. This creates the basis for a different approach to the formulation of anarchist politics, what has come to be termed post-anarchism.
*to me.. all we could say.. maté basic needs law: the fundamental reality is that we are all human beings.. and we basically all have the same needs: authenticity and attachment – gabor maté
**if * then no need to ‘exercise power’ et al
Ontological Justifications for Anarchism
*The central feature of an ontological defence of anarchism is the representation of human nature. One of the most clearly elaborated ontological defences of anarchism can be found in William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1971). Godwin’s argument is that human beings are perfectible, not because each is able to reach a final condition, but because each is capable of continually improving (ibid.: 144). **The perfectibility of human nature is associated with the question of truth and justice, which is, in turn, generated by the power of reason.
*which we have no idea of.. ie: black science of people/whales law et al.. and if we did.. even if we got a new rat cage – aka: rat park.. could we rep/define a living/changing ness?.. i don’t think so
**ooooof.. whalespeak load of cancerous distractions
Godwin asserts a set of propositions regarding the character of human nature and then draws logical inferences from those assertions. Godwin believed that all human beings are equal in that they have an innate ability to reason (ibid.: 231). The problem in society, then, is *not to find the perfect person to rule but to cultivate sufficiently the reasoning capacities of all individuals. Once we have sufficient confidence in our own reasoning abilities, our acceptance of rule by others will be shaken. Confidence in others is the offspring of our own ignorance (ibid.: 247).
*kind of.. but rather.. listening (to itch-in-the-soul) capacities..
Godwin’s characterization of human nature, government and power are linked to a transcendental notion of truth. Truth and justice have an abstract condition of existence in which the world has only imperfect manifestations: ‘Truth is omnipotent’ (ibid.: 143). Vices and moral weakness are founded on ignorance (ibid.: 143). Truth will be victorious not only over ‘ignorance’ but also over sophistry (ibid.: 140). For this victory to occur, however, the truth must be communicated (ibid.: 140). Man’s perfectibility is advanced as he uncovers the truths of his existence and communicates them to others. Governments, which have become the foundations of inequality, exist because of ignorance. As ignorance declines, so will the basis of government (ibid.: 248).
oi.. again.. whalespeak load of cancerous distractions.. what truths? why must they be communicated? can’t we see these assumptions are chaining us to the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world
The same strategy for the justification of anarchism is found in the work of Peter Kropotkin (1987). Kropotkin bases his analysis of mankind on a conception of universal animal nature. In contrast to Darwin, Kropotkin asserted that human survival has been enhanced by cooperation, not competition. Most animal species that have survived use ‘mutual aid’ as a tool for survival. From this naturalistic observation, Kropotkin suggested that the history of the human species also shows the tendency toward cooperation. In the modern age, however, this natural condition has been mitigated by social conditions. Since the sixteenth century, with the emergence of the centralized nation state and the economic logic of capitalism, the institutions that supported mutual aid among the human species have been in retreat (ibid.: 203, 208).
mutual aid (kropotkin) .. pëtr kropotkin.. et al.. still cancerous distractions
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To Kropotkin, ‘progress’ is measured according to those institutions that extend the natural condition of mutual aid (1987: 180). Modern institutions, however, corrupt the individual. The undesirable traits in human beings will be eliminated by disposing of the institutions that promote such characteristics (ibid.: 83). Kropotkin acknowledged that this will not be easy to achieve because the law serves the ruling class (Kropotkin cited in Gould and Truitt, 1973: 450–1).
rather.. by restoring/uncovering missing pieces
Pierre Joseph Proudhon presented a similar ontological justification for anarchism. In What Is Property? *Proudhon argued that the idea of property was not natural to the human condition (1966: 251). The system of property leads to inequality that can only be maintained by force. Proudhon was, however, equally critical of state communism. Communism oppresses the various faculties of individuals (ibid.: 261). In place of either of these systems, Proudhon proposed a form of social organization he called liberty. For Proudhon, liberty is the condition in which mankind is capable of exercising rationality in the organization of society (ibid.: 283). Liberty brings the body of scientific knowledge to bear on political questions. Political truths exist and can be understood by rational scientific inquiry (ibid.: 276). **To the extent that a society is enlightened, the need for oppressive state authority diminishes. Ultimately, human reason will replace the oppressive state.
pierre-joseph proudhon et al.. property ness et al..
**rather.. to extent we are all undisturbed.. et al
Origins of an Epistemological Defence of Anarchism
In contrast to an ontological defence of anarchism, an epistemologically based theory of anarchism questions the processes out of which a ‘characterization’ of the individual occurs. If the validity of any representation can be questioned, then the political structures that rest on that representational foundation must also be suspect. If the conditions for the existence of the truth claims embraced by the political order are demonstrated to be suspect, and if the representations by which the character of the state is propagated and legitimated are open to interpretation, doubt, or shown to be grounded in fiction, then the authority of the state may be legitimately questioned.
aka: sea world.. black science of people/whales law et al
The elements for an epistemologically based critique of the state can be traced back to the nineteenth century in the writings of Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche. In the contemporary world, the same challenges to the Enlightenment view of knowledge, and ultimately to the state, can be found in the writings of the post-structuralists.
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The Nineteenth-Century Attack on Representation
Max Stirner’s The Ego and His Own (1973) is a subjectivist’s defence against the power of the state. What is unique about the work, especially in relation to other nineteenth-century anarchist thought, is the method Stirner employs for his defence of egoism. Stirner’s main task is not to construct an alternative view of human nature but to suggest that the systems of thought that have been employed in the Western philosophic and political tradition are based on an error. The error is that they construct a fixed idea of the human being and then seek to construct man in the image of that idea. Thoughts and conceptions, themselves, become the chains that enslave us. We are prisoners of our conceptions..t (ibid.: 63).
yeah that.. huge.. no legit data to date.. if we would ever have any.. dawn of everything (book) ness.. black science of people/whales law ness
Stirner traces the emergence of the Idea in the history of Western thought. Ancient man was concerned with the world, and the world was its own truth. The mind was to be used as a weapon, a means against nature (ibid.: 17). But the world is in a constant state of change. Therefore, truth is a fleeting moment. This was an unsettling position for modern man.
intellectness as cancerous distraction et al.. what does truth in fleeting moment even mean?.. why are we obsessed with truth ness.. rather than living ness..
Stirner identified the transformation to the modern age with the emergence of spiritualism and the creation of static concepts. Specifically, he argued that the modern age emerged with the decline of ancient civilization and the rise of Christianity. Asserting that the modern age is characterized by the notion of the Idea, or Concept, Stirner suggested a natural affinity between the spiritualism of modern philosophy and the spiritualism of Christian thought. Whether in spiritual or secular matters, both convey the same ‘foolishness’ of the fixed idea (ibid.: 44).
Stirner claimed that the individual loses uniqueness in the face of the generalized and fixed concept of ‘Man’. This claim is especially relevant in the area of politics. Stirner surveyed what he considered to be three types of liberal thought: political, social and humane. Each ultimately rests on the creation of an image to which the individual must conform. Political liberalism is possible only through the creation of the idea of citizenship. It transforms individual into citizen in the image of the state (ibid.: 107). Social liberalism robs people of their property in the name of community (ibid.: 117–18). However, humane liberalism, because of its subtlety, is the most insidious because it removes the uniqueness of human beings and turns the real living ego, man, into the generalized concept, Man (ibid.: 128). The individual is lost to the Concept. Servitude continues, but in the name of humanity rather than God, King or country. Stirner rejected all three of these liberal formulations and sought to find the place for man that has been lost in the modern age.
the it is me ness.. and find the bravery to change your mind ness
Stirner opposes the attempt to formulate a notion of human ‘essence’ (ibid.: 81), yet his alternative is clearly not wholly successful. *He is aware of the problem but lacks the linguistic tools to escape it. He, therefore, lapses into his own characterization of the human subject at various points throughout the work. This leaves the work as a whole unable to remove the notion of the historical subject, even within a general attack on its characterization.
*because they are part of it.. part of the cancerous distraction
The significance of the work is clearly in its reformulation of the methodological problems; Stirner’s position is an early formulation of the attack on representation. This is reflected in his condemnation of ‘concepts’, ‘principles’ and ‘standpoints’ that are used as weapons against individuals (ibid.: 63). More generally, Stirner’s attack has the character of a universal condemnation of ‘ontological culture’. The culture of ‘being’ and the representations of that being are characterized as suspect at best and dangerous at worst. Rather than focusing on a competing model of human nature, Stirner was concerned with showing the linkage between ideas and the context in which they are generated. This method is similar to that labelled ‘genealogy’ by Nietzsche and the post-structuralists.
representation ness.. marsh label law ness.. et al
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Nietzsche, Genealogy and the Problem of Language
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche created a language with which to analyse the presuppositions that underlie the Enlightenment view of knowledge. Nietzsche denied the validity of Kant’s assertion that there is a transcendental reality of which our knowledge is limited. In denying the existence of a transcendental realm of things in themselves, Nietzsche is raising doubts about the foundation on which the entire Enlightenment enterprise has been built. The magnitude of this assertion cannot be over-emphasized..t
Whether one subscribes to the Platonic notion of the forms, adheres to the Kantian notion of a thing in itself, or defends the Hegelian totalizing teleology of world history, to Nietzsche these are nothing more than fictions. Each of these systems of thought suggests that there is a substratum to reality in which the true causal dynamic of world events resides. Thus what has passed in history as epistemology has been little more than metaphysics (Nietzsche, 1957). Science also rests on presuppositions, the truth of which cannot be proved. For Nietzsche, the world is neither true nor real, but living ..t(Deleuze, 1983: 184).
huge.. and why we need to focus on life over survival ness
Nietzsche will not deny that these fictions have served a utility function in human history. At the beginning of The Use and Abuse of History (1957), Nietzsche suggests that the drawing of a line to establish a specific horizon, distinguishing the knowable and the unknowable, the visible and the invisible, allows for the generation and reproduction of knowledge and culture (ibid.: 7). Within the metaphysics of culture, falsity and narrowness are virtues when compared to the intellectual paralysis generated by ever-shifting horizons (ibid.: 8).
At this point an epistemological paradox around the idea of exclusion appears. To generate knowledge, particularly of history and culture, one must continually limit the universe of one’s objects, closing the system. One must draw a boundary around that which is relevant. But to do so removes the phenomenon from the context of its occurrence. This process negates the possibility of truth. Therefore, history never contains truth; it is the past transformed to resemble the present..t (ibid.: 15).
history ness et al.. as cancerous distraction
Cultural and historical analyses create fiction. This is logically true, regardless of the utility of the proposition. Because the past is continually reconfigured to resemble the present, any notion of an ahistorical universal is absurd. The historical character of truth is also reinforced in a second way. Because truth does not and cannot exist apart from those who possess it, and because those beings are historical entities, truth is a historical phenomenon (Strong, 1988: 44).
If universal truth is denied, then the domain of intellectual inquiry is transformed. The quest for knowledge is not satisfied by representations. There is no longer the possibility of stating truth about human beings or nature. Representations of being, truth and the real are only fictions (Nietzsche, 1967: 266). If this is accepted, then there remains a twofold intellectual task. The first is to unmask the existing structure of culture so as to reveal its metaphysical illusions (genealogy). The second task is to return to the individual a conception of life stripped of its illusion. This is represented by the ‘will to power’. These ideas are clearly related. If the will to power is in part the will to truth, which Nietzsche suggests it is, and if the ideal of truth does not reside in true reality, it must be contained in the medium of truth, language. Language contains the concepts that characterize the world. The genealogical method explores the process by which facts acquire their status from the utility function they serve in the language of history.
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Nietzsche’s genealogical exploration is concerned with the way in which the facts of the contemporary world have been created. Of particular interest is the creation of morality. To this point in history, claimed Nietzsche (1956), the intrinsic worth of values had been taken for granted; they must be called into question: ‘We need to know the conditions from which those values have sprung and how they have developed and changed: morality as a consequence, symptom, mask’ (ibid.: 155).
Questioning the origin and status of values suggests the link between language, knowledge and power that will be an essential component of the post-structuralist claims. Language expresses a set of conceptualizations about the world. And, because the person who makes a statement using the concepts contained in language is not making an objectively true statement, the world of appearance is a creation of those who speak and give the world its image (Nietzsche cited in Kaufman, 1968).
language as control/enclosure et al
Thus Nietzsche asks ‘Who speaks?’ when moral positions are asserted. In exploring the genealogy of the concept good, Nietzsche claimed that its genesis was in the utility it served for the nobles (ibid.: 160). As the concept of good, originally associated with the actions of the nobility, is adopted by the lower strata, the concept loses its necessary connection to the existence of an aristocracy. Yet the association of good with nobles remains ingrained in the language.
The problem created by this representation of moral virtue is that it generates a ‘fixed’ characterization of human nature. This is true whether the characterization of human nature is good or bad. In fact, Nietzsche claims that the characterizations of good and bad are dependent on each other, suggesting that no knowledge at all is conveyed by their usage. However, the result of this characterization is a fixed, ahistorical notion of morality that can be applied to individuals. Society becomes immersed in the process of sorting the good from the bad and of assigning responsibility based on that characterization..t
supposed to’s of school/work.. socrates supposed to law.. et al
By denying the possibility of a moral representation of human nature, Nietzsche brings into question the process that has dominated the political experience of the Western world. If morality has its basis in interest rather than truth, the foundations that underlie political assertions of right and justice are also obliterated. Claims of the state have their genesis in the interests of those who created the language of justice in the same way that the interests of the commercial classes and the royal dynasties created the concept of nationalism (Nietzsche cited in Kaufmann, 1968: 61).
If politics cannot be organized around truth because it lacks transcendental grounding, and politics cannot be organized around justice because its representation reflects the interests of those who define it, then politics is reduced to the expression of power. The state is organized immorality (Nietzsche, 1967: 382). It represents the ‘idolatry of the superfluous’ (Nietzsche cited in Kaufmann, 1968: 162). The morality of the state is the instinct of the herd, with the force of numbers legitimating its actions.
Nietzsche asked, ‘Under what conditions did man construct the value judgments “good” and “evil”?’ (Nietzsche, 1956: 151). By replacing the transcendental claims of morality with the genealogical enterprise, Nietzsche suggested a method for the critique of all universal claims to knowledge in the West. Nietzsche contextualized all claims, whether in the discourse on physical nature or moral propositions. *Both convey the tools of a species seeking a conceptual ordering of the world to enhance survival.
ooof.. all good.. wow.. great.. till *here.. need life over survival ness.. esp when we keep missing the essence of what our legit needs are
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Thus, while Nietzsche rejected the ontological claims that provided the foundation for much of nineteenth-century anarchism, he made a monumental contribution to the development of post-anarchism. Nietzsche *also introduced a question which would open a new avenue of inquiry for twentieth century post-structuralism. Under what conditions does contingent knowledge take on the character of a fact?
*again.. ooof.. so much good.. till something like this question.. knowledge/fact ness.. aren’t they universals you just said to let go of ? how can something alive (always changing) be defined as fact
Post-Atructuralism and the Critique of Enlightenment Epistemology
Inspired by Nietzsche and linguistic philosophy, the movement of poststructuralism in the late twentieth century continues to challenge the Enlightenment epistemology. The works of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard, as three of the most notable members of the post-structuralist movement, all signify a break with what they perceive to be an epistemology based on the fixed idea. These authors and other post-structuralists reflect a shift away from the ontological character of the human discourse that dominated the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
In analysing the problems with Enlightenment epistemology, the common features of the post-structural position emerge. Reacting specifically to the structuralism of Saussure and Lévi-Strauss, the post-structural criticism is a comprehensive critique of the idea of representation. Linked to the questioning of the status of representation and to the rejection of a fixed conception of human nature is the denial of the ‘grand narratives’ that underlie mass politics..t
representation ness .. as cancerous distraction
again.. black science of people/whales law et al
In the attack on representation, there is an implicit negation of any fixed content for subjectivity in social and historical discourse. The post-structuralists reject what they consider the ontological character of modern individualism which has provided the foundation for nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberal ideology. They also reject the teleological character of twentieth-century Marxism.
The post-structuralists challenge the idea that truth and knowledge are simply the result of a linear accumulation of facts about objects in the world. Science, economics, culture and politics change as the language, concepts and ideas regarding what is acceptable as truth change. Thus the linear view of knowledge is replaced with a conceptualization of knowledge that is contingent on a plurality of internally consistent episteme. It is this idea that *raises questions about the foundational basis of the modern state.
*again.. foundation of state or whatever.. is cancerous distraction.. irrelevant.. if/when realize nothing legit/true (aka: alive if static) to date
Representation, Language and Truth
Of central concern to the post-structuralists is the contrast between the modern and postmodern understanding of knowledge. At the centre of this debate is the status of representation. Representation signifies a process by which experience is turned into the signs of experience, which can then be ordered for recovery and use. Whether ordered from appearance (classical episteme) or according to function (modern episteme), the epistemological problem remains. The epistemology of representation requires a closed system. This is the only way that the identities of the signified can remain stable (Laclau cited in Ross, 1988: 73).
The attack on representation is an attack on the idea of a closed system (Arac, 1986: xxii). The argument centres on the claim that a closed system always omits an element contained in the object that it seeks to describe. In addition, the idea of representation fixes the meaning of the sign outside its context, making communication through the use of signs almost meaningless (Derrida, 1982b: 299–301). The post-structuralist critique of representation links the process of concept formation to the production and reproduction of language (Benhabib, 1987: 106–9). The attack on representation results in the conclusion that the communication of intended meaning is always inhibited because the meaning of the sign can never be clearly communicated.
all.. to wengrow?
language as control/enclosure.. need to try idiosyncratic jargon ness
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First, grammar contains its own internal laws governing discourse, regardless of the content of the message. *The rules governing the truth claims of the message are then internal to the system of language itself and do not require the construction of an external system of verification. Second, because the verification of signs and symbols occurs internationally, there is no possibility of a metalanguage that links the various languages. (This is the focus of Lyotard’s 1984 argument in The Postmodern Condition.) Third, because each language has different symbolic referents, statements must be context specific. This makes the communication across different systems of language difficult, if not impossible. Finally, with the plurality of possible grammatical systems, and the context-specific nature of their claims, irreconcilable tension must exist among heteromorphous language systems.
*potential here for idiosyncratic jargon ness.. but doubt that’s how it’s meant.. definitely not how ‘grammar’ ness et al has played out since forever..
It is possible, therefore, to deduce an ideal speech situation in which discourse occurs that is free from the influence of institutionalized power. But if the post-structuralists are correct, what would such a speech situation produce? To the post-structuralists, the ideal speech situation will produce skewed languages speaking at one another – neither truth nor consensus..t
again.. potential here for idiosyncratic jargon ness.. but not how it’s played out since forever..
for that to happen need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox so we can org around legit needs
ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
.. The real question is not what something is in itself. There is no such metalanguage that can support the idea of essence. Genealogical analysis focuses on the context that makes a statement of ‘this is’ possible. In describing the application of this method to the study of the prison, Foucault states that he studies the practice of imprisonment to *understand the ‘moral technology’ in which the practice becomes accepted as natural (1981: 4–5). Thus there is a direct connection between the accepted practice and the production of truth that supports that practice.
*aka: conditions for legit freedom.. in order to get to root of problem
ie: legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
..The task of post-structural analysis is not to replace one set of axiomatic structures with another but to provide a reading of scientific, cultural and social texts such that the contradictions, assumptions and a prioris are made explicit (Aronowitz cited in Ross, 1988: 55). Only in this way can the connections among language, the production of truth, and the institutions of power be made apparent.
ooof.. back to (to me .. blatant) cancerous distractions.. oi.. ie: fact/truth ness et al
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Epistemological Relativism and the Critique of Power
The political side of their epistemological critique links the context in which the political statements are formulated to the institutions that generate the rules and procedures for institutional discourse. As Foucault asserted, all institutions of power have a mechanism for generating and controlling discourse (1980: 93). Thus, discourse not only generates legitimating discourse for that institution but also controls the right to speak within the institutional framework..t (Foucault, 1977: 214).
again.. language as control/enclosure
Post-structural analysis of the political environment substitutes a focus on epistemology for the modernist focus on ontology. The concern changes from ‘what is human nature?’ to ‘how have we come to this belief about human nature?’ ..A plurality of languages requires the decentring of politics.
If post-structuralism counters the universal claims of the modernist epistemology and replaces them with a notion of plurality and contingency, then it can challenge the content of the dominant ideology without the substitution of one popular truth for another (Ross, 1988: ix). Where no a priori exists regarding the subject, there can be no universal regarding politics. *The post-structuralists argue that the human discourses need to give up universals (Mouff cited in Ross, 1988: 34).
*wouldn’t that include giving up on truth/fact ness.. ? oi
If truth is relative to the construction of a language in which taxonomies, concepts and facts are used to judge and regulate activity, then truth is not something to be discovered but something that is produced..t The post-structuralists claim that the creation of knowledge needs to be understood as a process in which contingent value is replicated within a closed epistemological system. For this reason, there is a link between the social, economic, scientific and political discourses within any society: ‘In any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice’ (Foucault, 1973: 168). Each episteme supports a different form of domination. In any given period, then, the system in which knowledge is produced and reinforced maintains the political order..t
perpetuating the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of myth of tragedy and lord
*The post-structuralists oppose the tyranny of globalizing discourse on any level (Foucault, 1980: 80, 83). The methodologies suggested by Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard (deconstruction, genealogy and paralogy, respectively) are all designed to decentre the production of language and truth to more accurately reflect the contingent and relative character of knowledge. Society contains a plurality of heteromorphous languages. Genealogical analysis reveals that history has been a struggle among these languages (Foucault, 1980: 83).
*if so.. then need to try a way that’s sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. to facil the thing we’ve not yet tried: the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake..
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
At this point, the attack of the post-structuralists appears entirely negative in character. There is no possibility of truth; there are only contingent truths. There are no legitimating foundations for politics. There are only power struggles in which the power is masked, effectively or ineffectively, in the production of legitimating discourse through self-replicating institutions of power. The existing political order is generated from a language of representation that is context specific and insupportable in its universalism.
yeah to all that.. now let’s follow thru with a legit alt.. legit alt conditions et al.. (hari rat park law) so that we can do/be that
35
Post-Structuralism, the State and Anarchist Theory
Several aspects of the post-structuralists’ position have particular importance for an epistemological formulation of anarchism. The attempt to fix human nature or to create any idea of human essence is clearly rejected. The idea that legitimacy can be grounded in process is also suspect (cf. Derrida, 1982a: 304). The post-structuralist position also eliminates any idea of historical inevitability or teleology. History is the discourse of the present projected onto the past.
In general, post-structuralism provides the tools for a systematic deconstruction of the claims to legitimacy of any institutional authority. If truth determines how we live, and the production of truth is relative to a particular episteme and the corresponding constellation of power, then how we live is ultimately determined by power, not truth in either the Platonic or the Kantian sense. Dismantling the myths on which politics is based demonstrates the prejudices of existing practice. Removing the possibility that the state can be based on truth reveals the existing structures of power in social relations.
The post-structuralists, he claims, are not able to make any determinations of what is just and unjust.
isn’t that the point (of freedom et al).. and why we need tech as nonjudgmental expo labeling.. tech w/o judgment
The political question that emerges from the post-structuralists’ strategy concerns what remains after the epistemological critique of power. Is there any type of politics that can be defended? It is into this space that the epistemological foundation of anarchism emerges.
36
The Epistemological Basis of Anarchism
The central problem for anarchist theory, in the light of the post-structuralist critique of power and knowledge, is to build a non-representational basis for anarchism. A new theory of anarchism cannot be based on the ontological assumptions contained within the classical anarchist literature. The characterization of human beings as benevolent or rational cannot be sustained with any more certainty than the claims that human beings are selfish and irrational. Anarchism must find its grounding outside any fixed structure..t
aka: no judgement.. ie: the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. to facil the thing we’ve not yet tried: the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake..
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
The Empirical Assertion of Anarchy
*Experience cannot be recaptured by language. The closed grammatical and semantic system used for discourse must, by its nature, omit elements of experience. Any attempt to categorize or reformulate experience creates fiction..t A reconstituted experience takes the forms, categories and concepts created in a historical and collectively grounded context. Reflection on experience is, therefore, historical context reflecting back on itself.
*aka: whalespeak.. all fiction to date.. and again.. thinking we can capture living things w/o then killing them.. oi
If discourse is relative to the governing episteme, and if all claims to truth are subject to those same constraints, then the ability to formulate a universally valid, rational or normative discourse would be impossible. If that is the case, *the discourse that has come to rationalize the existence and functioning of the state within the modernist episteme is valid only within the closed and constrained sets of assumptions and concepts that constitute its context..t Given that meaning in discourse is generated by metaphorical reference to individuated experience and that those individuated metaphorical references are plural, **the communication of intended meaning is impossible. Within this epistemological framework, the idea that consensus can be achieved in political discourse through the imposition of a structural context, whether democratic or otherwise, is reduced to nonsense. Taken together – the relativity of both ontology and epistemology, the plurality of language systems, and the impossibility of communicating intended meaning – ***the potential to reach consensus without either deception or force becomes impossible..t The true character of the society is revealed as anarchy, the realization of which is prevented by the various fictions used to legitimize state power. The anarchistic nature of existing society remains an undercurrent to the surface relation of power.
*aka: whalespeak can only refence/perpetuate sea world
**assuming we would ever have .. or think about.. intended meaning if we were legit free.. actually a huge cancerous distracting assumption
***public consensus always oppresses someone(s)
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
37
Without ideological justification to support the institutional structure, social relations are naturally anarchistic. Anarchy is the true, empirical, character of society.
well.. not sure it captures it all.. depends on defn.. et al..
is there even a character of society? (or does that kill us.. in the proces of characterizing us)..
i think the only thing we can really say.. hope for.. is that ‘in an disturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows
and to that.. again.. the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
The Normative Defence of Anarchism
Given the heteromorphous nature of possible attitudes, rules and prescriptions, consensus is not logically possible. Consensus can only be reached using a totalizing conception of society. But given the plurality of experiences, interests, languages and epistemological contexts, such universalism can only take the character of totalitarian politics..
any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
If knowledge, as the construction of truth, cannot be externally validated, and epistemological and ontological plurality is the background for political reality, then anarchism becomes the only defensible normative position. Anarchism denies the state’s claims to have the legitimate right to determine what is sacred and profane. Anarchism represents the condition in which the optimal state of external plurality can exist.
aka: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
though we’ve not yet tried it to date
38
the metaphors of any culture cannot close the gap between the uniqueness of experience and the standardization necessary for discourse..t
why we need 1st/most: means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening as global detox to/for 8b idiosyncratic jargoned voices
To the post-structuralists, the impossibility of communicating perfect meaning in political discourse suggests the impossibility of creating consensual politics. This is the case because both the descriptive and prescriptive statements that form the foundation for consensual politics are reducible to subjectivist claims. The truth value of any such assertions has been dissolved by the post-structuralist critique. The plurality of languages and the individuated nature of sensory experience suggest that each denotative and prescriptive statement must be unique to each individual. Consensual politics is reduced to an expression of power, the ability for one set of metaphors to impose itself onto the discursive system to impose its validating conditions for truth.
39
*Post-structuralism has provided the analytic tools..t to clarify what Max Stirner suggested in the nineteenth century. Stirner argued that the concept of self represents a link between culture and institutionalized power. If the self cannot validate its understanding through the belief in transcendent truth, and if social discourse consists of metaphors, traces of reified metaphysics, and power, then the self has only the self through which to validate being. As a result, **Stirner embraced the concept of the ego.
*we haven’t provide legit tools (for humanity) to date..
mufleh humanity law: we have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity– Luma Mufleh
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. to facil the thing we’ve not yet tried: the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake..
**i would call it the itch-in-the-soul.. otherwise not deep enough.. not legit self
Stirner claimed that the state imposes its will, its thoughts and its concepts on the individual body. In defending his ‘skin’ against the tyranny of the concept (1973: 148), Stirner is defending the sensing being against the process of objectification at the hands of the state. It is again Foucault who comes closest to the assertions of Stirner in his research on the control of ‘bodies’ in prisons and mental institutions. Foucault described his work as an inquiry into the ‘technology of the self’..t (Foucault cited in Rabinow, 1984: 229). He was concerned with the various objectification strategies that have been used to control bodies. Because the technologies of the self imposed by institutions are both contingent and speculative, Foucault concludes that they should be resisted (1977: 211).
to wengrows tweet on shaman tech et al.. and.. to me.. tech as it could be ness.. that listens to self-talk as data.. in order to connect us.. aka: ai as augmenting interconnectedness
40
The post-structuralist critique of modernism undermines the project of constructing a universal human identity. In the absence of a metaconcept of human nature, the discourse on human subjectivity moves from a search for fact to a discussion of multiple interpretations..t This shift constitutes a movement from science to aesthetics in the discourse about human beings.
aka: idiosyncratic jargon ness via nonjudgmental expo labeling as means to communicate/connect us
The struggle for liberation has the character of political resistance to a process of semantic and metaphorical reductionism that serves the interests of control and manipulation.
Ultimately, post-structuralism offers a new opportunity to reformulate the claims of anarchism. By demonstrating how political oppression is linked to the larger cultural processes of knowledge production and cultural representation, post-structuralism conveys a logic of opposition. By defending uniqueness and diversity, post-structuralism stands against any totalizing conception of being. Its liberating potential derives from the deconstruction of any concept that makes oppression appear rational.
42
2. Is Post-Structuralist Political Theory Anarchist?
Todd May
Anarchism is often dismissed in the same terms as post-structuralism for being an ethical relativism or a voluntarist chaos. However, the theoretical tradition of anarchism, though not as voluminous as Marxism or liberalism, provides a general framework within which post-structuralist thought can be situated, and thus more adequately evaluated.
43
[…]
The post-structuralist analyses of knowledge, of desire and of language, subvert the humanist discourse which is the foundation of traditional anarchism. .Humanism is the nineteenth-century motif, and individual autonomy and subjectivity its concepts, that must be rejected if a politics adequate to our age is to be articulated..Humanism is the foundation of all political theory bequeathed to us by the nineteenth century. In rejecting it, post-structuralism has questioned not only the fundamental assumptions of such theory, but also the very idea that political theory actually requires foundations. That is why post-structuralism is so often misunderstood as an extreme relativism or nihilism.
To offer a general political theory would in fact run counter to their common contention that oppression must be analysed and resisted on the many registers and in the many nexuses in which it is discovered. It would be to invite a return to the problem created by humanism, which became a tool of oppression to the very degree that it became a conceptual foundation for political or social thought. For the post-structuralists, there is a Stalin waiting behind every general political theory: either you conform to the concepts on which it relies, or else you must be changed or eliminated in favour of those concepts. Foundationalism in political theory is, in short, inseparable from representation.
This is the trap of an anarchist humanism. By relying on humanism as its conceptual basis, anarchists precluded the possibility of resistance by those who do not conform to its dictates of normal subjectivity. Thus it is no surprise when in Kropotkin’s critique of the prisons he lauds Pinel as a liberator of the insane, failing to see the new psychological bonds Pinel introduced and which Foucault analyses in Histoire de la folie (Kropotkin, 1970: esp. 234; Foucault, 1972: 511–30). For traditional anarchism, abnormality is to be cured rather than expressed; and though far more tolerant of deviance from the norm in matters of sexuality and other behaviours, there remains in such an anarchism the concept of the norm as the prototype of the properly human. This prototype, the post-structuralists have argued, does not constitute the source of resistance against oppression in the contemporary age; rather, through its unity and its concrete operation it is one form of such oppression.
myth of normal et al
Traditional anarchism, in its foundational concepts – and moreover, in the fact of possessing foundational concepts – betrays the insights which constitute its core. Humanism is a form of representation; thus, anarchism, as a critique of representation, cannot be constructed on its basis. Poststructuralist theorizing has, in effect, offered a way out of the humanist trap by engaging in non-foundationalist political critique. Such a critique reveals how decentralized, non-representative radical theorizing can be articulated without relying upon a fundamental concept or motif in the name of which it offers its critique. However, one question remains which, unanswered, threatens the very notion of post-structuralism as a political critique. If it is not in the name of humanism or some other foundation that the critique occurs, in what or whose name is it a critique? How can the post-structuralists criticize existing social structures as oppressive without either a concept of what is being oppressed or at least a set of values that would be better realized in another social arrangement? In eliminating autonomy as inadequate to play the role of the oppressed in political critique, has post-structuralism eliminated the role itself, and with it the very possibility of critique? In short, can there be critique without representation?
both cancerous distractions.. let go
44
Simply put, evaluation cannot occur without values; and where there are values, there is representation. For instance, in his history of the prisons, Foucault criticizes the practices of psychology and penology for normalizing individuals. His criticism rests on a value that goes something like this: one should not constrain others’ action or thought unnecessarily. Lyotard can be read as promoting the value, among others, of allowing the fullest expression for different linguistic genres. Inasmuch as these values are held to be valid for all, there is representation underlying post-structuralist theorizing.
Post-structuralism leaves the decision of how the oppressed are to determine themselves to the oppressed; it merely provides them with intellectual tools that they may find helpful along the way.
ooof
Thus post-structuralist theory is indeed anarchist. It is in fact more consistently anarchist than traditional anarchist theory has proved to be. The theoretical wellspring of anarchism – the refusal of representation by political or conceptual means in order to achieve self-determination along a variety of registers and at different local levels – finds its underpinnings articulated most accurately by the post-structuralist political theorists. ..The traditional anarchists pointed to the dangers of the dominance of abstraction; the post-structuralists have taken account of those dangers in all of their works. They have produced a theoretical corpus that addresses itself to *an age that has seen too much of political representation and too little of self-determination. What both traditional anarchism and contemporary post-structuralism seek is a society – or better, a set of intersecting societies – in which people are not told who they are, what they want, and how they shall live, but who will be able to determine these things for themselves..t These societies constitute an ideal and, as the post-structuralists recognize, probably an impossible ideal. But in the kinds of analyses and struggles such an ideal promotes – analyses and struggles dedicated to opening up concrete spaces of freedom in the social field – lay the value of anarchist theory, both traditional and contemporary.
*the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
for that.. needs to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
46
3. Post-Anarchism and Radical Politics Today
Saul Newman
already read and have notes here: post anarchism & radical politics today
66-67
4. Post-Anarchism Anarchy
Hakim Bey
Between tragic Past & impossible Future, anarchism seems to lack a Present – as if afraid to ask itself, here & now, WHAT ARE MY TRUE DESIRES? – & what can I DO before it’s too late? … Yes, imagine yourself confronted by a sorcerer who stares you down balefully & demands, ‘What is your True Desire?’ Do you hem & haw, stammer, take refuge in ideological platitudes? Do you possess both Imagination & Will, can you both dream & dare – or are you the dupe of an impotent fantasy?
Look in the mirror & try it … (for one of your masks is the face of a sorcerer) …
The anarchist ‘movement’ today contains virtually no Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans or children … even tho in theory such genuinely oppressed groups stand to gain the most from any anti-authoritarian revolt. Might it be that anarchISM offers no concrete program whereby the truly deprived might fulfil (or at least struggle realistically to fulfil) real needs & desires?
If so, then this failure would explain not only anarchism’s lack of appeal to the poor & marginal, but also the disaffection & desertions from within its own ranks. Demos, picket-lines & reprints of 19th century classics don’t add up to a vital, daring conspiracy of self-liberation. If the movement is to grow rather than shrink, a lot of deadwood will have to be jettisoned & some risky ideas embraced.
The potential exists. Any day now, vast numbers of americans are going to realize they’re being force-fed a load of reactionary boring hysterical artificially-flavored crap. Vast chorus of groans, puking & retching … angry mobs roam the malls, smashing & looting … etc., etc. ..We could have revolt in our times – & in the process, we could realize many of our True Desires, even if only for a season, a brief Pirate Utopia, a warped free-zone in the old Space/Time continuum.
If the A.O.A. retains its affiliation with the ‘movement,’ we do so not merely out of a romantic predilection for lost causes – or not entirely. Of all ‘political systems,’ *anarchism (despite its flaws, & precisely because it is neither political nor a system) comes closest to our understanding of reality, ontology, the nature of being. As for the deserters … we agree with their critiques, but note that they seem to offer no new powerful alternatives. **So for the time being we prefer to concentrate on changing anarchism from within. Here’s our ***program, comrades:
*yet.. still not quite close enough.. because still not unconditional enough.. the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
**so .. not only letting go enough (aka: unconditional).. holding on too much (ie: cancerous distractions et al)
***long list/descripton of 9 things.. all cancerous distractions.. ooof
AnarchISM ultimately implies anarchy – & anarchy is chaos. Chaos is the principle of continual creation … & Chaos never died.
(March ’87, NYC: A.O.A. Plenary Session)
69
Part 2: Post-Anarchism Hits the Streets
70
5. Empowering Anarchy: Power, Hegemony and Anarchist Strategy [49]
Tadzio Mueller
notes from this section on empowering anarchy page
88
6. Hegemony, Affinity and the Newest Social Movements: At the End of the 00s
Richard J.F. Day
My primary goal is to argue that the field in which these interventions are occurring is ordered by the relation of the various authors to what I will call the hegemony of hegemony. By this I mean the commonsensical assumption that meaningful social change – and social order itself – can only be achieved through the deployment of universalizing hierarchical forms, epitomized by the nation state, but including conceptions of the world state and other globalized institutions as well. As I will try to show, this assumption is challenged not only by some important and highly visible forms of contemporary activism, but also by a long-standing tradition of affinity-based direct action that has been submerged under (neo)liberal and (post-)Marxist theory and practice. Hence my secondary purpose: to contribute to the ongoing effort to destabilize the hegemony of hegemony, by exploring the possibilities of non-hegemonic forms of radical social change.
90
Proceeding in this way would be at odds with what I am trying to do, that is, to challenge the deference that is given to practices guided by a hegemonic logic.
108
7. The Constellation of Opposition
Jason Adams
Several years after the events of May 1968, Michel Foucault argued that they had fundamentally transformed the grounds on which the game of war would be played (Foucault, 1980: 116).
ooooof
109
Strangely, for some this perspective is fundamentally bleak in that with the death of the subject there is said to also be a concomitant death of resistance as well; yet Foucault argued that far from limiting resistance, this transformation multiplied its possibilities into literally thousands of new arenas of conflict
yeah 108.. ooooof ooooooof
127
8. Acracy_Reloaded@post1968/1989: Reflections on Postmodern Revolutions
Antón Fernández de Rota
130
Among others, for example, the importance of fighting against the forms of power/knowledge (the fight of the patients against medical or pharmaceutical-industry authority). I believe that all these features remain valid.
creates:
A carcinogenic pole in which the excess of the body is turned against itself, that turns it into a black hole (the sadness in Spinoza’s philosophy), and a delirious pole that reinvents the body (Spinozian joy).
always forever whac-a-mole-ing ness itis until we let go enough to try something legit diff.. ooooof
133
Without this articulation nothing is possible. (this: to articulate with the different subjectivities and cultural global expressions)
ooof.. just chained every possibility back up.. need itch-in-the-soul 8b souls 1st thing everyday as label.. or won’t legit detox
134
Rather than a fixed status, ..to transcend the old casts, of becoming-other and of procuring our bodies in the virtual and actual flow of the eternal antagonistic differentiation. Leaving behind the world that abandons us, with all our hagiographies and relics, in order to create new worlds through the actual unfolding of virtual possibilities. To follow lines of flight and to recombine them with friendly others to innovate excesses to come. Reloading movement. Galloping on smooth plateaus and between sharp wire fences of that which is common to everyday routines. That is what it means today: the joy of being an ‘anarchist’.
not happening if even a little clinging ness ie: p 133
136
Part 3: Classical Anarchism Reloaded
137
9. Things to Do with Post-Structuralism in a Life of Anarchy: Relocating the Outpost of Post-Anarchism
Sandra Jeppesen
138
Turtle Island (aka North America)
google: North America is called Turtle Island by some Indigenous peoples because of creation stories that depict the landmass as being formed on the back of a giant turtle. These stories, which vary by tribe and region, tell of a time when the world was covered in water and a turtle, or a group of animals working together, brought land into existence.
141
Axiom ^. Anarchy Is Not a Protest Movement
When anarchists do protest, we do not accept the state directives on how to protest (‘How to be a Good Protester’, by Bill Clinton), rather we protest on our own terms. This is called direct action. It is not a form of protest, it is a way of life.
so way of life is protest?.. ooof.. need legit life over survival ness.. over fighting ness.. over protest ness.. over any form of re ness
143
With so many potential theorists, there should also be as many anarchist theories as possible. We might say that there is a lot of work to be done, but, following Barthes and Heckert, let’s say instead that there is a lot of play to be done. Anarchist theory, like anarchist practice, at its rhizomatic roots, is about play. From playing anarchist soccer to sex and gender play and playing with words to playing with a diversity of tactics, playing with the legalities of border-crossings, or playing with fire – play has always been an anti-authoritarian practice.
ooof.. play as cancerous distraction not legit free/play
146
10. Anarchy, Power and Post-Structuralism
Allan Antliff
As a corollary to Todd May’s praise for anarchism’s thoroughgoing attack on domination in all its forms, May argued that anarchism (theoretically) was not up to the task of realizing its political potential. Referencing ‘classical’ figures from the nineteenth-century European wing of the movement, *May suggested that anarchists had yet to come to terms with power as a positive ground for action. The anarchist project, he argued, is based on a fallacious ‘humanist’ notion that ‘the human essence is a good essence, which relations of power suppress and deny’. This impoverished notion of power as ever oppressive, never productive, was the Achilles heel of anarchist political philosophy (May, 1964: 62). Hence May’s call for a new and improved ‘poststructuralist anarchism’. The post-structuralist anarchist would not shy away from power: she would shed the husk of humanism the better to exercise power *‘tactically’ within an ethical practice guided by Habermas’s universalist theory of communicative action (ibid.: 146).
*or not.. power ness to date has only been cancerous distraction
**ie of same song power ness.. ooof
Let us begin with Emma Goldman’s (1869–1940) closing summary of anarchist principles, circa 1900, from her essay, ‘Anarchism: What it Really Stands for’:
Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the domination of religion; the liberation of the human body from the domination of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth, an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations. (Goldman, 1969: 62)
147
Kropotkin characterized anarchist morality as ‘a superabundance of life, which demands to be exercised, to give itself … the consciousness of power’ (ibid.: 108). He continued: ‘Be strong. Overflow with emotional and intellectual energy, and you will spread your intelligence, your love, your energy of action broadcast among others! This is what all *moral teaching comes to’ (ibid.: 109). ..Kropotkin, contra May, embeds power in the subject and configures the unleashing of that power on morality as the marker of social liberation, predicting that it will generate both ‘antisocial’ (to be debated and resolved) and ‘social’ (socially accepted) behaviour in the process.
*ooof
Indeed, it is worth underlining that the anarchist subject’s power, situated socially, *is not reactive; it is generative. Kropotkin wants power to ‘overflow’; it has to if a free social order is to be realized. Anarchist social theory develops out of this perspective.
*totally reactive as described here.. and as practiced since forever.. oi
149
The Ego and Its Own singled out the proletariat – the ‘unstable, restless, changeable’ individuals who owe nothing to the state or capitalism – as the one segment of society capable of solidarity with those ‘intellectual vagabonds’ who approached the condition of anarchistic egoism (Stirner, 1915: 148–9). *Liberation for the proletariat did not lie in their consciousness of themselves as a class, as Marx claimed. It would only come if the workers embraced the egotistic attitude of the ‘vagabond’ and shook off the social and moral conventions that yoked them to an exploitive order. Once the struggle for a new, stateless order was under way, the vastness of the working class ensured the bourgeoisie’s defeat. ‘If labor becomes free’, Stirner concluded, ‘the state is lost’ (ibid.: 152).
*no one to date has shaken off that yoke.. need global detox leap.. for (blank)’s sake
150
Stirner also drew distinctions between insurrection and revolution, reasoning that whereas revolutions simply changed who was in power, insurrection signalled a refusal to be subjugated and a determination to assert egoism over abstract power repeatedly, as an anarchic state of being. ‘The insurgent’, wrote Stirner, ‘strives to become constitutionless’, a formulation that the programme of the Moscow Federation put into practice (1915: 287). Autonomous self-governance, voluntary federation, the spread of power horizontally – these were the features of its insurgency.
refusal ness same song as simply changing who’s in power
151
To conclude, the history of the Russian Revolution makes abundantly clear that ‘classical’ anarchism does have a positive theory of power. Not only that, it offers an *alternative ground for theorizing the social conditions of freedom and a critical understanding of power and liberation as perpetually co-mingling with and inscribed by a process of self-interrogation and self-overcoming that is pluralistic, individualist, materialist and social. **Finally, it has the advantage of a historical record: this theory has been put into practice, sometimes on a mass scale.
*not legit alt if still powering.. we need a way about uncovering (what’s already on each heart) rather than of overcoming anything
**yet.. nothing to date.. legit diff/alt
Arguably, then, contemporary radicals would do better marshalling anarchism to critique post-structuralism, rather than the other way around.
or just try something legit diff.. let go of all the marshalling/talking/debating/re ness.. et al
153
1. Post-Anarchism: A Partial Account
Benjamin Franks
The emphasis in post-anarchism has been on a rejection of essentialism, a preference for randomness, fluidity, hybridity and a repudiation of vanguard tactics, which includes a critique of occidental assumptions in the framing of anarchism (Adams, 2004; Anderson, 2005). Despite many excellent features of post-anarchist writings, not least their verve, sophistication and their opening up of new terrains for critical investigation and participant research, there are, nonetheless, a number of concerns, which this paper is designed to articulate and help to resolve. The first is to determine where post-anarchism is positioned in relation to the other ‘orthodox’ or ‘classical’ versions of anarchism. The second concern of this analysis of post-anarchism is to illustrate that, *despite the post-anarchists’ commitments to non-vanguard and anti-hierarchical practices, many reconstruct a strategic supremacy to particular types of action and overlook or underemphasize certain forms of oppression and resistance.
*happens if any form of m\a\p
160
A more significant potential weakness is that, inadvertently, post-anarchists start to prioritize certain elitist forms of resistance and agents of change.. Not everyone is capable of drifting; there are those who are physically, socially or economically restrained or have responsibilities to particular locales or to more vulnerable others.
again.. why we need a legit nother way.. one that is for all of us.. from the get go
164
Part 4: Lines of Flight
165
12. Buffy the Post-Anarchist Vampire Slayer
Lewis Call
notes here: buffy the post-anarchist vampire slayer
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13. Sexuality as State Form
Jamie Heckert
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This chapter is a story about how I developed a deeper understanding of sexual orientation through these stories with the help of anarchist/poststructuralist thought and, more specifically, Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of the state form and the nomad. It’s a story that has changed and will change again, for understanding, too, is a becoming.
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The future cannot be plotted, planned, forced or demanded – these are the efforts of states (Scott, 1998). All visions of the future are fantasy; it can be predicted no more than it can be controlled. Diverse practices of prefiguration are intertwined in such a way that the consequences cannot be predetermined. Life is always becoming otherwise.
graeber unpredictability/surprise law et al
*Of course, we all use categories to make sense of the world – coding is crucial in research methodology or other forms of storytelling where **communication only happens because we can distinguish between the princess and the pea or the capitalist and the anarchist.
*in sea world.. but perhaps making sense ness would be irrelevant if we were legit free
**again.. in sea world.. but perhaps making communication ness the way we do it now.. would be irrelevant if we were legit free.. rumi words law et al.. lanier beyond words law et al..
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That’s what labels are about, I think, aren’t they? About other people being able to put you in a box and then […] I don’t know, deal with you or not deal with you, as they feel fit..t And my experience has been that if you refuse to be pushed into one of their boxes, they’re kind of (shrugging). I don’t know a word […] it leaves them slightly powerless and confused. (‘Mark’)
marsh label law et al
It felt restrictive and it felt like […] the most difficult thing for me was that I felt that *once I chose a particular thing to call myself, then I’d have to conform to that and I’d have to keep it up like a membership and I couldn’t really handle doing that..t So I kind of dropped, not intentionally, but I kind of dropped it all and then, at some stage, I realised that I didn’t actually need any of that so I didn’t pick it up again. (‘Erica’)
*huge.. ie: the it is me ness
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The thing is, *the state is also a survival strategy. It is, however, **a strategy that assumes its survival depends on crushing or containing the Other. .t This is never the official story – war is presented as exceptional, as justifiable, as necessary. It is always regrettable, yet, too, always the lesser evil in the face of fascism, communism or terrorism. ***The state as apparatus or state as nation is always a security state, always dependent on fear, on terror, to justify the protection that only it can provide..t (Brown, 2005; Newman, 2007). The state as micropolitics, as state form, may involve similar emotional patterns. It might also be a way that many of us learned to survive growing up in a culture of domination (Heckert, n.d.).
*need a means to try/see life over survival ness
**need a means sans any form of m\a\p
***safety addiction and structural violence
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14. When Theories Meet: Emma Goldman and ‘Post-Anarchism’
Hilton Bertalan
194
It is not surprising then that the phrase for which Goldman has come to be known (‘If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution’) resonates with an analogy that was very important for Nietzsche. Throughout his work, Nietzsche makes use of dance to explain perpetual and creative epistemological shifts. As Deleuze (1983) suggests, for Nietzsche, ‘dance affirms becoming and the being of becoming’ (194). Nietzsche’s (1995) most fervent admiration is reserved for ‘books that teach how to dance [and] present the impossible as possible’ (139), as well as those that allow its reader ‘to be able to dance with one’s feet, with concepts, with words’ (Nietzsche, 1982: 512). Works of this motif would, according to Nietzsche (1969), ideally ‘give birth to a dancing star’ (46). This is precisely the effect Nietzsche had on Goldman. Although the famously attributed phrase was never actually spoken by Goldman, the story from which it is taken conveys Goldman’s embodiment of Nietzsche’s ‘dance’.[135] Upon dancing with what was described as ‘reckless abandon’, Goldman was taken aside and told that ‘it did not behoove an agitator to dance’, especially someone ‘who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement’ (Goldman, 1970a: 56). Considering her passionate commitment to his work, Goldman’s style of dance itself might have been stirred by her attachment to Nietzsche: ‘better to dance clumsily than to walk lamely’, Nietzsche said (1969: 305). Subjected to governessy reproof and told ‘her frivolity would only hurt the Cause’, Goldman (1970a) became furious with the austere suggestion that ‘a beautiful ideal’ such as anarchism ‘should demand the denial of life and joy’ (56). Not only does this story provide an example of Goldman envisioning social change as taking place in everyday spaces and expressions – challenging Call’s reading of ‘classical’ anarchists as exclusively concerned with politics and the economy – it also suggests that her conception of joy, play, dance and free expression (notions that more generally contributed to her view of social change) were inspired by Nietzsche. More than simply the physical embodiment of creative expression, or the counterpoint to the perceived and sought-after gravitas of classical anarchism, dance describes Goldman’s approach to an anarchist life. Goldman’s desire to dance herself to death (present in the epigraph of this piece) – that is, to remain in a permanent state of conceptual and political motion – was directly influenced by Nietzsche’s work.
endnote 135: Considered an authority on Goldman, Shulman (1991) was asked to provide a friend with a photo of Goldman and an accompanying phrase to be embossed on T-shirts and sold at an anti-Vietnam protest in the early 1970s. Shulman provided a number of passages from which quotes could be drawn, with particular emphasis on one from Goldman’s autobiography. In this passage, Goldman describes a party at which another anarchist confronted her about her style of dance. What resulted was a paraphrasing of this confrontation: ‘If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution’.
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Goldman recognized that any conception, however rational it may have seemed, was the product of particular conditions, and that those conditions were always subject to change. As Nietzsche (1968) put it, ‘the character of the world in a state of becoming is incapable of formulation’ (280). ..From Nietzsche, Goldman borrowed a sense of constant change that necessarily undermined notions of a universal and final solution to domination and oppression. .. In fact, despite Nietzsche’s lack of interest in politics and his vocal disdain for nineteenth-century socialism and anarchism, Goldman was, in many ways, the type of thinker he foresaw – the proverbial fish he hoped to catch:
Included here is the slow search for those related to me, for such as out of strength would offer me their hand for the work of destruction. – From now on all my writings are fish-hooks: perhaps I understand fishing as well as anyone? […] If nothing got caught I am not to blame. There were no fish. (Nietzsche, 1979: 82)
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Two themes inform the rest of this piece: the concept of transformation as it relates specifically to social change and political theory, and transformation more generally focused on the self. For Goldman, transformation of the social (organization, resistance, theorizing social change) is equal to transformation of the self (responsibility, care, ethics of relationality, issues of control and domination, notions of subjectivity).
neither (social/self) can ‘transform’ with description given ie: re ness.. responsibility ness.. as cancerous distractions
According to Call (2002), by ‘refusing to claim for itself the mantle of absolute truth’, postmodern anarchism ‘insists upon its right to remain perpetually fluid, malleable, and provisional’ (71). Yet Goldman too voiced this refusal, and similarly viewed anarchism in this light. ‘Anarchism’, Goldman (1969) argued, ‘cannot consistently impose an iron-clad program or method on the future’ (43). It ‘has no set rules’, she proposed, ‘and its methods vary according to the age, the temperament, and the surroundings of its followers’ (2005a: 276). Nietzsche also refused to offer a blueprint for future (or even present) readers to follow. ‘Revolution […] can be a source of energy’, Nietzsche (1995) wrote, ‘but never an organizer, architect, artist, perfecter of human nature’ (249). .. As her statement above suggests, Goldman’s anarchism was non-prescriptive and contingent. That is, she viewed it not as a closed mapping that sketched forms of resistance or social organization, but rather, as a flexible and open political philosophy in a state of perpetual transformation. May’s description of a contemporary politics informed by Deleuze reiterates Goldman’s view: ‘Our task in politics is not to follow the program. It is not to draft the revolution or to proclaim that it has already happened. It is neither to appease the individual nor to create the classless society […] Our task is to ask and answer afresh, always once more because it is never concluded’ (May, 2005: 153). Deleuze (1983) himself states likewise that ‘the question of the revolution’s future is a bad one, because, as long as it is posed, there are going to be those who will not become revolutionaries’ (114). .Deleuze is arguing above, the foreclosure of the unknown not only prevents people from becoming revolutionaries, it also serves to stop revolutionaries from becoming. Or, as Goldman (2005a) made clear, ‘there is no cut-and-dried political cure’ (402).
Deleuze and Guattari (1983) would have supported her reluctance: ‘Where are you going? Where are you coming from? What are you driving at? All useless questions […] all imply a false conception of voyage and movement’ (58). Goldman believed that a political philosophy could be radical and emancipatory without tethering itself to anodyne universals or essentialist notions. For Goldman, anarchism was not encoded with a linear progression – it did not have an identifiable beginning, ending or goal. Instead, it was closer to Deleuze and Guattari’s (1983) claim that ‘there is no general recipe’ (108) than the attempts by many of Goldman’s contemporaries to locate the most egalitarian and natural forms of social organization. As one of the most tireless and prolific radicals of the twentieth century, Goldman was uniquely clear that her efforts were not focused upon a single, attainable goal. Rather, her anarchism could best be described as based on what Deleuze (2004) called *‘ceaseless opposition’ (259) – an approach that remains ‘open, connectable in all its dimensions […] capable of being dismantled […] reversible, and susceptible to constant modification’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983: 26). What was for Goldman (1969) a political philosophy that had ‘vitality enough to leave behind the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life’ (49) is, for Deleuze and Guattari (1983), ‘the furniture we never stop moving around’ (47). ‘How, then, can anyone assume to map out a line of conduct for those to come?’, Goldman wondered (1969: 43). The approach one could instead take, according to Deleuze (2004), is by ‘not predicting, but being attentive to the unknown knocking at the door’ (346). Goldman would have agreed. ‘I hold, with Nietzsche’, she argued, ‘that we are staggering along with the corpses of dead ages on our backs. Theories do not create life. Life must make its own theories’ (2005a: 402). Goldman’s anarchism did not predict or initiate a single and dramatic political shift, but rather, was constantly **renewed by the context and conditions of resistance and the collectives and individuals taking part in struggles.
*ooof whac-a-mole-ing ness et al
**not new/diff if about resistance/struggles (those are of sea world.. and so cancerous distractions)
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Goldman’s political activity demonstrates *just how radical the concept of constant transformation is.
*as long as legit transform ness
..‘continual transition’ (Nietzsche, 1968: 281); ‘state of permanent creation’ (Deleuze, 2004: 136); ‘state of perpetual transition’ (Anzaldúa, 1987: 100); ‘state of eternal change’ (Goldman, 1970b: 524).. *For example, Goldman did not envision a core human nature that could be set free from political and economic constraints. ‘Human nature’, Goldman (1998) argued, ‘is by no means a fixed quantity. Rather, it is fluid and responsive to new conditions’ (438). Engaged in what Butler (1993) would come to term ‘resistance to fixing the subject’ (ix), Goldman perceived **identity as always shifting.
*’human nature’ as fixed is actually just whale nature.. in legit human nature.. unpredictability ness is the fixed ness
**the it is me ness
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Goldman took this further by also focusing on personal transformation. Rather than paying exclusive attention to the alteration or eradication of external economic and political conditions, Goldman (1998) demanded a struggle against what she called the ‘internal tyrants’ (221) that, as she further suggests, ‘count for almost nothing with our Marxist and do not affect his conception of human history’ (122). Goldman’s thoughts on tendencies toward the domination of the self and others resonate with thinkers often cast as voices of post-structuralist thought. Foucault (1983), for example, similarly advocated for ‘the tracking down of all varieties of fascism, from the enormous ones that surround and crush us to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everyday lives’ (xiv). *For both Goldman and Foucault, there is no pure individual to be left alone or cultivated in the ideal environment. ..Focault’s (1983) curiosity toward ‘the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us’ (xiii) is similar to Goldman’s (1969) position that the individual ‘clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! the moment a protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalistic authority or any other decayed institution’
*this is why we need a legit global detox leap
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With yet another allusion to Nietzsche, Goldman (1998) explicates a self animated by perpetual transformation:
I do not mean the clumsy attempt of democracy to regulate the complexities of human character by means of external equality. The vision of ‘beyond good and evil’ points to the right to oneself, to one’s personality. Such possibilities do not exclude pain over the chaos of life, but they do exclude the puritanic righteousness that sits in judgment on all others except oneself. (215)
why we need tech w/o judgment
For Goldman, self-reflection is a constant process.
Deleuze and Guattari (1983) express this notion of transformation perfectly:
Form rhizomes and not roots, never plant! Don’t sow, forage! Be neither a One nor a Many, but multiplicities! Form a line, never a point! Speed transforms the point into a line. Be fast, even while standing still! Line of chance, line of hips, line of flight.
deleuze & guattari et al
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Beauty in a Thousand Variations
The works of Anzaldúa, Butler and Deleuze are clearly marked with an affinity for multiplicity and interconnectivity – what I would refer to as an ethic of love. Though known primarily for her discussion of love with regard to her personal relationships and struggle for open sexual expression, Goldman used the term to describe more broadly a spirit or ethic that desired meaningful personal and organizational connections on multiple levels. Love, according to Goldman (1970c), was a ‘force’, providing ‘golden rays’ and the ‘only condition of a beautiful life’ (46). Always more at home in promissory love letters than prescriptive texts or travelling along programmatic routes, Goldman understood love as the most important element of life. It was, I would argue, a constant drift through her work that constituted an element of thought and interaction that most assured radical social and personal change. Love as a whirling of possibility, a potentially binding political landscape, as an affinity for the unknown, for futurity, for constant responsibility, open and vulnerable connection, the multiple – this is the guiding spirit of Goldman and the thinkers I have so far discussed. For Goldman, without an ethic of love, social change is meaningless: ‘high on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by’ (Goldman, 1970c: 44). ‘Love’, continued Goldman, ‘is the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny’ (44). Once again we see the presence of Nietzsche in Goldman’s interest in the intractable, what Chela Sandoval (2000), through her concept of ‘hermeneutics of love’, refers to as ‘a state of being not subject to control or governance’ (142). Or, as Nietzsche (1989) wrote, ‘that which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil’ (103). In this, a Goldman sense of love, we do not love under certain conditions, or because we understand one another, or because we share a particular vision, or even because we recognize each other as something relatable, translatable or familiar to something in our psychic, preferential, emotional or political sensibilities. It is not because we will be loved or find a desire satisfied, a lack filled, or be offered something absent. Instead, for Goldman, love takes place prefiguratively, before the encounter, before the advance or event that usually marks its beginning or containment in reachable social and political visions.
pearson unconditional law.. paul know\love law.. et al
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What is important for Foucault (and for other thinkers mentioned) is the radical element – the element that does not re-inscribe, reform, or take over existing systems of power. Love does not want power, nor does it want what already exists. Multiplicity and interconnectivity, as important aspects of love, cannot be found in hegemonic spaces of social organization and resistance. Love does not seek to reform, but rather, to transform, over and over, amidst a cluster of identities and tactics. Goldman recognized the radical potential of this multiplicity: ‘Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things because of the bulk of trifles confronting us’ (Goldman, 1998: 167). . As Anzaldúa (1987) suggested:
Goldman supported those individuals and organizations that neither sought to reinforce existing structures of power, nor refused connection with those whose tactics, organization and political philosophy did not mirror their own. Like Deleuze, Goldman (1970a) saw it as ‘ridiculous to expect any redress from the State’ (122), following Nietzsche (1995), who argued that the state ‘tries to make every human being unfree by always keeping the smallest number of possibilities in front of them’ (157)…The question then becomes, how can things be opened up, expanded, and interrogated, rather than asking how others can be incorporated into an existing paradigm.
if still interrogating.. still in that judgmental existing paradigm
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Power, for Goldman, existed in all institutions and relationships, and therefore *the struggle against domination needed to take place constantly and in every aspect of life. As Goldman (1998) suggested with regard to ‘sex’ and power, ‘a true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered’ (167). That is, power is not a force wielded by some and denied others, but rather, is present in all relationships and institutions.
*in sea world.. but if want to be legit free.. cancerous distractions
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15. Reconsidering Post-Structuralism and Anarchism
Nathan Jun
I
The concept of representation looms large in post-structuralist philosophy. For Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze representation is arguably the principal vehicle by which relational concepts are subordinated to totalizing concepts: difference to identity, play to presence, multiplicity to singularity, immanence to transcendence, discourse to knowledge, power to sovereignty, subjectivation to subjectivity, and so on.
representation ness et al.. as cancerous distraction
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*It does imply, however, that for Deleuze, as for Spinoza, the crucial question is not whether and how resistance is possible, but how and why desire comes to repress and ultimately destroy itself in the first place (Deleuze and Guattari, 1977: xiii). Answering this question requires, among other things, theoretical analyses of the various assemblages that come into being over time (vis-à-vis their affects, their lines of flight, etc.) as well as **experimentation at the level of praxis. We shall say more about this below, but for the time being it is enough to note that Deleuze, like Bakunin, Kropotkin and other classical anarchists, agrees that power can be active or reactive, creative or destructive, repressive or liberatory. More importantly, both are agreed that power is ontologically constitutive (i.e. that it produces reality) and that it is ***immanent to individuals and society as opposed to an external or transcendent entity (Kropotkin, 1970: 104–6; Lunn, 1973: 220–7).
*ie: missing pieces ness.. so khan filling the gaps law et al
**on the ground ness et al
***in sea world.. if legit free.. i think ‘power’ ness (at least as we know/speak it) would be/become irrelevant
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Alongside systems of ordering and identifying, there may be other distinct regulatory practices such as ‘the minute observation and intervention into the behavior of bodies, a distinction between the abnormal and the normal in regard to human desire and behavior, and a constant surveillance of individuals’ (May, 2005: 140). For Foucault, discipline is nothing more than the collocation of these practices, the concrete manifestation of which is the prison (Foucault, 1978: 184). Discipline itself ‘does not exist as a concrete reality one could point to or isolate from the various forms it takes’ (May, 2005: 141). Instead, Deleuze describes discipline as an ‘abstract machine’ that collocates diverse representational practices (i.e. ‘overcodes molar lines’) into a single regime of power.
identity ness.. marsh label law ness.. the it is me ness
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*Thus resistance necessarily emerges within power relations and is primary to them. To resist power as though it were somehow elsewhere or outside is merely to react against power. And as radicals of all stripes have witnessed time and again, **such reactive resistance is either quickly defeated by extant power structures or else ends up replicating these power structures at the micropolitical level. In the place of reactive resistance, Foucault recommends an active form of resistance in which power is directed against itself rather than against another form of power (such as the state). ***To actively resist is to enter into a relation with oneself, to reconstitute oneself, to create oneself anew. Through this process, extant power relations are challenged and new forms of knowledge emerge. Bakunin and Kropotkin could not possibly have put the point better.
*why both are cancerous distractions
**any form of re ness
***nah.. rather.. (again.. any form of re ness) is to perpetuate same song
For Foucault, the relation of the self to itself forms the basis of ethics or ‘modes of subjectivation’. In ‘Technologies of the Self’ (2003: 145–69), he formulates a history of the various ways that human beings ‘develop knowledge about themselves’ vis-à-vis a host of ‘specific techniques’. These techniques, which Foucault calls technologies of the self,
permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality. (Ibid.: 146)
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance.. to facil the thing we’ve not yet tried: the unconditional part of left-to-own-devices ness.. for (blank)’s sake..
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Technologies of the self are to be distinguished as such from three other types of technology (or ‘matrices of practical reason’): (1) technologies of production (labour power), by which we ‘produce, transform, or manipulate’ objects in the world; (2) technologies of signs systems, which includes human languages specifically as well as the use of ‘signs, meanings, symbols, or signification’ more generally; and (3) technologies of power, by which human behaviour is directed, coordinated, compelled, engineered, etc., in ‘an objectivizing of the subject’ (ibid.).
oooof
In Greco-Roman civilization, Foucault claims, there were initially two major ethical principles – ‘know yourself’ (the Delphic or Socratic principle) and ‘take care of yourself’. To illustrate the idea of care for the self, Foucault examines the ‘first’ Platonic dialogue, Alcibiades I, and extracts from it four conflicts, viz. (1) between political activity and self-care; (2) between pedagogy and self-care; (3) between self-knowledge and self-care; and (4) between philosophical love and self-care. The principle of self-knowledge (or self-examination) emerges as victor in the third conflict and gives way both to the Stoicism of the Hellenistic/imperial periods as well as Christian penitential practices in the early Middle Ages. For the Stoics, the importance of self-knowledge is manifested in the practices of quotidinal examinations of conscience; the writing of epistles, treatises and journals; meditations on the future; and the interpretation of dreams. Foucault summarizes:
so really techs of self are just about .. manipulating legit self (the it is me ness).. even more/deeper.. and do it in the name of freeing or taking care of.. self..
In the philosophical tradition dominated by Stoicism, askesis means not renunciation but the progressive consideration of self, or mastery over oneself, obtained not through the renunciation of reality but through the acquisition and assimilation of truth. It has as its final aim not preparation for another reality but access to the reality of this world. The Greek word for this is paraskeuazõ (‘to get prepared’). It is a set of practices by which one can acquire, assimilate, and transform truth into a permanent principle of action. Alethia becomes ethos. It is a process of becoming more subjective. (Ibid.: 158)
oooof
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Modern consciousness takes for granted that there is an inner life that we are constantly forced to suppress in our myriad roles within the capitalist machine. Underneath one’s roles as student, son, tax-paying American, etc. – all of which are constructed from without by power relations – there is a self that one does not discover but rather fashions. The potential for such self-construction is not necessarily radical in and of itself, since self-construction can and often does merely replicate extant power relations that lie ‘outside’ or ‘on top of’ the self. But it is precisely through self-construction that radical political resistance becomes possible.
but not ‘self-construction’ described above..
again.. the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance
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16. Imperfect Necessity and the Mechanica Continuation of Everyday Life: A Post-Anarchist Politics of Technology
Michael Truscello
how that divide might be bridged by the concept of ‘imperfect necessity
Necessity in the legal sense also has a potentially revolutionary communicative function:
inasmuch as the necessity defence serves a communicative function – providing the defendant a solemn forum in which to espouse his views, forcing a formal response from the government, and involving jurors and officers of the court in the debate over the legitimacy of the violated law – widespread availability of the imperfect necessity defence would also facilitate public dialogue of this kind. (Oleson, 2007: 39)
ooooof.. nevermind (thought imperfect necessity ness might be interesting)
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‘Imperfect necessity’ and its correlative ‘graduated culpability’ offer anarchists epistemological and pragmatic possibilities for describing and overcoming the ambivalence towards technology in a decidedly post-anarchist social assemblage.
rather.. seems to carry all the baggage of same song ness..
The concept of necessity in this discussion also refers to the means by which revolutionaries could survive in the context of continuing revolution. This meaning of necessity divided the earliest socialists and anarchists. Marxists proposed the state as the means by which necessity could be administered and revolution could persist, and anarchists offered the solution of free communities (Bookchin, 2004: 46). ‘The problem of want and work’, writes Bookchin, ‘was never satisfactorily resolved by either body of doctrine in the last century’ (2004: 47). Bookchin’s own solution was ‘social ecology’, which required technology to ‘replace the realm of necessity by the realm of freedom’ (2004: 48), a proposal justifiably met with derision by anarcho-primitivists. The problem of necessity in the period of late capitalism is intimately bound to the problem of technology, since most people who live in industrial societies depend on massive technological systems for sustenance, and since the current population of the planet greatly surpasses the number that could be supported by living as hunter–gatherer societies, the primitivist ideal. To revolt against these technological systems from within industrial societies would seem to be an act of self-destruction; to preserve these systems would be equal folly. For anarchists, the problem of the technological society therefore necessitates a paradoxical solution.
‘Imperfect necessity’, one such paradoxical solution, guides this chapter in at least three significant ways: first, the phrase recognizes that life in industrial societies is so profoundly mediated by technology, or what Jacques Ellul called the ‘total phenomenon’ of la technique, that the existence of most individuals depends on it, and as a result, to oppose the total phenomenon, as anarcho-primitivists do, carries with it an almost suicidal or genocidal tendency (simultaneously, to endorse the total phenomenon without qualification is equally insane); therefore, despite the toxicity of modern technology, it may be necessary to embrace some technology while simultaneously opposing authoritarianism and promoting deindustrialization; second, ‘imperfect necessity’ signifies an epistemological condition in which socio-technical structures are contingent and path-dependent, and therefore the liminal spaces of anarchist resistance must adapt to indeterminate but historical and ideological forms of oppression; this necessity refers to the shifting but essential conditions that enable continuous insurrection; and finally, the phrase ‘imperfect necessity’ has a legalistic reality that presents an opportunity for opposition through constructs of the law, not to reinforce the statist hegemony of the law but rather to enact discursive stresses within the state and its hegemonic apparatus. Ultimately, the technological society must be contested paradoxically, through the limited use of technology in a pluralistic insurrection that advocates deindustrialization.
and again.. there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance
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‘A technology for life’, Bookchin wrote, ‘would be based on the community; it must be tailored to the community and the regional level’ (ibid.: 81; italics in original). Bookchin’s social ecology was influential in environmentalist circles; it seemed to recognize and respond to the environmental crisis unfolding globally. However, his programme for social revolution through ecology smacked of techno-utopian delusion – dotting the countryside with more technology would somehow bring humans closer to nature? – and primitivists were quick to recognize Bookchin’s problematic understanding of technology.
we need immersion into tech as it could be.. because mufleh humanity law et al
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The problem with contemporary studies of technology is that they too often place too much faith in the ability of individuals or groups to intervene and control technological systems.
rather.. the problem is that we’re missing the thing tech can do that we can’t: nonjudgmental expo labeling
*Technology heavily influences the constraints of our choices, it ‘enforces limits upon the possible and the necessary’ (ibid.: 81). Such constraints on our necessities and desires become ‘highly specific’ once a ‘particular technical form’ is adopted (ibid.: 84), which produces a condition of ‘necessity through aimless drift’ (ibid.: 89); ubiquitous computing in the West is an example of a specific technical form often dictating necessities and delimiting desires. **Technology is never neutral; instead, it is ‘an environment – a totality of means enclosing us in its automatism of need, production and exponential development’ (Watson, 1998: 121). A.. in particular if those technical affairs affect the ***survival of individuals within the system (ibid.: 273).
*but that’s what it could also unleash.. via tech w/o judgment
**rather.. we’ve not yet used it that way.. but we could.. ie: nonjudgmental expo labeling.. way more ‘neutral’ than us
***need to get out of the system (hari rat park law et al).. and need to try life over survival ness
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contributors
236
rousselle is librarian for anarchist library
______
_____
______
______
_____
- anarch\ism(62)
- accidental anarchist
- anaculture
- anarchism and christianity
- anarchism and markets
- anarchism and other essays
- anarchism & cybernetics of self-org systems
- anarchism as theory of org
- anarchism of other person
- anarchism or rev movement
- anarchist communism
- anarchist critique of relations of power
- anarchist library
- anarchist seeds beneath snow
- anarchists against democracy
- anarchists in rojova
- anarcho blackness
- anarcho transcreation
- anarchy
- anarchy after leftism
- anarchy and democracy
- anarchy in action
- anarchy in manner of speaking
- anarchy of everyday life
- anarchy works
- annotated bib of anarchism
- are you an anarchist
- art of not being governed
- at the café
- bad anarchism
- billionaire and anarchists
- breaking the chains
- christian anarchism
- colin ward and art of everyday anarchism
- constructive anarchism
- david on anarchism ness
- don’t fear invoke anarchy
- empowering anarchy
- enlightened anarchy
- errico on anarchism
- everyday anarchism
- fragments of an anarchist anthropology
- freedom and anarchy
- goal and strategy for anarchy
- graeber anarchism law
- insurgent anarchism
- inventing anarchy
- is anarchism impossible
- kevin on anarchism w/o adj
- krishnamurti for anarchy
- means and ends
- mobilisations of philippine anarchisms
- new anarchists
- nika on anarchism
- on anarchism
- post anarchism: a reader
- post anarchism & radical politics today
- post scarcity anarchism
- social anarchism – gustav on socialism
- sophie on anarchism
- spiritualizing anarchism
- that holy anarchist
- two cheers for anarchism
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be you. 
