Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 10:11:35 -0400
Subject: Re: Essentialism's Relation to Anarchism, Agamben & De Puydt
From: Joshua Synenko <jsynenko-AT-accessv.com>


J.M. Adams:

> Yes the qoute at the end of my messages, the
> signature, is indeed originally from Walter Benjamin
> but I think it is more useful today in the way it is
> redeployed by Giorgio Agamben in his book "Means
> Without Ends" - there he basically goes beyond
> Benjamin's call to attain to a concepttion of history
> that attends to the insight that "the state of
> emergency is not the exception but the rule" to say
> that with the permanent state of emergency the world
> is being thrust into ever-increasingly today we are
> ALL becoming part of and thus aware of "the tradition
> of the oppressed" in one way or another and it is for
> this reason that "power no longer has today any form
> of legitimization other than emergency...because power
> everywhere and continuously refers and appeals to
> emergency as well as laboring secretly to produce
> it...this is the case also and above all because naked
> life, which was the hidden foundation of sovereignty,
> has become the dominant form of life everywhere"
> (p.5). For those who are not aware, Agamben's concept
> of Naked Life is basically those who are the
> "exception" to the human subject defined under modern
> sovereignty most often as the "citizen" - it is those
> whose lives can be considered to be worthless, which
> is why he dedicates an entire book to studying
> Auschwitz and its also why so many in the anti-border
> movement pay attention to his work as well. Indeed I
> think this is a good example of why the idea of an
> essential human subject can become problematic because
> as another poster mentioned, within the realm of
> political philosophy the  great tradition of
> "Liberalism is founded on the belief that humans are
> essentially self-interested and seek to maximise
> benefit to themselves" and as we know, the subject of
> liberalism is always the citizen and never the
> non-citizen, it is never the indigenous person who is
> being systematically wiped off the face of the earth,
> never the migrant worker who is condemned to a life of
> coercive mobility coupled with dangerous borders, etc.
> Of course what this means is that any notion of a
> commune of communes will have to deal with the
> question of the commune's "Others" those naked lives,
> or "bodies without will" as Paul Virilio terms them,
> that are deemed not to be part of the decision making
> body for one reason or another - and I dont think the
> Bookchinists have sufficiently dealt with this
> question which is probably because they are ultimately
> bound to an anarchistic form of liberalism.

It seems unlikely that the absence of a central authority would lead people
to work harder towards liberalism. Wouldn't self-maximization turn into
self-preservation? People, as citi-zens or not, generally want to preserve
themselves, and their little communities. If a state were to implode,
wouldn't it be reasonable for everyone to turn inwards, to our religious
communities, ethnic associations, and families? The dissolution of the state
would be followed by a great unproductive period, and a violent one, too.
Wouldn't the powerful security apparatus reverse its stated goal to
immobilize the citizenry and become defensive, further contributing to
self-imposed confinement? Who would have time to reinvest accumulated
wealth? It could be, as Der Derian said, the beginning of a kind of
neo-medievalism. The others of the commune would be those without strong
links to religion, family, and consequently, the most mobile under the new
immobile order. The oppressed migrant workers would surely have an upper
hand here, as central organizers with strong links to various communities
(incl. emerging militias)?
J