File spoon-archives/postanarchism.archive/postanarchism_2004/postanarchism.0404, message 41


From: swilbur-AT-wcnet.org
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] "the future"
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 11:20:06 US/Eastern


Jesse wrote: 
> i want no part of the ongoing squabble between tom 
> and shawn, which i haven't been following closely 
> enough to be a judge of and which leaves me baffled.

Probably another indication of your general good sense...

> i never have understood tom's arguments, and i'm puzzled 
> by shawn's intense responses to them.

Me, too. Me, too. I suspect Tom and i are both trying to
push through something in our thinking. We probably 
should do it separately. My apologies for the public
display of ill-directed intensity - though i can't
promise i won't do much the same again. 

> but. . . one thing i pick up on, as i read, is this 
> question about our attitude (as anarchists) toward 
> "the future." (not sure why i put that in scare 
> quotes, but somehow i feel obliged to.)
> 
> so, for instance, here is shawn talking: "We should 
> work to see that there is never another holocaust. 
> We should guard against unleashing something
> worse. But, if we take the path of radical openness 
> -- and there may be no real ethics without it - then 
> we have to acknowledge that 'what comes' is not
> something we can control or predict."
 
To start, it's probably worth noting that "the future"
and the "to-come" are not necessarily the same thing,
or refer to different aspects of a larger problem. 
Also, i was responding here to Tom's construal of 
"radical openness" as a sort of amnesiac strategy,
where we must be open to everything. "Do we have to
be open to the concentration camp?" No. Should we 
pursue projects that seem to promote freedom? Yes,
absolutely. Do we know what promotes freedom? Yes,
sometimes, roughly, but not so well that we can
rest easy with our knowledge. We don't know enough
to solve solve our problems by "mere technologies,"
so our choices also require some accounting of what
we can't now account for - that which comes - and
that appears to require a "real ethics." (The 
distinction between techological solutions and 
ethical regard comes from Derrida again.) 

> this reminds me strongly of a theme in gareth 
> gordon's work (which also attempts to anarchize 
> derrida) . . . thus, gareth identifies "the 
> future" with "the Lacanian Real" and "the 
> undeconstructible" -- what is radically unknowable, 
> unrepresentable.  he finds some premonitions of 
> is in both proudhon and bakunin:
> 
> (Proudhon:) "Progress, I repeat, is an affirmation 
> of universal movement, and thus it is the denial 
> of all forms and formulae of immutability, all 
> doctrines of eternity, irremovability and 
> impeccability, etc., applied to any being 
> whatsoever. It denies the permanence of any order, 
> including that of the universe itself, and the 
> changelessness of any subject or object, be it
> empirical or transcendental."

Strong stuff, and more evidence, i think, of the 
diversity of forms "progress" has taken. 

> (Bakunin:) "Even the most rational and profound 
> science cannot divine the form social life will 
> take in the future. It can determine only the
> negative conditions, which follow logically from 
> a rigorous critique of existing society."
> 
> (Gordon:) "The desire to respect the absolute 
> unknowability of the future is a common, perhaps 
> determining, theme in anarchist thought."
> 
> possibly.  certainly that really speaks to the 
> grounds we've had for rejecting rigid historical 
> schemas (stages, teleologies, etc.).  gordon goes 
> on, much like newman and may, to speak of anarchism 
> as an attempt to "abolish the whole politics of 
> representationality."

Another way to read this stuff is simply to say that
Proudhon and Bakunin recognize the *limits* of 
representation. Responsible knowledge seems hard to
separate from some sense of what one does and cannot
know. Reponsible social organization seems to imply
a similar kind of awareness. 

> however . . . what about practices of planning, 
> which inevitably entail some attempt to control the 
> future (however democratically)? james guillaume, 
> in tracing the line between proudhon's mutualism 
> and bakunin's collectivism, located a crucial step 
> in proudhon's affirmation of collective economic
> planning, noting proudhon's appeal to the prometheus 
> myth: "[Prometheus] stole fire from heaven, and 
> invented art . . . foresaw the future and wanted to 
> become the equal of Jupiter" (proudhon qtd. in francis 
> feeley, _The French Anarchist Labor Movement and "La 
> Vie Ouvrière_ 84-85).  according to francis feeley,
> "Guillaume suggested that Proudhon's personification 
> of social collectivity negated his earlier concept of 
> an individualistically-oriented society working 'sans 
> concert (without coordination)'"; since "it is planned 
> in advance and proportioned to needs," guillaume 
> concludes, "production is social" (qtd. in feeley 85).
>  
> note that proudhon's step away from marketplace 
> individualism entails an embrace of a kind of 
> representation: the ability of a collective force, 
> via some adequate system of values and decision-making, 
> to represent itself to itself, and thereby to project a 
> realistic future and plan accordingly, is what allows
> it to regulate itself, to make its own production 
> properly "social."

Doesn't market theory understand "market individualism"
as representational in much the same sense of a 
"collective force...representing itself to itself"? 
I'll have to look over the source material before i
can judge what the nature of the movement here really
is. My initial concern is that the issue of representation
is less at stake than the old feud between individualism
and collectivism. 

> another pertinent consideration, from another latter-day 
> proudhonian (paul goodman, writing with his brother 
> percival):
> 
> "Any community plan involves a formidable choice and 
> fixing of living standards and attitudes, of schedule, 
> of personal and cultural tone. Generally people move 
> in the existing plan unconsciously, as if it were nature 
> ... But let a new proposal be made and it is astonishing 
> how people rally to the old arrangement . . . The trouble 
> with this good instinct -- not to be regimented in 
> one's intimate affairs by architects, engineers, and 
> international public-relations experts -- is that 'no plan' 
> always means in fact some inherited and frequently bad plan 
> ... The best defense against planning -- and people do need
> a defense against planners -- is to become informed about 
> the plan that is indeed existent and operating in our lives; 
> and to learn to take the initiative in proposing or 
> supporting reasoned changes." (_Communitas_ 10)
> 
> doesn't this imply that the "radical openness" shawn and 
> others have been appealing to is a mirage -- the illusion of 
> "no plan"? 

It strikes me that the Goodmans are taking a position 
largely compatible with the one i've been trying to
articulate, without, of course, the specifically
poststructuralist emphasis on the unknown and unknowable.
I think i've been arguing pretty consistently for explicit
projects, clarifying or assumptions and goals, etc. Even
the messy, "personal" exchanges have been, in part, about
bringing present conditions and assumptions into the open.

> that there is no choosing _not_ to determine the future, 
> only a choice between determining it in some egalitarian 
> and cooperative fashion or leaving it to elites?

I agree that there is here only a choice of choices, some
obviously better or worse than others, either because of
the means of choosing, or because of the strength or 
weakness of our understanding of present conditions. All
of these choices may, however, be extensions of that
"arrogation" at the heart of human agency and 
responsibility. The derridean position seems to be that,
as there are "two speeds" or "two calls" that condition
thought - absolute urgency and the need for absolute
certainty (as a condition of justice) - there are two
moments to action in regard to the future. One of those
involves taking what we know as far as it will take us,
and the other involves making some space for what we
don't know, or what we don't know we don't know. When
Derrida talks about a "politics of memory," and all the
dynamics of rememberance and forgetfulness, some of
this is at stake. 

The hard note to hit is how to take this stuff into 
account while doing meaningful work in the material
world. 

-shawn
 
> or am i misunderstanding completely (or partially) 
> the nature of the "openness" being proposed?
> 
> 
>        --jesse.


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