Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2004 23:14:59 -0800 (PST)
From: "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: [postanarchism] Aristarkhova: "Against All Parties" (Russian postanarchism?)




Originally written for and published in Russian in the
collected volume of new Russian anarchist movement 

"Against All Parties"

by Irina Aristarkhova

http://www.constantvzw.com/cyberf/book/articles.php?pg=art26
(edited by Oleg Kireev, Moscow, 2000)

In this essay I think through the possibilities of
alternative ways to carry out effective and ethical
political struggle to go beyond the current crisis in
party politics, group affiliations with their reliance
on the old political structures and methods. For
reformulating it I will be using conceptual means
developed by Levinas, Irigaray, Derrida and Kornell.
Traditional idea of party politics is based on
belonging to and differentiation, separation from;
hence, we have a problem of representation (whom, who,
when and how). 

One of the alternatives to this crisis can be found in
the phenomenon that I call "Maternal Politics",
examples of which exist, though varied considerably
and necessarily, around the world. I will focus on the
Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers (CSM) – an example of
Russian organization. I will try to show how CSM
transforms theory and practice of traditional
political struggle in post-Soviet Russia and near-by
states through finding a way out of the current
political crisis of representation and political
activism. 

1. Governmental Crisis

Traditionally the notion of state has been defined
through opposition to the civil society. Foucault,
among others, has shown that this opposition does not
serve us anymore methodologically, for carrying out
effective political struggle. When it is maintained,
we have to be careful what are the reasons and claims
behind such activist foundation – what does it serve
and whom, politically. Exclusive importance and
central position of the state are presented through a
variety of metaphors – "cold monster", impersonal and
distant from ‘the people’, or ‘system / machine’ which
operation can be reduced to economic and other
conditions (like the state of productive forces and
industrial relations). As it’s well-discussed,
Foucault’s position differed from such framing of the
state, and he stressed that today "state no more than
in any other moment of its history, does not have such
unity, individuality, strong functionality, and,
frankly speaking, importance; at the end, the state
may be nothing more than an imagined reality,
mystified abstraction, which importance is much more
limited than many of us think" (Foucault, 1991a:103).
His notion of "Governmentality" serves as an
alternative to state in the analysis of political
sphere. And indeed governmentalization of the state is
probably more significant today, than ‘state-zation’
of society. (Foucault, 1991a:103)1 

Another widely used point from Foucault’s political
analysis is that power cannot be presented anymore in
repressive terms only, as something that comes from
above down. This makes master/slave and oppressed /
opressors paradigms unproductive (Foucault,
1996:111-152). Today politics is characterized by a
situation in which distribution and articulation (or
exercise) of power undermines survival and growth of
large and stable political bodies – for examples, as
the recent case with Russian political movement called
"Russia, Our Home". 

Another example of shift towards a govermentalization
of Russian state was Martin Vacuum’s presidential
campaign (Russia, June, 1996). One of his main
campaign slogans was: "Russia is in need of
government, not crown" (One must govern Russia, not be
on its trone). We see more and more of move to this
new governmental direction in Putin’s government. This
shift – from sovereign framing of power to
govermentalization of Russian state does not mean,
certainly, that the problematics of ruling or law
disappears altogether. Moreover, the state becomes a
part of a complex system of the problem of government
and governing. Or, in Foucault’s terms, of "how one
enacts tactics, and not laws, or even the use of laws
as tactics, in order to distribute things so as to
achieve such and such results with such and such
means" (Foucault, 1991a:95).


2. Crisis of Representation

Crisis of the State manifests itself also in
proliferation of NGOs, or so-called "Third Sector"
organizations. This kind of social formations seek to
fill the space freed as a result of the process of
govermentalization of state, and they promote group
interests. Such organizations usually face the same
problem as the state or political parties based on it
– the problem of representation. If state ‘represents’
interests of the people, of the working class, of the
capital, etc. – as in classical political discourse,
weakening of the state shakes the ground of the notion
of representation as such. Representation was the
function of the state proper, and when state becomes
just another member of government, NGOs find
themselves in urgent need to respond to crisis of
representation – even though they might participate in
and grow as a result of weakening of the state, they
also need it to carry on filling in its withdrawal.
For many non-state political formations the issue of
representing – working class, women, animals,
minorities, the poor, - becomes a constant head-ache
and a struggle for grounding oneself. State crisis
leads to representation crisis, one goes hand in hand
with another one, depending for the other to exist and
justify its existence. 


Representation, especially in its current political
form, implies homogeneity of shared values, goals, or
convictions. Often it is based on claims that not
every one has an opportunity to express and fight for
their convictions, needs and interests, and therefore
they need to be represented by "someone on their
behalf, for them". However, after a short while a
problem occurs as different and uncompromising needs
and convictions by separate individuals cannot ground
political programmes and struggles, and get subsumed
under one leading ideology that levels difference by a
few means2. Ideology cements party politics. Fixed and
written into a programme or main manifesto, it
provides a basis for a principal upon which to choose
strategy, tactics, actions and borders of the party –
who belongs to it and who is not, and upon which
parameters.

Notes:
1.See the following works by Foucault, where he
develops the notion of ‘governmentality’: Michel
Foucault. Dits et écrits 1954-1988, IV 1980-1988.
Edition établie sous la direction de Daniel Defert et
François Ewald avec la collaboration de Jacques
Lagrange. Gallimard, 1994. P. 582-583, Préface à l'
"Histoire de la sexualité", English translation:
Rabinow. The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1984. P. 333-339; also see Pp. 728-729,from
L'éthique du souci de soi comme pratique de la
liberté, Concordia: Revista internacional de
filosofia, n. 6, july-december, 1984, 99-116; p. 785,
from Les techniques de soi; université du Vermont,
octobre 1982. Published in English as "Technologies of
the Self. A Seminar with Michel Foucault", the
University of Massachusetts Press, 1988, 16-49; p.
213-218. Subjectivité et vérité, Annuaire du Collège
de France, 81 année. Histoire des systèmes de pensée,
année 1980-81, 1981. P. 385-389.
2. Here I mean by "ideology" a number of ideas and
convictions that are written in Party Programmes,
manifestos or Codes. It is a "party ideology" and not
a Marxist notion of ideology or its derivatives.


===="“It does not matter how many people chose moral duty over the rationality of self-preservation - what does matter is that some did. Evil is not all-powerful. It can be resisted. The testimony of the few who did resist shatters the authority of the logic of self-preservation. It shows it for what it is in the end - a choice." 

- Zygmunt Bauman, 'Modernity and the Holocaust'

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html