From: JessEcoh-AT-cs.com
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 01:09:45 EST
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] re: Autonomous Liberalism vs. Autonomous Marxism


In a message dated 12/4/03 1:43:53 AM Central Standard Time, 
swilbur-AT-wcnet.org writes: 
> >Why not just accept that we
> >can existentially create ourselves as we wish, that we
> >can choose to be cooperative and that because of this,
> >a liberated society is indeed possible, 
> 
> I accept that we can make choices within a web of constraints or network 
> of power relations. I don't believe we can "existentially create ourselves 
> as we wish," if by that you mean without taking into account the power 
> relations be are implicated in. If you mean we can ignore those 
> constraints, then i don't think you're actually concerned with 
> poststructuralism at all. I'm not sure even Stirner gives you much 
> support. 

jason -- 

   i have to agree with shawn here.  even simone de beauvoir, who makes one 
of the most significant applications of the notion that "existence precedes 
essence" in declaring that "one is not born a woman, one becomes one," took 
sartre to task for failing to recognize the ways in which the aforementioned "power 
relations" and "constraints" come to bear on the choosing and becoming self.  
try _not_ being either a "woman" or a "man" in this society (or any other 
available), and you'll see what this means very quickly.  sartre's too-literal 
interpretation of his own "existence precedes essence" actually made the 
choosing subject into a kind of "essence" (in the sense of a fundamentally real, 
indivisible object which does not depend on its circumstances for its meaning and 
its powers).  it's not simply true that "we can existentially create ourselves 
as we wish" -- this is no less false-by-overstatement than freud's "biology 
is destiny."

   it is, of course, true that we have a lot more choice about how to be (and 
become) than we give ourselves credit for most of the time, and that "nature" 
and the "natural" are very often ideological alibis for choices that have 
been socially sedimented and artificially fixed in place.  poststructuralism 
gives us a healthy suspicion of such rhetorical appeals to "nature." this healthy 
suspicion becomes an unhealthy fixation when it impels us to deny that human 
beings share a broad range of natural needs, from food and water to 
companionship and self-expression, or that we can observe certain tendencies in human 
behavior that we could describe as "altruistic" _and_ "aggressive" (as kropotkin 
did), or that we must not even speculate about whether these tendencies might 
have had survival value for the species during the course of its evolution, a 
survival value that would explain their emergence in the context of the 
phenomenon of natural selection, a phenomenon which embraces every living thing we 
know of (so that for ourselves to be an exception would be very odd indeed -- 
in fact, it would mean that we are "essentially" distinct in kind from the rest 
of the observable living world).

   let's acknowledge how complex these issues are.  it does not always mean 
the same thing to speak of "nature": kropotkin is not edouard drumont (the 
famous anti-semite and anti-Dreyfusard), and his way of articulating relationships 
between evolutionary theory and social theory does not and cannot provide 
ideological justification for racist/sexist projects.  nor does it make anarchist 
projects redundant: anarchy is by no means biologically inevitable, for 
kropotkin (wouldn't it be silly if it was?).  we cannot responsibly use 
"essentialist" as a swear-word, either.  if the term "essentialism" means everything we 
designate by it, then nobody is or _can_ be an "anti-essentialist," much less a 
"non-essentialist." let your suspicion of sweeping generalizations and 
universalisms apply here: the specifics -- who is claiming what to be "essential" to 
whom or what -- will always turn out to matter.


       --jesse.


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