Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 20:39:34 -0400
Subject: AUT: Identity, Zapatismo, Reeve


Dear Aut-op-sy,

        This is a very belated comment on the Reeve debate, stimulated by a
challenge in the editorial of Wildcat 45. It is a note written for Wildcat,
but I thought it should be posted here as well.

        John

Labelling the Zapatistas

A Comment on Deneuve-Reeve

John Holloway

        When I first started to read the paper by Deneuve and Reeve on
'Behind the Balaclavas of South-East Mexico', I confess that I quickly put
it aside as being too silly to take seriously. To criticise the practice of
community decision-making in Chiapas on the basis that the Maya and Inca
societies were authoritarian is just too ridiculous - something like
criticising the IRA on the basis that Genghis Khan was undemocratic (the
distances in time and space are roughly comparable). 

        Two things led me to read the article more carefully: firstly, the
careful discussion to which it was subjected in the aut-op-sy mailing list,
and secondly, the fact that Wildcat, for whom I have a great respect, urged
me to read it seriously: in the editorial introduction to no. 45 of
Wildcat-Zirkular (June 1998), they say in bold type that George Caffentzis
(who also has an article published in that number) and I should listen to
Reeve and learn something about emancipatory processes.

        With this admonition in mind, I went back to reading the
Deneuve-Reeve article, together with the discussion in the aut-op-sy list,
which included a reply by Reeve (20/4/98) to criticisms made in that
discussion. Having read the discussion, I abandoned my original intention
of replying to Deneuve-Reeve's criticism of the Zapatistas, because there
are already excellent replies to be found in the aut-op-sy discussion,
especially the contributions by Monty Neill on 29/3/98, by Christopher Day
on the same date and by Monty Neill on 7/5/98.

        Nevertheless, I continue to find the Deneuve-Reeve article not only
ill-informed but deeply disturbing. In this note I want to explain why. 

        Possibly the most important charge that Deneuve-Reeve make against
the Zapatistas is their statement at the beginning of the article that the
Zapatista movement is 'a movement which is a vehicle for the values of
ethnic identity ... which are nowadays at the heart of the most barbaric
tendencies in the world'. While I agree that identity (and not just ethnic
identity) is at the heart of the most barbaric tendencies of the world,
what disturbs me about the article is that it is Deneuve-Reeve's argument,
and not the Zapatista movement, which is identitarian. 

        Identity is the core of bourgeois thought. What distinguishes
bourgeois thought is the assumption that capitalist social relations are
permanent, that they 'are'. Deprived of historical movement, interconnected
processes appear as so many separate things that 'are', each with its own
Is-ness, its own identity. This identity is not, of course, a matter of
mere appearance: the material establishment of social relations through the
exchange of commodities, and the fracturing of the relation between subject
and object which that implies, means that the flux of social relations (the
'sheer unrest of life') really exists in the form of things, of identities.
Bourgeois thought, scientific and non-scientific alike, proceeds through
identifying, classifying, defining, labelling. The thing or person is
abstracted from the flux of social relations and identified. The argument
goes: 'it is x, therefore ...'

        Identification as a pattern of thought (and action) receives its
clearest expression in fascism, racism and sexism: 'he is a Jew, therefore
...; she is black, therefore...; she is a woman, therefore ...; they are
long-haired, they are gay, etc ...' The starting point of identification
precludes any understanding of social change, because all possible movement
is entrapped within the identification on which the argument is based.
Anything can be explained by 'well, what do you expect, they're Jews', or
'women are like that': an eternal return in which there is nothing new.
Over all such arguments stands the grim, terrible warning of Adorno:
'Auschwitz confirmed the philospheme of pure identity as death.' (Negative
Dialectics, 1990, 362).  

        Identity is the hallmark of bourgeois thought, but it penetrates
deep into would-be oppositional thought as well. The response to Nazi
fascism is often: 'they are Germans, therefore ...'; or to US domination,
'they are Americans, therefore...' Or it can be a simple inversion: 'we are
black, therefore ...; we are women, we are Basques, we are Irish, we are
gay...' In all these cases, as long as the assertion of identity does not
consciously carry with it its own negation ('we are black, but more, etc'),
then it reproduces precisely the pattern and the danger of fascist thought.
Hence the force of Deneuve-Reeve's suggestion that identity is 'at the
heart of the most barbaric tendencies in the world'.

        With this, I return to Deneuve-Reeve's argument. In general, the
Zapatista movement has been strongly and consciously anti-identitarian.
They have consistently refused to present themselves as an ethnic movement,
although some of their symapthisers have tended to represent them as such.
That is also the sense of many of their statements about being a national
movement: 'we are not an indigenous movement but national', etc. Against
all the attempts by the state, and by the established left, to label them,
they have refused to fit into any categories. In one of their communiques,
Power says to them: 'I am who am, the eternal repetition... Be ye not
awkward, refuse not to be classified. All that cannot be classified counts
not, exists not, is not.' (La Jornada 10 June 1996) Their response, of
course, is mockery, laughter, jokes, dancing. And to their supporters from
all over the world they say, in the anti-identitarian statement by Ana
Maria to the first Intergalactic: 'Detras de nosotros estamos ustedes'
('Behind us are the we that are you').

        Deneuve and Reeve, on the other hand, insist on identifying, on
labelling. Their argument is: 'they are Maoists, therefore...' Like all
identitarian arguments, it is caught in an ever-returning present: 'They
were Maoists in the 1970s, they were Maoists when they went to the jungle
in the early 1980s, therefore they're Maoists now, therefore ...' And then,
in perfect reproduction of the pattern of anti-Jewish arguments: 'They
claim that their decisions are taken in democratic assemblies, but then
they would, wouldn't they, Maoists always do.'

        In this context, the criticism of the claim of community democracy
in Chiapas by reference to the practices of the Incas (six centuries and
thousands of kilometres away) seems not only ridiculous but sinisterly
logical: 'The Indians claim to have a democratic tradition, but look at the
Mayas, look at the Aztecs, look at the Incas, that shows what sort of
tradition they have: once an Indian, always an Indian'. 

        And as for Latin American revolutionaries: 'nothing new, we've seen
it all before - Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador'. And as for the enthusiasts
who support them: 'why can't they learn that we live in an eternal present,
that nothing changes?'

        That, dear Wildcat, is why I find the Deneuve-Reeve argument not
only ill-informed but deeply disturbing. 


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