Becoming-Other, Becoming-Many: Poststructuralism and the Problem of Justice- George Sotiropoulos– political philosopher and member of Void Network participates in the conference POSTSTRUCTURALISM: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE Wed. 6/3/2019 MADRID

This paper argues that poststructuralist thought can help articulate a critical and materialist notion of justice against the normativist and idealist conceptions dominant today. The assumption that justice is a critical concept goes all the way back to Plato, whose interrogation of the notion in the Republic yields a critical analysis of the political forms existing in Greece at the time. On the other hand, in the very same work, Plato has been taken to canonize an idealist conceptualization of justice, as a normative Ideal that prescribes how things Ought to be. This conception remains prevalent today in mainstream theories of justice, which unfold within a more or less liberal frame of reference. Despite the plurality of perspectives and the willingness to critically engage with key premises of liberal thought, justice continues for the most part to be conceived as a judgment that reason passes on material reality. Recognizing the exclusionary implications of this type of normative political theory, a diverse yet identifiable current of thought has emerged that attempts to recover a more critical conception of justice, which does not adopt however the reductionist attitude of traditional Marxist or more broadly materialist critiques. In this context, the legacy of poststructuralism has been ambivalent. On the one hand, the late work of Derrida has arguably been an inaugurating moment of contemporary critical and non-reductionist theories of justice. On the other hand, it is not hard to find instances in the work of other iconic poststructuralist thinkers that suggest a principled dismissal of the notion’s analytical and political merits. Intentionally or inadvertently, poststructuralism’s radical critique of political normativism has been said (and accused) to lead to a subsumption of justice to power. Even Derrida’s attempts to sustain the irreducibility of the former to the latter, ends up in an aporetic position, which refrains from articulating an alternative, positive conception of justice. It is the latter possibility that my paper explores. Starting with a brief discussion of Derrida and Foucault and then focusing on Deleuze and Guattari, it will be argued that poststructuralist thought provides a fertile basis for a concept of justice that foregrounds the latter’s critical potency without however forfeiting its normative and ethical traits. At the same time, this conception will be shown to be consistent to a materialist theory of social reality, yet respectful of the ideational dimension of justice as well as of its excessiveness vis-à-vis historical actuality.

Conference Program

more info: https://poststructuralismconference.wordpress.com/conference-abstracts/

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Postmodernism has taken various guises and, accordingly, there is no absolute consensus on what constituted it in the first place. Fredric Jameson characterized it in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism as the loss of historicity, a lack of depth and meaningfulness and a waning of emotional affect, while Brian McHale in Postmodernist Fiction (1987) argued that postmodernism is defined by its fascination with the ontological. Taken together, postmodernism seems essentially to involve a questioning of the real, both in terms of the actual world, and in the representational efficacy and fidelity of fiction.

The forces that once drove postmodernism seem now to be depleted, however. Postmodernism rejected grand narratives, including those of religion, the concept of progress and of history itself. Angela Carter’s fiction, and particularly The Bloody Chamber, provides a clear example of the typical postmodernist impulse: in rewriting traditional fairy-tales she subverts grand narratives of gender, sexuality and female subjectivity. In contrast, in today’s cultural climate there appears to be a renewed engagement with history and a revival of mythic meaning-making that the arch-postmodernists would have abhorred. Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being (2013), for example, relates interconnecting histories – among them the story of a Japanese Kamikaze pilot in the Second World War and the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, contextualizing both in a history of ideas, by reflecting throughout on the principles of Zen Buddhism.

Postmodernism refracted reality into endless language-games, with authors such as Paul Auster making appearances in the fictional universes of their novels or, as is the case in Julio Cortázar’s short story “The Continuity of Parks”, with characters reading stories only to find the embedded story bleeding back into their level of representation. At first glance, today’s writers demonstrate a similar impulse to blur the lines between fiction and reality, as David Shields advocates in his book Reality Hunger (2010). Yet when authors, or other real elements, appear in fiction now – as Ben Lerner does in 10:04 – their presence is intended to signal realism, rather than to foreground the artifice of the text. Indeed, in place of postmodernism’s cool detachment, its anti-anthropomorphism, realism is once again a popular mode. Emotions, furthermore, are again playing a central role in literary fiction, as authors insist on our essential relationality – our connectedness as humans to one another in the globalizing world and with fictional characters as representations of our selves.

It seems then, that a new dominant cultural logic is emerging; the world – or in any case, the literary cosmos – is rearranging itself. This process is still in flux and must be approached strictly in the present tense. To understand the situation, we have to pose a number of questions. The first, and most dramatic, is “Is postmodernism dead?”; quickly followed by “If so, when did it die?”. Critics – such as Christian Moraru, Josh Toth, Neil Brooks, Robin van den Akker and Timotheus Vermeulen – repeatedly point to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the new millennium, the 9/11 attacks, the so-called “War on Terror” and the wars in the Middle East, the financial crisis and the ensuing global revolutions. Taken together, these events signify the failure and unevenness of global capitalism as an enterprise, leading to an ensuing disillusionment with the project of neo-liberal postmodernity and the recent political splintering into extreme Left and extreme Right. The cumulative effect of these events – and the accompanying hyper-anxiety brought about by twenty-four hour news – has made the Western world feel like a more precarious and volatile place, in which we can no longer be nonchalant about our safety or our future.

It seems fitting to me that Oxford Dictionaries chose the politically-charged “post-truth” as their word of the year for 2016. The prevalence of the word – associated particularly with the current political climate (Trump, Brexit, personality politics in general) – is symbolic of contemporary attitudes towards the concept of truth. It can help us to think about the radical cultural shifts that are underway. While modernism was ultimately founded on a utopianism that upheld certain universal truths, postmodernism rejected and deconstructed the notion of truth altogether. The prefix “post-” paradoxically ends up drawing into closer focus the very concept it seeks to reject. The two elements of the word therefore form a kind of metonym for the current stance; “post” reflects a lingering postmodernist distrust, while “truth” remains an important touchstone.

There are many terms for this new supplanting cultural logic, this shift in the ruling belief system: to name a few – altermodernism, cosmodernism, digimodernism, metamodernism, performatism, post-digital, post-humanism, and the clunky post-postmodernism. There are convergences and divergences between these conceptualizations; they complement each other as much as they compete. Even so, consistent across these formations is a legacy of modernist and postmodernist stylistic practice, and a rehabilitated ethical consciousness. Lerner’s 10.04 provides an illustrative case. In one episode, the narrator Ben has just finished his monthly shift at Park Slope Food Co-op. Ben, like many members of the Co-op, simultaneously exhibits pride in its eco-friendly, anti-capitalist ethos and disdain at its inflexibility in accommodating his own extensive travel plans in the working rota. While bagging dried mangoes, Noor, a fellow member, reveals that she is not biologically related to the man she thought was her father. This has significant repercussions for her sense of self, particularly since her Arab-American identity has been founded on her father’s Lebanese heritage.

Despite the intensely personal and affecting nature of Noor’s story, it is punctuated with interruptions. The narrator repeatedly interjects with reporting clauses and narratorial intrusions, such as “Noor said, although not in these words”. The device is postmodern, recursively framing and foregrounding the story in a story, yet it serves not as a self-reflexive affectation; but rather as a way of showing the hermeneutic function of stories in our memories, in our narratives of self and in our relationships with others. There is a narrative interruption too, when Ben is called away from the mangoes. Not yet knowing how Noor’s story ends, Ben wrongly jumps to the conclusion that the story is about Islamophobia. This judgement made by Lerner’s narrating character, self-righteous but flawed, is seen as emblematic of widespread Western social hypocrisy and made more poignant precisely because readers are supposed to interpret the character as a textual proxy for the author. Again, what seems like postmodern metatextuality – the character of the author in the fiction – is not used to postmodern effect. The typically postmodern appearance of the author reduced him or her to a linguistic sign by the ontological impossibility of their presence in the fiction. Contrastingly, Lerner’s author is precisely at home in the fiction.

Later reflecting on Noor’s story, Ben wishes there had been a way to comfort her “without it sounding like presumptuous co-op nonsense”. Ben contemplates his own feelings: “my personality dissolving into a personhood so abstract that every atom belonging to me as good as belonged to Noor, the fiction of the world rearranging itself around her”. In 10.04, this rearrangement of the world turns on an axis of human subjectivity, conceived as intimately and ethically relational.

10.04 is just one example of contemporary fiction that articulates a sentiment beyond the postmodern. It can be categorized as autofiction, a genre that integrates the autobiographical into fiction, and that has blossomed alongside the so-called memoir boom. The genre, at first glance, may seem strictly postmodern, dealing as it does with the fragmentation of the subject and the blurring of the fact–fiction ontological boundary. Yet contemporary autofictions narrativize the self not as a game, but in order to enhance the realism of a text and tackle the sociological and phenomenological dimensions of personal life. Édouard Louis’s The End of Eddy (2017) is a case in point, detailing within a work of fiction the author’s own experiences as an effeminate young man in a small working-class village in Northern France.

Other recent literary trends, such as the popularity of historical fiction, the revival of realism and fiction’s increased engagement with visual and digital culture are also emblematic of this shift. While David Foster Wallace is often cited as the literary figure who issued a call-to-arms against ironic postmodern pop-culture, many other contemporary writers appear to be mounting the offence: among them Ben Lerner, but also Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, Joshua Ferris, Jonathan Franzen, Sheila Heti, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ruth Ozeki, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith and Adam Thirlwell. Thirlwell’s Kapow! (2012), for instance, engages with the revolutions of the Arab Spring, interrogating their historicity and significance, through comparison with the French Revolution. In the process, the self-conscious narrator mixes high and low cultural references, emphasizes the relay of the media’s reportage of world events, and considers the appropriateness of writing his own Arabic novel.

At the same time, our culture retains many of the themes and concerns that exercised writers of earlier generations; there is little sign of a radical literary avant garde sweeping away the old to make way for the new. Postmodernism might not be as emphatically over as some critics like to claim, but it does seem to be in retreat. Its devices have become so commonplace that they have been absorbed into mainstream, commercial and popular culture. Postmodernism has lost its value in part because it has oversaturated the market. And with the end of postmodernism’s playfulness and affectation, we are better placed to construct a literature that engages earnestly with real-world problems. This new literature can, in good faith, examine complex and ever-shifting crises – of racial inequality, capitalism and climate change – to which it is easy to close one’s eyes.

Alison Gibbons is Reader in Contemporary Stylistics at Sheffield Hallam University and an editor of Notes on Metamodernism

source: THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

photo: Woman looking through a hole in the Berlin Wall after the opening of the border on November 09, 1989, in Berlin. (©Thomas Imo/Photothek via Getty Images)

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Maintaining the Borders: identity & politics

Jamie Heckert

30 October 2002

Identity is the process of creating and maintaining borders, creating different kinds of people. This keeps the world packaged in tidy little boxes. These boxes, in turn, are necessary for the violence and domination of hierarchical societies. There cannot be masters or slaves, bosses or workers, men or women, whites or blacks, leaders or followers, heterosexuals or queers, without identity.

Social movement, both past and present, often attempts to use identity as a tool of liberation. Movement based on gender, sexual orientation, class, ethnic and ability identities all have some success in challenging hierarchy and oppression. By no means do I mean to diminish the impact of past and present activism. Personally, my life would have been much more difficult before feminist and gay liberation/equality movement arose. I argue that identity politics is inherently limited in its ability to challenge hierarchy because it depends upon the same roots as the system it aims to overthrow. ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

Does that mean we should all be the same?

Identity is also the answer to the question, ‘who am I?’. This is different from answering, ‘what kind of person am I?’. Labels like ‘woman’, ‘white’ and ‘heterosexual’ tell us about someone’s position in various hierarchies. These positions, these identities, are significant to how a person thinks of themselves. But, they don’t answer the question, ‘who am I?’. Each of us is unique, both similar and different to everyone else in various ways. Working to eliminate identity in the hierarchical sense (e.g. some animals are more equal than others) isn’t the same as eliminating identity in the individual sense (e.g. I’ll still be Jamie). When I talk about the problems with identity, I mean the ‘boxes’ rather than individuals.

Let me use ‘sexual orientation’ as an example. Supposedly people can be put into three boxes, depending on whether they fancy women, men or both. While this is a popular idea, it seems to cause an awful lot of suffering. People worry a lot about their image, and try very hard to make sure that others realise ‘what’ they are. We also worry about ‘what’ other people are – are they like me or are they different? Some people are so unhappy and anxious about these things that they attack others, either physically or verbally. Even people who think of themselves as heterosexual can be attacked. Finally, people suffer when they desire others of the ‘wrong’ gender, or if they worry that others think they do. One alternative is that we all try to be ‘equal opportunity lovers’ and fancy everyone. Those who succeed could then feel superior to those whose desires are less politically correct. Another alternative is that we try to give up thinking of people (including ourselves) in terms of sexual orientation and instead recognise that everyone’s sexual desires are complex and unique. This would mean being yourself rather than a heterosexual, a queer or whatever, and to recognise people as people instead of members of categories. We could never all be the same, even if we tried!

What is wrong with political identity?

Identity separates people. It encourages us to believe that ‘we’ are different from ‘others’. Identity can also encourage conformity. How else do I show that I am one of us other than conforming to the accepted codes prescribed to that identity? This construction of similarity and difference exists whether we are talking about traditional identity politics groups like ‘disabled people’ or political identities like ‘environmentalists’. This separation of us from them has serious consequences for political movement.

Identity encourages isolation. Political ghettos cannot exist without political identity; and their existence reinforces it. Not only are the ‘activists’ separated from the ‘non-activists’, but within a broad political ghetto, anarchists, feminists, and environmentalists (amongst others) often see themselves as involved in separate struggles. People who consider themselves politically active are separated both from each other and from others who do not share an ‘activist’ identity. Effective movement for radical social change cannot be based on such divisions.

Identity reduces social phenomena to individuals. Concepts like anarchism and racism are social. They are not embodied by individuals as terms like ‘anarchist‘ and ‘racist‘ suggest. Rather, they exist as ideas, practices and relationships. In most societies, racism is inherent in our institutionalised relationships and ways of thinking. We can and should be critical of racism, but to attack people as ‘racists’ can only further alienate them from our efforts. Besides, it is a dangerous fantasy to believe that ‘racists’ can be separated from those of us who are non-racist. Likewise, anarchism exists throughout every society. Every time people co-operate without coercion to achieve shared goals, that is anarchy. Every time someone thinks that people should be able to get along with each other without domination, that is anarchism. If we only see racism in ‘racists’, we will never effectively challenge racism. If we only see anarchism in ‘anarchists’, we will miss out on so many desperately needed sources of inspiration.

Identity encourages purity. If we believe that concepts like feminism can be embodied in individuals, then some people can be more feminist than others. This leads to debates about ‘real feminists’ and how feminists should act (e.g. debates regarding feminism and heterosexuality). Feminist purity allows for hierarchy (e.g. more or less and thus better or worse feminists) and encourages guilt (e.g. asking yourself ‘should real feminists think/act like this?’).

Political identity simplifies personal identity. A related problem for feminist identity, for example, is that it demands we focus on one aspects of our complex lives. Feminist movement has often been dominated by white middle-class women who have a particular perspective on what is a ‘women’s issue’. Many women have had to choose between involvement in a woman’s movement that fails to recognise ethnicity and class issues, or in black or working class politics that did not acknowledge gender. But, the alternative of specialised identity politics could get very silly (e.g. a group for disabled, transgender, lesbian, working-class women of colour). Likewise, if I describe myself as a feminist, an anarchist, and a sex radical, I am suddenly three different people. However, if I say I advocate feminism, anarchism and radical sexual politics I am one person with a variety of beliefs.[iv][iv]

Identity often imagines easily defined interests. Feminism is often presented as for women only; men are perceived to entirely benefit from the gender system. Many men do clearly benefit from the gender system in terms of institutionalised domination. If we perceive interests as inherently stemming from current systems, we fail to recognise how people would benefit from alternative systems. If we want to encourage and inspire people to create a very different form of society, we should share with each other what we see as beneficial. We must recognise that different value systems (e.g. domination versus compassion) result in very different interests.

Identity discourages participation. If people are worried that they might be excluded through labelling (e.g. racist or homophobic), they won’t feel welcomed and won’t get involved. Likewise, people do not get involved if they believe that it is not in their interests. If we pepetuate the idea that feminism is for women, men will never see how it could also be in their interests to support feminism. Or they might support feminism, but feel guilty for their male privilege. Either way, men are not encouraged to be active in feminist movements. Radical social change requires mass social movement. Identity politics, by definition, can never achieve this. Political identities, like ‘environmentalist’, can likewise become a basis for minority politics.

Identity creates opposition. By dividing the world up into opposing pairs (e.g. men/women, heterosexuals/queers, ruling class/working-class, whites/blacks), identity creates opposite types of people who perceive themselves as having opposing interests. This opposition means that people fail to recognise their common interests as human beings. The opposition of two forces pushing against each other means that very little changes.

Identity freezes the fluid. Neither individual identity (the ‘who am I?’ kind) nor social organisation are fixed, but are in constant motion. Political identities require that these fluid processes are frozen realities with particular characteristics and inherent interests. In failing to recognise the nature of both identity and society, political identity can only inhibit radical social change.

It may not be perfect, but can’t it still be a useful strategy?

It is a very good strategy if you don’t want to change things very much. Identity politics fits in nicely within the dominant neo-liberal ideology. Groups created around oppressed identities can lobby the state for civil rights. This idea of trying to protect individuals without changing relationships or systems of organisation is compatible with the individualistic basis of capitalism and representative ‘democracy’. I would never argue that a strategy has to be ‘perfect’ to be useful, but it must be consistent with its aims. Ends and means can only be separated in our minds. If the aim is to reduce or eliminate hierarchical social divisions (e.g. gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, class), a strategy which depends upon those very divisions can never be successful.

If political identity is such a poor strategy, why is it so common?

On a personal level, political identity makes us feel part of something larger at the same time that it makes us feel special were different. In the short-term, this can be very successful defence mechanism. For example, I’m sure I would have been a lot more damaged by the sexist and homophobic environment in which I grew up if I had not been able to convert stigma into pride. However, feeling yourself to be different and separate from other people is not a successful long-term strategy, either psychologically or politically.

What’s the alternative to political identity?

If borders are the problem, then we must support and encourage each other to tear down the fences. Two crucial tools for dismantling borders are systematic analyses and compassionate strategies.

We should recognise oppression is not simply a practice of individuals who have power over those who do not. Instead, we could see how forms of organisation (including institutions and relationships) systematically produce hierarchies and borders. People will only see an interest in getting more involved if they realise that their individual problems – anxiety, depression, exhaustion, anger, poverty, meaningless work,unsatisfying sex lives, etc – are not unique, but are systematically produced. Furthermore, their action will only be effective if they work to reduce all forms of hierarchy and domination. Constructs including gender, sexuality, capitalism, race and the nation state are interdependent systems. Each system of domination serves to reinforce the others. This doesn’t mean we have to solve every problem instantly, but we must recognise that all issues are human issues. At the same time, we must not imagine that a particular system of domination (not even capitalism!) is the source of all others.

Radical politics is rarely appealing because it focuses on the evils of the world. This offers little that is hopeful or constructive in people’s daily lives. If we want to see widespread social movement for radical change, we have to offer people something they value. Listening to people’s concerns, caring about their problems and encouraging and supporting them to develop systemic solutions requires compassion. Offer people a better quality of life instead of focusing so much on depressing aspects of our current society.

We should also recognise that people positioned in more privileged categories may in some ways suffer. At the very least, people who feel a strong need to dominate and control must suffer deep insecurities, the results of competition and hierarchy. Insecurity, domination and control are not conducive to fulfilling and meaningful relationships with other people. Attacking people in ‘privileged’ positions does little to dismantle these systems. It also gives entirely too much credit to people in those positions – they are both products and producers of systems, just like the rest of us.

To radically reorganise our society, we should aim to both diminish systematic domination and suffering and encourage systematic compassion. Just as apparently disconnected and often incoherent forms of domination can reinforce and maintaining each other, so too can a compassionate organisation of society become systematic and self-sustaining.

Encouraging people to be more comfortable with sexuality in general has been a key focus of my own political efforts[v][v]. But, sexuality is only one area in which a compassionate and systematic approach has much more radical potential than politicising identity.

Find sources of suffering, whatever they are, and support and encourage people to find ways of relating to themselves and others that reduce that suffering. Help build compassionate, co-operative institutions (e.g. social centres, support/discussion groups, mediation services, childcare support, food not bombs). Tell people when you admire or appreciate their efforts. Support people trying to change their environments (e.g. workplace resistance). Offer alternatives to people who are involved in or considering authoritarian positions (e.g. military, police, business management).

Demonstrating the pleasures and benefits of co-operative, compassionate organisation offers a strong threat to the world of borders and guards. I suspect that fragmented groups, anti-whatever demonstrations, unfriendly, exclusive meetings and utopian ‘after the revolution’ lectures will never be quite as enticing to people outside the activist ghetto.

Further Reading:

Anonymous (1999) Give Up Activism in Reflections on June 18^th. Also at http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no9/activism.htm#

Begg, Alex (2000) Empowering the Earth: Strategies for Social Change. Totnes, Green Books

CrimethInc. (2002) Definition of Terms. Harbinger (4) http://crimethinc.com/library/terms.html

CrimethInc. (2002) Why We’re Right and You’re Wrong (Infighting the Good Fight). Harbinger (4) http://crimethinc.com/library/right.html

Edwards, David (1998) The Compassionate Revolution: Radical Politics and Buddhism. Totnes, Green Books

Heckert, J. (2003) Sexuality | Identity | Politics in J Purkis and J Bowen (eds) Changing Anarchism. Manchester, Manchester University Press

hooks, b. (2000). Feminism is for Everybody: passionate politics. London, Pluto Press

LeGuin, U. (1999/1974). The Dispossessed. London, The Women’s Press

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“How strongly that poisonous net holds when one is unaware of what it is made of, and how easily it falls apart when one consciously begins to contradict its malicious urgings.”²

“[The] normalizing of the shocking and abusive is refused by repairing injured instinct….To re-learn the deep…instincts, it is vital to see how they were decommissioned to begin with….[We compose] a map of the woods in which we live, and where the predators live, and what their modus operandi is….[Then] if our wild nature has been injured by something, we refuse to lie down to die. We refuse to normalize this harm. We call up our instincts and do what we have to do.¹⁰ Klein demonstrates a similar optimism: “Once the mechanics of the shock doctrine are deeply and collectively understood, whole communities become harder to take by surprise, more difficult to confuse-shock resistant.”¹¹

• Separation: a detachment or departure from a previous state, whose familiarity provided a sense of security;

• Marginality / Ambiguity: entering the margin between the former and the new state of being, not quite here but not quite there, having lost the security of familiar boundaries and facing disorientation;

• Consummation: a culmination in which one integrates a new state of being and sense of self.¹²

“by methods as heartless, as cynically iniquitous as any that were employed by the Roman plunderers or robber barons of the Dark Ages. In the cool brutality with which properties are wrecked, securities destroyed, and people by the hundreds robbed of their little, all to build up the fortunes of the multi-millionaires, we have an appalling revelation of the kind of monster a human being may become.”¹⁴

“I for one have been subjected to much of this torture as being part of a marginalized class of society. The criminal global elites like to practice their abuse experiments on the less fortunate that cannot defend themselves and offer any resistance, but as the author so rightly observed the human spirit is indominitable and will not go quietly into the night. Excellent job in exposing these psychological crimes for what they are. When people start realizing they were once human beings and hate what the behavioural criminals are doing, we can stop this learned helplessness and say with Patrick Henry, ‘Give me Liberty or give me death’.”¹⁵

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_28661.shtml

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