File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0112, message 189


From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Re: Re: Self-determination from waaaaayyy back
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 21:06:41 -0600


Hey commie00,

You said:
> also: i'd argue that racism is a 'class problem' thru and thru, meaning:
it
> is used to divide the working class (that is: capitalism has "realized and
> suppressed" xenophobia into itself [into the class dialectic] as the
> catagory of "racism"), and must be overcome by the working class (which, i
> agree with you, requires a fuck of a lot more than a seriously simplistic
> "black and white unite and fight" mentality). i don't think this is a
> 'reduction' of racism, but that your use of 'class' in that phrase is a
redu
> ction of the catagory of class.


To see racism as simply an instrument to divide workers is exactly the kind
of reductionism I think is poisonous.  Racism is not simply divisive.
Racism is a power relation that flows from the interaction of two aspects of
life: the binary division of capital and labor, based on the separation of
the producer from the means of producing, involves the fragmentation of all
of social life.  I apologize for the following long quote, but I cannot do
John Holloway justice in my own words, but it is what I am trying to get at:


We have presented the issue of power in terms of a binary antagonism between
doing and done, in which the done, existing in the form of capital
(apparently controlled by, but actually in control of, the capitalists)
subordinates, ever more voraciously, all doing to the sole purpose of its
self-expansion.



            But is this not too simple? Surely that which we scream against
is far more complex than this? What about the way that doctors treat their
patients, what about the way that teachers treat their students, that
parents treat their children? What of the treatment of blacks by whites?
What about the subordination of women to men? Is it not too simplistic, too
reductionist, to say that power is capital and capital is power? Are there
not many different types of power?



Foucault in particular makes the argument that it is mistaken to think of
power in terms of a binary antagonism, that we must think of it rather in
terms of a 'multiplicity of relations of force'. (1976, p. 121)
Corresponding to the multiplicity of power relations there is then a
multiplicity of resistances, 'present everywhere in the network of power. In
relation to power, there is therefore not one place of the great Refusal -
soul of revolt, hearth of all rebellion, pure law of the revolutionary. But
resistances which are special cases: possible, necessary, improbable,
spontaneous, wild, solitary, concerted, rampant, violent, irreconcilable,
ready to negotiate, interested, or sacrificial: by definition, they can
exist only on the strategic field of the relations of power'. (1976, p. 126)



In terms of our scream, that would suggest an endless multiplicity of
screams. And indeed it is so: we scream in many different ways and for many
different reasons. From the beginning of our argument it was stressed that
the 'we-ness' of 'we scream' is a central question in this book, not a
simple assertion of identity. Why, then, insist on the binary nature of an
over-riding antagonism between doing and done? It cannot be a matter of an
abstract defence of a Marxist approach - that would make no sense. Nor is it
in any sense the intention to impose a single identity or unity upon the
manifest multiplicity of resistance, to subordinate all the variety of
resistances to the a priori unity of the Working Class. Nor can it be a
matter of emphasising the empirical role of the working class and its
importance in relation to 'other forms of struggle'.



In order to explain our insistence on the binary nature of the antagonism of
power (or, in more traditional terms, our insistence on a class analysis),
it is necessary to retrace our steps. The starting point of the argument
here is not the urge to understand society or to explain how it works. Our
starting point is much more pointed: the scream, the drive to change society
radically. It is from that perspective that we ask how society works. That
starting point led us to place the question of doing in the centre of our
discussion, and this in turn led us to the antagonism between doing and
done.



Obviously, other perspectives are possible. It is more common to start
positively, with the question of how society works. Such a perspective does
not necessarily lead to a focus on doing and the way in which doing is
organised. In the case of Foucault, it leads rather to a focus on talking,
on language. This perspective certainly allows him to elucidate the enormous
richness and complexity of power relations in contemporary society and, more
important from our perspective, the richness and complexity of resistance to
power. However, the richness and complexity is the richness of a still
photograph, or of a painting.[1] There is no movement in the society that
Foucault analyses: change from one still photograph to another, but no
movement. There cannot be, unless the focus is on doing and its antagonistic
existence. Thus, in Foucault's analysis, there are a whole host of
resistances which are integral to power, but there is no possibility of
emancipation. The only possibility is an endlessly shifting constellation of
power-and-resistance.



The argument in this chapter has led to two important results, which it is
worth reiterating. Firstly, the focus on doing has led to an intimation of
the vulnerability of power-over. The done depends on the doer, capital
depends on labour. That is the crucial chink of light, the glimmer of hope,
the turning-point in the argument. The realisation that the powerful depend
on the 'powerless'[2] transforms the scream from a scream of anger to a
scream of hope, a confident scream of anti-power.[3] This realisation takes
us beyond the merely radical-democratic perspective of an endless struggle
against power to a position from which we can pose the issue of the
vulnerability of capital and the real possibility of social transformation.
>From this perspective, then, we must ask of any theory not so much how it
illuminates the present, but what light it throws on the vulnerability of
rule. What we want is not a theory of domination, but a theory of the
vulnerability of domination, of the crisis of domination. The emphasis on
understanding power in terms of a 'multiplicity of relations of force' does
not give us any basis for posing this question. Indeed, on the contrary, it
tends to exclude the question, for, while resistance is central to Foucault'
s approach (at least in his later work), the notion of emancipation is ruled
out as being absurd, for it pre-supposes, as Foucault correctly points out,
the assumption of a unity in the relations of power.



To pose the question of the vulnerability of power thus requires two steps:
the opening of the category of power to reveal its contradictory character,
which has been described here in terms of the antagonism between power-to
and power-over; and secondly, the understanding of this antagonistic
relation as an internal relation. Power-to exists as power-over: power-over
is the form of power-to, a form which denies its substance. Power-over can
exist only as transformed power-to. Capital can exist only as the product of
transformed doing (labour). That is the key to its weakness. The issue of
form, so central to Marx's discussion of capitalism, is crucial for an
understanding of the vulnerability of domination. The distinction which
Negri makes (and develops so brilliantly)[4] between constituent and
constituted power takes the first of these two steps and opens up an
understanding of the self-antagonistic nature of power as a pre-condition
for talking about revolutionary transformation. However, the relation
between constituent and constituted power remains an external one.
Constitution (the transformation of constituent into constituted power) is
seen as a reaction to the democratic constituent power of the multitude.
This, however, tells us nothing about the vulnerability of the process of
constitution. In the face of power-over (constituted power) it tells us of
the ubiquity and force of the absolute struggle of the multitude, but it
tells us nothing of the crucial nexus of dependence of power-over
(constituted power) upon power-to (constituent power). In this sense, for
all the force and brilliance of his account, Negri remains at the level of
radical-democratic theory.[5]



Does this emphasis on the perspective of the scream lead us then to an
impoverished view of society? The argument above seems to suggest that the
perspective of the scream leads to a binary view of the antagonism between
doing and done, and that in such a perspective there is no room for the
'multiplicity of forces' which Foucault sees as essential to the discussion
of power. This seems to suggest a split between the revolutionary or
negative perspective and the understanding of the undoubted richness and
complexity of society. This would indeed be the case (and would constitute a
major problem for our argument) if it were not for the second result of our
previous discussion, namely that the antagonistic relation between doing and
done, and specifically the radical fracturing of the flow of doing that is
inherent in the fact that power-over exists as ownership of the done, means
a multiple fragmentation of doing (and of social relations). In other words,
the very understanding of social relations as being characterised by a
binary antagonism between doing and done means that this antagonism exists
in the form of a multiplicity of antagonisms, a great heterogeneity of
conflict. There are indeed a million forms of resistance, an immensely
complex world of antagonisms. To reduce these to an empirical unity of
conflict between capital and labour, or to argue for a hegemony of working
class struggle, understood empirically, or to argue that these apparently
non-class resistances must be subsumed under class struggle, would be an
absurd violence. The argument here is just the contrary: the fact that
capitalist society is characterised by a binary antagonism between doing and
done means that this antagonism exists as a multiplicity of antagonisms. It
is the binary nature of power (as antagonism between power-to and
power-over) that means that power appears as a 'multiplicity of forces'.
Rather than starting with the multiplicity, we need to start with the prior
multiplication that gives rise to this multiplicity. Rather than starting
with the multiple identities (women, blacks, gays, Basques, Irish and so
on), we need to start from the process of identification that gives rise to
those identities. In this perspective, one aspect of Foucault's enormously
stimulating writings is precisely that, without presenting it in those
terms, he greatly enriches our understanding of the fragmentation of the
flow of doing, our historical understanding of what we shall characterise in
the next chapter as the process of fetishisation.



A last point needs to be dealt with before passing on to the discussion of
fetishism. It is an important part of Foucault's argument that power should
not be seen in purely negative terms, that we must also understand the way
in which power constitutes reality and constitutes us. That is clearly so:
we are conceived and born not in a power-free vacuum but in a
power-traversed society: we are products of that society. Foucault, however,
fails to open up the category of power, to point to the fundamental
antagonism that characterises it. Thus, we can say, for example, that we are
products of capital, or that everything we consume is a commodity. That is
clearly so, but it is deceptive. It is only when we open up these
categories, when we say, for example, that the commodity is characterised by
an antagonism between value and use-value (utility), that use-value exists
in the form of value, and in rebellion against this form, that the full
development of our human potential pre-supposes our participation in this
rebellion, and so on: it is only then that we can make sense of the
statement that everything we consume is a commodity. It is only then that it
makes sense to speak of the commodity-form as a form of relations to be reje
cted and fought against. Similarly, with power: it is only when we open up
the category of power and see power-over as the form of power-to that we can
fully understand power-over as a form of social relations to be rejected and
fought against.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

[1] One is reminded of his fascinating analysis of Velázquez's Las Meninas
at the beginning of The Order of Things: fascinating, but without movement.

[2] This is surely a central contribution of Marxism to negative theory.

[3] See Holloway (1995).

[4] See Negri (1999).

[5] It is interesting to compare Negri's recuperation of the
radical-democratic thrust of political theory (the development of the
concept of 'constituent power') with Bloch's recuperation of the Not-Yet,
the projection beyond existing society, as a constant theme in folklore, art
and political theory. Contrast for example Bloch's enthusiastic discussion
of Joachim of Fiore (1993, pp. 590-598) with Negri, who, coupling Joachim
with Savanarola, says dismissively 'with Machiavelli, I am ill disposed
toward those friars who are prophets by profession, "in this city of ours,
which is a magnet for all the imposters of the world".' (1999, p. 100) The
argument in relation to Negri is developed at greater length in chapter 9.




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