Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 10:20:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: TMB <tblan-AT-telerama.com>
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] Always leaving the party early? Part 3 



Shawn,
 
Your responses, careful and pretty thorough considering, are much
appreciated. I will snip (mainly my comments) greatly as this is
metastatizing, but I did want to respond. And to the previous response as
well.
 
 
Shawn: I would say, "yes." It's an exciting formulation in many ways, one
of the most appealing elements of Derrida's "hauntological" work. It is,
of course, a displacement of justice in some ways. There is no question of
saying, according to this formulation, "i am just," or "this, here and
now, is justice." There is not even any certain way to *address our
actions to justice* - but when was there such a way?
 
--- I really don't see how to take justice as "the possibility of the
impossible", to remove it so abtractly from so many basic conditions and
situations of justice: a harm, a wrong, an economic injustice, breaking a
law, the situation of a trial, the petition for justice, "no jusitce, no
peace!", etc. While in many such contexts the orientation towards the
possibility of the impossible is crucial, ultimately isn't it that the
possibility of the impossible is important *for* something: for, in
particular, the amelioration of a harm/violence? As aharm, this is not
properly "justice" until it involves intention action or negligence that
harms. Otherwise it's safety. Is this too naively pedestrian? Or, on the
other hand, is the Derridean formulation so stratospheric, or strategic
that it simply can not intersect meaningfully with virtually *all* of the
"peace and justice" milieu, through which I am more or less always partly
reading "anarchy"? In any case, yes, to some extent, I am trying to say:
"here is what justice is", "this is, thus, reasonably just, though perfect
justice may never be reached", etc. And to make that determination, which
I think we always are in, all the time (in two calls, and other ones as
well), it is necessary to get to some extent clear on what justice is. I
assert that justice is in a certain way nonviolence, which is of enormous
consequence for things like anarchy. Partly I see anarchy as a formation
amassing itself in response in particular to the business of rule systems
gone out of control. In the world or dimension of justice in particular,
it rebels, it appears to me, against the business of *enforcement* and
*compliance* issues, and these issues, in turn, appear to gather and
accomplish themselves as powers, entities, formations, bureacracies,
states precisely in that they "forget" (if the every knew) the essence of
justice. This essence, I believe (and maybe I'm wrong here), *must be
understood as nonviolence*. That violence in some sense always has within
it a certain "impossible" may be the case, but there doesn't seem any way
as far as I can see to cover over this other moment. The Derridean
strategy, and trope, appears more than anything else to leave the world
far too untouched, and works out of its texts (far beyond books as such)
in the mode of deconstructing-inhabitation, leading to *aporia* and a
certain authenticating freedom, but in a manner that remains, I still
think, grounded in a status quo. As Derrida breaks through texts -- with a
certain nonviolence that separates deconstruction (or Destruktion) from
*destruction* -- it appears to me to lead to a certain *phase*. That phase
is a certain accomplishment of deconstruction. Yet I believe that it
*should* lead beyond that:
 
"text" ---> deconstruction ---> enconstruction,

though it needen't take that sequential form. The enconstructive text also
can inhabit, but what would be the difference? Clearly, we know that the
deconstructive reading works to bring about the texts own contradictions.
Nothing tricky there. The enconstructive reading accomplishes an *outside*
(given by the possibility of the impossible known as deconstruction) that
can also affirm and re-construct the text, re-deploy its structures, in
new ways, etc. I am certain at least that "anarchy" points to this, but I
am also fairly certain that it *limps* (doens't totally fail or fall down)
by failing to make the "positive term" as I am thinking of it into the
enconstructive. Ditto aporia. I see an enormous difference between
"aporia" and "enporia"! Exclamation point. Enporia means to set forth road
from a position of iteration, to "enroad". It is founded on the capacity
to be both in and outside of road, and suggests perhaps a multiplicity of
roads (many to choos from, enact, etc.). Clearly this is not the same a
"no road" and "each road leads nowhere". I remain convinced that the
difference here is enormous. I do not mean to suggest that Derrida is all
about nothing but aporia, but the issues that one should find in dealing
with the enporiaic appear to me to be quite a bit different from those one
needs for dealing with or finding one's way to aporia.
 
 
 
Shawn: I would have thought you thought it went "not far enough,"
particularly if it "does not admit of any real question." Derrida's
response is, as i understand it, that without opening onto the possibility
of the impossible, justice can hardly be anything by a "technological"
question, which admits of no question and only one solution. If we accept
other aspects of the poststructuralist, or specifically Derridean,
accounts of the world, that sort of certainty in the realm of justice
probably strikes us as problematic.
 
--- I agree with this powerful and important moment. However, it is a
necessary but insufficient element. I want to suggest that the very
necessary militation against totalization, closedness, lack of question,
technological distance, etc. is not all there is to do, by any means, and
further, that broaching this very issue is a matter of primary and
overwhelming urgency, absolutely within the range of Derridean urgency,
and fully responsive to it. The Heideggerian overtones are apparent, and
the "problem of technology" may well remain, but there is more to do than
free up from amortizing or overly domesticating justice. We may imagine
here, for example, according to this "schema" (it's not that, of course),
a judge who, being a good Derridean, enters more properly into the
"madness of the moment of decision" and, in sentencing a criminal (let us
imagine it is a nonviolent resister of a military operation such as the
sanctions imposed against Iraq), decides to send the person to Iraq, to be
kept in a prison and untreated by proper medicine, is to languish and
perhaps die, with the assignment of having to write a reasonably
convincing essay to the court as to why this sort of suffering is, as
Madeline Albright said, worth the price. That would be one authetic judge!
Such a sentence, well beyond what is taken to be "possible", indeed. The
whole authenticating gesture of that aspect of Derrida's work, I strongly
believe, always has that possibilty, just as "authentic Dasein" can remain
an account of a lynching in the South in which a fallen racist finds
himself and, seizing the day, refuses to take the They as his Hero, and
himself kicks the chair out from beneath the struggling colored man.
 
--- This possibility, at least regarding authenticity as such, is to be
preserved *within a space and a moment*, but it must also be *opened* and
considered according to two other categories, at least: one is the *mis en
scene*, whose opening is always an aspect of justice (and this is, quite
simply, other than the Derridean formuation, which I must maintain has a
peculiar, "tropish" and strategic dominance), the other is *nonviolence as
such*. There are pressing and compelling reasons for opening up such
categories as these. Generally, the Derridean operation (enterprise?)
backs us unto a corner, and we are in a way forced to come out fighting,
or at least resolute, but, presumably, aware of the madness of our
decisions and, I guess, softened of a cerain arrogance. Though the "new"
action is the same old action and decision. In any case, what is so
important is a word that occurs often enough for Derrida: the *scene*, and
more broadly, what I call *mis en scene*, and variously any
conceptualization of: that within which action takes place. There is,
then, a responsibility for the setting of actions, and it is at *this*
level that perhaps most of the most important questions about action and
political responsibility occur, and it is precisely to this point: the
opening of mis en scene, the responsibility for setting(s), that within
which decision and action is to occur...indeed, these are all in a way
pointing to the within-which and overall, environment, design, etc., of
the Derridean moment and space of decision and urgency...These *should* be
emerging in light of politics, responsibility and justice. The opening of
the within which and the business of change, and attribution, this not
opened up in Derrida's program. It takes a while to unpack it (and whether
I'm right about it of course remains open), so I will resort to bare
indications (for whose violence I again apologize). Essentially, the great
richness of the openings of the *mis en scene*, the within-which and
responsibility for the "overall" in Derrida takes place as part of his
being in the usual "backward" form. The implications of these "overalls
around which there emerges the writing that is Derridas", lies, probably,
more in the direction of his *artistry*. In any case, it is no mere and no
simply matter of his making "ongoing decisions". The broader opening I
refer to is the opening of our work of design, how a play and its scenes,
backdrops, dialogue, blockings, etc., is a matter of design, and the
actors act within this "all the world's a stage". Derrida militates
against reducing or insulating us from the "wide world" via calculation.
This is *not* the only story to tell. There is a work, more close to the
work of justice than anything, closer to what is needful at virtualy ever
site of need of progress: that work is a *creation of the conditions of
possibility of authentic emergence*. Derrida does this work in *one
specific way*. He doesn't grasp what the very possibility of such work
means. The whole category of it, of paradigmaticity, of the
around-within-which, of setting, is, I suggest (so poorly right now) the
primary site for change, to which the impetus to "anarchy" should be
turning. It implies and depends on things like an enporiaic orientation,
and somthing more radical. If Derrida brings us to stop in our tracks in
aporia, only to lead us to resolve to continue to walk in our finitude, an
envolutionary enarchy (or something) does something else altogether: it
disperses "us" into selves that are no longer quite on the road, but
rather in the dirt opening up the foundation for the road, in the map room
where a road is planned, with the surveyors, in the woods charting out
this or that path, graspin the occasional uses for the road, situating the
business of our travel within broader settings. When we grasp this in
terms of the idea that "there is no path to peace, peace is the path"
(Gandhi) or "we must build the road as we go down it" (not verbatim, An
San Suu Kyi), we are these selves as dispersed, journeymen/women, artist
selves, playwrights, dramturgs, etc. in the gravity of the possibility of
violence, in an urgency (to be sure). Simply handling this all is a
daunting task. The turns against the "backward", the major negation
formation (I don't know if you see how the formations come into play; I
believe I am right about it), and this turn of positivity, unleashing,
etc., is a bit overwhelming. The overall setting I describe I might call
variously "nonviolence thoughtaction", "envolutionary enconstruction",
"nonviolence enconstruction", "nonviolence enarchy", etc. This space,
accomplishment, world orientation complex is, I believe, much more
essentially "anarchic" than anarchy tends to be, although it is definitely
more pluralistically archic: yet it has this "opening to the primordial"
(visualize: the work of the digging and planning of foundations) and some
aspects of necessary orientations to maintain that. This is much too long
I realize.

---I would want to explain them through a treatment of precisely the
sanctions on Iraq. In such a treatment I would want to show a few things:
 
- the Derridan reading is necessary but not sufficient 
- a personal (sort of) critique of Derrida as not taking sufficient
action on the sanctions during the 90's is needful, and reaches back into
the problem of Heidegger
- a critique and enconstructive response (beyond deconstructive, beyond
critical) must be developed to include a few basic categories - the use of
the sanctions in this is an especially fitting and needful move
 
--- Sort of that work (I don't know that I'm up for it), perhaps these
indications do suffice in showing you what I think (whether you agree with
it or not, of course).
 
 
Shawn: For Derrida, there is no point in talking about "ethics,"
"responsibility," or "justice" unless something important is really at
stake - unless we are open to a radical range of possibilities, even (and
here's the poison in the gift) to "the worst." Rather than closing off
every question, i would have said that this approach makes every analysis
in some sense "interminable."
 
--- Analysis, maybe. But ther is more than analysis. I think that this
stuff still militates against certain (definitely obtaining)
possibilities, but they are not the only ones. Again, mention of
Heidegger; the militation (or whatever) against technology is all very
well and good, but the ire about the "manufacture of corpses" (a "worst",
incidentally, to which I don't remain open, and we must also admit of
other categorics, like "worse than the worst", if we take the possibility
of the impossible seriusly) traces to a real problem, perhaps one
fundamental to Heidegger's program. The ire, I suggest, arises from a
certain nonviolence as such, whose fundamental problem for "ontology" (I
realize this isn't exactly Derrida now) breaks the substantivity of any
ontology, just precisely in how the argument about separating the
philosopher's work from his personal life becomes so central in the
question. I point to it here, not in order to harp on a personal matter
regarding Heidegger, but rather to say that this *whole situation* *is
substantive* given that one's basis or substantivity (range of terms,
issues, etc.) is up to the task. That would be a becoming-substantive of
nonviolence, whose space and "nature" presents special problems. It's in
this regard that I was pointing to a neutrality of western terms: no
question *at all* about their never being so neutral, which is what you
pointed out. But that non-neutrality is grounded, then, in a gravity of
stakes that is always there to some degree. There is one study, discipline
and practice that brings us to experience the possible, even with a bit of
heroic bravery in the way that "the worst" must be broached (and this can
be found in Gandh, interestingly, and is foundational for his nonviolence,
just as a strong authenticating instinct/practice). There is another that
is topically and substantively about the *amelioration and prevention of
violence*. This, too, is part of justice. The program for authenticity of
justice wants to downplay any overly technologizing of justice, even if it
leaves open a certain difficult rawness of justice. The program for
nonviolence has other goals; it is to lessen violence. It is to prevent
violence. It may even at times open up to some insulation of authenticity,
if necessary, but it remains indifferent but with some preference for
auethenticity. Yes, perhaps that means an openness to "the worst", but
again, it is another thing: it is nonviolence and is irreducible to
anything else.
 
--- Little is worse today than the failure to open the nonviolence
dimension of justice. I do not see, for example, a Derridan reading
leading to any of the important modes of alternative justice. I can even
see how one could do a Derridean reading of George Bush's take on Iraq: we
see somethign speedy, something slow, indeed, and a limit to the
interminable (weapons inspections), a Sartrean anguish of decision, etc.
Moreover, well, look at the sanctions, if you can do so without throwing
up. The problem is that the predominant terms, even the best postmodern
terms of justice just plain fail to open up the needful categories.
Systematically and in a certain way irredeemably. More to say. More to
say: above all, an analysis must be able to open the scene of -- and the
scene of the design of, and the scene of the responsibility for the design
of --- the sanctions as a challenge to Saddam, and a violence that was
able, in the development and deployment that took no responsibility for
that *multiple action* of *development of a whole mis en scene/theater
within which a given action was supposed to take place, demanded, etc.*
This is the violence of the call, and it occurs precisely at the level
unaddressed by the matter of immediate decision, be it "fast and slow". I
don't know if I need to point out that an esimated 500,000 children under
the age of five perished, along with other uniquely vulnerable people. I
am not hitting ot off well enough, and in this post offend through length
(to add to the dirt permeating my spinning here), but Derrida only goes a
bit of the way in regards to this crucial opening. What can we say? No
question: he is about how you can inhabit an inarticulable monstrosity
(elenchus cum architect's ghost?), but *not* a certain "everything" by
which an architecht(ure), like the architects of the sanctions, is
possible.
 
 
 
--- Plus, once you get with Derridas program, there is simply *no
formulating anything else* in a certain way. Of course, one is free to
formulate all one wishes. Yes, I realize that. But there is something else
at work that is truly problematic and I believe dominating in this
brilliant, powerful philosophers work. If one works in particular to open
the enporaic, this appears to have consequences for Derridas work, which
in a way appears to take a certain flight and at the same time have a
great deal of stake in keeping a certain status quo regardingwhat to call
ita certain western positivism and failure. Not in the direction of
alternativity, but precisely of aporia, tacked on but strangely in the
position of replicating at the same time (reading and inhabiting other
texts, and thereby reinstantiating them and creating openings only in a
negative sense that is somehow beyond the text, of all things).
 
Shawn: Probably because i'm having trouble making a meaningful distinction
between the aporia and the enporia, i'm having trouble following the
critique here. However, the notion that "reading and inhabiting other
texts" is only a "negative" operation "with a great deal of stake in
keeping a certain status quo" strikes me as off the mark. The politics of
inheritance and memory which brings Derrida back to the old texts and old
names is driven by a commitment to the continuing "it happens" of
deconstruction. One can certainly question the appropriateness and grounds
of that commitment. But if forty years of work demonstates anything, it
appears there is a good case that "it happens."
 
--- It happens. There are other things that can happen. They are not
happening. The *should* happen. They require a greater activation of
thought and an opening of some new directions, a turn on critical
discourse into a new kind of constructionism (enconstruction). A turn on
Chomsky, if you like. And, in a kind of parallel (difficult, but not that
far off, I think), with Derrida. And on anarchy. On *negation*.
 
 
Shawn: This is a strong claim, and one i suspect it might be hard to
substantiate from the texts. To say that Derrida "goes to bat for
violence" strikes me as a bit much. I recall a quip about George Sorel's
"Reflections on Violence," where the reviewer, noting the rather abstract
character of much of Sorel's "defense of violence," noted that the work
"is hardly the Anarchist Cookbook." And Derrida, as we know from his
much-mediated encounter with Sorel in "Force of Law," is hardly Sorel. The
explicitly non-innocent orientation of much poststructuralist theory
practically erases "nonviolence" from the options. Instead, we are left
responsible for something like a "choice of violences." Once you
acknowledge complex flows of power, question the sorts of metanarratives
that have structured distinctions between, for example, "force" and
"violence," much of the dogma of organized nonviolent activism stops
making much sense. The debates around recent attempts within the anarchist
movement to define property damage as "nonviolent" point to some of the
weaknesses of our understanding in this regard.
 
--- This business of an erasure of nonviolence is very, very problematic.
First off, it reads as if you mean an erasure of a naive sense of
totalized nonviolence ("the end of the world!" <-- Derrida). And think
again about such a ruling out. We are not just looking at "choices of
violence": there is real nonviolence, as amelioration of violence, as
modes of interacting that do work to persuade, that may have moments of
suffering (the classic civil disobedience, etc.), but the important range
of civil disobedience actions that we know are *strongly* involved in
almost *all* progressive and even anarchist political action today do not
amount to a ruling out of nonviolence. What we have, I suggest, is a
*limping nonviolence* in which theoretically it is *not broached* or
entered into as a subsantive dimention, let alone in certain moments, an
ontological dimension, onto- political, juridical, ethical dimension, but
pratically, it practically leads the way. That is exacty what a great deal
of activism looks like to me: Great masses, throngs of people, all
marching towards some capital, against capital, against war (ostensibly),
for justice, and, to my eyes, activists getting arrested, and most of
them, in my view, doing so walking backwards the whole time. I contend
that theory as such mainly fails to grasp nonviolence at a really
*radical* level, although it turns up here and there as a strategic
option. I am angry at the likes of Derrida for this, because I think they
have a greater responsiblity to (have done) this. Their not having done so
points to a certain deep problem.
 
--- I suspect that your sense that deconstruction is "never" "the sense of
the possibility of the impossible" comes largely from you understanding of
deconstruction as negation, rather than, say, dissemination.
 
--- I don't suggest that deconstruction is never that, but that justice is
never really that. These operations (deconstruction, dissemination) remain
neutral categories/operations and can be quite violent in their inherent
possibility. I maintain that justice, if it "is" any *one* thing is, above
all, *nonviolence*, or else, better put: it is the impossibility of any
one thing, and one of the many things it is is always nonviolence. I do
not think it is possible to imagine any sense of justice that, while quite
commonly involving a great deal of violence, even at times wildly
disproportionate amounts, does not trace to the problem of a "wrong"
(typical western formulation) that is a violence and whose response is not
in some way an ameliorative. I think there are enormous consequences when
one opens this up within radical theoretial registers.


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