Constituent Imaginary Final

Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 1 of 216 Index Index ........................................................................................................................................................... 1 introductory remarks ............................................................................................................................... 8 1NC—Module A: The World is Fucked ................................................................................................. 9 1NC—Module A: The World is Fucked ............................................................................................... 10 1NC Module B—Engage The Poetical .................................................................................................. 11 1NC Module B—Engage The Poetical .................................................................................................. 12 1NC Module B—Engage The Poetical .................................................................................................. 13 1NC Module B—Engage The Poetical .................................................................................................. 14 1NC Module B—Calculation, Technology, and Askesis [Alternate] ................................................. 15 1NC Module B—Calculation, Technology, and Askesis (Alternate Form) ....................................... 16 1NC Module B—Calculation, Technology, and Askesis (Alternate Form) ....................................... 17 1NC Module B—Social Ecology ............................................................................................................ 18 1NC Module B Feyerabend Shell Module ............................................................................................ 19 1NC Module B Feyerabend Shell Module ............................................................................................ 20 1NC Module B Feyerabend Shell Module ............................................................................................ 21 1NC Module B—Reflections on Direct Action ..................................................................................... 22 1NC Module B—Reflections on Direct Action ..................................................................................... 23 1NC Module B—Reflections on Direct Action ..................................................................................... 24 Alternative Graeber ................................................................................................................................ 25 Alternative Graeber ................................................................................................................................ 26 Alternative Graeber ................................................................................................................................ 27 Alternative Graeber ................................................................................................................................ 28 Alternative Graeber ................................................................................................................................ 29 ***Heidegger/Engage the Poetical*** 2NC—Must Rethink Relationship to us and earth .............................................................................. 30 Technological Thought Bad (1/2) .......................................................................................................... 31 Technological Thought Bad (2/2) .......................................................................................................... 32 Reflection/Introspection overcomes technological logic ...................................................................... 33 Alt Solvency ............................................................................................................................................. 34 Technological Thinking  Genoide ...................................................................................................... 35 Fuck Roger Clemens 1 Constituent Imaginary page 2 of 216 DDI 2008 Aff is technologically justified ................................................................................................................ 36 ‘Askesis’ Alt Ext (1/4) ............................................................................................................................. 37 ‘Askesis’ Alt Ext (2/4) ............................................................................................................................. 38 ‘Askesis’ Alt Ext (3/4) ............................................................................................................................. 39 ‘Askesis’ Alt Ext (4/4) ............................................................................................................................. 40 Calculative Thinking .............................................................................................................................. 41 Meditative thinking solves rootedness .................................................................................................. 42 Relationship to Technology  Standing Reserve ................................................................................ 43 Impact Calculus  Enslavement to tech o/w ....................................................................................... 44 A/T Tech is inevitable (1/2) .................................................................................................................... 45 A/T Tech is inevitable (2/2) .................................................................................................................... 46 A2: Technology is neutral ...................................................................................................................... 47 A2 Crisis Politics ..................................................................................................................................... 48 A2 Moral Obligation/Responsibility ..................................................................................................... 49 Standing Reserve (1/2) ............................................................................................................................ 50 Standing Reserve (2/2) ............................................................................................................................ 51 A2 “Experts” Research........................................................................................................................... 52 A2 “We Don’t Have to Do the Alt” ....................................................................................................... 53 A2 “You Want the Past” ........................................................................................................................ 54 Poetry is the saving power ...................................................................................................................... 55 Tech  Calculation ................................................................................................................................ 56 Relationship to Tech is key..................................................................................................................... 57 A2 Nazism (1/3) ....................................................................................................................................... 58 A2 Nazism (2/3) ....................................................................................................................................... 59 A2 Nazism (3/3) ....................................................................................................................................... 60 A2 Rorty ................................................................................................................................................... 61 Aff Answer to heidegger ......................................................................................................................... 62 ***Alternative Energy is a social project*** Counter Culture and Alternative Energy ............................................................................................. 63 State/centralization disrupts renewables (1/4) ..................................................................................... 64 State/centralization disrupts renewables (2/4) ..................................................................................... 65 State/centralization disrupts renewables (3/4) ..................................................................................... 66 Fuck Roger Clemens 2 Constituent Imaginary page 3 of 216 DDI 2008 State/centralization disrupts renewables (4/4) ..................................................................................... 67 Grid integration fails .............................................................................................................................. 68 ***Feyerabend/Epistemological Anarchy/ Ignore Reason – Leap of Faith ............................................................................................................... 69 No Reality – Understanding IS Transforming ..................................................................................... 70 No Reality – No External Access ........................................................................................................... 71 No Reality – Abstraction / Experimentation ........................................................................................ 72 No Reality – Stability .............................................................................................................................. 73 No Reality – Referentiality ..................................................................................................................... 74 No Reality – Referentiality ..................................................................................................................... 75 No Reality / Alternative Solves Better – Unlimiting Democracy ........................................................ 76 No Reality / Alternative Solves “Reality” Better – Unlimiting Democracy ....................................... 77 No Reality / Alternative Solves “Reality” Better – Truth Claims ...................................................... 78 No Reality / Alternative Solves “Reality” Better – Truth Claims ..................................................... 79 Alternative Solves “Reality” Better – Democracy ............................................................................... 80 Alternative Solves Better – Layperson Decision-Making.................................................................... 81 Impact – Freedom ................................................................................................................................... 82 Impact – Freedom ................................................................................................................................... 83 Fuck Scientific Method – Ideology / Excluded Methodologies ........................................................... 84 Fuck Scientific Method – Ideology / Excluded Methodologies ........................................................... 85 Fuck Scientific Method – Bureacracy / Dissent ................................................................................... 86 Fuck Scientific Method – Bureacracy / Dissent .................................................................................. 87 Fuck Scientific Method – Annihilates Difference / Empirics (China) ................................................ 88 Fuck Scientific Method – Cosmology / Generalization ....................................................................... 89 Fuck Scientific Method – Astrology Proves.......................................................................................... 90 Fuck Scientific Method – Astrology Proves.......................................................................................... 91 Fuck Scientific Method – Self-Referentiality ....................................................................................... 92 Fuck Scientific Method – Self-Referentiality ....................................................................................... 93 Fuck Scientific Method – AT: Emprics ................................................................................................ 94 Fuck Scientific Method – AT: Emprics ................................................................................................ 95 Fuck Scientific Method – AT: Emprics ................................................................................................ 96 State Example – Scientific Confluency Bad.......................................................................................... 97 Fuck Roger Clemens 3 Constituent Imaginary page 4 of 216 DDI 2008 Perm Fails – Inarticulate Grunting Pigs ............................................................................................... 98 Perm Fails – Inarticulate Grunting Pigs ............................................................................................... 99 ***Social Ecology*** Shit Is Bad.............................................................................................................................................. 100 Shit Is Bad.............................................................................................................................................. 101 Shit Is Bad.............................................................................................................................................. 102 Shit Is Bad.............................................................................................................................................. 103 Shit Is Bad.............................................................................................................................................. 104 Bad Shit Goes Epic................................................................................................................................ 105 Bad Shit Gets Fixed .............................................................................................................................. 106 Bad Shit Gets Fixed .............................................................................................................................. 107 Bad Shit Gets Fixed .............................................................................................................................. 108 Bad Shit Gets Fixed .............................................................................................................................. 109 Bad Shit Gets Fixed .............................................................................................................................. 110 Bad Shit Gets Fixed .............................................................................................................................. 111 Bad Shit Gets Fixed .............................................................................................................................. 112 Bad Shit Gets Fixed .............................................................................................................................. 113 Bad Shit Gets Fixed .............................................................................................................................. 114 Bad Shit Gets Fixed .............................................................................................................................. 115 In Between Bad and Epic ..................................................................................................................... 116 Deep Ecology Bad: ................................................................................................................................ 117 Deep Ecology Bad ................................................................................................................................. 118 Deep Ecology Bad ................................................................................................................................. 119 Deep Ecology Bad ................................................................................................................................. 120 Deep Ecology Bad ................................................................................................................................. 121 Deep Ecology Bad ................................................................................................................................. 122 A2: Social Ecology is anthropocentric ................................................................................................ 123 A2: Abandoning Science Is Bad .......................................................................................................... 124 A2: Uniformity ...................................................................................................................................... 125 A2: Hierarchy Inevitable ...................................................................................................................... 126 Cap Turns Bad Shit Into Epic Shit, Creating Entirely New Shit ..................................................... 127 Cap Turns Bad Shit Into Epic Shit, Creating Entirely New Shit ..................................................... 128 Fuck Roger Clemens 4 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 5 of 216 ***Graeber/small-a anarchy*** Kritik Is Verb ........................................................................................................................................ 129 Kritik Is Verb ........................................................................................................................................ 130 Kritik Is Verb ........................................................................................................................................ 131 Kritik Is Verb ........................................................................................................................................ 132 Kritik Is Verb ........................................................................................................................................ 133 Grassroots Solvency .............................................................................................................................. 134 Grassroots Solvency .............................................................................................................................. 135 Grassroots Solvency .............................................................................................................................. 136 Grassroots Solvency .............................................................................................................................. 137 Grassroots Solvency .............................................................................................................................. 138 Communities Good ............................................................................................................................... 139 Communities Good ............................................................................................................................... 140 Communities Good ............................................................................................................................... 141 Direct Democracy Good ....................................................................................................................... 142 Direct Democracy Good ....................................................................................................................... 143 Direct Democracy Good ....................................................................................................................... 144 Concensus Democracy Good ................................................................................................................ 145 Concensus Democracy Good ................................................................................................................ 146 Movement Of Movements Good .......................................................................................................... 147 Movement of Movements Good ........................................................................................................... 148 Movement of Movements Good ........................................................................................................... 149 Fragmented Movements Good............................................................................................................. 150 Fragmented Movements Good............................................................................................................. 151 Fragmented Movements Good............................................................................................................. 152 Fragmented Movements Good............................................................................................................. 153 SYNTHESIS OF IDEAS KEY ............................................................................................................. 154 Role Of Ballot ........................................................................................................................................ 155 Nonviolence Good ................................................................................................................................. 156 Nonviolence Good ................................................................................................................................. 157 Intellectual Debate Good ...................................................................................................................... 158 Fuck Roger Clemens 5 Constituent Imaginary page 6 of 216 DDI 2008 Intellectual Debate Good ...................................................................................................................... 159 Must Continue To Kritik ..................................................................................................................... 160 Must Continue To Kritik ..................................................................................................................... 161 Small Issues First .................................................................................................................................. 162 Borders First.......................................................................................................................................... 163 Exchange of Experiences Key .............................................................................................................. 164 Exchange of Experiences Key .............................................................................................................. 165 Action Before Alternative..................................................................................................................... 166 Idealism Good........................................................................................................................................ 167 Idealism Good........................................................................................................................................ 168 Direct Action Good ............................................................................................................................... 169 Direct Action Good ............................................................................................................................... 170 Movement Against Neoliberalism Good ............................................................................................. 171 Movement Against Neoliberalism Good ............................................................................................. 172 Movement Against Neoliberalism Good ............................................................................................. 173 Movement Against Neoliberalism Good ............................................................................................. 174 Movement against Neoliberalism Good .............................................................................................. 175 Movement against Globalization Good ............................................................................................... 176 Working Through The State Good ..................................................................................................... 177 Anarchy Good ....................................................................................................................................... 178 Anarchy Good ....................................................................................................................................... 179 AT State Key ......................................................................................................................................... 180 KRITIK OF MEDIA ............................................................................................................................ 181 KRITIK OF MEDIA ............................................................................................................................ 182 UNLEASH THE IMAGINARY .......................................................................................................... 183 FRAMEWORK/POLICY BAD ........................................................................................................... 184 WESTERN INSTITUTIONS BAD ..................................................................................................... 185 UNIVERSITY BAD .............................................................................................................................. 186 WE DON’T OVERTHROW STATE.................................................................................................. 187 CONSENSUS BAD ............................................................................................................................... 188 A2 – TURN WE SOLVE INEQUALITIES ........................................................................................ 189 COUNTERPOWER/RESISTANCE CARNIVAL ............................................................................ 190 STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE -> BUREAUCRACY .......................................................................... 191 A2 FOUCAULT/WEBER .................................................................................................................... 192 Fuck Roger Clemens 6 Constituent Imaginary page 7 of 216 DDI 2008 VIOLENCE KEY.................................................................................................................................. 193 ALIENATION ....................................................................................................................................... 194 ALEINATION ....................................................................................................................................... 195 NEGATION - SCREAMING............................................................................................................... 196 DIRECT ACTION KEY ...................................................................................................................... 197 DIY AND MUSIC BREAK DOWN CAP ........................................................................................... 198 A2 – NO ALTERNATIVE ................................................................................................................... 199 COMMUNITY ACTIVISM SOLVES BIOPOLITICS .................................................................... 200 INDECISION GOOD ........................................................................................................................... 201 IMPULSE GOOD ................................................................................................................................. 203 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD .............................................................................................. 204 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD .............................................................................................. 205 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD .............................................................................................. 206 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD .............................................................................................. 207 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD .............................................................................................. 208 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD .............................................................................................. 209 HOMELESS NARRATIVE ................................................................................................................. 210 HOMELESS NARRATIVE ................................................................................................................. 211 DEFENCE OF NARRATIVE.............................................................................................................. 212 DEFENCE OF NARRATIVE.............................................................................................................. 213 ***Discourse Fails*** Discourse Fails ....................................................................................................................................... 214 Discourse Fails ....................................................................................................................................... 215 Tech as Social Project ........................................................................................................................... 216 Fuck Roger Clemens 7 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 8 of 216 introductory remarks constituent imaginaries – introductory remarks method – this is the work product of our anti-authoritarian community, enacting the alternative to politics-as-usual and providing for a decidedly divergent set of argument, evidence, and implying an alternative to dominant debate practices – no one lead this group: everyone led this group, everyone also followed the various leads of each of the others – a certain chaotic milieu is as inevitable as it is charming – we invite you to do the same: most of the file is done with ocr, which should facilitate you in making these arguments into whatever resonates with you, adjust them to specific round contexts (judges, opponents, etc.), and effectively take them as the starting point they were intended to be general parameters – there are four major arguments represented in this file: epistemological anarchism (paul feyerabend), social ecology (murray bookchin, et al), technological askesis (martin heidegger & ladelle mcwhorter), and small-a anarchy or the “movement of movements” (david graeber, et al) – we have covered some of the canonical literature, but have not provided you with exhaustive coverage of the subject matters: if an idea, concept, or way of thinking catches your interest, tracing the research trajectories of these major argument groups should be relatively easy 1nc shells – there is an über-shell that divides into two parts: the first part is generic and combines with the various different modules (derived from the above argument groups) – there are also several stand-alone shells within the argument groupings: importantly, we encourage different forms of knowing, ways of lending support, and figuring the contours of the argument – towards that end, we encourage you to exploit positively your relationships to popular culture (music, poetry, dance) and develop new ones: explore the possibilities of this argument by supplementing (or supplanting) our work with avocations of your own the file – as mentioned, we tried to present this in a technologically amenable way with which you can work, alter, improve: due to time constraints (and some technological challenges), many of the extension blocks follow a traditional form and are designed, again, to do with what you will – they are grouped among the different general arguments and follow the typical formal requirements of adjusting the work to an institute-wide audience – also, some of the cards in the files have been used in the various shells, so be careful, and some of the shell cards have been shortened (using ellipses, since the full cards are available in the file) some strategy notes – there is some phenomenal counter-perm evidence (e.g., immanuel wallerstein) that helps you reverse competition and control the net benefit by arguing that the combination of alternatives must be done according to a view towards community, sociality, and the like – the shells and extensions efface the standard disadvantage vernacular of links, impacts, and alternatives: please, do not infer from these arguments, extensions, and evidence that talk about the status quo decision-making or alternative ways of producing community, for example, a standard lexicon of causality and solvency constituent imaginaries comprises brad bolman, brendan burke, benjamin chang, bob ciborowski, roger clemens, gabriella friedman, cory hansen, harsh jhaveri, taylor layton, matthew malek, patrick mccleary, will miller, krishnan ramanujan, alex resar, bill shanahan, elliot stein Fuck Roger Clemens 8 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 9 of 216 1NC—Module A: The World is Fucked If, as I have argued elsewhere, the modern world-system is in structural crisis, and we have entered an ‘age of transition’—a period of bifurcation and chaos—then it is clear that the issues confronting antisystemic movements pose themselves in a very different fashion than those of the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries.1 Immanuel Wallerstein, sociologist and activist, explains the relevance of how we think about the topic, their 1ac, and the whole host of other concerns that will determine what a “good decision” will be at the end of this debate. Wallerstein continues and applies your decision to this debate: That brings us back to the issue of debate. We need to stop assuming what the better (not the perfect) society will be like. We need to discuss it, outline it, experiment with alternative structures to realize it; and we need to do this at the same time as we carry out the first three parts of our programme for a chaotic world in systemic transition. And if this programme is insufficient, and it probably is, then this very insufficiency ought to be part of the debate which is Point One of the programme.2 We offer a radical alternative to their affirmative approach. Rather than prefigure an outcome that will fail and likely exacerbate the very catastrophe they detail in their 1ac. Reality is not fixed and stable, but dependent on the assumptions one accepts. Our constituent imaginaries for this debate encourage divergent realities. Paul Feyerabend, epistemological anarchist, argues for this alternative approach to science and to debate: The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious.… [I]t neglects the complex physical and historical conditions which influence scientific change. It makes our science less adaptable and more dogmatic: every methodological rule is associated with cosmological assumptions, so that using the rule we take for granted that the assumptions are correct.3 Our constituent imaginaries argue against simple recourse to USFG “policy” and instead defends politics as an way toward a different energy future. David Graeber, anarchist sociologist and activist, defends a different politics: The notion of “policy” presumes a state or governing apparatus which imposes its will on others. “Policy” is the negation of politics; policy is by definition something concocted by some form of elite, which presumes it knows better than others how their affairs are to be conducted. By participating in policy debates the very best one can achieve is to limit the damage, since the very premise is inimical to the idea of people managing their own affairs. 4 The drive for alternative energy should recognize that incentivizing renewables does little to accomplish the political end described in their 1ac. Alternative energy is a social project, not just a combination of technology, economics, and politics. Leigh Glover of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at Delaware explains the futility of the affirmative approach in 2006: Renewable energy is currently in the process of being overhauled as a technology. Much of what was developed at the small scale is of no commercial use for large energy supply companies. A new generation of technologies is now being developed to serve quite different ends. Associated with the introduction of this technology is a new set of social issues. What renewable energy advocates seem to have overlooked is that the social and environmental benefits of the old technology are not necessarily characteristic of this new generation. These new technological developments have effectively closed off meaningful advances in the old technology in the developed world, so that designing technologies that people could buy and operate for their homes, farms, small factories, and commercial centers is no longer being pursued. Renewable energy technology is held in a cycle of perpetual disadvantage, whereby every successive advance to make it fit better into the conventional energy system creates a further set of obstacles that erode its original advantages over fossil fuels. 5 1 Immanuel Wallerstein, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Ed. Tom Mertes (2004) 271. Immanuel Wallerstein, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Ed. Tom Mertes, (2004) 272. 3 Paul Feyerabend, AgainstMethod (1975) full card in file. 4 David Graeber, lecturer, anthropology Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004 2 5 Leigh Glover, 2006 Policy Fellow and Assistant Professor, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, “From Love-ins to Logos,” Transforming power: energy, environment, and society in conflict, eds. John Byrne, Noah Toly, and Leigh Glover 253-54. Fuck Roger Clemens 9 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 10 of 216 1NC—Module A: The World is Fucked Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, further delineates the parameters of this current crisis as inextricably woven into the political, technological, and social fabric of our lives. The way we answer the questions posed by their 1ac and this year’s topic will determine survival of the planet, including humankind. Bookchin explains the extent of our challenge in this debate round: What technology will be required to achieve these goals and avoid the further pollution of the earth? What institutions will be required to create a new public sphere, what social relations to foster a new ecological sensibility, what forms of work to render human practice playful and creative, what sizes and populations of communities to scale life to human dimensions controllable by all? What kind of poetry? Concrete questions—ecological, social, political, and behavioral—rush in like a flood heretofore dammed up by the constraints of traditional ideologies and habits of thought. The answers we provide to these questions have a direct bearing on whether humanity can survive on the planet. The trends in our time are visibly directed against ecological diversity; in fact, they point toward brute simplification of the entire biosphere.… Modern society, in effect, is disassembling the biotic complexity achieved by aeons of organic evolution. The great movement of life from fairly simple to increasingly complex forms and relations is being ruthlessly reversed in the direction of an environment that will be able to support only simpler living things. To continue this reversal of biological evolution, to undermine the biotic food-webs on which humanity depends for its means of life, places in question the very survival of the human species. If the reversal of the evolutionary process continues, there is good reason to believe—all control of other toxic agents aside —that the preconditions for complex forms of life will be irreparably destroyed and the earth will be incapable of supporting us as a viable species.6 Our constituent imaginaries present a different way through the 1ac, the topic, and the underlying assumptions of traditional policymaking and conventional (hard) energy paths. The world presumed in their 1ac is coming apart. Their cosmological assumptions guarantee failure and risk massive societal and ecological catastrophe. Vote negative to travel different paths toward the energy futures necessary to sustain life on our planet. 6 Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (Palo Alto, CA: Cheshire Books, 1981) 41 – full card in file. Fuck Roger Clemens 10 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 11 of 216 1NC Module B—Engage The Poetical The resolution, should the United States federal government increase alternative energy incentives in the United States is an answer, not a topic. This year’s topic is alternative energy and how we should orient ourselves in relation to that larger concept. The affirmative’s reliance on the United States federal government as the enactor of a future policy option is part of the problem, not the solution. Their attempt to outline linear advantages and place a calculative value on both human and non-human beings endorses a fundamentally flawed ontology - an ontology focused on challenging-forth the future and describing how the future should be. This mindset creates an obsession with management – the only way to successfully control the future is management, management excludes all other options of existence, and becomes the only means to the only end. The affirmative endorses a managerial mode of thinking that proliferates through intellectual debate about the environment, threatening to overcome all alternatives; we quote Ladelle McWhorter in 1992: LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. What it most illustrative is often also what is most common. Today, on all sides of ecological debate we hear, with greater and greater frequency, the word management. On the one hand, business people want to manage natural resources so as to keep up profits. On the other hand, conservationists want to manage natural resources so that there will be plenty of coal and oil and recreational facilities for future generations. These groups and factions within them debate vociferously over which management policies are the best, that is, the most efficient and manageable. Radical environmentalists damn both groups and claim it is human population growth and rising expectations that are in need of management. But wherever we look, wherever we listen, we see and hear the term management. We are living in a veritable age of management. Before a middle class child graduates from high school she or he is already preliminarily trained in the arts of weight management, stress management, and time management, to name just a few. As we approach middle age we continue to practice these essential arts, refining and adapting our regulatory regimes as the pressures of life increase and the body begins to break down. We have become a society of managers - of our homes, careers, portfolios, estates, even of our own bodies - so is it surprising that we set ourselves up as the managers of the earth itself? Martin Heidegger writes in 1959 that, under this mindset, “nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modern technology and industry. This relation of man, to the world as such, [is] in principle a technical one.” Heidegger calls this challenging-forth of energy from nature the creation of “standing reserve,” nature converted to a tool for human needs. Continued reliance on the creation of standing reserve will inevitably lead to humans as part of the standing reserve. We understand that the world will be technological. This is not the question, instead the importance lies in how we orient ourselves in relation to technology. Their interventionist mindset is the root cause of all environmental catastrophe. Like a Rube Goldberg machine, the affirmative is the next piece, the next bit of complexity added to the machine. But with each new added piece, the chances of collapse becomes ever more likely. Their drive for ceaseless interventions motivated by guilt for our previous actions will inevitably result in our complete destruction, and the creation of a meaningless, nihilistic existence, we return to McWhorter: LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. Thinking today must concern itself with the earth. Wherever we turn on newsstands, on the airwaves, and in even the most casual of conversations everywhere - we are inundated by predictions of ecological catastrophe and omnicidal doom. And many of these predictions bear themselves out in our own experience. We now live with the ugly, painful, and impoverishing consequences of decades of technological innovation and expansion without restraint of at least a century of disastrous "natural resource management” policies, and of more than two centuries of virtually unchecked industrial pollution - consequences that include the fact that millions of us on any given day are suffering, many of us dying of diseases and malnutrition that are the results of humanly produced ecological devastation; the fact that thousands of species now in existence will no longer exist on this planet by the turn of the century; the fact that our planet's climate has been altered, probably irreversibly, [CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE] 11/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 12 of 216 1NC Module B—Engage The Poetical [CONTINUED] by the carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons we have heedlessly poured into our atmosphere; and the mind-boggling fact that it may now be within humanity's Power to destroy all life on this globe. Our usual response to such prophecies of doom is to ignore them or, when we cannot do that, to scramble to find some way to manage our problems, some quick solution, some technological fix. But over and over again new resource management techniques, new solutions, new technologies disrupt delicate systems even further, doing still more damage to a planet already dangerously out of ecological balance. Our ceaseless interventions seem only to make things worse, to perpetuate a cycle of human activity followed by ecological disaster followed by human intervention followed by a new disaster of another kind. In fact, it would appear that our trying to do things, change things, fix things cannot be the solution, because it is part of the problem itself. But, if we cannot act to solve our problems, what should we do? The negative proposes a radical break from the action reaction cycles of the affirmative, we must act in the present and allow the future to reveal itself, only this creates an aesthetic relationship with nature that opens up the possibility for meaningful existence. We in this room must embrace a process of askesis in order to rethink our relationship to the world and, most importantly, ourselves. Askesis is an individual process of self-transformation that creates the potential to break down our ascetic drive for purity and control. We must engage in a meditative self-analysis. Thus, the role of the ballot is to affirm our criticism as a way of questioning our selves, we believe debate affords us the opportunity to not rush headlong in to quick solutions, but instead, provide the possibility for a new approach to environmental advocacy, otherwise, the ontological assumptions underlying their affirmative threaten to silence and ignore the catastrophic effects our own actions have had on the environment itself. We quote Ladelle McWhorter in 1992: LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Asceticism/askēsis : Foucault's thinking historical subjectivity” in Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought. The ascetic self, then, undergoes changes as the process intensifies, becoming more powerful perhaps and ever more rigidly defined. The ascetic self is subjected and subjectified by the processes of purification that posit its ever more carefully delineated identity core. The ascetic self en-selfs itself by enforcing the continued stability of the identity it seeks to be. Asceticism is a powerfully paradoxical drive for constant self-transformation toward a perfect stasis in a pure unity of self-identical repose. Foucault's askesis bears great resemblance to the movement of self-transformative ascetic drives. The ascetic self's drive to know itself is certainly apparent in Foucault. And there is a sense in which in Foucault we encounter a kind of truth, a truth that the self is not self-identical but rather that it is an amalgamation of disparate forms. The ascetic self, upon encountering that "truth," upon acceding to the plausibility of genealogical accounts, begins, predictably enough, to discipline itself to that self-knowledge, to bring itself into intellectual conformity with that truth. But when the drive to purify confronts the "truth" of its own impurity, when it runs headlong into the contradictory project of attempting to pare itself down to its fundamental multiplicity, ascetic selfhood begins to undergo the self-transforming power of Foucault's discourse, and the valences that held themselves in tension to produce the notion of a perfect unity, of some enduring Same, must necessarily shift. The thought of self in the center of Foucault's discourse is the thought of transgression, a reversal of forces, a gradual or perhaps violent turning outward of the valences before turned in, like fingers pulling loose from a stone they have gripped too hard for too long. It will be necessary to find a different way to speak: When there occurs the undergoing of the genealogical stripping away of the argumentative and commonsense forces sustaining belief in the unitary self, when there occurs the undergoing of the exposure of the fearful and nonrational drives that put those beliefs in place, there may occur a kind of death of the ahistorical self, just as, in Nietzsche's discourse, when there occurs the undergoing of the exposure of the ungodliness that supported gods, there occurs a kind of death of the ahistorical God. [CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE] 12/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 13 of 216 1NC Module B—Engage The Poetical [CONTINUED] As the thought of God loses its power to shape a world, the thought of a unitary self-identity begins to lose its power to shape a life. And what then? Will human being simply fly apart? Will we all go stark raving mad? Will might equal right and society degenerate into a war of all against all? Perhaps. But why should it come that? Selfishness would be a strange thing in a discourse that did not insist upon the unity of self-identical selves. Perhaps, as Nietzsche says, morality and evil are Siamese twins. Foucault's discourse, then, like ascetic discourses, is a self-transformative exercise. It is an askesis that allows the powers of ascetic selfhood to bring themselves to bear in characteristic ways. But because Foucault's discourse draws asceticism to focus its self-transformative power on the drive for purification itself, ascetic selfhood finds itself in question. Not only does self-transformation occur here, but there is within the discourse an awareness of this transformative power and an allowance of it as opposed to adenial or an attempt at masterful control. Thus, like ascetic discourses, Foucault's is a discourse that transforms itself; but it transforms itself from an active production of an agent-subject to a process of self-overcoming that opens possibilities for movements of differing rather than the continued movement of purification that is an insistence upon the identity of the same. Yes, Foucault's discourse begins as and in some ways may be read as remaining an ascetic discourse. It draws its energy from its ascetic lineage and past. But within Foucault's discourse ascetic selfhood cannot maintain control of the direction of its own forceful drives. Thus, as Foucault's discourse operates upon the forces at its own discoursive center, something other to asceticism may begin to emerge, something we ascetic selves are not able to name, something that will resist the ascetic drive to label and identify, but something the undergoing of which may be either beautiful or terrible or both but which will definitely be—to use a Nietzschean word—interesting. To affirm our aesthetic relationship with the environment, we must attempt to experience nature in a different manner. This is possible via poetry, for poetry is contemplative, open, and meditative. Engaging the poetical enables us to avoid the pitfalls of calculative technological thought because it allows ontology to become a radically open question. We read Johann Peter Hebel: We are plants, which whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not – must with our roots rise out of the earth in order to bloom in the ether and to bear fruit. Hebel calls on us to accept an aeshetically defined relationship with the earth, the ether is a higher place of thought, which only meditative thinking can reach. Poetry is the saving power, allowing us to both meditatively engage with the earth and confront technological thinking. The poetical creates the only true possibility understanding the essence of technology. Rejection of poetry is a fundamental rejection of the aesthetic relationship with nature, ruling out all mutually responsible relationships with nature and technology. Heidegger explains this concept further in an essay from 1949. Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, 1949, The Question Concerning Technology, http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html [BGB] The question concerning technology is the question concerning the constellation in which revealing and concealing, in which the essential unfolding of truth propriates. But what help is it to us to look into the constellation of truth? We look into the danger and see the growth of the saving power. Through this we are not yet saved. But we are thereupon summoned to hope in the growing light of the saving power. How can this happen? Here and now and in little things, that we may foster the saving power in its increase. This includes holding always before our eyes the extreme danger. The essential unfolding of technology threatens revealing, threatens it with the possibility that all revealing will be consumed in ordering and that everything will present itself only in the unconcealment of standing-reserve. Human activity can never directly counter this danger. Human achievement alone can never banish it. But human reflection can ponder the fact that all saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same time kindred to it. But might there not perhaps be a more primally granted revealing that could bring the saving power into its first shining-forth in the midst of the danger that in the technological age rather conceals than shows itself? [CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE] 13/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 14 of 216 1NC Module B—Engage The Poetical [CONTINUED] At the outset of the destining of the West, in Greece, the arts soared to the supreme height of the revealing granted them. They illuminated the presence [Gegenwart] of the gods and the dialogue of divine and human destinings. And art was called simply techne. It was a single, manifold revealing. It was pious, promos, i.e., yielding to- the holding sway and the safekeeping of truth. The arts were not derived from the artistic. Artworks were not enjoyed aesthetically. Art was not a sector of cultural activity. What was art—perhaps only for that brief but magnificent age? Why did art bear the modest name techne? Because it was a revealing that brought forth and made present, and therefore belonged within poiesis. It was finally that revealing which holds complete sway in all the fine arts, in poetry, and in everything poetical that obtained poiesis as its proper name. The same poet from whom we heard the words But where danger is, grows there the saving power also . . . says to us: . poetically man dwells on this earth. The poetical brings the true into the splendor of what Plato in the Phaedrus calls to ekphanestaton, that which shines forth most purely. The poetical thoroughly pervades every art, every revealing of essential unfolding into the beautiful. Could it be that the fine arts are called to poetic revealing? Could it be that revealing lays claim to the arts most primally, so that they for their part may expressly foster the growth of the saving power, may awaken and found anew our vision of, and trust in, that which grants? Whether art may be granted this highest possibility of its essence in the midst of the extreme danger, no one can tell. Yet we can be astounded. Before what? Before this other possibility: that the frenziedness of technology may entrench itself everywhere to such an extent that someday, throughout everything technological, the essence of technology may unfold essentially in the propriative event of truth. Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it. Such a realm is art. But certainly only if reflection upon art, for its part, does not shut its eyes to the constellation of truth, concerning which we are questioning. Thus questioning, we bear witness to the crisis that in our sheer preoccupation with technology we do not yet experience the essential unfolding of technology, that in our sheer aesthetic-mindedness we no longer guard and preserve the essential unfolding of art. Yet the more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes. The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become. For questioning is the piety of thought. 14/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 15 of 216 1NC Module B—Calculation, Technology, and Askesis [Alternate] The affirmative reduces nature to a resource to be endlessly exploited for human needs ensuring our separation from the earth and complete intellectual mastery over nature LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. What it most illustrative is often also what is most common. Today, on all sides of ecological debate we hear, with greater and greater frequency, the word management. On the one hand, business people want to manage natural resources so as to keep up profits. On the other hand, conservationists want to manage natural resources so that there will be plenty of coal and oil and recreational facilities for future generations. These groups and factions within them debate vociferously over which management policies are the best, that is, the most efficient and manageable. Radical environmentalists damn both groups and claim it is human population growth and rising expectations that are in need of management. But wherever we look, wherever we listen, we see and hear the term management. We are living in a veritable age of management. Before a middle class child graduates from high school she or he is already preliminarily trained in the arts of weight management, stress management, and time management, to name just a few. As we approach middle age we continue to practice these essential arts, refining and adapting our regulatory regimes as the pressures of life increase and the body begins to break down. We have become a society of managers - of our homes, careers, portfolios, estates, even of our own bodies - so is it surprising that we set ourselves up as the managers of the earth itself? And yet, as thoughtful earth-dwellers we must ask, what does this signify? In numerous essays - in particular the beautiful 1953 essay, "The Question Concerning Technology" - Heidegger speaks of what he sees as the danger of dangers in this, our age. This danger is a kind of forgetfulness – a forgetfulness that Heidegger thought could result not only in nuclear disaster or environmental catastrophe, but in the loss of what makes us the kind of beings we are, beings who can think and who can stand in thoughtful relationship to things. This forgetfulness is not a forgetting of facts and their relationships; it is a forgetfulness of something far more important and far more fundamental than that. He called it forgetfulness of 'the mystery.’ It would be easy to imagine that by 'the mystery' Heidegger means some sort of entity, some thing, temporarily hidden or permanently ineffable. But 'the mystery is not the name of some thing; it is the event of the occurring together of revealing and concealing. Every academic discipline, whether it be biology or history, anthropology or mathematics, is interested in discovery, in the 'revelation of new truths" Knowledge, at least as it is institutionalized in the modern world is concerned, then, with what Heidegger would call revealing, the bringing to light, or the coming to presence of things. However, in order for any of this revealing to occur, Heidegger says, concealing must also occur. Revealing and concealing belong together. Now, what does this mean? We know that in order to pay attention to one thing, we must stop paying close attention to something else. In order to read philosophy we must stop reading cereal boxes. In order to attend to the needs of students we must sacrifice some of our research time. Allowing for one thing to reveal itself means allowing for the concealing of something else. All revealing comes at the price of concomitant concealment. But this is more than just a kind of Kantian acknowledgment of human limitation. Heidegger is not simply dressing up the obvious, that is, the fact that no individual can undergo two different experiences simultaneously His is not a point about human subjectivity at all. Rather, it is a point about revealing itself. When revealing reveals itself as temporally linear and causally ordered, for example, it cannot simultaneousy reveal itself as ordered by song and unfolding dream. Furthermore, in revealing, revealing itself is concealed in order for what is revealed to come forth. Thus, when revealing occurs concealing occurs as well. The two events are one and cannot be separated. Too often we forget. The radiance of revelation blinds us both to its own event and to the shadows that it casts, so that revealing conceals itself and its self-concealing conceals itself, and we fall prey to that strange power of vision to consign to oblivion whatever cannot be seen. Even our forgetting is forgotten, and all races of absence absent themselves from our world. The noted physicist Stephen Hawking, in his popular book A Brief History of Time, writes, "The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.,'5 Such a theory, many people would assert, would be a systematic arrangement of all knowledge both already acquired and theoretically possible. lt would be a theory to end all theories, outside of which no information, no revelation could, or would need to, occur. And the advent of such a theory would be as the shining of a light into every corner of being. Nothing would remain concealed. [Continues, No break] 15/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 16 of 216 1NC Module B—Calculation, Technology, and Askesis (Alternate Form) This dream of Hawking's is a dream of power; in fact, it is a dream of absolute power, absolute control. It is a dream of the ultimate managerial utopia. This, Heidegger would contend, is the dream of technological thought in the modern age. We dream of knowing, grasping everything, for then we can control, then we can manage, everything. But it is only a dream, itself predicated, ironically enough, upon concealment, the self-concealing of the mystery. We can never control-the mystery the belonging together of revealing and concealing. In order to approach the world in a manner exclusively technological, calculative, mathematical, scientific, we must already have given up (or lost, or been expelled by, or perhaps ways of being such as we are even impossible within) other approaches or modes of revealing that would unfold into knowledges of other sorts. Those other approaches or paths of thinking must already have been obliterated; those other knowledges must already have concealed themselves in order for technological or scientific revelation to occur. The danger of a managerial approach to the world lies not then in what it knows nor in its planetary on into the secrets of galactic emergence or nuclear fission – but in what it forgets, what it itself conceals. It forgets that any other truths are possible, and it forgets that the belonging together of revealing with concealing is forever beyond the power of human management. We can never have, or know, it all; we can never manage everything. The affirmative’s interventionist mindset is the root cause of environmental catastrophe. The need for ceaseless interventions is motivated by guilt for the status quo and merely recreates environmental problems LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. Thinking today must concern itself with the earth. Wherever we turn on newsstands, on the airwaves, and in even the most casual of conversations everywhere - we are inundated by predictions of ecological catastrophe and omnicidal doom. And many of these predictions bear themselves out in our own experience. We now live with the ugly, painful, and impoverishing consequences of decades of technological innovation and expansion without restraint of at least a century of disastrous "natural resource management” policies, and of more than two centuries of virtually unchecked industrial pollution - consequences that include the fact that millions of us on any given day are suffering, many of us dying of diseases and malnutrition that are the results of humanly produced ecological devastation; the fact that thousands of species now in existence will no longer exist on this planet by the turn of the century; the fact that our planet's climate has been altered, probably irreversibly, by the carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons we have heedlessly poured into our atmosphere; and the mind-boggling fact that it may now be within humanity's Power to destroy all life on this globe. Our usual response to such prophecies of doom is to ignore them or, when we cannot do that, to scramble to find some way to manage our problems, some quick solution, some technological fix. But over and over again new resource management techniques, new solutions, new technologies disrupt delicate systems even further, doing still more damage to a planet already dangerously out of ecological balance. Our ceaseless interventions seem only to make things worse, to perpetuate a cycle of human activity followed by ecological disaster followed by human intervention followed by a new disaster of another kind. In fact, it would appear that our trying to do things, change things, fix things cannot be the solution, because it is part of the problem itself. But, if we cannot act to solve our problems, what should we do? 16/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 17 of 216 1NC Module B—Calculation, Technology, and Askesis (Alternate Form) Our alternative is to embrace a process of askesis in order to rethink our relationship to the world and, most importantly, ourselves. Askesis is an individual process of self-transformation which breaks down our ascetic drive for purity and control. The role of the ballot is to affirm our criticism as a way of questioning our selves. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Asceticism/askēsis : Foucault's thinking historical subjectivity” in Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought. The ascetic self, then, undergoes changes as the process intensifies, becoming more powerful perhaps and ever more rigidly defined. The ascetic self is subjected and subjectified by the processes of purification that posit its ever more carefully delineated identity core. The ascetic self en-selfs itself by enforcing the continued stability of the identity it seeks to be. Asceticism is a powerfully paradoxical drive for constant self-transformation toward a perfect stasis in a pure unity of self-identical repose. Foucault's askesis bears great resemblance to the movement of self-transformative ascetic drives. The ascetic self's drive to know itself is certainly apparent in Foucault. And there is a sense in which in Foucault we encounter a kind of truth, a truth that the self is not self-identical but rather that it is an amalgamation of disparate forms. The ascetic self, upon encountering that "truth," upon acceding to the plausibility of genealogical accounts, begins, predictably enough, to discipline itself to that self-knowledge, to bring itself into intellectual conformity with that truth. But when the drive to purify confronts the "truth" of its own impurity, when it runs headlong into the contradictory project of attempting to pare itself down to its fundamental multiplicity, ascetic selfhood begins to undergo the self-transforming power of Foucault's discourse, and the valences that held themselves in tension to produce the notion of a perfect unity, of some enduring Same, must necessarily shift. The thought of self in the center of Foucault's discourse is the thought of transgression, a reversal of forces, a gradual or perhaps violent turning outward of the valences before turned in, like fingers pulling loose from a stone they have gripped too hard for too long. It will be necessary to find a different way to speak: When there occurs the undergoing of the genealogical stripping away of the argumentative and commonsense forces sustaining belief in the unitary self, when there occurs the undergoing of the exposure of the fearful and nonrational drives that put those beliefs in place, there may occur a kind of death of the ahistorical self, just as, in Nietzsche's discourse, when there occurs the undergoing of the exposure of the ungodliness that supported gods, there occurs a kind of death of the ahistorical God. As the thought of God loses its power to shape a world, the thought of a unitary self-identity begins to lose its power to shape a life. And what then? Will human being simply fly apart? Will we all go stark raving mad? Will might equal right and society degenerate into a war of all against all? Perhaps. But why should it come that? Selfishness would be a strange thing in a discourse that did not insist upon the unity of self-identical selves. Perhaps, as Nietzsche says, morality and evil are Siamese twins. Foucault's discourse, then, like ascetic discourses, is a self-transformative exercise. It is an askesis that allows the powers of ascetic selfhood to bring themselves to bear in characteristic ways. But because Foucault's discourse draws asceticism to focus its self-transformative power on the drive for purification itself, ascetic selfhood finds itself in question. Not only does self-transformation occur here, but there is within the discourse an awareness of this transformative power and an allowance of it as opposed to a denial or an attempt at masterful control. Thus, like ascetic discourses, Foucault's is a discourse that transforms itself; but it transforms itself from an active production of an agent-subject to a process of self-overcoming that opens possibilities for movements of differing rather than the continued movement of purification that is an insistence upon the identity of the same. Yes, Foucault's discourse begins as and in some ways may be read as remaining an ascetic discourse. It draws its energy from its ascetic lineage and past. But within Foucault's discourse ascetic selfhood cannot maintain control of the direction of its own forceful drives. Thus, as Foucault's discourse operates upon the forces at its own discoursive center, something other to asceticism may begin to emerge, something we ascetic selves are not able to name, something that will resist the ascetic drive to label and identify, but something the undergoing of which may be either beautiful or terrible or both but which will definitely be—to use a Nietzschean word—interesting. 17/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 18 of 216 1NC Module B—Social Ecology We must use this debate round in order to embrace the “first nature” and “contribute to the diversity, fecundity, and richness of the natural world.” We must end the perpetual cycle that the affirmative engages in of “exploit[ing] the whole web of life and tear[ing] down the planet in a rapacious, cancerous manner” by inflicting “second nature” upon “first nature.” The only way we can do this is by breaking down the root of the cause – social hierarchies. We must use this debate round to start a movement where “the local base of society begins to challenge the authority of its seemingly invulnerable state and corporate apex.” It is this type of “highly conscious, well-organized, and programmatically coherent libertarian municipalist movement” where people can “reconstruct society along lines that could foster a balanced, well-rounded, and harmonious community.” By doing so we change our fundamental relationship with nature where we no longer see nature as a tool for human usage, but rather we work with nature in small eco-communities that “would obey nature’s “law of return” by recycling their organic wastes into composted nutriment for gardens and such materials as they can rescue for their crafts and industries. We can expect that they would subtly integrate solar, wind, hydraulic, and methane-producing installations into a highly variegated pattern for producing power.” We can transform the space in this room into our revolution. When we leave this room – however you vote – the plan does not happen. The plan is a game. But the thinking that Bookchin talk about is not a game. It’s real and only our approach can take the first step towards saving us because it begins with us. Your ballot an reinforce our perspective and change the other people in this room. It sends the message that you are part of our revolution. 18/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 19 of 216 1NC Module B Feyerabend Shell Module The aff’s scientific worldview manifests a monolithic ontology – their scenarios and description of solvency presuppose specific knowledges which pound themselves into debaters’ minds Feyerabend 1975 (Paul, “Against Method”, professor at Berkeley) 19/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 20 of 216 1NC Module B Feyerabend Shell Module The impact to this homogenization is the elimination of all identity under imperialistic oppression – this forms the root cause of war. Moreover, under such a scenario, life is not worth living. The K must be a prior concern to any other impact. Feyerabend 1975 (Paul, “Against Method”, professor at Berkeley) 20/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 21 of 216 1NC Module B Feyerabend Shell Module Alternative Text: “Vote negative to affirm that anything goes.” Within the monolithic grasp of the aff’s ideology, the only hope is to cast subjectivity adrift. Affirming that anything goes opens up a multitude of emergent possibilities capable of transcending the hegemony of modern science, solving the aff. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 39-40 OCR (there may be typos) One way of criticizing standards is to do research that violates them (this is explained in Section 3). In evaluating the research we may participate in an as yet unspecified and unspecifiable practice (this is explained in Section 2, Thesis v.). Result: interesting research in the sciences (and, for that matter, in any field) often leads to an unpredictable revision of standards though this may not be the intention. Basing our judgement on accepted standards the only thing we can say about such research is therefore: anything goes. Note the context of the statement, 'Anything goes' is not the one and only 'principle' of a new methodology, recommended by me. It is the only way in which those firmly committed to universal standards and wishing to understand history in their terms can describe my account of traditions and research practices as given in Sections a and . If this account is correct then all a rationalist can say about science (and about any other interesting activity) is: anything goes. It is not denied that there exist parts of science that have adopted some rules and never violate them. After all, a tradition can be streamlined by determined brainwashing procedures and it will contain stable principles once it has been streamlined. My point is that streamlined traditions are not too frequent and that they disappear at times of revolution. I also assert that streamlined traditions accept standards without examining them and that any attempt to examine them will at once introduce the 'anything goes' situation (this was explained in Section 3). Nor is it denied that the proponents of change may have excellent arguments for every one of their moves. 14 But their arguments will be dialectical arguments, they will involve a changing rationality and not a fixed set of standards and they are often the first steps towards introducing such a rationality. This, incidentally, is also the way in which intelligent commonsense reasoning proceeds - it may start from some rules and meanings and end up with something entirely different. Small wonder that most revolutionaries have unusual developments and often regard themselves as dilettantes. It is surprising to see that philosophers who were once inventors of new world views and who taught us how to look through the status quo have now become its most obedient servants: philosophia ancilla scientiae. 21/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 22 of 216 1NC Module B—Reflections on Direct Action Enacting a new world is possible. Often it is enough to sit in the debate room and fiat a plan, but we propose an alternative path. It is not enough to discuss what the new world would look like. The world has changed throughout history, and this is no different in Debate. The debate space is a place of change as new approaches have arisen, and even still, new conceptions of argumentation are viewed as incorrect. Nothing is impossible or should be limited. Small-a anarchist David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, in Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004, illuminates So in this case, the question becomes: What sort of social theory would actually be of interest to those who are trying to help bring about a world in which people are free to govern their own affairs? This is what this pamphlet is mainly about. For starters, I would say any such theory would have to begin with some initial assumptions. Not many. Probably just two. First, it would have to proceed from the assumption that, as the Brazilian folk song puts it, “another world is possible.” That institutions like the state, capitalism, racism and male dominance are not inevitable; that it would be possible to have a world in which these things would not exist, and that we’d all be better off as a result. To commit oneself to such a principle is almost an act of faith, since how can one have certain knowledge of such matters? It might possibly turn out that such a world is not possible. But one could also make the argument that it’s this very unavailability of absolute knowledge which makes a commitment to optimism a moral imperative: Since one cannot know a radically better world is not possible, are we not betraying everyone by insisting on continuing to justify, and reproduce, the mess we have today? And anyway, even if we’re wrong, we might well get a lot closer. manifesto): Here of course one has to deal with the inevitable objection: that utopianism has lead to unmitigated horror, as Stalinists, Maoists, and other idealists tried to carve society into impossible shapes, killing millions in the process. This argument belies a fundamental misconception: that imagining better worlds was itself the problem. Stalinists and their ilk did not kill because they dreamed great dreams—actually, Stalinists were famous for being rather short on imagination—but because they mistook their dreams for scientific certainties. This led them to feel they had a right to impose their visions through a machinery of violence. Anarchists are proposing nothing of the sort, on either count. They presume no inevitable course of history and one can never further the course of freedom by creating new forms of coercion. In fact all forms of systemic violence are (among other things) assaults on the role of the imagination as a political principle, and the only way to begin to think about eliminating systematic violence is by recognizing this. And of course one could write very long books about the atrocities throughout history carried out by cynics and other pessimists... So that’s the first proposition. Debate is the intellectual capital of the world: playing policy maker and striving for the newest quick fix to contemporary problems without contemplating what we as individuals can accomplish. Policy debate is vanguardism-infecting debate with eltitist notions that what is good for one is good for all, and that we as policy debaters get to make those decisions for all. We advocate a different notion, one radically different. We contribute to the round, never expecting our ideas to be followed while hoping for a change. David GraeberFragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004, once more shows us the alternative “any anarchist social theory would have to reject self-consciously any trace of vanguardism. The role of intellectuals is most definitively not to form an elite that can arrive at the correct strategic analyses and then lead the masses to follow[….]One obvious role for a radical intellectual is to do precisely that: to look at those who are creating viable alternatives, try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are (already) doing, and then offer those ideas back, not as prescriptions, but as contributions, possibilities—as gifts.” This year’s resolution calls for an alternative energy policy. The aff highlights the energy policy while ignoring the call for alternatives, largely missing the point. It is time to reject the mantle of the traditional intellectual and assume that of the activist. We must seek for true alternatives. True alternatives, those which challenge the traditional agenda be they ecological 22/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 23 of 216 1NC Module B—Reflections on Direct Action or institutional and reject coercive actions are the true paths. David Graeber, Revolutionary/ Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 202 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 explains It’s hard to think of another time when there has been such a gulf between intellectuals and activists; between theorists of revolution and its practitioners. Writers who for years have been publishing essays that sound like position papers for vast social movements that do not in fact exist seem seized with confusion or worse, dismissive contempt, now that real ones are everywhere emerging. It’s particularly scandalous in the case of what’s still, for no particularly good reason, referred to as the ‘anti-globalization’ movement, one that has in a mere two or three years managed to transform completely the sense of historical possibilities for millions across the planet. This may be the result of sheer ignorance, or of relying on what might be gleaned from such overtly hostile sources as the New York Times; then again, most of what’s written even in progressive outlets seems largely to miss the point—or at least, rarely focuses on what participants in the movement really think is most important about it. As an anthropologist and active participant—particularly in the more radical, directaction end of the movement—I may be able to clear up some common points of misunderstanding; but the news may not be gratefully received. Much of the hesitation, I suspect, lies in the reluctance of those who have long fancied themselves radicals of some sort to come to terms with the fact that they are really liberals: interested in expanding individual freedoms and pursuing social justice, but not in ways that would seriously challenge the existence of reigning institutions like capital or state. And even many of those who would like to see revolutionary change might not feel entirely happy about having to accept that most of the creative energy for radical politics is now coming from anarchism—a tradition that they have hitherto mostly dismissed— and that taking this movement seriously will necessarily also mean a respectful engagement with it. I am writing as an anarchist; but in a sense, counting how many people involved in the movement actually call themselves ‘anarchists’, and in what contexts, is a bit beside the point. The very notion of direct action, with its rejection of a politics which appeals to governments to modify their behavior, in favor of physical intervention against state power in a form that itself prefigures an alternative—all of this emerges directly from the libertarian tradition. Anarchism is the heart of the movement, its soul; the source of most of what’s new and hopeful about it. In what follows, then, I will try to clear up what seem to be the three most common misconceptions about the movement—our supposed opposition to something called ‘globalization’, our supposed ‘violence’, and our supposed lack of a coherent ideology—and then suggest how radical intellectuals might think about re-imagining their own theoretical practice in the light of all of this. Our discourse in this round isn’t empty. Engaging with the community in this round is a meaningful act. Our action is a living example of direct action. Though we ask you to support us, we do not ask you to adopt our ideologies. Homogenity is as terrible as that which we kritik. Bringing difference into the equation is the solution. We are not the leaders of this movement, but simply examples. David Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London, 2007, Possibilities, p. 378 concludes Not so for what most in the movement were actually for. If there was one central inspiration to the global justice movement, it was the principle of direct action. This is a notion very much at the heart of the anarchist tradition and, in fact, most of the movement’s central organizers—more and more in fact as time went on—considered themselves anarchists, or at least, heavily influenced by anarchist ideas. They saw mass mobilizations not only as opportunities to expose the illegitimate, undemocratic nature of existing institutions, but as ways to do so in a form that itself demonstrated why such institutions were unnecessary, by providing a living example of genuine, direct democracy. The key word here is “process”—meaning, decision-making process. When members of the Direct Action Network or similar groups are considering 23/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 24 of 216 1NC Module B—Reflections on Direct Action whether to work with some other group, the first question that’s likely to be asked is “what sort of process do they use?”—that is: Do they practice internal democracy? Do they vote or use consensus? Is there a formal leadership? Such questions are usually considered of much more immediate importance than questions of ideology.2 Similarly, if one talks to someone fresh from a major mobilization and asks what she found most new and exciting about the experience, one is most likely to hear long descriptions of the organization of affinity groups, clusters, blockades, flying squads, spokescouncils, network structures, or about the apparent miracle of consensus decision making in which one can see thousands of people coordinate their actions without any formal leadership structure. There is a technical term for all this: “prefigurative politics”. Direct action is a form of resistance which, in its structure, is meant to prefigure the genuinely free society one wishes to create. Revolutionary action is not a form of self-sacrifice, a grim dedication to doing whatever it takes to achieve a future world of freedom. It is the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free. 24/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 25 of 216 Alternative Graeber We begin with a narrative from BRE, a homeless person living in Tornoto, Canada. BRE, Toronto based organizer who has spent times in the streets and in school. Currently involved in the Tornoto Free space and the free skool. 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 243-244 On the streets there’s no forgetting your body. Its hunger gnaws at you constantly. Tired bones offer regular reminders that pavement makes a rotten mattress. Skin burns from the heat of sun and lash of wind. The wet cold of rain…the entire body shivers from the narrow outward. My homeless body is the low-end site of biopolitics. It is the low-rent district in which postmodern struggles are engaged. The street is perhaps the prime example of what Mary Lousie Pratt calls a contact zone, those spaces in which cultures meet, clash, and wrestle with each other. Despite the postmodern emphasis on playful encounter these contracts are quite brutal and vicious. Poor people are subjected to ongoing violence simply because of the poverty that we embody. [A Poem by Sandy Cameron embodies this] “those cheaters on welfare are useless,” the young man says. “The Bestthing to do is set up a machine gun at Hastings and Main and open fire. They’re gonna die anyway, so it might as well be sooner as later.” (Cameron 1995) Sandy Cameron’s poem expresses a view that I have overheard many times from “respectable citizens” – my life is not worth living. My body is expendable. My body is viewed as garbage. In a popular series of ads for a local Toronto radio station, a homeless person is shown sitting on a garbage can. Emblazoned on the photo is the word “PEST.” A middle-class tourist is overheard saying abou those of us who rest outside his hotel: “The kindest thing would be to get them all drunk and just put them to sleep. Nobody would know the difference. Nobody knows them. They’d never be missed.” Graffiti screaming “kill the poor” has appeared around town over the last few years. The threatened violence is too often played out for real. There has been an increase recently in the number of physical attacks on hompless people by neo-Nazi gangs. We are reminded of the vulnerability of our bodies when a friend is killed while sleeping in a park, or dies from the cold of a inter night, or her body urns up in an alley near the streets where she worked. Not long ago I was physically attacked by a self styled street vigilante screaming at me that he was “cleaning the garbage off the streets.” The intersection of inferiorized subject positions was clear in his thinking as he identified me as a “faggot” and my partner as a “whore” simply by virtue of our being on the streets. As Jean Swanson suggests, the poor in Canda are not yet being murdered by government bullets, although some of them are being murdered when they try to supplement inadequate welfare rates with prostitution.” Swanson also points out that “the contempt, the lies, the innuendo, and the stereotypes of the media and the politicians are the first manipulating steps to the hatred that must be necessary before killing seems acceptable” (2001: 104-105) When I’m living on the streets, my body is painfully exposed. I have no shelther and few defenses. Our life expectancy in Canada is six and a half years shorter than wealthier people. My body simply stands less of a chance of being around for a while, less than the likely reader of this book. Mine is an ephemeral body, even in the mortal human terms of life expectancy; a term that exists for others with time time to sit around and worry about it. This is bare life. As Giorgio Agamben (2000) notes in his discussions of naked life, we are the ones whose lives are considered worthless. We are the exception to the human subject of modern sovereignty: the citizen. We are the naked lives, and there are man, including indigenous people and nonstatus immigrants, who are deemed not to be part of the decision-making body: the citizenry. Debate is no different. The game we play has evolved to exclude the poor, to exclude the population that our proposed “policies” might affect. BRE continunes. Being labeled criminals, deviants, even “thugs” and “pests” as homeless people too often are, erases my humanity; it places me in a postmodern realm, the realm of the post-human. I was human once, but that was before I “chose” to 25/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 26 of 216 Alternative Graeber abandon the civil society and its work ethic and became the despised street youth, the mee echo of a person, a posthuman. Naked Life. A condition of violence. This politics of exclusion removes our poor bodies from civil society and the realm of citizenship. Exclusion, being rendered invisible, immaterial, is a common bodily experience. Goverments don’t invite us to take part in discussions on issues that affect our lives. The comfortable chairs at summits on living and working opportunities are not filled by poor people. We are not asked to tell our own stories and we do not get many opportunities. We are treated as objects rather than subjects. We see this ever more in debate. Debate is filled with the rich, those who can afford to travel to tournaments that cost hundreds and institutes that cost thousands. Break rounds are filled with those who go to big name schools that cost thousands. The majority of the debate community thinks that we can understand and solve problems that affect people we have no relation with. BRE continunes “poor people have as much control over government experiments or think-tank theorizing about their future as lab rats have in a cancer experiment” (Swanson 2001: 77-78). We don’t ask which questions to address. We don’t design the experiment and we are not invited to present the findings. bell hooks argues that while it is now fashionable to talk about overcoming racism, and sexism, class remains “the uncool subject” that makes people tense. Despite being such a pressing issue, lass it not talked about in a society where the poor have no public voice. As hooks(2000:vii) notes, “we are afraid to have a dialogue about class even though the ever widening gap between rich and poor has already set the stage for ongoing and sustained class warfare.” Breaking this silence is crucial. So we must present it ourselves.We must do autoethnography. We don’t have much access to computers and we have even less access to publications that will relay our stories, so autoethnography is expressed in more direct, one might say, traditional means. Oral traditions are strong among us, and we can spin yarns all afternoon under the right circumstances. Not only is the system of debate set up to exclude the poor, but it also set up to exclude dissent. Technical proficiency and speed are increasingly taught as the only way to win rounds. The purpose of debate today isn’t to change anything rather to out tech your opponents and win rounds. Criticism that attempts to create change is taboo, and are quickly force to the outskirts of debate and erased. Although nothing is done in a debate round, much is accomplished. Incorporating narratives and experiences is an important way to create this change. By becoming aware of others struggles and forms of resistance against the system allow us to incorporate them in to our own movement and create change. David Graeber, a recently fired professor from Yale University, further alludes to this in his writing with Stephen Shukaitis. Stevphen shukaitis, research fellow at the university of London, queen mary. Member of the planetary autonomist network and editoral collective of autonomedia, David graeber , associate professor of anthropology recently fired from Yale University and worker for the direct action movement, 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 30-33 One striking example of this can be seen with the Wages for Housework campaigns that began in the early '70s. In 1972, Mariarosa Dalla Costa (who was involved in Potere Operaio and help to found Lotta Continua) and Selma James (who was involved with the struggles for independence in the West Indies and feminist organizing in the UK) published a book called The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community. Their arguments, drawing from their experiences of struggles and debates emerging within the feminist movement, provided a crucial turning point for reorienting organizing strategies. Through its understanding of the work of housewives as a key component of class struggle, it developed a method for understanding the organizing of a whole host of struggles not usually considered within the confined notion of the industrial proletariat (housewives, the unemployed, students, agrarian workers), as interconnected and important. By focusing on a demand for recognition of housework as work, this opened the door for a renewed consideration of forms of social protagonism, and the autonomy of forms of struggle, to develop what Dalla Costa and James described as "not a higher productivity of domestic labor but a higher subversiveness in the struggle."" These arguments led to the founding of Wages for Housework campaigns across the world. Their writings were translated into multiple languages. This focus on the importance of considering unwaged labor in the discourse on capitalism 26/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 27 of 216 Alternative Graeber filtered through various networks and connections. For instance, these arguments proved extremely significant for a number of individuals in New York City in this period, who would go on to form a collective (with a corresponding publication) called Zerowork. These currents mutated and crossbred with similar currents developing at the time, from the collaboration between the IWW and Surrealism emerging in Chicago in the late '60s to debates around the nature of class struggle that occurred in the UK in the 'SOs. Zerowork, which would over time morph into the Midnight Notes collective, came to draw from the experiences of its memers in Nigeria to describe the creation of new enclosures founded upon an ongoing process of primitive accumulation that was backed by the IMF and other state agencies. These arguments, in turn, would come to be used by many in the revived global justice movement that has become more familiar through the media in recent years. What we want to emphasize are the ways that the constant circulation of ideas, strategies, and experiences occurring across ever-increasing geographic areas have produced new connections and collaborations that are often ignored and under-appreciated by the allegedly critical and subversive academics one might logically think would take the greatest interest in their development. It might be of historical interest to map out the many connections and routes these genealogies of resistance contain, but that is not the task at hand right now. What is most striking to us are the ways this living history and the memories of struggles have been taken up, reused, reinterpreted, and redeployed in new and creative directions. The contents of this book draw together many strands and lineages, and tease them out in different directions to create new possibilities. Colectivo Situaciones, for instance, draws inspiration from Italian currents of radicalism and the writing of Baruch Spinoza, not to mention the rich tradition of struggles in Argentina and Latin America. In their piece for this book, they engage in dialogue with Precarias a la Deriva, a Madrid-based feminist collective. Maribel Casas-Cortds and Sebastian Cobarrubias draw from the experiences and ideas of Precarias a la Deriva and Bureau d'dtudes to map strategies of resistance as teaching assistants in North Carolina; Angela Mitropoulos uses Mario Tronti's ideas to consider the nature of autonomy and refusal in organizing around migration and border issues in Australia; Harry Halpin sits in a tree somewhere outside of Edinburgh contemplating the ambivalent nature of technological development and forms of organizing; Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma are in Hawai'i, drawing inspiration from another set of radicals, the Diggers, to use the planting of papayas to create new forms of the commons. They are all reclaiming existing traditions through new practices. Again, what is important to us is not necessarily to draw out all the different and multiple connections that exist, as interesting as that might be. What we want to do here is draw from these histories, experiences, and moments to ask questions about methods through which social research creates new possibilities for political action. That also means we wish to explore the ways in which militant praxis and organizing are themselves modes of understanding, of interpreting the world, and expressing modes of social being. We question the mode of understanding and expressing presented by the affirmative. The 1AC presented a policy that was a static method of solving the world. This is wrong! Rather than institutionalize movements and form a static policy to fix a failing system, we as the negative present the judge with a different approach: direct action. Graeber and Shukaitis Continue Research draws upon the multivector motion of the social worlds we inhabit and develops methods for further movement within that space, whether it's using militant ethnography within the globalization movement in Barcelona or applying autoethnographic methods as a homeless organizer in Toronto. As Graeme Chesters and Michal Osterweil describe, it's a question of forging a space, ethic, and practice appropriate to where we find ourselves, whether in a classroom or university space, a social center, a factory, or knitting at a summit protest. There is no pure social space in which new practices and ideas will emerge from an ideal revolutionary subject that we only need to listen to. Our lives are constantly distributed across a variety of compromises with institutions and arrangements of power that are far from ideal. The question is not to bemoan that fate but rather to find methods and strategies of how to most effectively use the space we find ourselves in to find higher positions of subversiveness in struggle. This is a process of finding methods for liberating life as lived imagination from the multiple forms of alienation that are reproduced through daily life and throughout society. Alienation in this sense is not just something that exists from a lack of control in one's workplace, or a process that di vorces one from being able to control one's labor. Rather, as all of society and our social relations are creatively and mutually co-produced processes, alienation is lacking the ability to affect change within the social forms we live under and through. It is the subjective experience of living within structures of the imagination warped and fractured by structural violence. This violence occurs not only in striking forms (prisons, wars, and s forth), but 27/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 28 of 216 Alternative Graeber also through the work of bureaucratic institutions that organize people as "publics," "workforces," populations, etc.; in other words, as aggregated segments of data whose form is imposed rather than mutually constituted and created. From census surveys and marketing research to even sometimes the most well-intended social movement research, research finds itself used as a tool to categorize and classify; it becomes part of the process of organizing forms of knowledge that are necessary to the maintenance of alienating structures, from the most horrific to the most mundane. Just like the debate community so too has the state evolved to exclude others. Structural violence, energy problems, and discrimination all result from the lack of ability to influence political decisions and change within structures we live through. The affirmative is not offensive! It is not a reason to prefer their mode of thought over ours. The debate should NOT be about competing policy options, the role of the ballot can be as something to endorse critique. It is an endorsement of finding positions of subversive ness in the struggle against bureaucracy. Graeber and Shukaitis continue Constituent power is what emerges most fully and readily when these institutional structures are shattered, peeling back bursts of time for collective reshaping of social life. It is from these moments that archipelagoes of rupture are connected through subterranean tunnels and hidden histories, from which one can draw materials, concepts, and tools that can help guide us today, wherever we might find ourselves. Trying to put a name on the directions of tomorrow's revolutionary fervor is for that reason perhaps a bit suspicious, even if well-intended, because the process of tacking a name on something is often the first step in institutionalizing it, in fixing it-it is the process that transforms the creativity of the constituent moment back upon itself into another constituted form and alienating structure. But if we are not trying to come up with definitive versions of reality (naming the world in order to control it), what are we doing? This question of rethinking the role of thought and knowledge production as a part of organizing, of appreciating multiple perspectives rather than universal truths and plans, is exactly what the contributors for this volume are doing. It would be silly to think that in this volume such a question could be definitively answered, or that it would be possible to capture and represent the vast experiences, accumulated practices, and knowledges that have been sheer amount of developed by organizers and militant researchers. Just the excellent proposals and submissions received for this project indicated to us how much interest in the pursuit of new forms of engaged research practice has grown. They simply all couldn't fit in one book (although perhaps in an encyclopedia devoted to the subject). The point is to use these developments to construct new possibilities, to follow the paths of our collective wanderings in ways that we could not have even dreamed of before starting this project. These hastily sketched maps and guides will orient our directions. We are stashing reserves of affective Essential nourishment and conceptual weapons under our belts as we find new [8 and passages. Eduardo Galeano once observed that "Utopia is on the horizon: I walk two steps, it takes two steps back. I walk ten steps and it is ten steps further away. What is utopia for? It is for this, for walking."" What tisen is theory for? It is a question that is best answered through walking, , rough a constant process of circulation and movement that we begin here, ji3llowing in the footsteps of many who have come before us. Our argument is an alternative framing of debate. We believe that debate shouldn’t be about affirming some government action that we can’t affect. Rather, we should affirm our own action. The ballot can be used to construct new possibilities of resistance by exposing the flawed nature of existing institutions including debate itself.. David Graeber affirms this in his book Possibilities: Not so for what most in the movement were actually for. If there was one central inspiration to the global justice movement, it was the principle of direct action. This is a notion very much at the heart of the anarchist tradition and, in fact, most of the movement’s central organizers—more and more in fact as time went on—considered themselves anarchists, or at least, heavily influenced by anarchist ideas. They saw mass mobilizations not only as opportunities to expose the illegitimate, undemocratic nature of existing institutions, but as ways to do so in a form that itself demonstrated why such institutions were unnecessary, by providing a living example of genuine, direct democracy. The key word here is “process”—meaning, decision-making process. When members of the Direct Action Network or similar groups are considering whether to work with some other group, the first question that’s likely to be asked is “what sort of process do they use?”—that is: Do they practice internal democracy? Do they vote or use consensus? Is there a formal leadership? Such questions are usually considered of much more immediate importance than questions of ideology.2 Similarly, if one talks to someone fresh from a major mobilization and asks what she found most new and exciting about the experience, one is most likely to hear long 28/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 29 of 216 Alternative Graeber descriptions of the organization of affinity groups, clusters, blockades, flying squads, spokescouncils, network structures, or about the apparent miracle of consensus decision making in which one can see thousands of people coordinate their actions without any formal leadership structure. There is a technical term for all this: “prefigurative politics”. Direct action is a form of resistance which, in its structure, is meant to prefigure the genuinely free society one wishes to create. Revolutionary action is not a form of self-sacrifice, a grim dedication to doing whatever it takes to achieve a future world of freedom. It is the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free. 29/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 30 of 216 2NC—Must Rethink Relationship to us and earth The rhetoric of the ecological movement is saturated with disaster imagery and calls for immediate action in the face of extinction. However, this managerial approach is emblematic of the very technological worldview that placed the earth in its current position. In order to temper our insatiable will to action, we must embark a journey of thought in order to rethink our relationship our selves and the earth. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. When we attempt to think ecologically and within Heidegger's discourse (or perhaps better: when we attempt to think Heideggerly within ecological concerns), the paradoxical unfolds at the site of the question of human action. Thinking ecologically - that is, thinking the earth in our time - means thinking death; it means thinking catastrophe; it means thinking the possibility of utter annihilation not just for human being but for all that lives on this planet and for the living planet itself. Thinking the earth in our time means thinking what presents itself as that which must not be allowed to go on, as that which must be controlled, as that which must be stopped. Such thinking seems to call for immediate action. There is no time to lose. We must work for change, seek solutions, curb appetites, reduce expectations, find cures now, before the problems become greater than anyone's ability to solve them - if they have not already done so. However, in the midst of this urgency, thinking ecologically, thinking Heideggerly, means rethinking the very notion of human action. It means placing in question our typical Western managerial approach to problems, our propensity for technological intervention, our belief in human cognitive power, our commitment to a metaphysics that places active human being over against passive nature. For it is the thoughtless deployment of these approaches and notions that has brought us to the point of ecological catastrophe in the first place. Thinking with Heidegger, thinking Heideggerly and ecologically, means, paradoxically, acting to place in question the acting subject, willing a displacing of our will to action; it means calling ourselves as selves to rethink our very selves, insofar as selfhood in the West is constituted as agent, as actor, as controlling ego, as knowing consciousness. Heidegger's work calls us not to rush in with quick solutions, not to act decisively to put an end to deliberation, but rather to think, to tarry with thinking unfolding itself to release ourselves to thinking without provision or predetermined aim. 30/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 31 of 216 Technological Thought Bad (1/2) Complex chains of causality that derive from the works of so-called experts as seen in the 1AC are the epitome of technological thought that seeks to order the world in order to prevent catastrophe. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. Some might find this unnecessarily harsh. We academicians may wish to contest the accusation. Surely, in the universities of all places, thinking, is going on. But Heidegger had no respect for that or any other kind of complacency. The thinking he saw as essential is no more likely, perhaps unfortunately, to be found in universities or among philosophers than anywhere else. For the thinking he-saw as essential is not the simple amassing and digesting of facts or even the mastering of-complex relationships or the producing of even more powerful and inclusive theories. The thinking Heidegger saw as, essential, the thinking his works call us to is not thinking that seeks to master anything, not a thinking that results from a drive to grasp and know and shape the world; it is a thinking that disciplines itself to allow the world - the earth, things - to show themselves on their own terms. The affirmative subscribes to the idea that the entire world is able to be managed by humanity – not only is this assumption flawed, it limits out crucial sources of knowledge that are key to solvency. Only rethinking our place in the world can solve. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. What it most illustrative is often also what is most common. Today, on all sides of ecological debate we hear, with greater and greater frequency, the word management. On the one hand, business people want to manage natural resources so as to keep up profits. On the other hand, conservationists want to manage natural resources so that there will be plenty of coal and oil and recreational facilities for future generations. These groups and factions within them debate vociferously over which management policies are the best, that is, the most efficient and manageable. Radical environmentalists damn both groups and claim it is human population growth and rising expectations that are in need of management. But wherever we look, wherever we listen, we see and hear the term management. We are living in a veritable age of management. Before a middle class child graduates from high school she or he is already preliminarily trained in the arts of weight management, stress management, and time management, to name just a few. As we approach middle age we continue to practice these essential arts, refining and adapting our regulatory regimes as the pressures of life increase and the body begins to break down. We have become a society of managers - of our homes, careers, portfolios, estates, even of our own bodies - so is it surprising that we set ourselves up as the managers of the earth itself? And yet, as thoughtful earth-dwellers we must ask, what does this signify? In numerous essays - in particular the beautiful 1953 essay, "The Question Concerning Technology" - Heidegger speaks of what he sees as the danger of dangers in this, our age. This danger is a kind of forgetfulness – a forgetfulness that Heidegger thought could result not only in nuclear disaster or environmental catastrophe, but in the loss of what makes us the kind of beings we are, beings who can think and who can stand in thoughtful relationship to things. This forgetfulness is not a forgetting of facts and their relationships; it is a forgetfulness of something far more important and far more fundamental than that. He called it forgetfulness of 'the mystery.’ It would be easy to imagine that by 'the mystery' Heidegger means some sort of entity, some thing, temporarily hidden or permanently ineffable. But 'the mystery is not the name of some thing; it is the event of the occurring together of revealing and concealing. Every academic discipline, whether it be biology or history, anthropology or mathematics, is interested in discovery, in the 'revelation of new truths" Knowledge, at least as it is institutionalized in the modern world is concerned, then, with what Heidegger would call [Continues, no break] 31/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 32 of 216 Technological Thought Bad (2/2) [Continues, no break] revealing, the bringing to light, or the coming to presence of things. However, in order for any of this revealing to occur, Heidegger says, concealing must also occur. Revealing and concealing belong together. Now, what does this mean? We know that in order to pay attention to one thing, we must stop paying close attention to something else. In order to read philosophy we must stop reading cereal boxes. In order to attend to the needs of students we must sacrifice some of our research time. Allowing for one thing to reveal itself means allowing for the concealing of something else. All revealing comes at the price of concomitant concealment. But this is more than just a kind of Kantian acknowledgment of human limitation. Heidegger is not simply dressing up the obvious, that is, the fact that no individual can undergo two different experiences simultaneously His is not a point about human subjectivity at all. Rather, it is a point about revealing itself. When revealing reveals itself as temporally linear and causally ordered, for example, it cannot simultaneousy reveal itself as ordered by song and unfolding dream. Furthermore, in revealing, revealing itself is concealed in order for what is revealed to come forth. Thus, when revealing occurs concealing occurs as well. The two events are one and cannot be separated. Too often we forget. The radiance of revelation blinds us both to its own event and to the shadows that it casts, so that revealing conceals itself and its self-concealing conceals itself, and we fall prey to that strange power of vision to consign to oblivion whatever cannot be seen. Even our forgetting is forgotten, and all races of absence absent themselves from our world. The noted physicist Stephen Hawking, in his popular book A Brief History of Time, writes, " The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.,'5 Such a theory, many people would assert, would be a systematic arrangement of all knowledge both already acquired and theoretically possible.lt would be a theory to end all theories, outside of which no information, no revelation could, or would need to, occur. And the advent of such a theory would be as the shining of a light into every corner of being. Nothing would remain concealed. This dream of Hawking's is a dream of power; in fact, it is a dream of absolute power, absolute control. It is a dream of the ultimate managerial utopia. This, Heidegger would contend, is the dream of technological thought in the modern age. We dream of knowing, grasping everything, for then we can control, then we can manage, everything. But it is only a dream, itself predicated, ironically enough, upon concealment, the self-concealing of the mystery. We can never control-the mystery the belonging together of revealing and concealing. In order to approach the world in a manner exclusively technological, calculative, mathematical, scientific, we must already have given up (or lost, or been expelled by, or perhaps ways of being such as we are even impossible within) other approaches or modes of revealing that would unfold into knowledges of other sorts. Those other approaches or paths of thinking must already have been obliterated; those other knowledges must already have concealed themselves in order for technological or scientific revelation to occur. The danger of a managerial approach to the world lies not then in what it knows nor in its planetary on into the secrets of galactic emergence or nuclear fission – but in what it forgets, what it itself conceals. It forgets that any other truths are possible, and it forgets that the belonging together of revealing with concealing is forever beyond the power of human management. We can never have, or know, it all; we can never manage everything. 32/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 33 of 216 Reflection/Introspection overcomes technological logic Reflection makes it possible to overcome the focus on short-term solutions that pervades the logic of the affirmative – only through introspection can we break down our own assumptions. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. Heidegger called this kind of thinking 'reflection'. In 1936 he wrote, "Reflection is the courage to make the truth of our own presuppositions and the realm of our own goals into the things that most deserve to be called in question." Reflectlon is thinking that never rests complacently in the conclusions reached yesterday; it is thinking that continues to think, that never stops with a satisfied smile and announces: we can cease; we have the right answer now. On the contrary, it is thinking that loves its own life, its own occurring, that does not quickly put a stop to itself' as thinking intent on a quick solution always tries to do. The affirmative’s interventionist mindset is the root cause of environmental degradation – only stepping back and rethinking solves. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. Thinking today must concern itself with the earth. Wherever we turn on newsstands, on the airwaves, and in even the most casual of conversations everywhere - we are inundated by predictions of ecological catastrophe and omnicidal doom. And many of these predictions bear themselves out in our own experience. We now live with the ugly, painful, and impoverishing consequences of decades of technological innovation and expansion without restraint of at least a century of disastrous "natural resource management” policies, and of more than two centuries of virtually unchecked industrial pollution - consequences that include the fact that millions of us on any given day are suffering, many of us dying of diseases and malnutrition that are the results of humanly produced ecological devastation; the fact that thousands of species now in existence will no longer exist on this planet by the turn of the century; the fact that our planet's climate has been altered, probably irreversibly, by the carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons we have heedlessly poured into our atmosphere; and the mindboggling fact that it may now be within humanity's Power to destroy all life on this globe. Our usual response to such prophecies of doom is to ignore them or, when we cannot do that, to scramble to find some way to manage our problems, some quick solution, some technological fix. But over and over again new resource management techniques, new solutions, new technologies disrupt delicate systems even further, doing still more damage to a planet already dangerously out of ecological balance. Our ceaseless interventions seem only to make things worse, to perpetuate a cycle of human activity followed by ecological disaster followed by human intervention followed by a new disaster of another kind. In fact, it would appear that our trying to do things, change things, fix things cannot be the solution, because it is part of the problem itself. But, if we cannot act to solve our problems, what should we do? 33/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 34 of 216 Alt Solvency The alternative solves case – Our insistence of a rejection of action seems in the face of ecological crisis, but it is essential to embrace paradox in order to forge new paths of thought and innovation. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. Heidegger's work is a call to reflect, to think in some way other than calculatively, technologically, pragmatically. Once we begin to move with and into Heidegger's call and begin to see our trying to seize control and solve problems as itself a problematic approach, if we still believe that thinking's only real purpose is to function as a prelude to action, we who attempt to think will twist within the agonizing grip of paradox, feeling nothing but frustration, unable to conceive of ourselves is anything but paralyzed. However, as so many peoples before us have known, paradox is not only a trap; it is also a scattering point and passageway. Paradox invites examination of its own constitution (hence of thi patterns of thinking within which it occurs) and thereby breaks a way of thinking open, revealing the configurations of power that propel it and hold it on track. And thus it makes possible the dissipation of that power and the deflection of thinking into new paths and new possibilities. Heidegger’s insistence on rethinking calls into question the dichotomies that the affirmative relies upon such as activity and passivity. The alternative solves the will to action. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. Heidegger frustrates us. At a time when the stakes are so very high and decisive action is so loudly and urgently called for, Heidegger apparently calls us to do - nothing. If we get beyond the revulsion and anger that such a call initially inspires and actually examine the feasibility of response, we begin to undergo the frustration attendant upon paradox; how is it possible, we ask, to choose, to will, to do nothing? The call itself places in question the bimodal logic of activity and passivity; it points up the paradoxical nature of our passion for action, of our passion for maintaining control. The call itself suggests that our drive for acting decisively and forcefully is part of what must be thought through, that the narrow option of will versus surrender is one of the power configurations of current thinking that must be allowed to dissipate. But, of course, those drives and those conceptual dichotomies are part of the very structure of our self-understanding both as individuals and as a tradition and a civilization. Hence, Heidegger's call is a threatening one, requiring great courage, "the courage to make the truth of our own presuppositions and the realm of our own goals into the things that most deserve to be called in question." Heidegger's work pushes thinking to think through the assumptions that underlie both our ecological vandalism and our love of scientific solutions, assumptions that also ground the most basic patterns of our current ways of being human. 34/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 35 of 216 Technological Thinking  Genoide The affirmative views the natural world as a standing reserve that can be controlled and tapped to fulfill human desires. The endpoint of this logic is biopolitical genocide as humans become part of this standing reserve as well in support of the greater good. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. What is now especially dangerous about this sense of our own managerial power, born of forgetfulness, is that it results in our viewing the world as mere resources to be stored or consumed. Managerial or technological thinkers, Heidegger says, view the earth, the world, all things as mere Bestand, standing-reserve. All is here simply for human use. No plant, no animal, no ecosystem has a life of its own, has any significance apart from human desire and need. Nothing, we say, other than human beings, has any intrinsic value. All things are instruments for the working out of human will. Whether we believe that God gave Man dominion or simply that human might (sometimes called inteligence or ratlonality) in the face of ecological fragility makes right, we managerial, technological thinkers tend to believe that the earth is only a stockpile or a set of commodities to be managed, bought, and sold. The forest is timber; the river, a power source. Even people have become resources, human resources, personnel to be managed, or populations to be controlled. This managerial, technological mode of revealing Heidegger says is embedded in and constitutive of Western culture and has been gathering strength for centuries. Now it is well on its way to extinguishing all other modes of revealing, all other ways of being human and being earth. It will take tremendous effort to think through danger, to think past it and beyond, tremendous courage and resolve to allow thought of the mystery to come forth; thought of the inevitability along with revealing, of concealment, of loss, of ignorance; thought of the occurring of things and their passage as events not ultimately under human control. And of course even the call to allow this thinking - couched as it so often must be in a grammatical imperative appealing to an agent - is itself a paradox, the first that must be faced and allowed to speak to us and to shatter us as it scatters thinking in new directions, directions of which we have not yet dreamed, directions of which we may never dream. 35/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 36 of 216 Aff is technologically justified The affirmative’s notion of an obligation towards the earth is a reflection of the Western development of guilt. However, the idea that the individual owes something to the world is an instance of technological thought that must be rejected to gain an authentic relationship with the environment. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, Heidegger and the Earth, ed: McWhorter. And shattered we may be, for our self-understanding is at stake; in fact, our very selves – selves engineered by the technologies of power that shaped, that are, modernity – are at stake. Any thinking that threatens the state. As a result, guilt is familiar, and, though somewhat uncomfortable at times, it comes to feel almost safe. It is no surprise, then, that whenever caring people think hard about how to live with/in/on the earth, we find ourselves growing anxious and, usually, feeling guilty about the way we conduct ourselves in relation to the natural world. Guilt is a standard defense against the call for change as it takes root within us. But, if we are to think with Heidegger, if we are to heed his call to reflect, we must not respond to it simply by deploring our decadent lifestyles and indulging ourselves in a fit of remorse. Heidegger's call is not a moral condemnation, nor is it a call to take up some politically correct position or some privileged ethical stance. When we respond to Heidegger's call as if it were a moral condemnation, we reinstate a discourse in which active agency and its projects and responsibilities take precedence over any other way of being with the earth. In other words, we insist on remaining within the discourses, the power configurations, of the modern managerial self. Guilt is a concept –whose heritage and meaning occur within the ethical tradition of the western world. But the history of ethical theory in the west (and it could be argued that ethical theory only occurs in the West is one with the history-of technological thought. The revelation of things as to-be-managed and the imperative to be in control work themselves out in the history of ethics just as surely as they work themselves out in the history of the natural and human sciences. 36/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 37 of 216 ‘Askesis’ Alt Ext (1/4) The alternative is not a call to inaction – we are actively doing work on ourselves in order to confront our assumptions and engaging ourselves in the ascetic process – think of it as an exercise. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Asceticism/askēsis : Foucault's thinking historical subjectivity” in Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought. In the Introduction to The Use of Pleasure Foucault calls his work an askesis*, "an exercise of oneself in the activity of thought." The "living substance of philosophy," Foucault writes, is the essay, ''which should be understood as the assay or test by which, in the game of truth, one undergoes changes, and not as the simplistic appropriation of others for the purpose of communication."1 Foucault's work, then, does not simply report to us his conclusions or theories. Foucault is not primarily interested in imparting information. What he offers instead is a kind of exercise book. Hence, if we are to think through Foucault's work, we need first to think the meaning of the word exercise. An exercise, of course, is a kind of practice, a practice designed to change the one who undergoes it. We undertake various programs of exercise in order to alter ourselves in some way. We engage in physical exercises to change the contours of our bodies or magnify their strength, to clear our minds of anger or depression, or to stimulate ourselves for intellectual work. We engage in mathematical or logic exercises in order to train ourselves in the patterns of mathematical or logical thought, as we engage in grammatical exercises in order to discipline our writing and speech. Exercises are transforming practices, practices "by which ... one undergoes changes." An exercise book, then, requires an approach quite different from most works of professional scholarship. If a typical work of scholarship is to be understood as simply a report of its author's conclusions, suggestions, and perhaps still-embryonic ideas, then it may be taken as a product, the result of an agent's or a subject's having acted to produce it As such it is an object to be perceived and judged and thought about, an object external to and separable from us subjects who read and judge it. But an exercise book demands to be treated as a very different kind of thing. If it is the case that exercise, askesis *, is a transformative practice, then Foucault's exercise books cannot be adequately comprehended by the notion 'object'. They cannot be perceived and read and judged by a subject whose being is wholly external to them. As we have noted, an exercise is a practice whose very nature it is to alter the practitioner. And that means that the practitioner (the writer, the reader) and the practice are not external to one another. As the askesis* plays out, the boundaries necessary for maintaining subjective and objective identities shift and may even erode. Exercises are often empowering and enlightening. 37/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 38 of 216 ‘Askesis’ Alt Ext (2/4) Askesis breaks with the modes of modern subjectivity – we confront the self-identical self through a form of asceticism that looks inward to strip away our false constructions of who we are. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Asceticism/askēsis : Foucault's thinking historical subjectivity” in Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought. Heid askesis JavaScript:doPopup('Popup','Page_246_Popup_1.html','width=224,height=150,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes')JavaScript:doPo pup('Popup','Page_246_Popup_2.html','width=224,height=150,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes')* purports to be other than an insistence upon ascetic submission to rigid identity structures. It purports to be the very opposite, in fact— an attempt to think subjectivity in the absence of transhistorical structure, the pure kernel of the ascetic dream. However, if this claim to otherness is true, Foucault is engaged in an apparent paradox. He—a subject, a self, a person with a particular identity, that man Michel Foucault—is trying to exercise himself in the thinking of his own contingency, his own optionality. He is attempting to put himself through an exercise that would constitute the undergoing of his own dispersal. What are we to make of even the thought of that? Cynicism snaps: This call of his for inwardness, selfhood, and subjectivity to think its historical emergence out of disparate forces and shameful heterogeneous unions could not possibly emerge from within the ascetic complex that is modern subjectivity, unless—unless—it is some new ploy, some new strategy for purification. Perhaps in Foucault's discourse the ascetic will is attempting to subject itself to a rigid identity in yet a new way; perhaps it is attempting to think dissension as—its truth. Foucault has been read that way, as Nietzsche has. Foucault's askesisJavaScript:doPopup('Popup','Page_246_Popup_4.html','width=224,height=150,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes')JavaScri pt:doPopup('Popup','Page_246_Popup_5.html','width=224,height=150,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes')* can be read as a kind of vengeful attempt to humiliate the ascetically produced self-identical self by bringing it up against its real genealogical past. If we were to read Foucault this way we would understand him to be perpetuating and perhaps developing asceticism in at least two ways. First, he would be maintaining the notion of a pure, self-identical truth of the self. In other words, he would still be positing a constant core, but in this case the core would be something like the Freudian id, a petty, infantile, frightened little thing. Second, in addition to positing this pure center of being, Foucault's discourse would be a perpetuation of asceticism in the sense that he would be forcing himself, and us, to turn around and face this puny, ugly little truth that is ourselves; he would be forcing us to strip away our delusions of grandeur and our pride in order to be that which we really are; he would be imposing, once again, and in yet a new and more repulsive way, the rigid standard of absolute identity. He would be calling us to an ever more honest ownership of ourselves. 38/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 39 of 216 ‘Askesis’ Alt Ext (3/4) The process of askesis allows us to move beyond traditional norms and assumptions as part of an individual transformation. Our only way of discovering anything more than the managerialism of the affirmative’s advocacy is to throw ourselves into the ascetic process. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Asceticism/askēsis : Foucault's thinking historical subjectivity” in Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought. In order to read Foucault's discourse as nothing but a perverse perpetuation of the ascetic ideal we must engage in a bit of ascetic refusal ourselves; we must insist that a discourse is the product of an author, a subject who acts. We must reject the possibility that Foucault's discourse itself might move us beyond the control of the ascetic self who produced or reads it. In other words, we must insist that there exist logically separable subjects and objects that stand in relation to each other as external causes and effects and maintain their identities regardless of change. But, if we pay careful attention to the transformative processes of askesis JavaScript:doPopup('Popup','Page_247_Popup_1.html','width=224,height=150,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes')JavaScript:doPo pup('Popup','Page_247_Popup_2.html','width=224,height=150,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes')*, we realize that that insistence is optional, and we can begin to undergo the possibility that there are other powers in this discourse of Foucault's, other voices besides the active, other grammars besides our Latinate substantive. The only way to find out is to engage the askesisJavaScript:doPopup('Popup','Page_247_Popup_4.html','width=224,height=150,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes')JavaScri pt:doPopup('Popup','Page_247_Popup_5.html','width=224,height=150,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes')* and allow ourselves to undergo. We cannot reproduce Foucault's askesisJavaScript:doPopup('Popup','Page_247_Popup_7.html','width=224,height=150,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes')JavaScri pt:doPopup('Popup','Page_247_Popup_8.html','width=224,height=150,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes')* here. However, some remarks may help us get a feel for some of the directions such an exercise might begin to take. The self is a historical entity that is constantly shifting – our alternative can change not only our assumptions but ourselves as well. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Asceticism/askēsis : Foucault's thinking historical subjectivity” in Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought. Self, then, as part of the eventful world, is itself eventful. It is to be thought as a nexus of repeating force events remaining more or less steady through time. Selves take many different shapes, as it were, as force events shift, are unable to repeat, or occur at a reduced level of energy vis-à-vis one another. Nevertheless, the shifts are usually minor; selves remain identifiable most of the time. This is to be expected, unless there is some relatively cataclysmic change in the sustaining patterns of force events. But what if there is? Well, then, selves may be dramatically altered. Some may die. New forms may be born. Postcataclysmic arrangements are not predictable; for, in an eventful world, there are no underlying, hidden laws or structures that govern change. However , the emergings of arrangements are often traceable in retrospect. Certain sorts of force networks might come to show themselves as essential to the maintenance of a given equilibrium. One might interrogate such a network with regard to its structure and emergence and so begin to think the history of its becoming the essence of a particular arrangement or current equilibric form. Selves, then, have histories, of course, but they also are historical. They are not subsisting entities to which things happen, around which events occur; not enduring substances whose manifestations are sometimes deformed or incomplete; selves occur at every instant, and at every instant their occurring interacts with or conflicts with, reinforces or disrupts all sorts of other occurrings "in" the matrices of world-event. Analyses will accordingly be multiple and complex. Hence genealogy as opposed to a quest for truth. 39/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 40 of 216 ‘Askesis’ Alt Ext (4/4) Our alternative is to embrace a process of askesis in order to rethink our relationship to the world and more importantly ourselves. Askesis is an individual process of self-transformation which breaks down our ascetic drives for purity and control. The role of the ballot is for the judge to affirm our criticism as a way of questioning themselves. LaDelle McWhorter, Professor of Philosophy at Northeast Missouri State, 1992, “Asceticism/askēsis : Foucault's thinking historical subjectivity” in Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought. The ascetic self, then, undergoes changes as the process intensifies, becoming more powerful perhaps and ever more rigidly defined. The ascetic self is subjected and subjectified by the processes of purification that posit its ever more carefully delineated identity core. The ascetic self en-selfs itself by enforcing the continued stability of the identity it seeks to be. Asceticism is a powerfully paradoxical drive for constant selftransformation toward a perfect stasis in a pure unity of self-identical repose. Foucault's askesis bears great resemblance to the movement of self-transformative ascetic drives. The ascetic self's drive to know itself is certainly apparent in Foucault. And there is a sense in which in Foucault we encounter a kind of truth, a truth that the self is not selfidentical but rather that it is an amalgamation of disparate forms. The ascetic self, upon encountering that "truth," upon acceding to the plausibility of genealogical accounts, begins, predictably enough, to discipline itself to that selfknowledge, to bring itself into intellectual conformity with that truth. But when the drive to purify confronts the "truth" of its own impurity, when it runs headlong into the contradictory project of attempting to pare itself down to its fundamental multiplicity, ascetic selfhood begins to undergo the self-transforming power of Foucault's discourse, and the valences that held themselves in tension to produce the notion of a perfect unity, of some enduring Same, must necessarily shift. The thought of self in the center of Foucault's discourse is the thought of transgression, a reversal of forces, a gradual or perhaps violent turning outward of the valences before turned in, like fingers pulling loose from a stone they have gripped too hard for too long. It will be necessary to find a different way to speak: When there occurs the undergoing of the genealogical stripping away of the argumentative and commonsense forces sustaining belief in the unitary self, when there occurs the undergoing of the exposure of the fearful and nonrational drives that put those beliefs in place, there may occur a kind of death of the ahistorical self, just as, in Nietzsche's discourse, when there occurs the undergoing of the exposure of the ungodliness that supported gods, there occurs a kind of death of the ahistorical God. As the thought of God loses its power to shape a world, the thought of a unitary self-identity begins to lose its power to shape a life. And what then? Will human being simply fly apart? Will we all go stark raving mad? Will might equal right and society degenerate into a war of all against all? Perhaps. But why should it come that? Selfishness would be a strange thing in a discourse that did not insist upon the unity of selfidentical selves. Perhaps, as Nietzsche says, morality and evil are Siamese twins. Foucault's discourse, then, like ascetic discourses, is a self-transformative exercise. It is an askesis that allows the powers of ascetic selfhood to bring themselves to bear in characteristic ways. But because Foucault's discourse draws asceticism to focus its self-transformative power on the drive for purification itself, ascetic selfhood finds itself in question. Not only does self-transformation occur here, but there is within the discourse an awareness of this transformative power and an allowance of it as opposed to a denial or an attempt at masterful control. Thus, like ascetic discourses, Foucault's is a discourse that transforms itself; but it transforms itself from an active production of an agent-subject to a process of self-overcoming that opens possibilities for movements of differing rather than the continued movement of purification that is an insistence upon the identity of the same. Yes, Foucault's discourse begins as and in some ways may be read as remaining an ascetic discourse. It draws its energy from its ascetic lineage and past. But within Foucault's discourse ascetic selfhood cannot maintain control of the direction of its own forceful drives. Thus, as Foucault's discourse operates upon the forces at its own discoursive center, something other to asceticism may begin to emerge, something we ascetic selves are not able to name, something that will resist the ascetic drive to label and identify, but something the undergoing of which may be either beautiful or terrible or both but which will definitely be—to use a Nietzschean word—interesting. 40/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 41 of 216 Calculative Thinking Calculative thinking is an endless cycle calculation that neglects meaning in order to fashion specific results Martin Heidegger 1959, 20th century philosopher, Discourse on Thinking, trans. From Gelassenheit by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, 1966 [pp. 45, 46] [Emphasis Added] The growing thoughtlessness must, therefore, spring from some process that gnaws at the very marrow of man today: man today is in flight from thinking This flight- from-thought is the ground of thoughtlessness. But part of this flight is that man will neither see nor admit it. Man today will even flatly deny this flight from thinking. He will assert the opposite. He will say-and quite rightly- that there were at no time such far-reaching plans, so many inquiries in so many areas, research carried on as passionately as today. Of course. And this display of ingenuity deliberation has its own great usefulness. Such thought remains indispensable. But-it also remains true that it is thinking of a special kind. Its peculiarity consists in the fact that whenever we plan, research, and organize, we always reckon with conditions that are given. We take them into account with the calculated intention of their serving specific purposes. Thus we can count on definite results. This calculation is the mark of all thinking that plans and investigates. Such thinking remains calculation even if it neither works with numbers nor uses an adding machine or computer. Calculative thinking computes. It computes ever new, ever more promising and at the same time more economical possibilities. Calculative thinking races from one prospect to the next. Calculative thinking never stops, never collects itself. Calculative thinking is not meditative thinking, not thinking which contemplates the meaning which reigns in everything that is. 41/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 42 of 216 Meditative thinking solves rootedness Openness toward meditative thinking will challenge Human’s loss of rootedness to calculative thinking Martin Heidegger 1959, 20th century philosopher, Discourse on Thinking, trans. From Gelassenheit by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, 1966 [pp. 47-9] [Emphasis Added] There are, then, two kinds of thinking, each justified and needed in its own way: calculative thinking and meditative thinking. This meditative thinking is what we have in mind when we say that contemporary man is in flight-fromthinking. Yet you may protest: mere meditative thinking finds itself floating unaware above reality. It loses touch. It is worthless for dealing with current business. It profits nothing in carrying out practical affairs. And you may say, finally, that mere meditative thinking, persevering meditation, is "above" the reach of ordinary understanding. In this excuse only this much is true, meditative thinking does not just happen by itself any more than does calculative thinking. At times it requires a greater effort. It demands more practice. It is in need of even more delicate care than any other genuine craft. But it must also be able to bide its time, to await as does the farmer, whether the seed will come up and ripen. Yet anyone can follow the path of meditative thinking in his own manner and within his own limits. Why? Because man is a thinking, that is, a meditating being. Thus meditative thinking need by no means be "high-flown." It is enough if we dwell on what lies close and meditate on what is closest; upon that which concerns us, each one of us, here and now; here, on this patch of home ground; now, in the present hour of history. 'What does this celebration suggest to us, in case we are ready to meditate? Then we notice that a work of art has flowered in the ground of our homeland. As we hold this simple fact in mind, we cannot help remembering at once that during the last two centuries great poets and thinkers have been brought forth from the Swabian land. Thinking about it further makes clear at once that Central Germany is likewise such a land, and so are East Prussia, Silesia, and Bohemia. We grow thoughtful and ask: does not the flourishing of any genuine work depend upon its roots in a native soil? Johann Peter Hebel once wrote: " We are plants which whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not-must with our roots rise out of the earth in order to bloom in the ether and to bear fruit" (Works, ed. Altwegg III, 314.) The poet means to say: For a truly joyous and salutary human work to flourish, man must be able to mount from the depth of his home ground up into the ether. Ether here means the free air of the high heavens, the open realm of the spirit. We grow more thoughtful and ask: does this claim of Johann Peter Hebel hold today? Does man still dwell calmly between heaven and earth? Does a meditative spirit still reign over the land? Is there still a life-giving homeland in whose ground man may stand rooted, that is, be autochthonic? Many Germans have lost their homeland have had to leave their villages and towns, have been driven from their native soil. Countless others whose homeland was saved, have yet wandered off. They have been caught up in the turmoil of the big cities, and have resettled in the wastelands of industrial districts. They are strangers now to their former homeland. And those who have stayed on in their homeland? Often they are still more homeless than those who have been driven from their homeland. Hourly and daily they are chained to radio and television. Week after week the movies carry them off into uncommon, but often merely common, realms of the imagination, and give the illusion of a world that is no world. Picture magazines are everywhere available. All that with which modern techniques of communication stimulate, assail, and. drive man-all that is already much closer to man today than his fields around his farmstead, closer than the sky over •the earth, closer than the change from night to day, closer than the conventions and customs of his village, than the tradition of his native world. We grow more thoughtful and ask: What is happening here-with those driven from their homeland no less than with those who have remained? Answer: the rootedness, the autochthony, of man is threatened today at-its core. Even more: The loss-of-rootedness is caused not merely by circumstance and fortune, nor does it stem only from the negligence and the superficiality of man's way of life. The loss of autochthony springs from the spirit of the age into which all of us were born. We grow still more thoughtful and ask: If this is so, can man, can man's work in the future still be expected to thrive in the fertile ground of a homeland and mount into the ether, into the far reaches of the heavens and the spirit? Or will everything now fall into the clutches of planning and calculation, of organization and automation? 42/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 43 of 216 Relationship to Technology  Standing Reserve To see the earth as a vector to procure alternative energy makes human’s relationship to earth ruled by the prospect of furthering modern technology and industry Martin Heidegger 1959, 20th century philosopher, Discourse on Thinking, trans. From Gelassenheit by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, 1966 [pp. 49-51] [Emphasis Added] The age that is now beginning has been called of late atomic age. Its most conspicuous symbol is the atom bomb. But this symbolizes only the obvious; for it was recognized at once that atomic energy can be used also for peaceful purposes. Nuclear physicists everywhere are busy with vast plans to implement the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The great industrial corporations of the leading countries, first of all England, have figured out already that atomic energy can develop into a gigantic business. Through this atomic business a new era of happiness is envisioned. Nuclear science, too, does not stand idly by. It publicly proclaims this era of happiness. Thus in July of this year at Lake Constance, eighteen Nobel Prize winners stated in a proclamation: "Science [and that is modem natural science] is a road to a happier human life." What is the sense of this statement? Does it spring from reflection? Does it ever ponder on the meaning of the atomic age? No For if we rest content with this statement of science, we remain as far as possible from a reflective insight into our age. Why? Because we forget to ponder. Because we forget to ask: 'What is the ground that enabled modem technology to discover and set free new energies in nature? This is due to a revolution in leading concepts which has been going on for the past several centuries, and by which man is placed in a different world. This radical revolution in outlook has come about in modern philosophy. From this arises a completely new relation of man to the world and his place in it. The world now appears as an object open to the attacks of calculative thought, attacks that nothing is believed able any longer to resist. Nature becomes a gigantic gasoline station, an energy source for modem technology and industry. This relation of man, to the world as such, in principle a technical one, developed in the seventeenth century first and only in Europe. It long remained unknown in other continents, and it was altogether alien to former ages and histories. The power concealed in modern technology determines the relation of man to that which exists. It rules the whole earth. Indeed, already man is beginning to advance beyond the earth into outer space. In not quite twenty years, such gigantic sources of power have become known through the discovery of atomic energy that in the foreseeable future the world's demands for energy of any kind will be ensured forever. Soon the procurement of the new energies will no longer be tied to certain countries and continents, as is the occurrence of coal, oil, and timber. In the foreseeable future it will be possible to build atomic power stations anywhere on earth. Thus the decisive question of science and technology today is no longer: 'Where do we find sufficient quantities of fuel? The decisive question now runs: In what way can we tame and direct the unimaginably vast amounts of atomic energies, and so secure mankind against the danger that these gigantic energies suddenly-even without military actions-break out somewhere, "run away" and destroy everything? 43/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 44 of 216 Impact Calculus  Enslavement to tech o/w Technological thinking is inevitable; human’s life enslaved to technology is far worse than the threat of the bomb Martin Heidegger 1959, 20th century philosopher, Discourse on Thinking, trans. From Gelassenheit by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, 1966 [pp. 49-51] [Emphasis Added] If the taming of atomic energy is successful, and it will be successful, then a totally new era-of technical development will begin. What we know now as the technology of film and television, of transportation and especially air transportation, of news reporting, and as medical and nutritional technology, is presumably only a crude start. No one can foresee the radical changes to come. But technological advance will move faster and faster and can never be stopped. In all areas of his existence, man will be en- circled ever more tightly by the forces of technology. These forces, which everywhere and every minute claim, enchain, drag along, press and impose upon man under the form of some technical contrivance or other-these forces, since man has not made them, have moved long since beyond his will and have outgrown his capacity for decision. But this too is characteristic of the new world of technology, that its accomplishments come most speedily to be known and publicly admired. Thus today everyone will be able to read what this talk says about technology in any competently managed picture magazine or hear it on the radio. But-it is one thing to have heard and read something, that is, merely to take notice; it is another thing to understand what we have heard and read, that is, to ponder. The international meeting of Nobel Prize winners took place again in the summer of this year of 1955 in Lindau. There the American chemist, Stanley, had this to say: "The hour is near when life will be placed in the hands of the chemist who will be able to synthesize, split and change living substance at will." We take notice of such a statement. We even marvel at the daring of scientific research, without thinking about it. We do not stop to consider that an attack with technological means is being prepared upon the life and nature of man compared with which the explosion of the hydrogen bomb means little. For precisely if the hydrogen bombs do not explode and human life on earth is preserved, an uncanny change in the world moves upon us. Yet it is not that the world is becoming entirely technical which is really uncanny. Far more uncanny is our being unprepared for this transformation, our inability to confront meditatively what is really dawning in this age. No single. man, no group of men, no commission of prominent statesmen, scientists, and technicians, no conference of leaders of commerce and industry, can brake or direct the progress of history in the atomic age. No merely human organization is capable of gaining dominion over it. 44/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 45 of 216 A/T Tech is inevitable (1/2) Technological thinking is inevitable, but releasement towards things and openness to the mystery will allow humans to view things in an undomineering, untechnical way: avoiding a catastrophic loss of being Martin Heidegger 1959, 20th century philosopher, Discourse on Thinking, trans. From Gelassenheit by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, 1966 [pp. 52-57] [Emphasis Added] Is man, then, a defenseless and perplexed victim at the mercy of the irresistible superior power of technology? He would be if man today abandons any intention to pit meditative thinking decisively against merely calculative thinking. But once meditative thinking awakens, it must be at work unceasingly and on every last occasion— hence, also, here and now at this commemoration. For here we are considering what is threatened especially in the atomic age: the autochthony of the works of man. Thus we ask now: even if the old rootedness is being , lost in this age, may not a new ground and foundation be granted again to man, a foundation and ground out of which man's nature and all his works can flourish in a new way even in the atomic age? What could the ground and foundation be for the new autochthony? Perhaps the answer we are looking for lies at hand; so near that we all too easily overlook it. For the way to what is near is always the longest and thus the hardest for us humans. This way is the way of meditative thinking. Meditative thinking demands of us not to cling one-sidedly to a single idea, nor to run down a one-track course of ideas. Meditative thinking demands of us that we engage ourselves with what at first sight does not go together at all. Let us give a trial. For all of us, the arrangements, devices, and machinery of technology are to a greater or lesser extent indispensable. It would be foolish to attack technology blindly. It would be shortsighted to condemn it as the work of the devil. We depend on technical deices; they even challenge us to ever greater advances. But suddenly and unaware we find ourselves so firmly shackled to these technical devices that we fall into bondage to them. Still we can act otherwise. We can use technical devices, and yet with proper use also keep ourselves so free of them, that we may let go of them any time. We can use technical devices as they ought to be used, and also let them alone as something which does not affect our inner and real core. We can affirm the unavoidable use of technical devices, and also deny them the right to dominate us, and so to warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature. But will not saying both yes and no this way to technical devices make our relation to technology ambivalent and insecure? On the contrary! Our relation to technology will become wonderfully simple and relaxed. We let technical devices enter our daily life, and at the same time leave them outside, that is, let them alone, as things which are nothing absolute but remain dependent upon something higher. I would call this comportment toward technology which expresses "yes" and at the s time "no," by an old word, releasement towards things. Having this comportment we no longer view things only in a technical way. It gives us clear vision and we notice that while the production and use of machines demands of us another relation to things, it is not a meaningless relation. Farming and agriculture, for example, now have turned into a motorized food industry. Thus here, evidently, as elsewhere, a profound change is taking place in man's relation to nature and to the world. But the meaning that reigns in this change remains obscure. There is then in all technical processes a meaning, not invented or made by us, which lays claim to what man does and leaves undone. We do not know the significance of the uncanny increasing dominance of atomic technology. The meaning pervading technology hides itself. But if we explicitly and continuously heed the fact that such hidden meaning touches us everywhere in the world of technology, we stand at once within the realm of that which hides itself from us, and hides itself just in approaching us. That which shows itself and at the same time withdraws is the essential trait of what we call the mystery. I call the comportment which enables us to keep open to the meaning hidden in technology, openness to the mystery. Releasement towards things and openness to the mystery belong together. They grant us the possibility of dwelling in the world in a totally different way. They promise us a new ground and foundation upon which we can stand and endure in the world of technology without being imperiled by it. Releasement towards things and openness to the mystery give us a vision of a new autochthony which someday even might be fit to recapture the old and now rapidly disappearing autochthony in a changed form. But for the time being—we do not know how long—man finds himself in a perilous situation. Why? Just because a third world war might break out unexpectedly and bring about complete annihilation of humanity and the destruction of the earth? No. In this dawning atomic age a far greater danger threatens—precisely when the danger of a third world war has been removed. A strange assertion! Strange indeed, but only as long as we do not meditate. In what sense is the statement just made valid? This assertion is valid in the sense that the approaching tide of technological revolution in the atomic age could so captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may [Continued, no break] 45/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 46 of 216 A/T Tech is inevitable (2/2) [Continued, no break] someday come to be accepted and practiced as the only way of thinking. What real danger then might move upon us? Then there might go hand in hand with the greatest ingenuity in calculative planning and inventing indifference toward meditative thinking, total thoughtlessness. And then? Then man would have denied and thrown away his own special nature—that he is a meditative being. Therefore, the issue is the saving of man’s essential nature. Therefore, the issue is keeping meditative thinking alive. Yet releasement toward things and openness to the mystery never happen of themselves. They do not befall us accidentally. Both flourish only through persistent, courageous thinking. Perhaps today’s memorial celebration will prompt us toward this. If we respond to the prompting, we think of Conradin Kreutzer by thinking of the origin of his work the lie-giving powers of his Hewberg homeland. And it is we who think if we know ourselves here and now as the men who must find and prepare the way into the atomic age, through it and out of it. If releasement toward things and openness to the mystery awaken within us, then we should arrive at a path that will lead to a new ground and foundation. In that ground the creativity which produces lasting works could strike new roots. 46/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 47 of 216 A2: Technology is neutral The affirmative’s conception of technology as a neutral force destroys meaningful understanding of the essence of technology Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, 1949, The Question Concerning Technology, http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html [BGB] In what follows we shall be questioning concerning technology. Questioning builds a way. We would be advised, therefore, above all to pay heed to the way, and not to fix our attention on isolated sentences and topics. The way is one of thinking. All ways of thinking, more or less perceptibly, lead through language in a manner that is extraordinary. We shall be questioning concerning technology, and in so doing we should like to prepare a free relationship to it. The relationship will be free if it opens our human existence to the essence of technology. When we can respond to this essence, we shall be able to experience the technological within its own bounds. Technology is not equivalent to the essence of technology. When we are seeking the essence of "tree," we have to become aware that what pervades every tree, as tree, is not itself a tree that can be encountered among all the other trees. Likewise, the essence of technology is by no means anything technological. Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely represent and pursue the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this Conception of it, to which today we particularly like to pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology. According to ancient doctrine, the essence of a thing is considered to be what the thing is. We ask the question concerning teehnology when we ask what it is. Everyone knows the two statements that answer our question. One says: Technology is a means to an end. The other says: Technology is a human activity. The two definitions of technology belong together. For to posit ends and procure and utilize the means to them is a human activity. The manufacture and utilization of equipment, tools, and machines, the manufactured and used things themselves, and the needs and ends that they serve, all belong to what technology is. The whole complex of these contrivances is technology. Technology itself is a contrivance—in Latin, an instrumentum. 47/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 48 of 216 A2 Crisis Politics The aff views technology as a means to an end – the crisis politics advocated by the 1AC represents a desperate attempt to re-control technology, ensuring future failure Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, 1949, The Question Concerning Technology, http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html [BGB] The current conception of technology, according to which it is a means and a human activity, can therefore be called the instrumental and anthropological definition of technology. Who would ever deny that it is correct? It is in obvious conformity with what we are envisaging when we talk about technology. The instrumental definition of technology is indeed so uncannily correct that it even holds for modern technology, of which, in other respects, we maintain with some justification that it is, in contrast to the older handicraft technology, something completely different and therefore new. Even the power plant with its turbines and generators is a man-made means to an end established by man. Even the jet aircraft and the high--frequency apparatus are means to ends. A radar station is of course less simple than a weather vane. To be sure, the construction of a high-frequency apparatus requires the interlocking of various processes of technicalindustrial production. And certainly a sawmill in a secluded valley of the Black Forest is a primitive means compared with the hydroelectric plant on the Rhine River. But this much remains correct: Modern technology too is a means to an end. This is why the instrumental conception of technology conditions every attempt to bring man into the right relation to technology. Everything depends on our manipulating technology m the proper manner as a means. We will, as we say, "get" technology "intelligently in hand." We will master it. The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control. 48/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 49 of 216 A2 Moral Obligation/Responsibility The affirmative’s conception of moral obligation and responsibility for environmental problems as a lapse, doom solvency – the harms will continue to be replicated Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, 1949, The Question Concerning Technology, http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html [BGB] The three previously mentioned ways of being responsible owe thanks to the pondering of the silversmith for the "that" and the "how" of their coming into appearance and into play for the production of the sacrificial vessel. Thus four ways of owing hold sway in the sacrificial vessel that lies ready before us. They differ from one another, yet they belong together. What unites them from the beginning? In what does this playing in unison of the four ways of being responsible play? What is the source of the unity of the four causes? What, after all, does this owing and being responsible mean, thought as the Greeks thought it? Today we are too easily inclined either to understand being responsible and being indebted moralistically as a lapse, or else to construe them in terms of effecting. In either case we bar from ourselves the way to the primal meaning of that which is later called causality. So long as this way is not opened up to us we shall also fail to see what instrumentality, which is based on causality, properly is. 49/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 50 of 216 Standing Reserve (1/2) The affirmative’s challenging of the earth to create energy creates a system of standing reserve Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, 1949, The Question Concerning Technology, http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html [BGB] Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens. In opposition to this definition of the essential domain of technology, one can object that it indeed holds for Greek thought and that at best it might apply to the techniques of the handicraftsman, but that it simply does not fit modern machine-powered technology. And it is precisely the latter and it alone that is the disturbing thing, that moves us to ask the question concerning technology per se. It is said that modern technology is something incomparably different from all earlier technologies because it is based on modern physics as an exact science. Meanwhile, we have come to understand more clearly that the reverse holds true as well: modern physics, as experimental, is dependent upon technical apparatus and upon progress in the building of apparatus. The establishing of this mutual relationship between technology and physics is correct. But it remains a merely historiological establishing of facts and says nothing about that in which this mutual relationship is grounded. The decisive question still remains: Of what essence is modem technology that it thinks of putting exact science to use? What is modern technology? It too is a revealing. Only when we allow our attention to rest on this fundamental characteristic does that which is new in modern technology show itself to us. And yet, the revealing that holds sway throughout modem technology does not unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poiesis. The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging [Herausfordern], which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such. But does this not hold true for the old windmill as well? No. Its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they are left entirely to the wind's blowing. But the windmill does not unlock energy from the air currents in order to store it. In contrast, a tract of land is challenged in the hauling out of coal and ore. The earth now reveals itself as a coal mining district, the soil as a mineral deposit. The field that the peasant formerly cultivated and set in order appears differently than it did when to set in order still meant to take care of and maintain. The work of the peasant does not challenge the soil of the field. In sowing grain it places seed in the keeping of the forces of growth and watches over its increase. But meanwhile even the cultivation of the field has come under the grip of another kind of setting-in-order, which sets upon nature. It sets upon it in the sense of challenging it. Agriculture is now the mechanized food industry. Air is now set upon to yield nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium, for example; uranium is set Up to yield atomic energy, which can be unleashed either for destructive or for peaceful purposes. This setting-upon that challenges the energies of nature is an expediting, and in two ways. It expedites in that it unlocks and exposes. Yet that expediting is always itself directed from the beginning toward furthering something else, i.e., toward driving on to the maximum yield at the minimum expense. The coal that has been hauled out in some mining district has not been produced in order that it may simply be at hand somewhere or other. It is being stored; that is, it is on call, ready to deliver the sun's warmth that is stored in it. The sun's warmth is challenged forth for heat, which in turn is ordered to deliver steam whose pressure turns the wheels that keep a factory running. The hydroelectric plant is set into the current of the Rhine. It sets the Rhine to supplying its hydraulic pressure, which then sets the turbines turning. This turning sets those machines in motion whose thrust sets going the electric current for which the longdistance power station and its network of cables are set up to dispatch electricity. In the context of the interlocking processes pertaining to the orderly disposition of electrical energy, even the Rhine itself appears to be something at our command. The hydroelectric plant is not built into the Rhine River as was the old wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for hundreds of years. Rather, the river is dammed up into the power plant. What the river is now, namely, a water-power supplier, derives from the essence of the power station. In order that we may even remotely consider the monstrousness that reigns here, let us ponder for a moment the contrast that is spoken by the two titles: "The Rhine," as dammed up into the power works, and "The Rhine," as uttered by the artwork, in Holderlin's hymn by that name. But, it will be replied, the Rhine is still a river in the landscape, is it not? Perhaps. But how? In no other way than as an object on call for inspection by a tour group ordered there by the vacation industry. The revealing that rules throughout modern technology has the character of a setting-upon, in the sense of a challenging--forth. Such challenging happens in that the energy concealed in nature is unlocked, what is unlocked is transformed, what is transformed is stored up, what is stored up is in turn distributed, and what is distributed is switched about ever anew. Unlocking, transforming, storing, distributing, and switching about are ways of revealing. But the revealing never simply comes to an end. Neither does it run off into the indeterminate. The revealing reveals to itself its own manifoldly interlocking paths, through regulating their course. This regulating itself is, for its part, everywhere secured. Regulating and securing even become the chief characteristics of the revealing that challenges. What kind of unconcealment is it, then, that is peculiar to that which results from this setting-upon that challenges? Everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately on hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further [Continues, no break] 50/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 51 of 216 Standing Reserve (2/2) [Continues, no break] ordering. Whatever is ordered about in this way has its own standing. We call it the standing-reserve [Bestand]. The word expresses here something more, and something more essential, than mere "stock." The word "standing-reserve" assumes the rank of an inclusive rubric. It designates nothing less than the way in which everything presences that is wrought upon by the revealing that challenges. Whatever stands by in the sense of standing-reserve no longer stands over against us as object. Yet an airliner that stands on the runway is surely an object. Certainly. We can represent the machine so. But then it conceals itself as to what and how it is. Revealed, it stands on the taxi strip only as standing-reserve, inasmuch as it is ordered to insure the possibility of transportation. For this it must be in its whole structure and in every one of its constituent parts itself on call for duty, i.e., ready for takeoff. (Here it would be appropriate to discuss Hegel's definition of the machine as an autonomous tool. When applied to the tools of the craftsman, his characterization is correct. Characterized in this way, however, the machine is not thought at all from the essence of technology within which it belongs. Seen in terms of the standing-reserve, the machine is completely nonautonomous, for it has its standing only on the basis of the ordering of the orderable.) The fact that now, wherever we try to point to modern technology as the revealing that challenges, the words "setting--upon," "ordering," "standing-reserve," obtrude and accumulate in a dry, monotonous, and therefore oppressive way — this fact has its basis in what is now coming to utterance. Who accomplishes the challenging setting-upon through which what we call the actual is revealed as standing-reserve? Obviously, man. To what extent is man capable of such a revealing? Man can indeed conceive, fashion, and carry through this or that in one way or another. But man does not have control over unconcealment itself, in which at any given time the actual shows itself or withdraws. The fact that it has been showing itself in the light of Ideas ever since the time of Plato, Plato did not bring about. The thinker only responded to what addressed itself to him. Only to the extent that man for his part is already challenged to exploit the energies of nature can this revealing that orders happen. If man is challenged, ordered, to do this, then does not man himself belong even more originally than nature within the standing-reserve? The current talk about human resources, about the supply of patients for a clinic, gives evidence of this. The forester who measures the felled timber in the woods and who to all appearances walks the forest path in the same way his grandfather did is today ordered by the industry that produces commercial woods, whether he knows it or not. He is made subordinate to the orderability of cellulose, which for its part is challenged forth by the need for paper, which is then delivered to newspapers and illustrated magazines. The latter, in their turn, set public opinion to swallowing what is printed, so that a set configuration of opinion becomes available on demand. Yet precisely because man is challenged more originally than are the energies of nature, i.e., into the process of ordering, he never is transformed into mere standingreserve. Since man drives technology forward, he takes part in ordering as a way of revealing. But the unconcealment itself, within which ordering unfolds, is never a human handiwork, any more than is the realm man traverses every time he as a subject relates to an object. 51/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 52 of 216 A2 “Experts” Research The affirmative’s emphasis on expert information objectifies the earth as on object to be understood, converting nature to standing reserve Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, 1949, The Question Concerning Technology, http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html [BGB] Where and how does this revealing happen if it is no mere handiwork of man? We need not look far. We need only apprehend in an unbiased way that which has already claimed man so decisively that he can only be man at any given time as the one so claimed. Wherever man opens his eyes and ears, unlocks his heart, and gives himself over to meditating and striving, shaping and working, entreating and thanking, he finds himself everywhere already brought into the unconcealed. The unconcealment of the unconcealed has already propriated whenever it calls man forth into the modes of revealing allotted to him. When man, in his way, from within unconcealment reveals that which presences, he merely responds to the call of unconcealment, even when he contradicts it. Thus when man, investigating, observing, pursues nature as an area of his own conceiving, he has already been claimed by a way of revealing that challenges him to approach nature as an object of research, until even the object disappears into the objectlessness of standing-reserve. Modern technology, as a revealing that orders, is thus no mere human doing. Therefore we must take the challenging that sets upon man to order the actual as standing-reserve in accordance with the way it shows itself. That challenging gathers man into ordering. This gathering concentrates man upon ordering the actual as standing-reserve. 52/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 53 of 216 A2 “We Don’t Have to Do the Alt” Failure to question the essence of technology allows man to become standing-reserve, justifies all atrocities Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, 1949, The Question Concerning Technology, http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html [BGB] But when we consider the essence of technology we experience enframing as a destining of revealing. In this way we are already sojourning within the free space of destining, a destining that in no way confines us to a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology or, what comes to the same, to rebel helplessly against it and curse it as the work of the devil. Quite to the contrary, when we once open ourselves expressly to the essence of technology we find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a freeing claim. The essence of technology lies in enframing. Its holding sway belongs within destining. Since destining at any given time starts man on a way of revealing, man, thus under way, is continually approaching the brink of the possibility of pursuing and promulgating nothing but what is revealed in ordering, and of deriving all his standards on this basis. Through this the other possibility is blocked—that man might rather be admitted sooner and ever more primally to the essence of what is unconcealed and to its unconcealment, in order that he might experience as his essence the requisite belonging to revealing. Placed between these possibilities, man is endangered by destining. The destining of revealing is as such, in every one of its modes, and therefore necessarily, danger. In whatever way the destining of revealing may hold sway, the unconcealment in which everything that is shows itself at any given time harbors the danger that man may misconstrue the unconcealed and misinterpret it. Thus where everything that presences exhibits itself in the light of a causeeffect coherence, even God, for representational thinking, can lose all that is exalted and holy, the mysteriousness of his distance. In the light of causality, God can sink to the level of a cause, of causa efficient He then becomes even in theology the God of the philosophers, namely, of those who define the unconcealed and the concealed in terms of the causality of making, without ever considering the essential provenance of this causality. In a similar way the unconcealment in accordance with which nature presents itself as a calculable complex of the effects of forces can indeed permit correct determinations; but precisely through these successes the danger may remain that in the midst of all that is correct the true will withdraw. The destining of revealing is in itself not just any danger, but the danger. Yet when destining reigns in the mode of enframing, it is the supreme danger. This danger attests itself to us in two ways. As soon as what is unconcealed no longer concerns man even as object, but exclusively as standing-reserve, and man in the midst of objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve, then he comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile, man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself and postures as lord of the earth. In this way the illusion comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion gives rise in turn to one final delusion: it seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself. Heisenberg has with complete correctness pointed out that the actual must present itself to contemporary man in this way. In truth, however, precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e., his essence. Man stands so decisively in subservience to on the challenging-forth of enframing that he does not grasp enframing as a claim, that he fails to see himself as the one spoken to, and hence also fails in every way to hear in what respect he ek-sists, in terms of his essence, in a realm where he is addressed, so that he can never encounter only himself. But enframing does not simply endanger man in his relationship to himself and to everything that is. As a destining, it banishes man into the kind of revealing that is an ordering. Where this ordering holds sway, it drives out every other possibility of revealing. Above all, enframing conceals that revealing which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what presences come forth into appearance. As compared with that other revealing, the setting-upon that challenges forth thrusts man into a relation to whatever is that is at once antithetical and rigorously ordered. Where enframing holds sway, regulating and securing of the standing-reserve mark all revealing. They no longer even let their own fundamental characteristic appear, namely, this revealing as such. 53/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 54 of 216 A2 “You Want the Past” The critique doesn’t strive to recreate the past – merely to reject the demand that nature become ordered and calculable – the alternative breaks down the illusion Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, 1949, The Question Concerning Technology, http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html [BGB] The modern physical theory of nature prepares the way not simply for technology but for the essence of modern technology. For such gathering-together, which challenges man to reveal by way of ordering, already holds sway in physics. But in it that gathering does not yet come expressly to the fore. Modern physics is the herald of enframing, a herald whose provenance is still unknown. The essence of modern technology has for a long time been concealed, even where power machinery has been invented, where electrical technology is in full swing, and where atomic technology is well under way. All coming to presence, not only modern technology, keeps itself everywhere concealed to the last. Nevertheless, it remains, with respect to its holding sway, that which precedes all: the earliest. The Greek thinkers already knew of this when they said: That which is earlier with regard to its rise into dominance becomes manifest to us men only later. That which is primally early shows itself only ultimately to men. Therefore, in the realm of thinking, a painstaking effort to think through still more primally what was primally thought is not the absurd wish to revive what is past, but rather the sober readiness to be astounded before the coming of the dawn. Chronologically speaking, modern physical science begins in the seventeenth century. In contrast, machine-power technology develops only in the second half of the eighteenth century. But modern technology, which for chronological reckoning is the later, is, from the point of view of the essence holding sway within it, historically earlier. If modern physics must resign itself ever increasingly to the fact that its realm of representation remains inscrutable and incapable of being visualized, this resignation is not dictated by any committee of researchers. It is challenged forth by the rule of enframing, which demands that nature be orderable as standing-reserve. Hence physics, in its retreat from the kind of representation that turns only to objects, which has been the sole standard until recently, will never be able to renounce this one thing: that nature report itself in some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and that it remain orderable as a system of information. This system is then determined by a causality that has changed once again. Causality now displays neither the character of the occasioning that brings forth nor the nature of the causa etficiens, let alone that of the causa formalis. It seems as though causality is shrinking into a reporting—a reporting challenged forth—of standing-reserves that must be guaranteed either simultaneously or in sequence. To this shrinking would correspond the process of growing resignation that Heisenberg's lecture depicts in so impressive a manner. ' Because the essence of modern technology lies in enframing, modern technology must employ exact physical science. Through its so doing the deceptive appearance arises that modern technology is applied physical science. This illusion can maintain itself precisely insofar as neither the essential provenance of modern science nor indeed the essence of modern technology is adequately sought in our questioning. 54/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 55 of 216 Poetry is the saving power Poetry is the saving power, allows to confront technological thinking and witness the unfolding of technology – the alternative is entrenchment of technological thinking Martin Heidegger, German philosopher, 1949, The Question Concerning Technology, http://www.wright.edu/cola/Dept/PHL/Class/P.Internet/PITexts/QCT.html [BGB] The question concerning technology is the question concerning the constellation in which revealing and concealing, in which the essential unfolding of truth propriates. But what help is it to us to look into the constellation of truth? We look into the danger and see the growth of the saving power. Through this we are not yet saved. But we are thereupon summoned to hope in the growing light of the saving power. How can this happen? Here and now and in little things, that we may foster the saving power in its increase. This includes holding always before our eyes the extreme danger. The essential unfolding of technology threatens revealing, threatens it with the possibility that all revealing will be consumed in ordering and that everything will present itself only in the unconcealment of standing-reserve. Human activity can never directly counter this danger. Human achievement alone can never banish it. But human reflection can ponder the fact that all saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same time kindred to it. But might there not perhaps be a more primally granted revealing that could bring the saving power into its first shining-forth in the midst of the danger that in the technological age rather conceals than shows itself? There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name techne. Once the revealing that brings forth truth into the splendor of radiant appearance was also called techne. There was a time when the bringing-forth of the true into the beautiful was called techne. The poiesis of the fine arts was also called techne. At the outset of the destining of the West, in Greece, the arts soared to the supreme height of the revealing granted them. They illuminated the presence [Gegenwart] of the gods and the dialogue of divine and human destinings. And art was called simply techne. It was a single, manifold revealing. It was pious, promos, i.e., yielding to- the holding sway and the safekeeping of truth. The arts were not derived from the artistic. Artworks were not enjoyed aesthetically. Art was not a sector of cultural activity. What was art—perhaps only for that brief but magnificent age? Why did art bear the modest name techne? Because it was a revealing that brought forth and made present, and therefore belonged within poiesis. It was finally that revealing which holds complete sway in all the fine arts, in poetry, and in everything poetical that obtained poiesis as its proper name. The same poet from whom we heard the words But where danger is, grows there the saving power also . . . says to us: . poetically man dwells on this earth. The poetical brings the true into the splendor of what Plato in the Phaedrus calls to ekphanestaton, that which shines forth most purely. The poetical thoroughly pervades every art, every revealing of essential unfolding into the beautiful. Could it be that the fine arts are called to poetic revealing? Could it be that revealing lays claim to the arts most primally, so that they for their part may expressly foster the growth of the saving power, may awaken and found anew our vision of, and trust in, that which grants? Whether art may be granted this highest possibility of its essence in the midst of the extreme danger, no one can tell. Yet we can be astounded. Before what? Before this other possibility: that the frenziedness of technology may entrench itself everywhere to such an extent that someday, throughout everything technological, the essence of technology may unfold essentially in the propriative event of truth. Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it. Such a realm is art. But certainly only if reflection upon art, for its part, does not shut its eyes to the constellation of truth, concerning which we are questioning. Thus questioning, we bear witness to the crisis that in our sheer preoccupation with technology we do not yet experience the essential unfolding of technology, that in our sheer aesthetic-mindedness we no longer guard and preserve the essential unfolding of art. Yet the more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes. The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become. For questioning is the piety of thought. 55/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 56 of 216 Tech  Calculation The affirmative’s endorsement of technology endorses a calculative worldview Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, 1990, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity, NetLibrary [BB] For modern commercial-technological humanity, nothing is "sacred." Everything has its price; everything can be calculated and evaluated according to the economic interests of someone or other. In the pre-technological era, when humanity still felt itself to be a part of the world instead of its master, people had to adapt themselves to the natural order as best they could. Even medieval humanity, to be sure, projected a certain order onto the world, but at least that "order" was believed to have been created and sustained by God—not by humans. The old-fashioned view that people must adapt themselves to the pre-existing order of things may be discerned in the objection which many people made in regard to the first airplanes: "If God had intended us to fly, He would have given us wings!" In the technological age, however, instead of conforming to the natural order, people force nature to conform to their needs and expectations. Whenever nature proves unsatisfactory for human purposes, people reframe it as they see fit. For Heidegger, such technological ''reframing" compels entities to be revealed in inappropriate ways. The "factory farm," for example, treats corn and cattle as if they were merely complex machines, not living things. Such reframing, however, is a necessary consequence of the economic imperatives of the food industry. 56/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 57 of 216 Relationship to Tech is key Embracing the paradoxical nature of modern technology – that there is escape, but only insofar as we accept there is no escape – is key to creating a creating a relationship with technology Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, 1990, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity, NetLibrary [BB] Such "essential thinking" is neither rational nor irrational, but a meditative openness for the being of entities. Such openness precedes the distinction between the rational and irrational. But does the technological era not result from the complete self-concealment of being? How then can we become open to it, especially if its self-concealment has stamped us with the one-dimensional rationality of Gestell? And if being has in fact completely concealed itself from us, how is it that we nevertheless encounter entities as entities, even if merely as "standing- reserve"? These questions compose the koan for the West. Heidegger formulated the koan in the following terms: Being has already cast itself upon us and has cast itself away from us.... This appears to be a "contradiction." Only we do not want to snatch what is disclosed there [and put it into] a formal scheme of formal thinking. In this way, everything becomes merely weakened in its essence and becomes essence-less under the appearance of a "paradoxical" formulation. As opposed to this, we must attempt to experience [the fact] that we— placed between the two limits—are transferred into a unique abode from which there is no exit. Yet since we find ourselves transferred into this situation of no exit, we will notice that perhaps even this uttermost situation without exit might arise from being itself.... [GA, 51: 80-81] Instead of trying to "solve" the problem of modern technology by furious actions and schemes produced by the rational ego, then, Heidegger counseled that people learn that there is no exit from that "problem." We are cast into the technological world. Insight into the fact that there is no exit from it may, in and of itself, help to free us from the compulsion which characterizes all attempts to become "masters" of technology—for technology cannot be mastered. Instead, it is the destiny of the West. We can be ''released" from its grip only to the extent that we recognize that we are in its grip: this is the paradox. 57/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 58 of 216 A2 Nazism (1/3) Heidegger’s philosophy cannot be understood separate from his engagement with Junger and Nazism Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, 1990, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity, NetLibrary [BB] From the very beginning of his career, Heidegger was concerned about the relation between burning issues of "factical existence," on the one hand, and problems in the history of metaphysics, on the other. He saw an internal relationship between the decline of the West into nihilism and the decline of Western humanity's understanding of being. During the 1920s, however, his critique of modern technology tended to be overshadowed by the ontological analyses that were clearly in the purview of his role as an academic philosopher. His decision to begin focusing on the phenomenon of modern technology cannot be understood apart from two interrelated events: first, his practical engagement with National Socialism, and second, his confrontation with Ernst Jünger's striking predictions about the technological future. Jünger's thesis, that the Gestalt of the worker was mobilizing the entire planet into a technological frenzy, was in many ways similar to what Spengler, Scheler, and others had already said. Nevertheless, Heidegger concluded that Jünger's writings gave the clearest expression to the metaphysical condition of the West at the end of the history of metaphysics. Jünger, like other reactionary authors, argued that modernity and industrial technology could not be explained either in terms of Marxist economic theories or in terms of the liberal free-market ideology. The industrial transformation of the earth was merely the empirical manifestation of a hidden, world-transforming power. Jünger maintained that this power took the form of the Gestalt of the worker, the latest historical manifestation of Nietzsche's cosmic Will to Power. Heidegger transformed what Jünger regarded as the history of the Will to Power into what he was to call the "history of being." Moreover, influenced once more by Jünger, he also formulated his own highly controversial claim that Nietzsche's metaphysics calls for humanity to dominate the earth through technological means. Resolved to forestall Jünger's fearsome predictions, but equally attracted to his masculinist rhetoric of courage and hardness, Heidegger used his own philosophical vocabulary and personal magnetism to support the National Socialist "revolution," which promised to provide an authentic "third way" between the twin evils of capitalist and communist industrialism. In this chapter, I argue that Heidegger believed National Socialism would renew and discipline the German spirit, thereby saving Germany from technological nihilism. I shall also address the following question: If Heidegger believed that his own philosophy could provide spiritual direction for National Socialism, does this mean that his philosophy is essentially fascist? In the subsequent chapter, I explain Jünger's conception of modern technology. Then, I shall describe in detail Jünger's influence both on Heidegger's engagement with National Socialism and on his mature concept of technology. 58/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 59 of 216 A2 Nazism (2/3) Heidegger’s Nazism persisted throughout his life – his lack of questioning of the movement makes him complicit in the holocaust – and his philosophy is deeply connected to Nazi ideology Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, 1990, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity, NetLibrary [BB] For years after 1934, Heidegger continued to play an active role as part of a group of academicians who wanted to "complete" the revolution by transforming the German university system.30 Moreover, he blacklisted people he considered to be "un-German" for somehow consorting with Jews. Heidegger's reasons for refusing to fire two Jewish professors during his rectorate were tactical, not ethical: their dismissal would not look good on the international scene. The question of whether he was deeply, or only opportunistically, anti-Semitic is complex. None of his public statements can be read as anti-Semitic, but on the other hand he never publicly apologized for his original support for the regime that exterminated millions of Jews and other "subhumans." In the late 1940s, in an extremely rare reference to the Holocaust, he said: "Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, essentially the same thing as the fabrication of cadavers in the gas chambers of the extermination camps, the same thing as the blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the fabrication of hydrogen bombs."31 In this astonishing statement, Heidegger glided over the fact that the Holocaust was a German phenomenon involving the slaughter of millions of Jews. Instead, he chose to view the Holocaust as a typical episode in the technological era afflicting the entire West. Nevertheless, in speaking of the Holocaust in the same breath with the hydrogen bomb, Heidegger was making an important point. Mass extermination in the Nazi camps was possible only because of developments within industrial technology. Moreover, the Nazis spoke of the Jews as if they were little more than industrial "waste" to be disposed of as efficiently as possible. Officials in charge of planning strategic use of nuclear weapons must be trained to conceive of the enemy populace in wholly abstract terms. Heidegger argued in several places that the hydrogen bomb—an instrument of mass extermination—was not the real problem facing us. Instead, the problem is the perversion and constriction of humanity's understanding of being itself in the technological era. Extermination camps and hydrogen bombs, from Heidegger's viewpoint, were both symptoms of humanity's conception of itself and everything else as resources to be produced and consumed, created and destroyed, at will. There is, however, something problematic but also typical of Heidegger's tendency to explain specific events and deeds in Germany as if they were typical of the entire Western world. Hence, during the 1940s he spoke of Hitler as if he were the inevitable manifestation of certain trends within the history of productionist metaphysics: One believes that the leaders had presumed everything of their own accord in the blind rage of a selfish egotism and arranged everything in accordance with their own will. In truth, however, they are the. necessary consequence of the fact that entities have gone over into the way of erring in which the vacuum [resulting from the self-concealment of being] expands which requires a single order and guarantee of entities. Therein is demanded the necessity of "leading," i.e., the planning calculation of the securing of the whole of the entity. For this such men who serve the leading must be directed and armed. The "leaders" are the authoritative mobilization-workers [Rustungsarbeiter] who oversee all sectors of the securing of the consumption of the entity, because they see through the whole of the surrounding [sectors] and thus dominate erring in its calculability. [VA I: 85-86/105] Hitler's National Socialism, we are told, resulted not from peculiar historical conditions, such as widespread German antiSemitism and hostility toward Enlightenment political values, but instead from a metaphysical process that determined events throughout the West. Surely such an analysis is open to question. The same kind of exculpatory metaphysical explanation can be discerned in Heidegger's account of Nietzsche's racism: "Nietzsche's racial thought has a metaphysical, not a biological sense." [N II: 309] Here, Heidegger sought both to protect Nietzsche from abuse at the hands of various Nazi ideologues, and to clarify that his own conception of the German Volk was a metaphysical, not a racist, one. But, as Derrida asks, "Is a metaphysics of race more serious or less serious than a naturalism or biologism of race?" 32 Nevertheless, Derrida also cautions that in thinking Nazism and anti-Semitism, we must not focus on Heidegger alone, for "Nazism could have developed only with the differentiated but decisive complicity of other countries, of 'democratic' states, and of university and religious institutions."33 During the 1920s and 1930s, German universities—professors and students alike— were mostly either conservative or reactionary in outlook.34 Hence, students and faculty helped both to make Hitler's accession to power possible and to consolidate that power. After the war, reflecting on his Rektor's address, Heidegger argued that it had been intended to defend the university against political co-optation. But colleagues who may have read his ambiguous words in this manner in 1933 were soon expressing outrage at his accumulation of university authority, at his allowing himself to be called Führer of the university, and above all at his eagerness (expressed in a telegram to Hitler!) to cooperate with the Gleichschaltung, i.e., with the "coordination" of the university into the totalitarian National Socialist state.35 Shortly before resigning as Rektor, Heidegger spelled out his official goals: Since the beginning of my installation, the initial principle and the authentic aim [of my rectorate]... reside in the radical transformation of intellectual education into a function of the forces and demands of the National Socialist state.... One cannot presume [to know] what will remain of our [Continues, no break] 59/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 60 of 216 A2 Nazism (3/3) [Continues, no break] transitory works The only certainty is that our fierce will, inclined toward the future, gives a meaning and brings support to our most simple effort. The individual by himself counts for nothing. It is the destiny of our nation incarnated by its state that matters.36 [My emphasis] In light of Being and Time's emphasis on individuation as an essential ingredient in authentic existence, we may be amazed at the assertion that the individual "counts for nothing" in the Nazi state. We should recall, however, that in the late chapters of Being and Time Heidegger argued that authentic individuation could occur only within the context of an entire generation willing to submit to its common destiny. The explicitly political Heidegger of 1933-34 sought to achieve his own authentic individuation by surrendering himself to what he believed were the "powers of being" at work in National Socialism. Two provocative passages shed light on Heidegger's political engagement. In the first passage, from 1935, Heidegger spoke of the "violent one" who tries to overpower the overpowering being: "The more towering the summit of historical Dasein, the deeper will be the abyss for the sudden fall into the unhistorical, which merely thrashes around in issueless and placeless confusion." [GA, 40: 170/135] Apparently, Heidegger was aware of the risk he was taking by supporting National Socialism. In his own defense, he insisted that it was better fox him to become engaged than to sit on the sidelines like so many others did. He did not escape unscathed by his decision. So disturbed was he by his de-Nazification hearings, and by related threats by French occupation authorities to deprive him of his home and his personal library, that he had a nervous breakdown in the spring of 1946 and spent three weeks under psychiatric care. In light of the global havoc and personal disaster which followed upon Heidegger's decision to lend his philosophy in support of Hitler, we may find particularly ironic Heidegger's remark from 1929-30: What can [today's philosopher] not report with the most modern slogans about the world situation, spirit, and the future of Europe, the coming age of the world and the new Middle Ages! How he can speak with unsurpassable earnestness about the situation of the university and its concerns, ask what man is, whether he is a transition to or [a matter of] boredom to the gods. Perhaps he is a comedian—who can know that?... If he is one who philosophizes, why does he relinquish his solitude and loiter about as a public professor in the market? But above all, what a dangerous beginning is this ambiguous behavior! [GA, 29/30: 18-19] While Heidegger's maverick version of National Socialism was incomparably more sophisticated than the primitive writings of many Nazi ideologues, nevertheless he shared with other Nazis a deep mistrust for the concept of individual civil, political, and economic liberties. Regarding such liberties as invitations to socially corrosive egoism, he proclaimed that only by surrendering to a higher power could Germans achieve genuine freedom. This conception of freedom was shared not only by Heidegger and Hitler, but by Jünger as well. Heidegger's relationship to National Socialism cannot be understood unless we see the extent to which Heidegger believed that it offered an alternative to the technological nihilism predicted by Jünger. Jünger called on Germans to submit to that nihilism, while Hitler—so Heidegger at first believed—called on Germans to submit to the dangerous venture leading beyond such nihilism. In the following chapter, we shall examine Jünger's conception of the nihilism of modern technology. 60/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 61 of 216 A2 Rorty Without a theoretical foundation for decisions, Rorty’s calculus is impossible. Further, Rorty’s understanding of politics and theory is flawed – only his interpretation allows the holocaust Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, 1990, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity, NetLibrary [BB] Richard Rorty, for example, another pragmatist influenced by Heidegger's deconstructive method, suggests that deconstruction has and ought to have no real political effect. It is one thing, he suggests, to speak as intellectuals about deconstructing Western metaphysics; it is quite another to take that deconstruction into the political domain. In other words, while we may abandon our search for the chimera of "absolute foundations" or "final truths" in epistemology, science, and political theory, we should not confuse such abandonment with relinquishing our social solidarity as expressed in the liberal humanism which defines the Western world. 34 Hence, while Rorty likes Heidegger's method, he accuses Heidegger's critique of modernity and industrial technology of being in some respects naive. There is really no alternative, so Rorty insists, to increasing our commitment to the industrial technology which has come out of the Enlightenment —unless we are willing to see millions of people starve to death around the world.35 In a world bereft of foundations for making monumental decisions, however, we may well ask: On what basis are we to say that it is better to feed starving millions, for example, than to worry about the fate of the entire human species in the face of a population explosion which threatens the stability of the biosphere? Moreover, are there not empirical questions to be asked regarding the relationship between those starving millions, on the one hand, and the influence of colonial-imperial economic practices— including those sponsored by the rich industrial democracies praised by Rorty—which helped to create the conditions for "overpopulation"? Rorty justifies his attempt to separate the activity of deconstructing the Western fascination with "objectivity" and "foundations" from the commitment to democratic-liberal social solidarity by saying that theory has not played a significant role in the praxis involved in establishing and furthering American democratic principles.36 Unfortunately, however, we may not so readily separate cultural criticism from its possible political consequences. Political theory, including the Enlightenment universalism of America's "founding fathers," played an important role in the history of American democracy. Rorty tends to downplay this particular case of a beneficial consequence of politicalcultural theory, however, in order to highlight the dangers involved in attempting to force social reality to live up to the "objective" demands of a particular theory, whether it be as sophisticated as Marxism or as primitive as National Socialism. Rorty, then, believes that his resistance to foundational theoretical schemes is the best way of defending against totalizing schemes which purport to be grounded in an objective, universal understanding of human nature and the purpose of historical existence. Unfortunately, National Socialism swept into power in part because of its attack upon the Enlightenment principles of universalism, rationality, and objectivity. Deconstructing the theoretical foundations of Weimar parliamentarianism helped to create a power vacuum that was quickly filled by Hitler's violent reaction against everything decadent and "Western.'' 61/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 62 of 216 Aff Answer to heidegger Heidegger’s philosophy must be read in context of his political history and Nazi engagement Michael E. Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University, 1990, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity, NetLibrary [BB] Having described this new structure of my book and the importance that discoveries about Heidegger's politics had in effecting it, I wish to raise a crucial question to be addressed later in this work: should Heidegger's regrettable political application of his thought influence our assessment of the validity of that thought? Some critics maintain that, in effect, Heidegger's philosophy was essentially reactionary and even fascist, the ideological "reflex" of a man belonging to a social class threatened by the advent of social and economic changes associated with the industrial age. While I cannot agree with such a reductionist reading of Heidegger's thought, a reading which recommends that we cease taking his writings seriously, I also cannot agree with those who pretend that Heidegger's thought was not colored in a significant way by his own strongly held political opinions. Read in its own historical context, Heidegger's concept of modern technology emerges as a critique of the legitimacy not only of industrial production processes, but of the whole of modernity as well. For him, nihilistic modern culture arose from the same one-dimensional disclosure of entities that simultaneously gave rise to the industrial forms of working and producing. According to Heidegger, technological humanity, far from being the autonomous agent in control of the technological conquest of nature, had itself become the "subject" of the self-directing work processes of modern technology. In the totally administered technological world, talk of individual "autonomy" or "freedom" made little sense, for in that world people had become indistinguishable ciphers shaped by the demands of industrial modes of production. Moreover, no mere change in the ''ownership" of the means of production could alter the alienating and destructive character of industrial work; capitalism and socialism alike were, from Heidegger's viewpoint, manifestations of the limitless Will to Power associated with the technological disclosure of things. 62/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 63 of 216 Counter Culture and Alternative Energy The counterculture movement is responsible for making alternative energy ‘the solution to the energy crisis’ Leigh Glover, 2006 Policy Fellow and Assistant Professor, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, “From Love-ins to Logos,” Transforming power: energy, environment, and society in conflict, ed. by John Byrne, Noah Toly, and Leigh Glover [pp. 249, 50] [Emphasis added] Alternative energy was effectively a subculture in this period, much of it independent of government and corporate involvement. There was widespread information on these technologies through various outlets, including magazines (for example, in the U.S., Organic Gardening and Farming, Environment Action Bulletin, and Home Power) and importantly, through the social network of the counter culture. Much individual experimentation took place and there was great innovation. As with many nascent technologies, amateur curiosity was an initial motivation, and little capital was involved. With the OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s, renewable energy garnered wider attention, and the interest of governments and the scientific establishment validated the potential of this technology as a "solution to the energy crisis." And this same decade essentially marked the end of renewable energy's first phase. If we allow that technology has social roots (Winner, 1977, 1986; Bijker et al., 1987; McGinn, 1990), and that renewable energy expanded outside obvious corporate and state sponsorship (Butti, 1980), then what social forces and social goals shaped this technology? Renewable energy received its first widespread applications and use in the industrial economics through the followers of alternative lifestyles. Today this phrase invites derision and has been co-opted to serve a number of political interests, but at the time it meant those wanting to live outside the mainstream. Rejecting the confines of conventional life in the developed world, individuals and groups experimented with a variety of alternative social choices in living arrangements, property ownership, farming, material consumption, entertainment, drugs, marriage, education, transport, health, religion, and a plethora of other dimensions of social life. It was always loose, as social movements are want to be, and difficult to fix in any absolute sense. So let's begin here by affirming the counter culture movement as the source of the idea that social change in the developed world could be brought about by a shift to alternative energy. Certainly, its ideas about society and nature were drawn from many places, but this social movement forged the concept that alternative energy technology could make modern society afresh. 63/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 64 of 216 State/centralization disrupts renewables (1/4) Although the counter-culture movement realized alternative energy through the state’s control of conventional energy, alternative energy’s inevitable transition to state hands reverses its original politics Leigh Glover, 2006 Policy Fellow and Assistant Professor, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, “From Love-ins to Logos,” Transforming power: energy, environment, and society in conflict, ed. by John Byrne, Noah Toly, and Leigh Glover [pp. 251] [Emphasis added] What was so offensive about the conventional energy system? For a start, its ownership and control was in the hands of large corporations and states. In every way, it was of great scale and beyond the comprehension of the general public, capable of being operated only by skilled and elite technicians and employees of these large enterprises. Its interests were not primarily in the public good, but in the profit and power of its owners and controllers. Great social apparatuses were constructed to ensure the security of its facilities and capital, and these security and economic dimensions were part of national governments that were essentially militaristic. Power plants and associated energy facilities were harmful to the environment-especially dangerous in the case of nuclear power-and aesthetically offensive. Conventional energy systems were monuments to exploitative social hierarchies, unresponsive to social needs and uncaring of their environmental impacts, and were part of a rampant industrialism inimical to the human prospect. At its extreme, the counter culture rejected the conventional energy system and, importantly, everything it stood for.' Alternative energy offered a means to escape the state- and corporate- managed energy systems, to tread lightly on the earth, to be independent, to be rooted in a local ecology, to link to other alternative technologies, to offer social benefits, and to be peaceful. It is worth remembering that the movement for renewable energy was driven forward by fear and loathing over the burgeoning nuclear energy industry, which was the epitome of all that the counter culture rejected (Lovins and Price, 1980). Langdon's Winner's insight that technology is politics (1977) may now be passé, even though it remains accurate. Ownership, design, control, autonomy, and responsibility associated with any technology are not fixed by the character of the technology but reflect social settings. Just because renewable energy was envisaged as part of a program of social reform by the counter culture (although that perhaps formalizes matters excessively), does not mean that these politics are axiomatically transferred when the ownership, production, design, and control of that technology passes from individual and local hands into those of states and corporations. But it does mean that it is unlikely the technology will retain its original politics intact. 64/216 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 65 of 216 State/centralization disrupts renewables (2/4) Reform Fails: renewable energy is a social issue, the centralization and mass consumption the state intends gut the basis behind renewables Leigh Glover, 2006 Policy Fellow and Assistant Professor, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, “From Love-ins to Logos,” Transforming power: energy, environment, and society in conflict, ed. by John Byrne, Noah Toly, and Leigh Glover [pp. 249, 50] [Emphasis added] Central to the social goal of alternative energy technologies was that they conveyed autonomy to their users. Renewable energy held the promise of being 'off the grid,' detached from power lines, pipelines, and 'big oil.' Basically, its users would be able to understand and control their own systems, fix and maintain them using basic skills, create no pollution and impinge on no one else, live free of monthly utility bills and high energy costs, and erode support for the state- and corporate-managed energy system. Soft energy paths were to involve decentralized approaches and diverse forms of technology and energy sources. These technologies were to meet energy needs by matching their scale and aligning energy quality to the task involved. They were to be reliable and adaptable to a variety of tasks and circumstances. And because they were not part of the centralized energy system, they possessed a number of economic advantages over the fossil fuel and nuclear energy system, including much lower capital investment, minimal transmission and distribution costs, no need for reserve capacities, no risks of massive over-capacity or mistimed capacity additions, and no compulsion to organize communities to capture available economies of scale. Critically, renewable energy sources were not meant as a substitute for conventional energy sources and demands of a mass consumption lifestyle. Rather, renewable energy systems were designed to meet modest needs and small energy services. In this way, the conventional energy system and all that it entailed was to be obviated and in its place an alternative way of meeting energy needs established; sustainable energy systems were meant to wholly replace the conventional energy system, which provided nothing the counter culture needed, and for which there were clear alternatives. In this way, renewable energy was the technical means to social ends. Renewable energy could satisfy these ends in ways that both pre-modern energy systems and the conventional energy system had failed. Although there was some interest in lessons from the past and from the developing world, the cause of renewable energy in the West was progressive, built on the advances offered by new forms of technology, or by novel applications of existing technologies to provide energy service needs. As a problem of technology and society, renewable energy may have been promulgated by the counter culture as being 'closer to the earth,' but for the most part it promised environmentalism of a modern kind. The utopian claims made for the social advantages of renewable energy were often grounded in technological positivism, anticipating social transformation from technological change. Still, the counter culture was clear that the socially beneficent technology would 65 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 66 of 216 State/centralization disrupts renewables (3/4) Concerned with ‘solving the economic problem’ the state fails at the transition to alternative energy More than the actual scale of corporate investment, at stake is what to make of a renewable energy future steered by corporate strategy and state policy. It is offered here that this development represents the "ecological modernization" of renewable energy.' While the state has dabbled in renewable technologies for quite some time, these efforts have been highly publicized and generally of little significance. Almost no national energy system in the developed world has managed to get beyond a couple of percent of its energy supplies or meet any significant portion of its major energy service needs from renewable sources. Yet, with the entry of large energy corporations into the field, the responsibility of the state is changed and its provider role for the interests of "capitalin-general" is evoked. Now the state will work more assiduously to provide the regulatory, policy, and political settings that will assist the development of the renewables-based economy. Doubtless the state's task of easing the way for renewable energy is made politically gentler if the conventional energy corporations also own the renewable energy enterprises. One hallmark of ecological modernization is the cooperation between states, corporations, and arguably, NOO advocates. Some environmentalists and progressive corporations have taken to proclaiming the benefits of cooperation, and governments can often he found applauding the maturity of these decisions. Certainly, in renewable energy there has been plenty of "working together." A marriage of interests has always been likely between elements of the corporate sector and those environmentalists seeking national policy changes, because many environmental groups concentrating on national politics have mostly abandoned any prospect of widespread change through "bottom-up" civil society actions (Gottlieb, 2005). Reform of the energy sector has meant "solving the economic problem," and the solution has been to pursue economies of scale in production of renewable energy units, invest in technological improvements, and hack away at subsidies given to conventional energy or to acquire access to high subsidies for renewables. These strategies can be pursued simultaneously with civil society mobilization, but this nevertheless requires bringing the interests of the state and corporations to bear on the problem. A centralized renewable system will face countless social and ecological issues the must be resolves based on scale Leigh Glover, 2006 Policy Fellow and Assistant Professor, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, “From Love-ins to Logos,” Transforming power: energy, environment, and society in conflict, ed. by John Byrne, Noah Toly, and Leigh Glover [pp. 253, 54] [Emphasis added] Thirdly, there are environmental protection requirements. For the counter culture's conception of renewable energy, this simply is not a major problem as none of the technologies are likely to be of great scale or involve especially toxic materials or processes. In order to meet the demands as a fuel source for the conventional system, however, renewable technologies must be large (as per the dictates of economy of scale), and must at the same time comply with environmental regulations. For example, large-scale hydro- power isn't environmentally acceptable, even though it is the largest renewable energy source within the conventional energy system (McCully, 2001). In another case, one might examine the issue of the coastal locations of large wind turbines. By displacing conventional power plants and possibly nuclear facilities, wind turbines are an environmentally more desirable technology. Yet, socially and ecologically there can be objections to sources of our energy which redefine the landscape. When we make renewable energy match the needs of the conventional energy system, whatever social or ecological issues that need to be resolved for these technologies increase in scale along with the size of the units involved. That there could be environmental problems arising from the original generation of renewable energy technologies is contrary to their design imperatives, but entirely consistent with the consequences of large centralized renewables-based systems in service to modern society. 66 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 67 of 216 State/centralization disrupts renewables (4/4) When used in a centralized scheme, renewables are made as inefficient as fossil fuels—rendering them to ‘a cycle of perpetual disadvantage Leigh Glover, 2006 Policy Fellow and Assistant Professor, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, “From Love-ins to Logos,” Transforming power: energy, environment, and society in conflict, ed. by John Byrne, Noah Toly, and Leigh Glover [pp. 253, 54] [Emphasis added] Fourthly, there is the issue of energy efficiency. Renewable energy can be highly efficient when applied directly to the energy service task as there are no distribution and transmission losses, less conversion losses from energy to task, and few reserve capacity requirements as energy is only used when needed. But when used as a fuel source in a centralized energy supply and distribution system, renewable energy is made as relatively inefficient as fossil fuels. Most of the advantages of renewable energy are lost when it fuels the conventional energy system and is built with excess capacity, transmitted with high losses, and so on. Several implications arise from this: for a start, renewable energy is hardly cheap when used inefficiently. Renewable energy is currently in the process of being overhauled as a technology. Much of what was developed at the small scale is of no commercial use for large energy supply companies. A new generation of technologies is now being developed to serve quite different ends. Associated with the introduction of this technology is a new set of social issues. What renewable energy advocates seem to have overlooked is that the social and environmental benefits of the old technology are not necessarily characteristic of this new generation. These new technological developments have effectively closed off meaningful advances in the old technology in the developed world,so that designing technologies that people could buy and operate for their homes, farms, small factories, and commercial centers is no longer being pursued. Renewable energy technology is held in a cycle of perpetual disadvantage, whereby every successive advance to make it fit better into the conventional energy system creates a further set of obstacles that erode its original advantages over fossil fuels. 67 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 68 of 216 Grid integration fails Using state-based market systems to resolve the energy crisis encounters obstacles with integration and is wrongly characterized as the alternative to the conventional energy crisis Leigh Glover, 2006 Policy Fellow and Assistant Professor, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, “From Love-ins to Logos,” Transforming power: energy, environment, and society in conflict, ed. by John Byrne, Noah Toly, and Leigh Glover [pp. 253, 54] [Emphasis added] So what is the significance of the global aspirations for advocates of renewable energy? Firstly, advocates such as Lovins challenged the conventional energy system on its own terms, by finding ways to prove renewable energy was cheaper than fossil fuels and should therefore be the sensible choice for states and energy consumers. That it was safer than nuclear energy was also an argument of the day, but one that, in the post-Chernobyl era, drifted away. Secondly, these advocates sought to make the transition as palatable as possible by suggesting that, while the results of the sustainable energy future would produce utopian expressions of individual freedom, democratic collective action, and environmental responsibility, it would seemingly not require wholesale overhaul of modernity's social institutions. Renewable energy would prompt revolutionary change, but a radical revolution, such as one that would end capitalism, wouldn't be necessary to bring it to fruition." The justification for renewable energy's superior rationality advanced by Lovins and others was explicitly conservative, expressing a faith in the inherent judgment of economic and social institutions to recognize the virtues of a sustainable future, once freed from government and market failures of various types (Hawken, 1993; Hawken et al., 1999). With loss of demand and removal of the drip of state subsidy, the conventional energy system would wither and the transition to the soft energy path would result from the rationality of the dominant economic and political institutions. Thirdly, renewables advocates wanted to use the same instruments that created the fossil fuel and nuclear energy system to promote the renewable energy system, especially state assistance for renewable energy. To their credit, these advocates usually combined the arguments for renewable energy with the causes of improved energy efficiency and energy conservation. But although such market governance had failed to protect community and ecological values in its design of the conventional energy system, it would be essential for introducing a renewables-based economy (and indeed, this has proved to be the case). Embedded in these strategies were a number of implications. For renewable energy to be widely taken up without disrupting existing state and corporate power, existing utilities and fossil fuel companies would have to be the purveyors of renewable energy. States would have to oversee and manage this process. Either that, or there would have to he a proliferation of small firms willing to resist the appeal of economies of scale. • If renewable technologies were going to be used in this way, then renewable energy had to become part of the existing system. The matter of phasing and integrating them into the existing system became an economic and technological problem of great complexity. This transition, therefore, implies a hybrid system that features the use of both conventional and renewable energy. • State decisions would effectively become the tool for controlling the characteristics of the emerging system, principally in determining the ways and the rate at which it would support renewable energy technologies. • Renewable technologies are given the role of an alternative fuel source within the conventional energy system and are assessed on criteria related to fuel sources. In order to fulfill their role as fuel source, renewable technologles would additionally meet requirements to efficiently integrate into the existing system. Following David Nye (1999), we are reminded of the extent to which technological determinism has influenced our ways of considering the energy system. Surely, much of the optimism about the possibilities of a renewable energy transition was caught up in this mindset. The counter culture invested socially transformative power in the technology of renewable energy and gave less attention than it should have to the role of culture in creating, spreading, and developing technologies. Still, it was the transition thesis that created the possibility of a corporate- and state-brokered renewable energy future, not the counter culture's technological optimism 68 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 69 of 216 Ignore Reason – Leap of Faith Don’t listen to aff blackmail – we must have the courage to break with plausible theories to escape ideology. We need to dare to dream outside of what seems reasonable. Feyerabend 1975 (Paul, “Against Method”, professor at Berkeley, pg.12) 69 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 70 of 216 No Reality – Understanding IS Transforming No reality – the process of understanding in itself distorts the subject-object relationship. Feyerabend 1975 (Paul, “Against Method”, professor at Berkeley, pg.66) 70 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 71 of 216 No Reality – No External Access Reality is indeterminate – so-called fact relies on arbitrarily assuming perfect access to an external material medium. Feyerabend 1975 (Paul, “Against Method”, professor at Berkeley, pg.31-32) 71 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 72 of 216 No Reality – Abstraction / Experimentation Their attempt to describe reality fails – it relies on abstraction and experimentation which blocks off the links of processes to their surroundings. Feyerabend 1999 (Paul, “Consequence of abundance”, professor at Berkeley, pg.5) 72 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 73 of 216 No Reality – Stability Reality isn’t eternal or indivisible – assuming an objective “reality” makes the error of assuming something stable. Feyerabend 1999 (Paul, “Consequence of abundance”, Pg. 66) 73 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 74 of 216 No Reality – Referentiality The aff can’t define reality – there are referential cutoffs in truth which require experiential relation. They prevent us from thinking subjectively. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 22-24 In an entirely different (and much less interesting) domain we have the opposition between those who suggest that languages be constructed and reconstructed in accordance with simple and clear rules and who favourably compare such ideal languages with the sloppy and opaque natural idioms and other philosophers who assert that natural languages, being adapted to a wide variety of circumstances could never be adequately replaced by their anaemic logical competitors. This tendency to view differences in the structure of traditions (complex and opaque vs. simple and clear) as differences in kind (real vs. imperfect realization of it) is reinforced by the fact that the critics of a practice take an observer's position with respect to it but remain participants of the practice that provides them with their objections. Speaking the language and using the standards of this practice they 'discover' limitations, faults, errors when all that really happens is that the two practices - the one that is criticized and the one that does the criticizing -don't fit each other. Many arguments against an out-and-out materialism are of this kind. They notice that materialism changes the use of 'mental' terms, they illustrate the consequences of the change with amusing absurdities (thoughts having weight and the like) and then they stop. The absurdities show that materialism clashes with our usual ways of speaking about minds, they do not show what is better - materialism or these ways. But taking the participants' point of view with respect to commonsense turns the absurdities into arguments against materialism. It is as if Americans were to object to foreign currencies because they cannot be brought into simple relations (i:i or t: io or x ioo) to the dollar.7 The tendency to adopt a participant's view with respect to the position that does the judging and so to create an Archimedian point for criticism is reinforced by certain distinctions that are the pride and joy of armchair philosophers. I refer to the distinction between an evaluation and the fact that an evaluation has been made, a proposal and the fact that the proposal has been accepted, and the related distinction between subjective wishes and objective standards of excellence. When speaking as observers we often say that certain groups accept certain standards, or think highly of these standards, or want us to adopt these standards. Speaking as participants we equally often use the standards without any reference to their origin or to the wishes of those using them. We say 'theories ought to be falsifiable and contradiction free' and not 'I want theories to be falsifiable and contradiction free' or 'scientists become very unhappy unless their theories are falsifiable and contradiction free'. Now it is quite correct that statements of the first kind (proposals, rules, standards) (a) contain no reference to the wishes of individual human beings or to the habits of a tribe and (b) cannot be derived from, or contradicted by, statements concerning such wishes, or habits, or any other facts. But that does not make them 'objective' and independent of traditions. To infer from the absence of terms concerning subjects or groups in 'there ought to be . . .' that the demand made is 'objective' would be just as erroneous as to claim 'objectivity' i.e. independence from personal or group idiosyncracies for optical illusions and mass hallucinations on the grounds that the subject, or the group, nowhere occurs in them. There are many statements that are formulated 'objectively' i.e. without reference to traditions or practices but are still meant to be understood in relation to a practice. Examples are dates, coordinates, statements concerning the value of a currency, statements of logic (after the discovery of alternative logics), statements of geometry (after 74 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 75 of 216 No Reality – Referentiality [CONTINUED – NO TEXT OMITTED] the discovery of Non-Euclidean geometries) and so on. The fact that the retort to 'you ought to do X' can be 'that's what you think!' shows that the same is true of value statements, And those cases where the reply is not allowed can be easily rectified by using discoveries in value theory that correspond to the discovery of alternative geometries, or alternative logical systems: we confront 'objective' value judgement from different cultures or different practices and ask the objectivist how he is going to resolve the conflict.' Reduction to shared principles is not always possible and so we must admit that the demands or the formulae expressing them are incomplete as used and have to be revised, Continued insistence on the 'objectivity' of value judgements however would be as illiterate as continued insistence on the 'absolute' use of the pair 'up-down' after discovery of the spherical shape of the earth. And an argument such as 'it is one thing to utter a demand and quite a different thing to assert that a demand has been made - therefore a multiplicity of cultures does not mean relativism' has much in common with the argument that antipodes cannot exist because they would fall 'down'. Both cases rest on antediluvian concepts (and inadequate distinctions). Small wonder our 'rationalists' are fascinated by them. With this we have also our answer to (b). It is true that stating a demand and describing a practice may be two different things and that logical connections cannot be established between them. This does not mean that the interaction between demands and practices cannot be treated and evaluated as an interaction of practices. For the difference is due, first to a difference between observer attitude and participant-attitude: one side, the side defending the 'objectivity' of its values uses its tradition instead of examining it - which does not turn the tradition into something else. And secondly, the difference is due to concepts that have been adapted to such one sidedness. The colonial official who proclaims new laws and a new order in the name of the king has a much better grasp of the situation than the rationalist who recites the mere letter of the law without any reference to the circumstances of its application and who regards this fatal incompleteness as proof of the 'objectivity' of the laws recited. 75 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 76 of 216 No Reality / Alternative Solves Better – Unlimiting Democracy A relativistic outlook on society presupposes objective, pre-set limits, ruining the democratic problem-solving process. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 83-85 A 'more philosophical' argument might suppo rt such a procedure by pointing out that traditions are neither good nor bad but simply are (Part One, Section a, Thesis t), that they assume positive or negative qualities only when viewed through the spectacles of other traditions (Thesis ii) and that the judgement of those who live in accordance with the tradition is to be given preference. Philosophical relativism is the doctrine that all traditions, theories, ideas are equally true or equally false or, in an even more radical formulation, that any distribution of truth values over traditions is acceptable. This form of relativism is nowhere defended in the present book. It is not asserted, for example, that Aristotle is as good as Einstein, it is asserted and argued that 'Aristotle is true' is a judgement that presupposes a certain tradition, it is a relational judgement that may change when the underlying tradition is changed. There may exist a tradition for which Aristotle is as true as Einstein, but there are other traditions for which Einstein is too uninteresting for examination. Value judgements are not 'objective' and cannot be used to push aside the 'subjective' opinions that emerge from different traditions. 1 also argue that the appearance of objectivity that is attached to some value judgements comes from the fact that a particular tradition is used but not recognized: absence of the impression of subjectivity is not proof of 'objectivity' but of an oversight. Turning now to the attitudes of relativists we must distinguish between (a) members of a relativistic society and (b) philosophical relativists. Among the former we shall find all attitudes from sheer dogmatism combined with a strong urge to proselytize to an out-and-out liberalism/ cynicism. Political relativism makes assertions about rights (and about protective structures defending these rights) - not about beliefs, attitudes etc. Philosophical relativists, on the other side, may again have all sorts of attitudes, punctilious obedience to the law included. Now one seems to assume that acceptance of political relativism will drastically increase the number of those who only want to please themselves and that everybody will be subjected to their whims. I regard this assumption as most implausible. Only few of the traditions of a relativistic society will be lawless - most of them will regiment their members even more strongly than is done in the so-called 'civilized societies' of today. The assumption also insinuates that it is lack of indoctrination and not lack of choice that is responsible for the drastic increase of the crime rate we observe today so that it is not fear of retaliation but the proper educa tion char malcee neonle behave hundreds of thousands of people. The French Revolution preached Reason and Virtue and ended up in an ocean of blood. The USA were built on the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all and yet there was slavery, suppression, intimidation. One could of course insist that the failure was due to inefficient methods of education - but 'more efficient' methods would be neither wise nor humane. Eradicate the ability to kill -and people may lose their passion. Eradicate the ability to lie - and imagination which always goes against the truth of the moment might disappear as well (cf. n. 6). An 'education' in virtue might easily make people incapable of being wicked by making them incapable of being people - a large price to pay for results that can be achieved in other ways. And that there are such other ways is openly admitted by the antirelativists. Far from trusting the force of the ideology whose importance they emphasize with such passion they protect society by laws, courts, prisons, and an efficient police force. But a police force can be used by relativists as well, for - and with this we come to the second part of 76 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 77 of 216 No Reality / Alternative Solves “Reality” Better – Unlimiting Democracy [CONT – NO TEXT OMIT] the assumption at the beginning of this paragraph - such a society will not be and cannot be without protective devices, It is to be admitted that speaking of police, prisons, protection does not sound good in the ears of those concerned with freedom. However a universal training in virtue and rationality that obliterates traditions and is liable to create meek zombies is an even greater threat to it. What kind of protection is better -the inefficient protection that comes from interfering with the soul or the much more efficient external protection that leaves souls intact and only restricts our movements? A relativistic society will therefore contain a basic protective structure. This leads to the next argument for rationalism (or some similar central protective ideology): must not the structure be 'just'? Must it not be shielded from undue influence? Must there not be an 'objective' way of settling disputes about it which means - is there not again a need for rationalism over and above particular traditions? To answer this question we need only realize that protective frameworks are not introduced out of the blue but in a concrete historical situation and that it is this situation and not an abstract discussion of 'justice' or 'rationality' that determines the process. People living in a society that does not give their tradition the rights they think it deserves will work towards a change. To effect the change, they will use the most efficient means available. They will use existing laws, if that is going to Part One, Section a, Thesis viii.) where the representatives of the status quo have no fixed opinion and no fixed procedure, they will organize an uprising if there seems no other way. To demand that they restrict their efforts to what is rationally admissible may at that stage be as sensible as the demand to reason with a wall. Besides, why should they worry about 'objectivity' when their aim is to make themselves heard in one-sided, i.e. 'subjective', surroundings? The situation is different when tribes, cultures, people who are not part of any one state move into the same area and now have to live together. An example are Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Mitanni, Hittites and the many other peoples who had interests in Asia Minor. They learned from each other and created the 'First Internationalism' (Brestead) of i6oo to 1200 B.C. Tolerance of different traditions and different creeds was considerable and by far exceeded the tolerance which Christians later showed towards alternative forms of life. The Yassaq of Genghis Khan which proclaims the same rights for all religons shows that history does not always progress and that the 'modern mind' may be far behind some 'savages' as regards reasonableness, practicality and tolerance. 77 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 78 of 216 No Reality / Alternative Solves “Reality” Better – Truth Claims The alternative solves – the aff’s truth and rationality claims have no backing and can’t be articulated. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 79-82 With the discussion of relativism we enter territory full of treacherous paths, traps, footangles, territory where appeals to emotion count as arguments and where arguments are of a touching simplemindedness. Relativism is often attacked not because one has found a fault, but because one is afraid of it. Intellectuals are afraid of it because relativism threatens their role in society just as the enlightenment once threatened the existence of priests and theologians. And the general public which is educated, exploited and tyrannized by intellectuals has learned long ago to identify relativism with cultural (social) decay. This is how relativism was attacked in Germany's Third Reich, this is how it is attacked again today by Fascists, Marxists, Critical Rationalists. Even the most tolerant people dare not say that they reject an idea or a way of life because they don't like it - which would put the blame on them entirely - they have to add that there are objective reasons for their action - which puts at least part of the blame on the thing rejected and on those enamoured by it. What is it about relativism that seems to put the fear of god into everyone? It is the realization that one's own most cherished point of view may turn out to be just one of many ways of arranging life, important for those brought up in the corresponding tradition, utterly uninteresting and perhaps even a hindrance to others. Only few people are content with being able to think and live in a way pleasing to themselves and would not dream of making their tradition an obligation for everyone. For the great majority - and that includes Christians, rationalists, liberals and a good many Marxists - there exists only one truth and it must prevail. Tolerance does not mean acceptance of falsehood side by side with truth, it means human treatment of those unfortunately caught in falsehood.7 Relativism would put an end to this comfortable exercise in superiority therefore the aversion. Fear of moral and political chaos increases the aversion by adding practical disadvantages to the intellectual drawbacks. Relativists, it is said, have no reason to respect the laws of the society to which they belong, they have no reason to keep promises, honour business contracts, respect the lives of others, they are like beasts following the whim of the moment and like beasts they constitute a danger to civilized life. It is interesting to see how closely this account mirrors the complaints of Christians who witnessed the gradual removal of religion from the centre of society. The fears, insinuations and predictions were then exactly the same - but they did not come true. Replacing religion by rationalism and science did not create paradise - far from it - but it did not create chaos either. It did not create chaos, it is pointed out, because rationalism is itself an orderly philosophy. One order was replaced by another order. But relativism wants to remove all ideological ingredients (except those that are convenient, for the time being). Is it possible to have such a society? Can it work? How will it work? These are the questions we have to answer. Starting with the intellectual (or semantic) difficulties viz. the insinuation that relativism means giving the same rights to truth and falsehood (reason and insanity, virtue and viciousness and so on) we need only remind the reader of theses i. and ii. of Section 2, Part One and the associated explanations. We saw then that classifying traditions as true or false (. . . etc.... ) means projecting the point of view of other traditions upon them. Traditions are neither good nor bad - they just are. They obtain desirable or undesirable properties only for an agent who participates in another tradition and projects the values of this tradition upon the world. The projections appear 'objective' i.e. tradition-independent and the statements expressing its 78 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 79 of 216 No Reality / Alternative Solves “Reality” Better – Truth Claims [CONT – No Text Omitted] judgements sound ‘objective’ because the subject and the tradition he represents nowhere occur in them. They are ‘subjective’ because this non-occurrence is due to an oversight. The oversight is revealed when the agent adopts another tradition: his valuejudgements change. Trying to account for the change the agent has to revise the content of all his value statements just as physicists had to revise the content of even the simplest statement about length when it was discovered that length depends on the reference system. Those who don’t carry out the revision cannot pride themselves on forming a special school of especially astute philosophers who have withstood the onslaught of moral relativism just as those who still cling to absolute lengths cannot pride themselves on forming a special school of especially astute physicists who have withstood the onslaught of relativity. They are just pigheaded, or badly informed, or both. So much about seeing relativism in terms of equal rights for falsehood, irrationality, viciousness and so on. That the appeal to truth and rationality is rhetorical and without objective content becomes clear from the inarticulateness of its defence. In Section s we have seen that the question ‘What is so great about science?’ is hardly ever asked and has no satisfactory answer. The same is true of other basic concepts.” Philosophers inquire into the nature of truth, or the nature of knowledge, but they hardly ever ask why truth should be pursued (the question arises only at the boundary line of traditions – for example, it arose at the boundary line of science and Christianity). The very same notions of Truth, Rationality, Reality that are supposed to eliminate relativism are surrounded by a vast area of ignorance (which corresponds to the arguer’s ignorance of the tradition that provides the material for his rhetorical displays). There is therefore hardly any difference between the members of a ‘primitive’ tribe who defend their laws because they are the laws of their gods, or of their ancestors and who spread these laws in the name of the tribe and a rationalist who appeals to ‘objective’ standards, except that the former know what they are doing while the latter does not.’ This concludes the intellectual, or ‘semantic’ part of the debate about relativism. 79 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 80 of 216 Alternative Solves “Reality” Better – Democracy The processes in a democratic society are more effective than the current scientific method – it is crucial that we act in a democratic manner. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 85-86 The third case is that of a relativistic society with a protective structure already installed. This is the case which rationalists seem to have in mind. We want to improve the protective structure. The improvement, rationalists say, must not be done arbitrarily, there must not be undue influence, objective standards must determine every single step. But why should the standards that guide an exchange between traditions be imposed from the outside? In Part One we have seen that the relation between Reason and Practice is a dialectical relation: traditions are.guided by standards which are in turn judged by the way in which they influence them. The same is true of the standards that guide the exchange between the various traditions of a free society. These standards are again determined, improved, refined, eliminated by the traditions themselves or, to use terms explained in the same place - the exchange between traditions is an open exchange, not a rational exchange. Insinuating that the internal business of a society must follow 'objective' rules, pointing out that they are the foremost inventors, guardians, polishers of rules, intellectuals have so far succeeded in interposing themselves between the traditions concerned and their problems. They have succeeded in preventing a more direct democracy where problems are solved and solutions judged by those who suffer from the problems and have to live with the solutions and they have fattened themselves on the funds thus diverted in their greedy group held together by a special and rather aggressive tradition equal in rights to Christians, Taoists, Cannibals, Black Muslims but often lacking their understanding of humanitarian issues. It is time to realize that science, too, is a special tradition and that its predominance must be reversed by an open debate in which all members of the society participate. But - and with this we proceed to question A of Section 2- will such a debate not soon discover the overwhelming excellence of science and thus restore the status quo? And if it doesn't-does this not show the ignorance and incompetence of laymen? And if that is so, is it then not better to leave things as they are instead of disturbing them by useless and timeconsuming changes? 80 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 81 of 216 Alternative Solves Better – Layperson Decision-Making Laypeople must be the ones to control science – only they know what is best for society, and they have the ability to find errors in the ‘scientific method.’ Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 96-98 T hese examples, which are not at all atypical,27 show that it would not only be foolish but downright irresponsible to accept the judgement of scientists and physicians without further examination. If the matter is important, either to a small group or to society as a whole, then this judgement must be subjected to the most painstaking scrutiny. Duly elected committees of laymen must examine whether the theory of evolution is really as well established as biologists want us to believe, whether being established in their sense settles the matter, and whether it should replace other views in schools. They must examine the safety of nuclear reactors in each individual case and must be given access to all the relevant information. They must examine whether scientific medicine deserves the unique position of theoretical authority, access to funds, privileges of mutilation it enjoys today or whether non-scientific methods of healing are not frequently superior and they must encourage relevant comparisons: traditions of tribal medicine must be revived and practiced by those who prefer them partly because it is their wish, partly because we thus obtain some information about the efficiency of science (cf. also the remarks in Section 9 below). The committees must also examine whether peoples' minds arc properly judged by psychological tests, what is to be said about prison reforms and so on and so forth. In all cases the last word will not be that of the experts, but that of the people immediately concerned.28 That the errors of specialists can be discovered by ordinary people provided they are prepared to 'do some hard work' is the basic assumption of any trial by jury. The law demands that experts be cross-examined and that their testimony be subjected to the judgement of a jury. In making this demand it assumes that experts are human after all, that they make mistakes, even right in the centre of their specialty, that they try to cover up any source of uncertainty that might reduce the credibility of their ideas, that their expertise is not as inaccessible as they often insinuate. And it also assumes that a layman can acquire the knowledge necessary for understanding their procedures and finding their mistakes. This assumption is confirmed in trial after trial. Conceited and intimidating scholars, covered with honorary degrees, university chairs, presidencies of scientific societies are tripped up by a lawyer who has the talent to look through the most impressive piece of jargon and to expose the uncertainty, indefiniteness, the monumental ignorance behind the most dazzling display of omniscience: science is not beyond the reach of the natural shrewdness of the human race. I suggest that this shrewdness be applied to all important social matters which are now in the hands of experts. 81 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 82 of 216 Impact – Freedom Society is reliant upon science, assuming its superiority over other beliefs; it rules all aspects of our lives and prevents us from being truly free. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 73-75 T here are two questions that arise in the course of any discussion of science. They are: (A) What is science? - how does it proceed, what are its results, how do its standards, procedures, results differ from the standards, procedures, results of other fields? (B) What's so great about science? - what makes science preferable to other forms of existence, using different standards and getting different results as a consequence? What makes modern science preferable to the science of the Aristotelians, or to the cosmology of the Hopi? Note that in trying to answer question (B) we are not permitted to judge the alternatives to science by scientific standards. When trying to answer question (B) we examine such standards, so we cannot make them the basis of our judgements. Question A has not one answer, but many. Every school in the philosophy of science gives a different account of what science is and how it works. In addition there are the accounts given by scientists, politicians and by so-called spokesmen of the general public. We are not far from the truth when saying that the nature of science is still shrouded in darkness. Still, the matter is discussed and there is a chance that some modest knowledge about science will some day arise. There exists hardly anyone who asks question B. The excellence of science is assumed, it is not argued for. Here scientists and philosophers of science act like the defenders of the One and Only Roman Church acted before them: Church doctrine is true, everything else is Pagan nonsense. Indeed, certain methods of discussion and insinuation that were once treasures of theological rhetoric have now found a new home in science. her of the faithful: in a free society there is room for many strange beliefs, doctrines, institutions. But the assumption of the inherent superiority of science has moved beyond science and has become an article of faith for almost everyone. Moreover, science is no longer a particular institution; it is now part of the basic fabric of democracy just as the Church was once pan of the basic fabric of society. Of course, Church and State are now carefully separated. State and Science, however, work closely together. Immense sums are spent on the improvement of scientific ideas. Bastard subjects such as the philosophy of science which shares with science the name but hardly anything else profit from the boom of the sciences. Human relations are subjected to scientific treatment as is shown by education programmes, proposals for prison reform, army training and so on. The power of the medical profession over every stage of our lives already exceeds the power once wielded by the Church. Almost all scientific subjects are compulsory subjects in our schools. White the parents of a six-year-old can decide to have him instructed in the rudiments of Protestantism, or in the rudiments of the Jewish faith, or to omit religious instruction altogether, they do not have similar freedom in the case 'of the sciences. Physics, astronomy, history must be learned; they cannot be replaced by magic, astrology, or by a study of legends. Nor is one content with a merely historical presentation of physical (astronomical, biological, sociological etc.) facts and principles. One does not say: some people believe that the earth moves around the sun while others regard the earth as a hollow sphere that contains the sun, the planets, the fixed stars. One says: the earth moves round the sun - everything else is nonsense. Finally, the manner in which we accept or reject scientific ideas is radically different from democratic decision procedures. We accept scientific laws and facts, we teach them in our schools, we make them the basis of important political decisions, but without having examined them, and without having 82 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 83 of 216 Impact – Freedom [CONT – NO TEXT OMITTED] subjected them to a vole. Scientists do not subject them to a vote, or at least this is what they tell us, and laymen certainly do not subject them to a vote. Concrete proposals are occasionally discussed, and a vote is suggested (nuclear reactor initiatives). But the procedure is not extended to general theories and scientific facts. Modem society is 'Copernican' not because Copernicus was put up for vote, discussed in a democratic way, and voted in with a simple majority; it is 'Copernican' because the scientists are Copernicans and because one accepts their cosmology as uncritically as one once accepted the cosmology of bishops Even bold and revolutionary thinkers bow to the judgement of science. Kropotkin wants to break up all existing institutions, but he does not touch science. Ibsen goes very far in his critique of bourgeois society, but he retains science as a measure of truth. Levi Strauss has made us realize that Western thought is not the lonely peak of human achievement it was once thought to be, but he and his followers exclude science from their relativization of ideologies.' Marx and Engels were convinced that science would aid the workers in their quest for mental and social liberation. Such an attitude made perfect sense in the ,7th, 18th, even 19th centuries when science was one of many competing ideologies, when the state had not yet declared in its favour and when its determined pursuit was more than balanced by alternative views and alternative institutions. In those years science was a liberating force, not because it had found the truth, or the right method (though this was assumed to be the reason by the defenders of science), but because it restricted the influence of other ideologies and thus gave the individual room for thought Nor was it necessary in those years to press a consideration of question B. The opponents of science who still were very much alive tried to show that science was on the wrong track, they belittled its importance and the scientists had to reply to the challenge. The methods and achievements of science were subjected to a critical debate. In this situation it made perfect sense to commit oneself to the cause of science. The very circumstances in which the commitment took place turned it into a liberating force. 83 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 84 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – Ideology / Excluded Methodologies Views of interpretations are constantly changing; however, science has prevented us from exploring these methods. We need to research the ‘other methods’ to equalize society. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 67-70 As opposed to Kuhn my own research started from certain problems in area A and concerned theories only.' 14 Both in my thesis (195 i) and in my first English paper on the matter'" I asked how observation statements should be interpreted. I rejected two accounts viz. the 'pragmatic theory' according to which the meaning of an observation statement is determined by its use and the 'phenomenological theory' according to which it is determined by the phenomenon that makes us assert it as true. I interpreted observation languages by the theories that explain what we observe. Such interpretations change as soon as the theories change,"' I realized that interpretations of this kind might make it impossible to establish deductive relations between rival theories and I tried to find means of comparison that were independent of such relations.' 17 In the years following my '958 paper (which preceded Kuhn's Structure and appeared in the same year as Hanson's Patterns) I tried to specify the conditions under which two theories 'in the same domain' would be deductively disjoint.1t I also tried to find methods of comparison that survive despite the absence of deductive relations. Thus while 1k was the incomparability of paradigms that results from the collaboration of A, B and C my version, If is deductive disjointness and nothing else and I never inferred incomparability from it. Quite the contrary, I tried to find means of comparing such theories. Comparison by content, or verisimilitude was of course out. But there certainly remained other methods."' Now the interesting thing about these 'other methods' is that most of them, though reasonable in the sense that they agree with the wishes of a sizeable number of researchers are arbitrary, or 'subjective', in the sense that it is very difficult to find wish-independent arguments for their acceptability.' 211 Also, these 'other methods' most of the time give conflicting results: a theory may be preferable because it makes numerous predictions, but the predictions may be based on rather daring approximations. On the other hand a theory may seem attractive because of its coherence but this 'inner harmony' may make it impossible to apply it to results in widely differing domains. Transition to criteria not involving content thus turns theory choice from a 'rational' and 'objective' routine into a complex decision involving conflicting preferences and propaganda will play a major role in it, as it does in all cases involving arbitrary elements."' Adding areas (B) and (C) strengthens the subjective, or 'personal' component of theory change. To avoid such consequences the champions of objectivity and content increase have devised interpretations that turn incommensurable theories into commensurable ones. They overlook that the interpretations they so blithely push aside were introduced to solve a variety of physical problems and that incommensurability was just a side effect of these solutions. Thus the standard interpretation of the quantum theory was designed to explain penetration of potential barriers, interference, conservation laws, Compton effect, the photoelectric effect in a coherent way. And one important interpretation of the theory of relativity was introduced to make it independent of classical ideas. It is not too difficult to dream up interpretations which make incommensurable theories commensurable but not a single philosopher has so far been able to let his interpretation solve all the problems solved by the interpretation it is supposed to replace. In most cases these problems are not even known. Also philosophers have so far hardly dealt with areas B and C. Most of the time they simply assume that theory change leaves methods unchanged. Matters of perception are not even considered. Here Kuhn is far ahead of all positivists. Incommensurability also shows that a certain form of realism is both too narrow and in conflict with scientific practice. Positivists believed that science deals essentially with observations. It orders and classifies observations, it never goes 84 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 85 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – Ideology / Excluded Methodologies [CONT – NO TEXT OMITTED] beyond them. Scientific change is a change of classificatory schemes blown up by a mistaken reification of the schemes. The critics of positivism pointed out that the world contains much more than observations. There are organisms, fields, continents, elementary particles, murders, devils and so on. Science, according to the critics, gradually discovers these things, determines their properties and their mutual relations. It makes the discoveries without changing the objects, properties, relations discovered. This is the essence of the realist position. Now realism may be interpreted as a particular theory about tion between man and the world, and it may be interpreted supposition of science (and knowledge in general). It seems philosophical realists adopt the second alternative - they are d But even the first alternative can now be criticized and shown correct. All we need to do is to point out how often the world because of a change in basic theory. lithe theories are corn me then no problem arises - we simply have an addition to knowle different with incommensurable theories. For we certainty assume that two incommensurable theories deal with one and objective state of affairs (to make the assumption we would assume that both at least refer to the same objective situation. can we assert that 'they both' refer to the same situation when 't never make sense together? Besides, statements about what what does not refer can be checked only if the things referr described properly, but then our problem arises again with force.) Hence, unless we want to assume that they deal with n all we must admit that they deal with different worlds and that (from one world to another) has been brought about by a switch theory to another. Of course, we cannot say that the switch was the change (though matters are not quite as simple as that: brings new principles of order into play and thereby causes us to a waking world instead of a dream world). But since Bohr's anal case of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen we know that there are which are not results of a causal interaction between object and but of a change of the very conditions that permit us to speak o situations, events. We appeal to changes of the latter kind wh that a change of universal principles brings about a change of world. Speaking in this manner we no longer assume an objecti that remains unaffected by our epistemic activities, except whe within the confines of a particular point of view. We concede epistemic activities may have a decisive influence even upon solid piece of cosmological furniture – they 85 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 86 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – Bureacracy / Dissent Scientists’ opinions are inherently flawed – dissenters are oppressed, and all scientists have different opinions. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 88-91 To start with, experts often arrive at different results, both in fundamental matters, and in application. Who does not know of at least one case in his family where one doctor recommends a certain operation, another argues against it, while a third suggests an entirely different procedure? Who has not read of the debates about nuclear safety, the state of the economy, the effects of pesticides, aerosol sprays, the efficiency of methods of education, the influence of race on intelligence? Two, three, five and even more views arise in such debates, and scientific supporters can be found for all of them. Occasionally one almost feels inclined to say: as many scientists, as many opinions. There are of course areas in which scientists agree - but this cannot raise our confidence. Unanimity is often the result of a political decision: dissenters are suppressed, or remain silent to preserve the reputation of science as a source of trustworthy and almost infallible knowledge. On other occasions unanimity is the result of shared prejudices: positions are taken without detailed examination of the matter under review and are infused with the same authority that proceeds from detailed research. The attitude towards astrology which I shall discuss presently is an example. Then again unanimity may indicate a decrease of critical consciousness: criticism remains faint as long as only one view is being considered, This is the reason why a unanimity that rests on 'internal' considerations alone often turns out to be mistaken. Such mistakes can be discovered by laymen and dilettantes, and often have been discovered by them. Inventors built 'impossible' machines and made 'impossible' discoveries. Science was advanced by outsiders, or by scientists with an unusual background. Einstein, Bohr, Born were dilettantes, and said so on numerous occasions. Schliemann who refuted the idea that myth and legend have no factual content started as a successful businessman, Alexander Marshack who refuted the idea that Stone Age man was incapable of complex thought as a journalist, Robert Ardrey was a playwright and came to anthropology because of his belief in the close relation between science and poetry, Columbus had no university education and had to learn Latin late in his life, Robert Mayer knew just the bare outlines of early igth century physics, the Chinese communists only little knowledge of the intricacies of scientific medicine. How is this possible? How is it possible that the ignorant, or ill-informed can occasionally do better than those who know a subject inside out? One answer is connected with the very nature of knowledge. Every piece of knowledge contains valuable ingredients side by side with ideas that prevent the discovery of new things. Such ideas are not simply errors. They are necessary for research: progress in one direction cannot be achieved without blocking progress in another. But research in that 'other' direction may reveal that the 'progress' achieved so far is but a chimera. It may seriously undermine the authority of the field as a whole. Thus science needs both the narrowmindedness that puts obstacles in the path of an unchained curiosity and the ignorance that either disregardsthe obstacles, or is incapable of perceiving them. 10 Science needs both the expert and the dilettante."Another answer is that scientists quite often just don't know what they are talking about. They have strong opinions, they know some standar arguments for these opinions, they may even know some results outsid the particular field in which they are doing research but most of the tim they depend, and have to depend (because of specialization) on gossip an rumours. No special intelligence, no technical knowledge is needed find this out. Anyone with some perseverance can make the discovery an he will then also find that many of the rumours that are presented wit such 86 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 87 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – Bureacracy / Dissent [CONT – NO TEXT OMITTED] assurance are nothing but simple mistakes. Thus R. A. Millikan, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics writes in Review o f Modern Physics, Vol. 29 (1949), p. 344: 'Einstein called out to us all -"let us merely accept this (the Michelson experiment) as an established experimental fact and from there proceed to work out its inevitable consequences" - and he went at the task himself with an energy and a capacity which very few people on earth possess. Thus was born the special theory of relativity'. The quotation suggests that Einstein starts with the description of an experiment, that he urges us to lay aside prior ideas and to concentrate on the experiment alone, that he himself abandons such ideas, and that using this method he arrives at the special theory of relativity. One has only to read Einstein's paper of 1905 to realize that he proceeds in an entirely different way. There is no mention of the Michelson-Morley experiment or, for that matter, of any particular experiment. The starting point of the argument is not an experiment, but a 'conjecture' and Einstein's suggestion is, not to eliminate the 'conjecture', but to 'raise (it) into a principle' - the very opposite of what Millikan describes Einstein as doing. This can be verified by anyone who is able to read, without special knowledge of physics, for the passage occurs in the first and non-mathematical part of Einstein's paper. Another and more technical example is the so-called Neumann proof: In the Thirties there existed two major interpretations of the quantum theory. According to the first interpretation quantum theory is a statistical theory, like statistical mechanics, and the uncertainties are uncertainties of knowledge, not uncertainties of nature. According to the second interpretation the uncertainties do not merely express our ignorance, they are inherent in nature: states that are more definite than indicated by the uncertainty relations simply do not exist. The second interpretation was defended by Bohr who offered a variety of qualitative arguments and by Heisenberg who illustrated it with simple examples. In addition there was a somewhat complicated proof by von Neumann allegedly showing that quantum mechanics was incompatible with the first view. Now at meetings up to the Fifties the discussion usually went like this. First the defenders of the second interpretation presented their arguments. Then the opponents raised objections. The objections were occasionally quite formidable and could not be easily answered. Then somebody said 'but von Neumann has shown . . .' and with this the opposition was silenced and the second interpretation saved. It was saved not because von Neumann's proof was so well known but because the mere name 'von Njeiinvinn' At this point the similarity between 'modern' science and the Middle Ages becomes rather striking. Who does not remember how objections were defused by reference to Aristotle? Who has not heard of the many rumours (such as the rumour that the young of a lion are born dead and licked to life by their mother) that were handed on from generation to generation and formed decisive parts of mediaeval knowledge? Who has not read with indignation how observations were rejected by reference to theories which were just further rumours and who has not either himself pontificated or heard others pontificate on the excellence of modern science in this respect? The examples show that the difference between modern science and 'mediaeval' science is at most a matter of degree and that the same phenomena occur in both. The similarity increases when we consider how scientific institutions try to impose their will on the rest of society.'2 87 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 88 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – Annihilates Difference / Empirics (China) Scientifically analyzing the world is fundamentally violent – it empirically annihilates difference – we must break with it from the outside. Feyerabend 1975 (Paul, “Against Method”, professor at Berkeley) 88 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 89 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – Cosmology / Generalization Science fails – it begins with constructed cosmological assumptions and generalizes them to the entire world – we must question the assumption that our senses are infallible. Feyerabend 1975 (Paul, “Against Method”, professor at Berkeley) 89 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 90 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – Astrology Proves The scientific method has no basis for its decisions, only making claims to suppress other methods – the case of astrology proves. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 94-96 in water is about one tenth of the strength of average chemical bonds so that water is ‘sensitive to extremely delicate influences and is capable of adapting itself to the most varying circumstances to a degree attained by no other liquid .117 It is quite possible that solar flares have to be included among these ‘varying circumstances’” which would again lead to a dependence on planetary positions. Considering the role which water and organic colloids” play in life we may conjecture that ‘it is by means of water and the aqueous system that the external forces are able to react on living organisms’?° Just how sensitive organisms are has been shown in a series of papers by F. it. Brown. Oysters open and close their shells in accordance with the tides. They continue their activity when brought inland, in a dark container. Eventually they adapt their rhythm to the new location which means that they sense the very weak tides in an inland laboratory tank.2’ Brown also studied the metabolism of tubers and found a lunar period though the potatoes were kept at constant temperature, pressure, humidity, illumination: man’s ability to keep conditions constant is smaller than the ability of a potato to pick up lunar rhythms and Professor Bok’s assertion that ‘the walls of the delivery room shield us effectively from many known radiations’ turns out to be just another case of a firm conviction based on ignorance. The ‘Statement’ makes much of the fact that ‘astrology was part and parcel of (the) magical world view’ and the second article that is attached to it offers a ‘final disproof’ by showing that ‘astrology arose from magic’. Where did the learned gentlemen get this information? As far as one can see there is not a single anthropologist among them and I am rather doubtful whether anyone is familiar with the more recent results of this discipline. What they do know are some older views from what one might call the ‘Ptolemaic’ period of anthropology when post-17th century Western man was supposed to be the sole possessor of sound knowledge, when field studies, archaeology and a more detailed examination of myth had not yet led to the discovery of the surprising knowledge possessed by ancient man as well as by modern ‘Primitives’ and when it was assumed that history consisted in a simple progression from more primitive to less primitive views. We see: the judgement of the ‘i86 leading scientists’ rests on an antediluvian anthropology, on ignorance of more recent results in their own fields (astronomy, biology, and the connection between the two) as well as on a failure to perceive the implications of results they do know. It shows the extent to which scientists are prepared to assert their authority even in areas in which they have no knowledge whatsoever. There are many minor mistakes. ‘Astrology’, it is said ‘was dealt a serious death blow’ when Copernicus replaced the Ptolemaic system. Note the wonderful language: does the learned writer believe in the existence of ‘death blows’ that are not ‘serious’? And as regards the content we can only say that the very opposite was true. Kepler, one of the foremost Copernicans used the new discoveries to improve astrology, he found new evidence for it, and he defended it against opponents.23 There is a criticism of the dictum that the stars incline, but do not compel. The criticism overlooks that modem hereditary theory (for example) works with inclinations throughout. Some specific assertions that are part of astrology are criticized by quoting evidence that contradicts them; but every moderately interesting theory is always in conflict with numerous experimental results. Here astrology is similar to highly respected scientific research programmes. There is a longish quotation from a statement by psychologists. It says: ‘Psychologists find no evidence that astrology is of any value whatsoever as an indicator of past, present, or future trends of one’s personal life . . .’. Considering that astronomers and biologists have not found evidence that is already published, and by researchers in their own fields, this can hardly count as an argument. ‘By offering the public the horoscope as a substitute for 90 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 91 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – Astrology Proves [CONT – No Text Omit] honest and sustained thinking, astrologers have been guilty of playing upon the human tendency to take easy rather than difficult paths’- but what about psychoanalysis, what about the reliance upon psychological tests which long ago have become a substitute for ‘honest and sustained thinking’ in the evaluation of people of all ages’ 24 And as regards the magical origin of astrology one need only remark that science once was very closely connected with magic and must be rejected if astrology must be rejected on these grounds. The remarks should not be interpreted as an attempt to defend astrology as it is practiced now by the great majority of astrologists. Modern astrology is in many respects similar to early mediaeval astronomy: it inherited interesting and profound ideas, but it distorted them, and replaced them by caricatures more adapted to the limited understanding of its practitioners. The caricatures are not used for research; there is no attempt to proceed into new domains and to enlarge our knowledge of extra-terrestrial influences; they simply serve as a reservoir of naïve rules and phrases suited to impress the ignorant. Yet this is not the objection that is raised by our scientists. They do not criticize the air of stagnation that has been permitted to obscure the basic assumptions of astrology, they criticize these basic assumptions themselves and in the process turn their own subjects into caricatures. It is interesting to see how closely both parties approach each other in ignorance, conceit and the wish for easy power over minds.” 91 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 92 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – Self-Referentiality The methods of science are inherently flawed since all merits are made by scientists themselves. This means science in itself cannot be preferred, flipping case. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 98-100 The considerations presented so far may be criticized by admitting that science, being a product of human effort has its faults but by adding that it is still better than alternative ways of acquiring knowledge. Science is superior for two reasons: it uses the correct method for getting results; and there are many results to prove the excellence of the method. Let us take a closer look at these reasons. The answer to the first reason is simple: there is no 'scientific method'; there is no single procedure, or set of rules that underlies every piece of research and guarantees that it is 'scientific' and, therefore, trustworthy. Every project, every theory, every procedure has to be judged on its own merits and by standards adapted to the processes with which it deals. The idea of a universal and stable method that is an unchanging measure of adequacy and even the idea of a universal and stable rationality is as unrealistic as the idea of a universal and stable measuring instrument that measures any magnitude, no matter what the circumstances. Scientists revise their standards, their procedures, their criteria of rationality as they move along and enter new domains of research just as they revise and perhaps entirely replace their theories and their instruments as they move along and enter new domains of research. The main argument for this answer is historical: there is not a single rule, however plausible and however firmly grounded in logic and general philosophy that is not violated at some time or other. Such violations are not accidental events, they are not avoidable results of ignorance and inattention. Given the conditions in which they occurred they were necessary for nrtwrecc science is the realization that events such as the invention of atomism in antiquity, the Copernican Revolution, the rise of modern atomism (Dalton; kinetic theory; dispersion theory; stereochemistry; quantum theory), the gradual emergence of the wave theory of light occurred only because some thinkers either decided not to be bound by certain 'obvious' rules, or because they unwittingly broke them. Conversely, we can show that most of the rules which are today defended by scientists and philosophers of science as constituting a uniform 'scientific method' are either useless - they do not produce the results they are supposed to produce -or debilitating. Of course, we may one day find a rule that helps us through all difficulties just as we may one day find a theory that can explain everything in our world. Such a development is not likely, one might almost be inclined to say that it is logically impossible, but I would still not want to exclude it. The point is that the development has not yet started: today we have to do science without being able to rely on any well defined and stable 'scientific method'. The remarks made so far do not mean that research is arbitrary and unguided. There are standards, but they come from the research process itself, not from abstract views of rationality. It needs ingenuity, tact, knowledge of details to come to an informed judgement of existing standards and to invent new ones just as it needs ingenuity, tact, knowledge of details to come to an informed judgement of existing theories and to invent new ones. More of this in Section 3of Part One and Section 3 of Chapter of Part Three.There are writers who agree with the account given so far and still insist on a special treatment for science. Polânyi, Kuhn and others object to the idea thatscience must conform to external standards and insist as I do that standards are developed and examined by the very same process of research they are supposed to judge. This process, they say, is a most delicate machinery. It has its own Reason and determines its own Rationality. And therefore, so they add, it must be left undisturbed. Scientists will succeed only if they are entirely research oriented, if they are allowed to pursue only those problems they regard as important and to use only procedures that seem efficient to them. 92 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 93 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – Self-Referentiality [CONT – No text omitted] This ingenious defence of financial support without corresponding obligations cannot be maintained. To start with, research is not always successful and often produces monsters. Small mistakes, involving restricted areas. mat' nerhans be corrected from the inside. Comprehensible history. Making use of new ideas these outsiders corrected the mistakes and so changed research in a fundamental way. Now what counts and what does not count as a mistake depends on the tradition that does the judging: for an analytical tradition (say, in medicine) the important thing is to find basic elements and to show how everything is built up from them. Lack of immediate success is a sign of the complexity of the problem and the need for more and more efficient research of the same kind. For a holistic tradition the important thing is to find large scale connections. Lack of immediate success of the analytic tradition is now a sign of its (partial) inadequacy and new research strategies may be suggested (this, incidentally, is roughly the situation in certain parts of cancer research). In the beginning the suggestions will be regarded as unwanted interference just as the mixing of astronomical and physical arguments was regarded as unwanted interference by the Aristotelian physicists of the 16th and 17th centuries. Which leads to a further criticism of the Kuhn-Polányi view: it assumes that the distinctions and separations implicit in a certain historical stage are unobjectionable and have to be maintained. But different research programmes were often united, or one subsumed under the other with a resulting change in competences. There is no reason why the research programme science should not be subsumed under the research progratnmefree society and competences changed and redefined accordingly. The change is needed the possibilities of freedom will not be exhausted without it - there is nothing inherent in science (except the wish of scientists to do their own thing at other people's expense) that forbids it; many scientific developments, though on a smaller scale, have been of exactly the same kind and, besides, an independent science has long ago been replaced by the business science which lives off society and strengthens its totalitarian tendencies. This disposes of the Polányi-Kuhn objection. 93 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 94 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – AT: Emprics There is no reason to prefer current science based on results – while science has made contributions to society, it still has many flaws. We ought to research older sciences to put them on an equal footing with science and since they have been proven to be effective. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 100-105 According to the second reason science deserves a special position because of its results. This is an argument only if it can be shown (a) that no other view has ever produced anything comparable and (b) that the results of science are autonomous, they do not owe anything to non-scientific agencies. Neither assumption survives close scrutiny. It is true that science has made marvellous contributions to our understanding of the world and that this understanding has led to even more marvellous practical achievements. It is also true that most rivals of science have by now either disappeared, or have been changed so that a conflict with science (and therefore the possibility of results that differ from the results of science) no longer arises: religions have been 'demythologized' with the explicit purpose of making them acceptable to a scientific age, myths have been 'interpreted' in a manner that removed their ontological implications. Some features of this development are not at all surprising. Even in a fair competition one ideology often assembles successes and overtakes its rivals. This does not mean that the beaten rivals are without merit and that they have ceased to be capable of making a contribution to our knowledge, it only means that they have temporarily run out of' steam. They may return and cause the defeat of their defeaters. The philosophy of atomism is an excellent example. It was introduced (in the West) in antiquity with the purpose of 'saving' macrophenomena such as the phenomenon of motion. It was overtaken by the dynamically more sophisticated philosophy of the Aristotelians, returned with the scientific revolution, was pushed back with the development of continuity theories, returned again late in the igth century and was again restricted by complementarity. Or take the idea of the motion of the earth. It arose in antiquity, was defeated by the powerful arguments of the Aristotelians, regarded as an 'incredibly ridiculous' view by Ptolemy, and yet staged a triumphant comeback in the 17th century. What is true of theories is true of methods: knowledge was founded on speculation and logic, then Aristotle introduced a more empirical procedure which was replaced by the more mathematical methods of Descartes and Galileo which in turn was combined with a fairly radical empiricism by the members of the Copenhagen school. The lesson to be drawn from this historical sketch is that a temporary setback for an ideology (which is a bunch of theories combined with a method and a more general philosophical point of view) must not be taken as a reason for eliminating it. Yet this is precisely what happened to older forms of science and to non-scientific points of view after the scientific revolution: they were eliminated, first from science itself, then from society until we arrive at the present situation where their survival is endangered not only by the general prejudice in favour of science, but by institutional means as well: and is the only ideology known to have worthwhile results? It reigns supreme because some past successes have led to institutional measures (education; role of experts; role of power groups such as the AMA) that prevent a comeback of the rivals. Briefly, but not incorrectly: today science prevails not because of its comparative merits, but because the show has been rigged in its favour. There is another element involved in this rigging mechanism, and we I I must not overlook it. I said above that ideologies may fall behind even in a fair competition. In the aôth and 17th centuries there was a fair cornpetition 94 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 95 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – AT: Emprics [CONT – no text omitted] (more or less) between ancient Western science and philosophy and the new scientific philosophy; there was never any fair competition between this entire complex of ideas and the myths, religions, procedures of non-Western societies. These myths, these religions, these procedures have disappeared or deteriorated not because science was better, but H because the apostles of science were the more determined conquerors, because they materially suppressed the bearers of alternative cultures. There was no research. There was no 'objective' comparison of methods and achievements. There was colonization and suppression of the views of the tribes and nations colonized. These views were replaced, first, by the religion of brotherly love, and then by the religion of science. A few scientists studied tribal ideologies, but being prejudiced and insufficiently prepared they were unable to find any evidence of superiority or even of equality (not that they would have recognized such evidence had they found it). Again the superiority of science is the result not of research, or argument, it is the result of political, institutional, and even military pressures. To see what happens when such pressures are removed or used against science we need only take a look at the history of traditional medicine in China, China was one of the few countries that escaped Western intellectual domination down to the 19th century. Early in the 20th century a new generation, tired of the old traditions and the restrictions implicit in them and impressed by the material and intellectual superiority of the West imported science. Science soon pushed aside all traditional elements. Herbal medicine, acupuncture, moxibustion, the yin/yang duality, the theory of the chi were ridiculed and removed from schools and hospitals, Western medicine was regarded as the only sensible procedure. This was the attitude up to about 1954. Then the parry. realizinu i-he between science and traditional medicine. One now discovered that traditional medicine has methods of diagnosis and therapy that are superior to those of Western scientific medicine. Similar discoveries were made by those who compared tribal medicines with science. The lesson to be learned is that non-scientific ideologies, practices, theories, traditions can become powerful rivals and can reveal major shortcomings of science if only they are given afair chance to compete. It is the task of the institutions of a free society to give them such a fair chance. The excellence of science, however, can be asserted only after numerous comparisons with alternative points of view. More recent research in anthropology, archaeology (and here especially in the flourishing subject of archaeoastronomy,3° history of science, parapsychology31 has shown that our ancestors and our 'primitive' contemporaries had highly developed cosmologies, medical theories, biological doctrines which are often more adequate and have better results than their Western competitors32 and describe phenomena not accessible to an 'objective' laboratory approach.33 Nor is it surprising to find that ancient man had views worth considering. Stone Age man was already the fully developed /wmo sapiens, he was faced by tremendous problems which he solved with great ingenuity. Science is always praised because of its achievements. So let us not forget that the inventors of myth invented fire, and the means of keeping it. They domesticated animals, bred new types of plants, kept types separate to an extent that exceeds what is possible in today's scientific agriculture)4 They invented rotation of fields and developed an art that can compare with the best creations of Western man. Not being hampered by specialization they found large scale connections 95 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 96 of 216 Fuck Scientific Method – AT: Emprics [CONT – no text omitted] between man and man and man and nature and relied on them to improve their science and their societies: the best ecological philosophy is found in the Stone Age. They crossed the oceans in vessels that were more seaworthy than modern vessels of comparable size and demonstrated a knowledge of navigation and the properties of materials that conflicts with scientific ideas but is, on trial, found to be correct)5 They were aware of the role of change and their fundamental laws took this into account. It is only quite recently that science has returned to the Stone Age view of change after a long and dogmatic insistence on 'eternal laws of nature' that started with the 'rationalism' of the Presocratics and culminated towards the end of the last century. Moreover, these were not instinctive discoveries, they were the result of thought and speculation. 'There is abundant data which suggests not only that hunter-gatherers have adequate supplies of food but also that they enjoy quantities of leisure time, much more in fact than do modern industrial or farm workers, or even professors of archaeology.' There was abundant opportunity for 'pure thought'.-16 It is no good insisting that the discoveries of Stone Age man were due to an instinctive use of the correct scientific method. If they were, and if they led to correct results, then why did later scientists so often come to different conclusions? And, besides, there is no 'scientific method', as we have seen. Thus if science is praised because of its achievements, then myth must be praised a hundred times more fervently because its achievements were incomparably greater. The inventors of myth started culture while rationalists and scientists just 9 changed it, and not always for the better.37 Assumption (b) can be refuted with equal ease: there is not a single important scientific idea that was not stolen from elsewhere. The Copernican Revolution is an excellent example. Where did Copernicus get his ideas? From ancient authorities, as he says himself. Who are the authorities that played a role in his thinking? Philolaos, among others, and Philolaos was a muddleheaded Pythagorean. How did Copernicus • proceed when trying to make the ideas of Philolaos part of the astronomy of his time? By violating reasonable methodological rules. 'There is no limit to my astonishment' writes Galileo50 'when I reflect that Aristarchus and Copernicus were able to make reason so conquer sense that, in defiance of the latter, the former became mistress of their belief.' 'Sense', here, refers to the experience which Aristotle and others had used to show that the earth must be at rest. The 'reason' which Copernicus opposes to such arguments is the very mystical reason of Philolaos (and of the Flermeticists) combined with an equally mystical faith in the fundamental character of circular motion. Modern astronomy and modern dynamics could not have advanced without this unscientific use of antediluvian ideas. While astronomy profited from Pythagoreanism and from the Platonic love for circles, medicine profited from herbalism, from the psychology, the metaphysics, the physiology of witches, midwives, cunning men, wandering druggists. his well known that rôth and 17th century medical science, while theoretically hypertrophic, was quite helpless in the face of disease (and stayed that way for quite some time after the 'scientific revolution'). Innovators like Paracelsus fell back on earlier ideas and improved medicine. Everywhere science is enriched by unscientific methods and unscientific results while procedures which have often been regarded as essential parts of science are quietly suspended or circumvented. 96 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 97 of 216 State Example – Scientific Confluency Bad Science and the state must be separated much like Church and the state – only by doing so can we remove science from its pedestal and pave the way to equalize all traditions. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 106-107 I started by stipulating that a free society is a society in which all tradition have equal rights and equal access to the centres of power. This led to the objection that equal rights can be guaranteed only if th basic structure of society is 'objective', not influenced by undue pressure from any one of the traditions. Hence, rationalism will be more importan than other traditions. Now if rationalism and the accompanying views are not yet in existence or have no power then they cannot influence society as planned. Yet life is not chaos under such circumstances. There are wars, there is powerplay, there are open debates between different cultures. The tradition of objectivity may therefore be introduced in a variety of ways. Assume it is introduced by an open debate - then, why should we change the form of debate at this point? Intellectuals say because of the 'objectivity' of their procedure - a pitiful lack of perspective, as we have seen. There is no reason to stick to reason even if it was reached by an open debate. There is even less reason to stick to it if it was imposed by force. This removes the objection. The second objection is that though traditions may perhaps claim equal rights they do not produce equal results. This may be discovered by an open debate. The implication is that the excellence of science was established long ago - so why the fuss? There are two replies to this objection. First that the comparative excellence of science has been anything but established. There are of course many rumours to that effect, but the arguments that are offered dissolve on closer inspection. Science does not excel because of its method for there is no method; and it does not excel because of its results: we know what science does, we have not the faintest idea whether other traditions could not do much better. So, we must find out. To find out we must let all traditions freely develop side by side as is at any rate required by the basic stipulation of a free society. It is quite possible that an open debate about this development will find that some traditions have less to offer than others. This does not mean that they will be abolished - they will survive and keep their rights as long as there are people interested in them - it only means that for the time being their tions in one period does not aid them in others. The open debate and with ft the examination of the favoured traditions will therefore continue: society is never identified with one particular tradition, and state and traditions are always kept separate. The separation of state and science (rationalism) which is an essential part of this general separation of state and traditions cannot be introduced by a single political act and it should not be introduced in this way: many people have not yet reached the maturity necessary for living in a free society (this applies especially to scientists and other rationalists). People in a free society must decide about very basic issues, they must know how to assemble the necessary information, they must understand the purpose of traditions different from their own and the roles they play in the lives of their members. The maturity lam speaking about is not an intellectual virtue, it is a sensitivity that can only be acquired by frequent contacts with different points of view. It can't be taught in schools and it is vain to expect that 'social studies' will create the wisdom we need. But it can be acquired by participating in citizens' initiatives. This is why the slow progress, the slow erosion of the authority of science and of other pushy institutions that is produced by these initiatives is to be preferred to more radical measures: citizen initiatives are the best and only school for free citizens we now have. 97 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 98 of 216 Perm Fails – Inarticulate Grunting Pigs Looking at issues from all positions at once sends us on the wrong track. We must look at positions from different methods individually. Paul Feyerabend, professor of philosophy at UC-Berkeley, 1978, Science in a Free Society, pp. 119-121 Experiences such as these convinced me that intellectual procedures which approach a problem through concepts and abstract from everything else are on the wrong track and I became interested in the reasons for the tremendous power this error has now over minds. I started examining the rise of intellectualism in Ancient Greece and the causes that brought it about I wanted to know what it is that makes people who have a rich and complex culture fall for dry abstractions and mutilate their traditions, their thought, their language so that they can accommodate the abstractions. I wanted to know how intellectuals manage to get away with murder - for it is murder, murder of minds and cultures that is committed year in year out at schools, universities, educational missions in foreign countries. The trend must be reversed, I thought, we must start learning from those we have enslaved for they have much to offer and at any rate, they have the right to live as they see fit even if they are not as pushy about their rights and their views as their Western Conquerors have always been. In 1964-5 when these ideas first occurred to me I tried to find an intellectual solution to my misgivings that is, I took it for granted that it was up to me and the likes of me to devise educational policies for other people. I envisaged a new kind of education that would live from a rich reservoir of different points of view permitting the choice of traditions most advantageous to the individual. The teacher's task would consist of facilitating the choice, not in replacing it by some 'truth' a theatre of ideas as imagined by Piscator and Brecht and it would lead to the development of a great variety of means of presentation. The 'objective' scientific account would be one way of presenting a case, a play another way (remember that for Aristotle tragedy is 'more philosophical' than history because it reveals the structure of the historical process and not only its accidental details) a novel still another way. Why should knowledge be shown in the garment of academic prose and reasoning? Had not Plato observed that written sentences in a book are but transitory stages of a complex process of growth that contains gestures, jokes, asides, emotions and had he not tried to catch this process by means of the dialogue? And were there not different forms of knowledge, some much more detailed and realistic than what arose as 'rationalism' in the 7th and 6th century in Greece? Then there was Dadaism. I had studied Dadaism after the Second World War. What attracted me to this movement was the style its inventors used when not engaged in Dadaistic activities. It was clear, luminous, simple without being banal, precise without being narrow; it was a style adapted to the expression of thought as well as of emotion. I connected this style with the Dadaistic exercises themselves. Assume you tear language apart, you live for days and weeks in a world of cacophonic sounds, jumbled words, nonsensical events. Then, after this preparation, you sit down and write: 'the cat is on the mat'. This simple sentence which we usually utter without thought, like talking machines (and much of our talk is indeed routine) now seems like the creation of an entire world: God said let there be light, and there was light. Nobody in modem times has understood the miracle of language and thought as well as the Dadaists for nobody has been able to imagine, let alone create a world in which they play no role. Having discovered the nature of a living order, of a reason that is not merely mechanical, the Dadaists soon noticed the deterioration of such an order into routine. They diagnosed the deterioration of language that preceded the First World War and created the mentality that made it possible. After the diagnosis their exercises assumed another, more sinister meaning. They 98 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 99 of 216 Perm Fails – Inarticulate Grunting Pigs [CONT – no text omit] revealed the frightening similarity between the language of the foremost commercial travellers in 'importance', the language of philosophers, politicians, theologians, and brute inarticulation. The praise of honour, patriotism, truth, rationality, honesty that fills our schools, pulpits, political meetings imperceptibly merges into inarticulation no matter how much it has been wrapped into literary from a pack of grunting pigs. Is there a way to prevent such deterioration? I thought there was. I thought that regarding all achievements as transitory, restricted and personal and every truth as created by our love for it arid not as 'found' would prevent the deterioration of once promising fairy tales and I also thought that it was necessary to develop a new philosophy or a new religion to give substance to this unsystematic conjecture. 99 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 100 of 216 Shit Is Bad The affirmative works within hypocritical “environmental” corporate businesses that advocate “responsible” legislation but continue to devastate the environment. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 4 The negative effects of these corporate and government "environmentalists" are already being felt. A number of big environmental organizations have corporate and politically conservative voices among their executive staff, their boards, and their funders. The result, of course, is more and more compromised positions, more and more timid strategies, and, ultimately, a more and more ineffective ecology movement. The examples are, unfortunately, all too plentiful: from "mainstream" environmental organizations which allow destructive development projects to move forward at the request of business forces within their organization to groups which advocate "responsible" legislation to protect one or two endangered species while they allow the rain forests and lifeways of indigenous people to be economically plundered and drastically altered without protest. Environmentalism is a way of manipulating nature as natural resources with minimal pollution and public outcry. We must seek to end the thoughts that we can control nature. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 8 This difference in political orientation, while perhaps not yet obvious to the general public, is not news to most people who are actively concerned with ecological politics today, The distinction between reform environmentalism and radical political ecologism was Bret made over 25 years ago. This book’s coauthor, Murray Bookchin, was among the first to draw attention to this distinction in several pioneering essays during the 1960s and 1970s. As Bookchin has noted, ecologism "refers to a broad, philosophical, almost spiritual, outlook toward humanity's relationship to the natural world, not to environmentalism [which is] a form of natural engineering that seeks to manipulate nature as mere ‘natural resources with minimal pollution and public outcry."‘ In strikingly similar terms, the renowned Norwegian eco-philosopher and activist Arne Naess made the same basic distinction in a 1973 essay contrasting the “shallow" reform environmental movement with the emerging "deep, long-range ecology movement,"‘ While this essay did not receive significant attention in the U.S. until 1980, it is now quite common in both activist and academic circles to characterize the central political fault line within the ecology movement as the ideological division between "shallow“ and “deep" ecologists. For many, "deep ecology" has become a generic rubric to describe all political ecologists who a) believe that the natural world has an intrinsic value of its own, b) seek to end industrial society’s attempted domination of the biosphere and c) work to radically reconstruct human society along ecological lines. In this very broad sense, social ecologists, eco-feminists, bioregionalists, radical greens, Earth First!ers, Native American traditionalists, many academic eco-philosophers, and some animal liberationists can all fairly he called "deep ecologists.” 100 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 101 of 216 Shit Is Bad The affirmative uses alternative energy in order to fuel the “grow or die” mentality of corporate capitalism. The only way to protect the planet is to transform our relationship with the planet into a non-hierarchical one. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 13 At first glance, at least, the garden scenario described by Nash bears more than a passing resemblance to the utopian vision of social ecology. Murray Bookchin, after all, described microbiologist René Dubos in 1974 as an important early social ecology thinker. “While Bookchin’s and Dubos’ views were far from identical even then, their visions for the humanly inhabited portions of the Earth did overlap significantly. Bookchin, however, expressed himself in much more radical terms. Following Peter Kropotkin, the visionary nineteenth-century anarchist geographer, Bookchin has argued that we need to transform our oppressive industrial capitalist society into "an ecological society based on nonhierarchical relationships, decentralized democratic communities, and eco-technologies like solar power, organic agriculture, and humanly scaled industries.” According to Bookchin, decentralized forms of production and food cultivation tailored to the carrying capacities of particular bioregions are not only more efficient and ecologically sustainable, they also restore humanity‘s intimate contact with soil, plant and animal life, sun, and wind. This. he believes, is the only way to fully anchor and sustain a widespread ecological sensibility within our culture. Furthermore, he maintains that only by challenging the profit-seeking, "grow or die" dynamic of the corporate capitalist economy and creating an alternative economy oriented to ecologically sustainable production to meet vital human needs can we genuinely protect the planet from the ravages of acid min, global warming, and ozone destruction. The affirmative’s way of using technology to dominate nature for human benefit is the result of domination of humans by humans. In order to fix this, we must restructure the capitalist system. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 129 To blame technology per se for this terrible distortion of second nature; to deal with human population growth as if it were not influenced profoundly by cultural factors; to reduce the basic social factors that have produced the present ecological crisis to largely, often purely biological ones—all this is to deflect attention away from the fact that our ecological dislocations have their primary source in social dislocations. The very notion of "dominating nature" has its roots in the domination of human by human—in hierarchies that brought the young into subjugation to gerontocracies, that brought women into subjugation to patriarchies, ordinary people into subjugation to military chiefdoms, working people into subjugation to capitalist or bureaucratic systems of exploitation, and so forth. 101 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 102 of 216 Shit Is Bad Blaming all humans for ecological problems masks the root cause of the problem, as well as turning human beings into a simple species and a destructive force that needs to be eliminated. Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p9-10 [McCleary] Modern environmentalist rhetoric facilities the notion of dominating the environment and using it for human services. Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 20-21 Perhaps even more troubling, the word in recent years has been identified with a very crude form of natural engineering that might well be called environmentalism. I am mindful that many ecologically oriented individuals use “ecology” and “environmentalism” interchangeably. Here, I would like to draw a semantically convenient distinction. By “environmentalism” I propose to designate a mechanistic, instrumental outlook that sees nature as a passive habitat composed of “objects” such as animals, plants, minerals, and the like that must merely be rendered more serviceable for human use. Given my use of the term, environmentalism tends to reduce nature to a storage bin of “natural resources” or “raw materials.” Within this context, very little of a social nature is spared from the environmentalist’s vocabulary: cities become “urban resources” and their inhabitants “human resources.” If the word resources leaps out so frequently from environmentalistic discussions of nature, cities, and people, an issue more important than mere word play is at stake. Environmentalism, as I use this term, tends to view the ecological project for attaining a harmonious relationship between humanity and nature as a truce rather than a lasting equilibrium. The “harmony” of the environmentalist centers around the development of new techniques for plundering the natural order with minimal disruption of the human “habitat.” Environmentalism does not question the most basic premise that humanity must dominate nature; rather, it seeks to facilitate that notion by developing techniques for diminishing the hazards caused by the reckless despoliation of the environment. 102 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 103 of 216 Shit Is Bad Anthropomorphic terms of social hierarchy justify human domination of nature. Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 27 Why do terms borrowed from human social hierarchies acquire such remarkable weight when plant- animal relations are described? Do ecosystems really have a “king of the beasts” and “lowly serfs”? Do certain insects “enslave” others? Does one species “exploit” another? The promiscuous use of these terms in ecology raises many far- reaching issues. That the terms are laden with socially charged values is almost too obvious to warrant extensive discussion. Many individuals exhibit a pathetic gullibility in the way they deal with nature as a dimension of society. A snarling animal is neither “vicious” nor “savage,” nor does it “misbehave” or “earn” punishment because it reacts appropriately to certain stimuli. By making such anthropomorphic judgments about natural phenomena, we deny the integrity of nature. Even more sinister is the widespread use of hierarchical terms to provide natural phenomena with “intelligibility” or “order.” What this procedure does accomplish is reinforce human social hierarchies by justifying the command of men and women as innate features of the “natural order.” Human domination is thereby transcribed into the genetic code as biologically immutable—together with the subordination of the young by the old, women by men, and man by man. The very promiscuity with which hierarchical terms are used to organize all differentia in nature is inconsistent. A “queen” bee does not know she is a queen. The primary activity of a beehive is reproductive, and its “division of labor,” to use a grossly abused phrase, lacks any meaning in a large sexual organ that performs no authentic economic functions. The purpose of the hive is to create more bees. The honey that animals and people acquire from it is a natural largesse; within the ecosystem, bees are adapted more to meeting plant reproductive needs by spreading pollen than to meeting important animal needs. The analogy between a beehive and a society, an analogy social theorists have often found too irresistible to avoid, is a striking commentary on the extent to which our visions of nature are shaped by self-serving social interests. Modern society functions through unethical self-interest and instrumental rationality that judges people and things by how much they can produce. Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 222 These far-reaching ethical and metaphysical remarks indicate how much the classical image of techne contrasts with the modern image of technics. The goal of techne is not restricted to merely “living well” or living within limit. Techne includes living an ethical life according to an originative and ordering principle conceived as “potency.” Viewed even in an instrumental sense, techne thus encompasses not merely raw materials, tools, machines, and products but also the producer— in short, a highly sophisticated subject from which all else originates.* To Aristotle, the “master-craftsman” is distinguished subjectively from his apprentices or assistants by virtue of honor, a sense of “why” products are created, and generally a wisdom of things and phenomena. By starting with the rationality of the subject, Aristotle establishes a point of departure for bringing rationalization to the production of the object. Modern industrial production functions in precisely the opposite way. Not only is the modern image of techne limited to mere technics in the instrumental sense of the term, but also its goals are inextricably tied to unlimited production. “Living well” is conceived as limitless consumption within the framework of a totally unethical, privatized level of self-interest. Technics, moreover, includes not the producer and his or her ethical standards (proletarians, after all, service the modern industrial apparatus in total anonymity) but the product and its constituents. The technical focus shifts from the subject to the object, from the producer to the product. from the creator to the created. Honor, a sense of “why,” and any general wisdom of things and phenomena have no place in the world required by modern industry. What really counts in technics is efficiency, quantity, and an intensification of the labor process. The specious rationality involved in producing the object is foisted on the rationalization of the subject to a point where the producer’s subjectivity is totally atrophied and reduced to an object among objects. 103 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 104 of 216 Shit Is Bad Technology has placed a “gilded cage” over humanity. Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 220 The hold of technics on the social imagery of that time was more fetishistic than rational. Even the First World War, which witnessed a massive use of the new technological armamentarium to slaughter millions of people, did not dispel this technical mythos. Only in the sequelae of the second of these worldwide conflicts, with all its terrifying results, did we begin to witness chilling doubts in the popular mind over the wisdom of technical innovation. Nuclear weaponry, perhaps more than any single factor, has created a popular fear of a “technics run-wild.” The 1960s began to exhibit a pronouncedly anti- technical bias of its own that has since turned into a complex duel between the “high” or “hard” technologies (those associated with fossil and nuclear fuels, industrial agriculture, and synthetics) and the so-called “appropriate” or, “soft” technologies (those structured around solar, wind, and hydraulic sources of energy, organically grown food, and human-scale, craft like industries). What clearly renders “appropriate” technology increasingly attractive today is not any popular celebration of its achievements or promise; rather, it is a growing fear that we are irretrievably committing ourselves to destructive systems of mass production and widespread problems of environmental pollution. The artistic messiahs of a technocratic society are gone. Humanity now seems to feel that technology has ensnared it .,. it has the mein of a victim rather than a beneficiary. If the first half of the century witnessed the emergence of “high” technology as a popular “art-form” because the great majority of the industrialized world’s population still lived in small communities with almost antique technic artifacts, the end of the century is witnessing the emergence of “appropriate” technology as a popular “art-form” precisely because “high’ technology has placed a gilded cage over the suffocating millions who now clutter the cities and highways of the western world. 104 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 105 of 216 Bad Shit Goes Epic Once reduced to just another species, any violent action against humanity becomes justified to protect the balance of nature Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p10 [McCleary] We must challenge social extremes at both ends of the spectrum to truly evaluate how to form harmony between humans and nature Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p17 [McCleary] 105 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 106 of 216 Bad Shit Gets Fixed An ecological society is freely created and based around the commune. Technological thinking and “fetishization of needs” will be abandoned. Social restructuring is the only way we can discover alternative energy. Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 262 In any case, it is apparent that we score a much richer ecological advance over the conventional biological wisdom of early humanity when we relate on the basis of a simple affinity of tastes, cultural similarities, emotional compatibilities, sexual preferences, and intellectual interests. Nor are we any the less natural for doing so. Even more preferable than the blood-related family is the commune that unites individuals by what they choose to like ineach other rather than what they are obliged by blood ties to like. Conscious cultural affinity is ultimately a more creative basis for association than the unthinking demands of kin loyalties. The rudiments of an ecological society will probably be structured around the commune—freely created, human in scale, and intimate in its consciously cultivated relationships— rather than clan or tribal forms that are often fairly sizable and anchored in the imperatives of blood and the notion of a common ancestry. It is not “retribalization” that an ecological society is likely to seek but rather recommunalization with its wealth of creative libertarian traits. On a still larger scale, the Commune composed of many small communes seems to contain the best features of the polio, without the ethnic parochialism and political exclusivity that contributed so significantly to its decline. Such larger or composite Communes, networked confederally through ecosystems, bioregions, and biomes, must be artistically tailored to their natural surroundings. We can envision that their squares will be interlaced by streams, their places of assembly surrounded by groves, their physical contours respected and tastefully landscaped, their soils nurtured caringly to foster plant variety for ourselves, our domestic animals, and wherever possible the wildlife they may support on their fringes. We can hope that the Communes would aspire to live with, nourish, and feed upon the life-forms that indigenously belong to the ecosystems in which they are integrated. Decentralized and scaled to human dimensions, such ecocommunities would obey nature’s “law of return” by recycling their organic wastes into composted nutriment for gardens and such materials as they can rescue for their crafts and industries. We can expect that they would subtly integrate solar, wind, hydraulic, and methane-producing installations into a highly variegated pattern for producing power. Agriculture, aquaculture, stock raising, and hunting would be regarded as crafts an orientation that we hope would be extended as much as possible to the fabrication of use-values of nearly all kinds. The need to mass-produce goods in highly mechanized installations would be vastly diminished by the communities’ overwhelming emphasis on quality and permanence. Vehicles, clothing, furnishings, and utensils would often become heirlooms to be handed down from generation to generation rather than discardable items that are quickly sacrificed to the gods of obsolescence. The past would always live in the present as the treasured arts and works of generations gone by. We could expect that work, more craftlike than industrial, would be as readily rotated as positions of public responsibility; that members of the communities would be disposed to deal with one another in faceto- face relationships rather than by electronic means. In a world where the fetishization of needs would give way to the freedom to choose needs, quantity to quality, mean-spirited egotism to generosity, and indifference to love, we might reasonably expect that industrialization would be seen as an insult to human physiological rhythms and that physically onerous tasks would be reworked into collective enterprises more festive than laborious in nature. Whether several ecocommunities would want to share and cojointly operate certain industrial entities—such as a small-scale foundry, machine shop, electronic installation, or utility—or whether they would want to return to more traditional but often technically exciting means of producing goods is a decision that belongs to future generations. Certainly, no law of production requires that we retain or expand the gigantic, highly centralized and hierarchically organized plants, mills, and offices that disfigure modern industry. By the same token, it is not for us to describe in any detail how the Communes of the future would confederate themselves and coordinate their common activities. Any institutional relationship of which we could conceive would remain a hollow form until we knew the attitudes, sensibilities, ideals, and values of the people who establish and maintain it. As I have already pointed out, a libertarian institution is a peopled one; hence its purely formal structure will be neither better nor worse than the ethical values of the people who give it reality. Certainly we, who have been saturated with the values of hierarchy and domination, cannot hope to impose our “doubts” upon people who have been totally freed of their trammels. What humanity can never afford to lose is its sense of ecological direction and the ethical meaning it gives to its projects. As I have already observed, our alternative technologies will have very little social meaning or direction if they are designed with strictly technocratic goals in mind. By the same token, our efforts at cooperation will be actively demoralizing if we come together merely to “survive” the hazards of living in our prevailing social system. Our technics can be eit--r catalysts for our integration with the natural world or the chasms separating us from it. They are never ethically neutral. “Civilization” and its ideologies have fostered the latter orientation; social ecology must promote the former. Modern authoritarian technics have been tested beyond all human endurance by a misbegotten history of natural devastation and chronic genocide, indeed, biocide. 106 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 107 of 216 Bad Shit Gets Fixed Small movements such as the one happening in this round are key to stopping hypocritical corporate “environmentalism”. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 4 Fortunately, as the discussion between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman shows, a potential counterforce to this corporate "environmentalism" has been growing for some time. Indeed, there is a diverse proliferation of more radical ecological schools of thought and action including deep ecologists, social ecologists, eco-feminists, bioregionalists, Native American traditionalists, eco-socialists, and greens. These small groups have the potential to reach out to the general public and the growing grassroots environmental movement in educational and empowering ways that can transform today’s reformist environmental movement into a broad-based movement seeking fundamental change. I believe that the future of the planet may well depend on how effectively today’s radical ecologists can work together and build such a movement. The breakdown of community solidarity has lead to hierarchies, domination, and exploitation within the human community. The only way we can have any sort of wilderness preservation is not by using technology to contain destruction, but by transforming the societies all together. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 22 The other key insight that social ecology offers to the radical ecology movement is its emphasis on the historic and organic connection between social hierarchy and the ecological crisis. Perhaps the most basic principle of social ecology today is that the social factor most underlying the destructive relationship between human societies and the rest of the natural world is the historic breakdown of community solidarity within early human societies and the resulting expansion of hierarchy, domination, and exploitation within the global human community. This social history, argues Bookchin, has profoundly conditioned "the way we experience reality as a whole, including nature and nonhuman life-forms." Historically, this conditioning fosters anthropocentrism and encourages the very idea of dominating nature. Given this analysis, it is inconceivable to social ecologists that ecology activists can effectively defend the Earth, in any long-term fashion, if they leave the tapeworm of human oppression firmly embedded within the very guts of our society. For Bookchin and other social ecologists, wilderness preservation, even on the scale proposed by Earth First!, is not nearly radical enough. They argue instead that the essential task, if we are to defend the Earth successfully, is not simply to try to contain ecologically destructive societies but to ultimately and fundamentally transform them. 107 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 108 of 216 Bad Shit Gets Fixed Alienation has desiccated our environment, but we can change our relationship with nature. Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 18 The tension between these two prospects has already subverted the morale of the traditional social order. We have entered an era that consists no longer of institutional stabilization but of institutional decay. A widespread alienation is developing toward the forms, the aspirations, the demands, and above all, the institutions of the established order. The must exuberant, theatrical evidence of this alienation occurred in the 1960s, when the “youth revolt” in the early half of the decade exploded into what seemed to be a counterculture. Considerably more than protest and adolescent nihilism marked the period. Almost intuitively, new values of sensuousness, new forms of communal lifestyle, changes in dress, language, music, all borne on the wave of a deep sense of impending social change, infused a sizable section of an entire generation. We still do not know in what sense this wave began to ebb: whether as a historic retreat or as a transformation into a serious project for inner and social development. That the symbols of this movement eventually became the artifacts for a new culture industry does not alter its far-reaching effects. Western society will never be the same again— all the sneers of tin academics and its critics of “narcissism” notwithstanding. What makes this ceaseless movement of deinstitutionalization and delegitimation so significant is that if has found its bedrock in a vast stratum of western society. Alienation permeates not only the poor but also the relatively affluent, not only the young but also their elders, not only the visibly denied but also the seemingly privileged. The prevailing order is beginning to lose the loyalty of social strata that traditionally rallied to its support and in which its roots were firmly planted in past periods. Crucial as this decay of institutions and values may be that it by no means exhausts the problems that confront the existing society. Intertwined with the social crisis is a crisis that has emerged directly from man’s exploitation of the planet. Established society is faced with a breakdown not only of its values and institutions, but also of its natural environment. This problem is not unique to our lives. The desiccated wastelands of the Near East, where the arts of agriculture and urbanism had their beginnings, are evidence of ancient human despoliation, but this example pales before the massive destruction of the environment that has occurred since the days of the Industrial Revolution, and especially since the end of the Second World War. The damage inflicted on the environment by contemporary society encompasses the entire earth. Volumes have been written on the immense losses of productive soil that occur annually in almost every continent of the earth; on the extensive destruction of tree cover in areas vulnerable to erosion; on lethal airpollution episodes in major urban areas; on the world diffusion of toxic agents from agriculture, industry, and powerproducing installations; on the chemicalization of humanity’s immediate environment with industrial wastes, pesticide residues, and food additives. The exploitation and pollution of the earth has damaged not only the integrity of the atmosphere, climate, water resources, soil, flora and fauna of specific regions, but also the basic natural cycles on which all living things depend. Yet modern man’s capacity for destruction is quixotic evidence of humanity’s capacity for reconstruction. The powerful technological agents we have unleashed against the environment include many of the very agents we require for its reconstruction. 108 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 109 of 216 Bad Shit Gets Fixed It is crucial to raise awareness to open up a space in which better methodologies can be formed and used. Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, summer 2K, interview with David Vanek, Harbinger Journal of Social Ecology [McCleary] I think the most important thing we are faced with today is to raise consciousness. America can be a good example. Americans by disposition and cultural heritage are activists. They don't think very much in advance, they act, and then they look for the reason why they acted. They don't think much of the past or the future, they think of the here and now. They're engineers, they don't generalize, they don't look for the connections. In America it's our job to bring out these faults. Our people have to know what happened in history, what philosophy is, so they can educate. They have to have a point of view. They can't just be against something; they have to offer an alternative. And they have to learn tactics; they have to have a methodology. We must adopt a libertarian municipalism in which people can gain power and form governments based on a community level. Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, summer 2K, interview with David Vanek, Harbinger Journal of Social Ecology [McCleary] Today I prefer the word communalism, by which I mean a libertarian ideology that, as I said, includes the best of the anarchist tradition as well as the best in Marx. I think neither Marxism nor anarchism alone is adequate for our times: a great deal in both no longer applies to today's world. We have to go beyond the economism of Marx and beyond the individualism that is sometimes latent, sometimes explicit in anarchism. Marx's, Proudhon's, and Bakunin's ideas were formed in the nineteenth century. We need a left libertarian ideology for our own time, not for the days of the Russian and Spanish Revolutions. The overriding problem is to change the structure of society so that people gain power. The best arena to do that is the municipality — the city, town, and village — where we have an opportunity to create a face-to-face democracy. We can transform local government into popular assemblies where people can discuss and make decisions about the economy and society in which they live. When we get power at the neighborhood level in a town or city, we can confederate all the assemblies and then confederate those towns and cities into a popular government — not a state (which is an instrument of class rule and exploitation), but a government, where the people have the power. This is what I call communalism in a practical sense. It should not be confused with communitarianism, which refers to small initiatory projects like a "people's" food cooperative, garage, printing press — projects that often become capitalistic when they don't fall apart or succumb to competition by other enterprises. People will never achieve this kind of face-to-face democratic society spontaneously. A serious, committed movement is necessary to fight for it. And to build that movement, radical leftists need to develop an organization — one that is controlled from the base, so that we don't produce another Bolshevik Party. It has to be formed slowly on a local basis, it has to be confederally organized, and together with popular assemblies, it will build up an opposition to the existing power, the state and class rule. I call this approach libertarian municipalism. 109 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 110 of 216 Bad Shit Gets Fixed Confederations must be formed that give power to the individual. Only then can universal problems be solved Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, summer 2K, interview with David Vanek, Harbinger Journal of Social Ecology [McCleary] That's absolutely untrue — the aim of confederating the popular assemblies is basic to libertarian municipalism. My writings on the subject always include a call for confederation. From the local confederations should come regional confederations, and then national or continental confederations. But the power must always reside in the popular assemblies, and the final decisions must always come from below, that is, from assemblies of the people. (I should add that anyone who does not attend an assembly is simply saying, "I am not a citizen, I don't care." So if they don't care to attend, let them live with the decisions of assemblies.) Municipalities form the locus, the arena of a truly political life, but no municipality can be "autonomous." Autonomy is a myth — you can't achieve it, because each person depends on everyone else, and each municipality depends on all the others. We all depend on each other, just as our individual egos are formed to a vast degree by culture, not born all of a sudden or self-formed somehow, the way Max Stirner suggested. I also reject the vicious totalitarian notion of total dependence upon the state. I am for interdependence among self-governing people in assemblies. Democracy is something that anarchism often seems to have problems with. This is one area in which I differ with authentic anarchists, who emphasize an individual ego and the fulfillment of its desires as the overriding consideration. Many anarchists reject democracy as the "tyranny" of the majority over the minority. They think that when a community makes decisions by majority vote, it violates the "autonomy" of the egos of the individuals who voted in the minority. They seem to think that somehow those who voted against a decision, because they are "autonomous," shouldn't have to follow it. I think that that idea is naive at best and a prescription for chaos at worst. Decisions, once made, have to be binding. Of course minorities should always have the right to object to majority decisions and to freely voice their own views. Majorities have no right to try to prevent a minority from voicing its views and trying to win majority support for them. The question is, what is the fairest way to make community wide decisions? I think majority voting is not only the fairest but the only viable way for a face-to-face democratic society to function, and that decisions made by majority vote should be binding on all the members of the community, whether they voted in favor of a measure or against it. 110 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 111 of 216 Bad Shit Gets Fixed We must reject any ideology that tries to subjugate humans to the power of nature Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p13 [McCleary] We must operate outside of the social status quo. Only then can power be brought to the powerless Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p15 [McCleary] 111 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 112 of 216 Bad Shit Gets Fixed We must develop structures that completely recreate how we address human and natural development Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p18 [McCleary] Society must be brought back into ecology. This is the only way to solve all ecological issues Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p24 [McCleary] 112 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 113 of 216 Bad Shit Gets Fixed We must deeply examine the relationship between society and nature. In doing so, we can see how society effects nature in positive and negative ways, and eventually root out the negative. Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p24-25 [McCleary] 113 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 114 of 216 Bad Shit Gets Fixed Only by embracing the “first nature” and creating an ecologically oriented society can we act against the domination and exploitation the affirmative perpetuates by furthering the “second nature” that threatens to tear down the planet. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 33-4 We need to understand that the human species has evolved as a remarkably creative and social life-form that is organized to create a place for itself in the natural world, not only to adapt to the rest of nature. The human species, its different societies, and its enormous powers to alter the environment were not invented by a group of ideologues called "humanists" who decided that nature was “made" to serve humanity and its needs. Humanity’s distinct powers have emerged out of eons of evolutionary development and out of centuries of cultural development. These remarkable powers present us, however, with an enormous moral responsibility. We can contribute to the diversity, fecundity, and richness of the natural world - what I call "first nature" - more consciously, perhaps, than any other animal. Or, our societies -"second nature" - can exploit the whole web of life and tear down the planet in a rapacious, cancerous manner. The future that awaits the world of life ultimately depends upon what kind of society or "second nature" we create. This probably affects, more than any other single factor, how we interact with and intervene in biological or "first nature" And make no mistake about it, the future of "first nature," the primary concern of conservationists, is dependent on the results of this interaction. The central problem we face today is that the social evolution of "second nature" has taken a wrong turn. Society is poisoned. It has been poisoned 'for thousands of years, from before the Bronze Age. It has been warped by rule by elders, by patriarchy, by warriors, by hierarchies of all sorts which have led new to the current situation of a world threatened by competitive, nuclear-armed, nation-states and a phenomenally destructive corporate capitalist system in the West and an equally ecologically destructive, though now crumbling, bureaucratic state capitalist system in the East. We need to create an ecologically oriented society out of the present anti-ecological one. lf we can change the direction of our civilization’s social evolution, human beings can new in the creation of a truly “free nature,” where all of our human traits – intellectual communicative, and social – are placed at the service of natural evolution to consciously increase biotic diversity, diminish suffering, foster the further evolution of new and ecologically valuable life-forms, and reduce the impact of disastrous accidents or the harsh effects of harmful change. Our species, gifted by the creativity of natural evolution itself, could play the role of nature rendered self conscious. 114 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 115 of 216 Bad Shit Gets Fixed Restructuring of society starts in places like this debate round. If we continue to challenge the authority of the state and corporate apex, we can construct a society of balanced communities between humanity and nature. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 100-1 Over the last few decades, demands for local community control have yielded a multitude of block associations, tenants' groups, alternative institutions, neighborhood alliances and multiracial citizen action groups. The town meeting, or citizens assembly, initially a New England institution, is becoming a byword in regions of the United States that have no shared tradition with the Northeast. Community action groups have also begun to enter into local politics, a terrain that was once the exclusive preserve of elite party machines. They are doing this on s scale that is beginning to affect municipal policymaking. Grassroots politics, specifically popular municipal politics, is becoming an integral part of U.S. politics as a whole. While it has yet to find a coherent voice and a clear sense of direction, I hope it is here to stay and will work its way, however confusedly, into the real world of the political landscape. Put bluntly, a latent duel power must emerge in which the local base of society begins to challenge the authority of its seemingly invulnerable state and corporate apex. I think we can develop such a tendency in North America today. I think it possible – if a highly conscious, well-organized, and programmatically coherent libertarian municipalist movement develops in the next decade – for the people to reconstruct society along lines that could foster a balanced, well-rounded, and harmonious community of interests among each other and between humanity and nature. Such an approach is not a utopian dream; it is an urgently needed strategy for our own time. Bemuse of automation, the flight of capital and the emerging global division of labor, a number of U.S. cities and towns have been transformed in the eyes of corporate and government elites from sites for maintaining essential "human resources" into a dumping ground for superfluous "human waste" To varying degrees, cities like New York, Detroit, and St. Louis have been set adrift by the corporations and the state. They have been abandoned to their squalor and to a leprous process of decay. Not surprisingly, given our country’s racist history, people of color comprise residential majorities in many of these cities. Owing to the decline of municipal services in these largely abandoned cities, a vacuum is developing between the traditional institutions that managed the city and the urban population itself. Understaffed and underfunded municipal agencies can no longer pretend to adequately meet such basic needs as sanitation. education, health, and public safety. An eerie municipal “no man’s land” is emerging between the traditional, decaying institutional apparatus of these cities and the people it professes to serve. Simple solutions such as the plan do not solve environmental problems. Our fundamental relationship with the environment must be changed. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 7 It should come as no surprise then that this same philosophical conflict splits the ranks of today’s political activists who seek to reshape our society’s relations with the rest of the natural world along more ecological lines. In his recent book, Green Political Thought, English author Andrew Dobson draws an important distinction between “light green” reform environmentalism and “dark green” radical ecologism. According to Dobson, conventional environmentalism represents an instrumental, imperial approach to nature that argues that our environmental problems, however serious, “can be solved without fundamental changes in present values or patterns of production and consumption." Radical ecologism, in contrast, raises the ethical ideal of a beloved eco-community and "argues that care for the environment…Presupposes radical changes in our relationship with it, and in our mode of social and political life." 115 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 116 of 216 In Between Bad and Epic By looking at the environment as a tool for human purposes, we erase the notion that non-human life has intrinsic value. This allows environmental devastation to occur. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 18 Philosophically, Foreman’s vision of "big Wilderness" grows directly out of the most basic principles of deep ecology, which, as articulated by Naess and Sessions, affirms that "the well-being and flourishing" of non-human life and its habitat has “intrinsic value” and should be respected by human beings “independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.” Indeed, most deep ecologists see a commitment to Big Wilderness as a litmus test of whether someone has firmly adopted a nonanthropocentric ecological ethic that transcends mere environmental pragmatism and enlightened human self-interest. An ecological society is key to breaking up imperialist notions of one human community advancing over another. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 24 A more unified, more holistic, more integrated radical ecology movement may well be emerging. If so, this movement will be neither anthropocentric nor misanthropic. It will seek both to expand wilderness and create a humane and ecological society. Its vision will balance creative human intervention in nature with humble and caring restraint. Furthermore, this movement will understand and accept ecological and ethical limits to global economic and population growth while seeking sustainable and just development of all societies. It will also seek to break up the modern imperialist system that ravages one human community to advance the interests of another and, on a more personal level, it will foster the (re)emergence of an ecological sensibility that can ground our lives in a heartfelt sense of connection and communion with the entire world of life. 116 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 117 of 216 Deep Ecology Bad: Deep Ecology’s biocentric view of the world leads to unethical population controls. Murray Bookchin, political and social philosopher, and Dave Foreman, environmentalist and co-founder of Earth First!, Introduction by Steve Chase, editor, Forward by David Levine, 1991, Defending the Earth: A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman, pg. 20 While never advocating active genocide, more than a few deep ecology activists have seriously talked of "letting nature take its course" in depopulating the Earth and have openly counseled people to do nothing to avert such "natural" disasters as famine or epidemic disease. More than one prominent deep ecologist has even advocated active measures such as militarily closing the U.S.-Mexican border to stem the tide of immigrants from Latin America, whom Ed Abbey once described as "morally-cultural1y-generica1ly" inferior people.°° All of this has led to a number of feminist and anti-racist critiques of such positions within the ecology movement by such ecological writers as Marti Kheel, Ynestra King, Janet Biehl, Carl Anthony, and the many authors of We Speak For Ourselves: Social Justice, Race, and Environment.” Turn: Deep ecological mindsets actually create a dichotomy between humans and nature for which they claim to solve Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p22 [McCleary] 117 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 118 of 216 Deep Ecology Bad Deep ecology is just a liberal environmentalist lie used to mask the fact that capitalist corporations are the root cause of ecological problems. Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p23-24 [McCleary] 118 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 119 of 216 Deep Ecology Bad Biocentrism and deep ecology warp minds to believe that humans need to be reduced and put on the same level as all of nature. It is this reduction that justifies any kind of human extinction in order to create a “biocentric democracy.” Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p11-12 [McCleary] 119 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 120 of 216 Deep Ecology Bad Biocentric mindsets prevent us from assessing the problems of situations and turn humans into a plague of a species determined to kill all other life Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p21-22 [McCleary] 120 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 121 of 216 Deep Ecology Bad Framing technology as evil pits humanity in a battle against nature in which people will always be dehumanized as servants of nature’s will Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p21 [McCleary] Views of biocentrism makes humans subjugate themselves to the domination of nature and the domination of human by human. Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p32 [McCleary] 121 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 122 of 216 Deep Ecology Bad The discourse of domination around biocentrism is counterproductive and reduces the biocentric ideologies to a tool used to subjugate humans to the domination of nature. Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, p33 [McCleary] 122 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 123 of 216 A2: Social Ecology is anthropocentric Murray Bookchin, founder, institute of social ecology, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Greener Future, 1990, 31 [McCleary] 123 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 124 of 216 A2: Abandoning Science Is Bad We cannot abandon science, but we must abandon technological thinking. Murray Bookchin, founder for the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 20 The new consciousness and sensibility cannot be poetic alone; they must also be scientific. Indeed, there is a level at which our consciousness must be neither poetry nor science, but a transcendence of both into a new realm of theory and practice, an artfulness that combines fancy with reason, imagination with logic, vision with technique. We cannot shed our scientific heritage without returning to a rudimentary technology, with its shackles of material insecurity, toil, and renunciation. And we cannot allow ourselves to be imprisoned within a mechanistic outlook and a dehumanizing technology—with its shackles of alienation, competition, and a brute denial of humanity’s potentialities. Poetry and imagination must be integrated with science and technology, for we have evolved beyond an innocence that can be nourished exclusively by myths and dreams. We must work within nature, neither commanding it nor submitting to it. Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 25 To assume that science commands this vast nexus of organic and inorganic interrelationships in all its details is worse than arrogance: it is sheer stupidity. If unity in diversity forms one of the cardinal tenets of ecology, the wealth of biota that exists in a single acre of soil leads us to still another basic ecological tenet: the need to allow for a high degree of natural spontaneity. The compelling dictum, “respect for nature,” has concrete implications. To assume that our knowledge of this complex, richly textured, and perpetually changing natural kaleidoscope of life- forms lends itself to a degree of “mastery” that allows us free rein in manipulating the biosphere is sheer foolishness. Thus, a considerable amount of leeway must be permitted for natural spontaneity—for the diverse biological forces that yield a variegated ecological situation. “Working with nature” requires that we foster the biotic variety that emerges from a spontaneous development of natural phenomena. I hardly mean that we must surrender ourselves to a mythical “Nature” that is beyond all human comprehension and intervention, a Nature that demands human awe and subservience. Perhaps the most obvious conclusion we can draw from these ecological tenets is Charles Elton’s sensitive observation: “The world’s future has to be managed, but this management would not be just like a game of chess— {butj more Eke steering a boat.” What ecology, both natural and social, can hope to teach us is the way to find the current and understand the direction of the stream. 124 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 125 of 216 A2: Uniformity Ecosystems depend on unity of diversity; uniformity leads to collapse. Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 20-21 Actually, such a totalitarian concept of “wholeness” stands sharply at odds with what ecologists denote by the term. In addition to comprehending its heightened awareness of form and structure, we now come to a very important tenet of ecology: ecological wholeness is not an immutable homogeneity but rather the very opposite—a dynamic unity of diversity. In nature, balance and harmony are achieved by ever-changing differentiation, by ever-expanding diversity. Ecological stability, in effect, is a function not of simplicity and homogeneity but of complexity and variety. The capacity of an ecosystem to retain its integrity depends not on the uniformity of the environment but on its diversity. A striking example of this tenet can be drawn from experiences with ecological strategies for cultivating food. Farmers have repeatedly met with disastrous results because of the conventional emphasis on single- crop approaches to agriculture or monoculture, to use a widely accepted term for those endless wheat and corn fields that extend to the horizon in many parts of the world. Without the mixed crops that normally provide both the countervailing forces and mutualistic support that come with mixed populations of plants and animals, the entire agricultural situation in an area has been known to collapse. Benign insects become pests because their natural controls, including birds and small mammals, have been removed. The soil, lacking earthworms, nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and green manure in sufficient quantities, is reduced to mere sand—a mineral medium for absorbing enormous quantities of inorganic nitrogen salts, which were originally supplied more cyclically and timed more appropriately for crop growth in the ecosystem. In reckless disregard for the complexity of nature and for the subtle requirements of plant and animal life, the agricultural situation is crudely simplified; its needs must now be satisfied by highly soluble synthetic fertilizers that percolate into drinking water and by dangerous pesticides that remain as residues in food. A high standard of food cultivation that was once achieved by diversity of crops and animals, one that was free of lasting toxic agents and probably more healthful nutritionally, is now barely approximated by single crops whose main supports are toxic chemicals and highly simple nutrients. 125 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 126 of 216 A2: Hierarchy Inevitable The notion of domination of nature is not inevitable or universal – it emerged with social hierarchy. Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 43 The notion that man is destined to dominate nature is by no means a universal feature of human culture. If anything, this notion is almost completely alien to the outlook of so- called primitive or preliterate communities. I cannot emphasize too strongly that the concept emerged very gradually from a broader social development: the increasing domination of human by human. The breakdown of primordial equality into hierarchical systems of inequality, the disintegration of early kinship groups into social classes, the dissolution of tribal communities into the city, and finally the usurpation of social administration by the State—all profoundly altered not only social life but also the attitude of people toward each other, humanity’s vision of itself, and ultimately its attitude toward the natural world. In many ways, we are still agonized by the problems that emerged with these sweeping changes. Perhaps only by examining the attitudes of certain preliterate peoples can we gauge the extent to which domination shapes the most intimate thoughts and the most minute actions of the individual today. 126 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 127 of 216 Cap Turns Bad Shit Into Epic Shit, Creating Entirely New Shit Capitalism has made true freedom elusive because individuals are blinded by their “needs” and unable to exercise personal autonomy. Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 262 In addition to subverting the integrity of the human community, capitalism has tainted the classical notion of “living well” by fostering an irrational dread of material scarcity. By establishing quantitative criteria for the “good life,” it has dissolved the ethical implications of “limit.” This ethical lacuna raises a specifically technical problematic for our time. In equating “living well” with living affluently, capitalism has made it extremely difficult to demonstrate that freedom is more closely identified with personal autonomy than with affluence, with empowerment over life than with empowerment over things, with the emotional security that derives from a nourishing community life than with a material security that derives from the myth of a nature dominated by an all-mastering technology. A radical social ecology cannot close its eyes to this new technological problematic. Over the past two centuries, almost every serious movement for social change has been confronted with the need to demonstrate that technics, “hard” or “soft,” can more than meet the material needs of humanity without placing arbitrary limits upon a modestly sensible consumption of goods. The terms of the “black redistribution” have been historically altered: we are faced with problems not of disaccumulation but of rational systems of production. Post-scarcity, as I have emphasized in earlier works, does not mean mindless affluence; rather, it means a sufficiency of technical development that leaves individuals free to select their needs autonomously and to obtain the means to satisfy them. The existing technics of the western world—in principle, a technics that can be applied to the world at large—can render more than a sufficiency of goods to meet everyone’s reasonable needs. Fortunately, an ample literature has already appeared to demonstrate that no one need be denied adequate food, clothing, shelter, and a11 the amenities of life.* The astringent arguments for “limits to growth” and the “life-boat ethic” so prevalent today have been reared largely on specious data and a cunning adaption of resource problems. Capitalism produces a “fetishization of needs” that removes needs from rational cognition and control. Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 68 The issue of scarcity is not merely a matter of quantity or even of kind; it can also be a socially contradictory hypostatization of need as such. Just as capitalism leads to production for the sake of production so too it leads to consumption for the sake of consumption. The great bourgeois maxim, “grow or die,” has its counterpart in “buy or die.” And just as the production of commodities is no longer related to their function as use-values, as objects of real utility, so wants are no longer related to humanity’s sense of its real needs. Both commodities and needs acquire a blind life of their own; they assume a fetishized form, an irrational dimension, that seems to determine the destiny of the people who produce and consume them. Marx’s famous notion of the “fetishization of commodities” finds its parallel in a “fetishization of needs.” Production and consumption, in effect, acquire superhuman qualities that are no longer related to technical development and the subject’s rational control of the conditions of existence. They are governed instead by an ubiquitous market, by a universal competition not only between commodities but also between the creation of needs—a competition that removes commodities and needs from rational cognition and personal control. 127 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 128 of 216 Cap Turns Bad Shit Into Epic Shit, Creating Entirely New Shit Individuals must choose their “needs” in qualitative terms; this is the only way to recover lost “freedom of choice.” Murray Bookchin, founder of the Institute for Social Ecology, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, 1981, Cheshire Books, Palo Alto, California, pg. 68 To break the grip of the “fetishization of needs,” to dispel it, is to recover the freedom of choice, a project that is fled to the freedom of the self to choose. The words freedom and choice must be emphasized: they exist conjointly and are tied to the ideal of the autonomous individual who is possible only in a free society. Although a hunter-gatherer community may be free from the needs that beleaguer us, it must still answer to very strict material imperatives. Such freedom as it has is the product not of choice but of limited means of life. What makes it “free” are the very limitations of its tool-kit, not an expansive knowledge of the material world. In a truly free society, however, needs would be formed by consciousness and by choice, not simply by environment and tool-kits. The affluence of a free society would be transformed from a wealth of things into a wealth of culture and individual creativity. Hence, want would depend not only on technological development but also on the cultural context in which it is formed. Nature’s “stinginess” and technology’s level of development would be important, but only as secondary factors in defining scarcity and need. The problems of needs and scarcity, in short, must be seen as a problem of selectivity—of choice. A world in which needs compete with needs just as commodities compete with commodities is the warped realm of a fetishized, limitless world of consumption. This world of limitless needs has been developed by the immense armamentarium of advertising, the mass media, and the grotesque trivialization of daily life, with its steady disengagement of the individual from any authentic contact with history. Although choice presupposes a sufficiency in the means of life, it does not imply the existence of a mindless abundance of goods that smothers the individual’s capacity to select use-values rationally, to define his or her needs in terms of qualitative, ecological, humanistic, indeed, philosophical criteria. Rational choice presupposes not only a sufficiency in the means of life with minimal labor to acquire them; it presupposes above all a rational society. Freedom from scarcity, or post-scarcity, must be seen in this light if it is to have any libratory meaning. The concept presupposes that individuals have the material possibility of choosing what they need—not only a sufficiency of available goods from which to choose but a transformation of work, both qualitatively and quantitatively. But none of these achievements is adequate to the idea of post-scarcity if the individual does not have the autonomy, moral insight, and wisdom to choose rationally. Consumerism and mere abundance are mindless. 128 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 129 of 216 Kritik Is Verb An alternative can only be defined in its method of kritiking – the means of kritiking is the alternative. Subcomandante Marcos, Revolutionary/Leader in EZLN Movement, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 5-6 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 Does the dialogue you propose aim to create new mechanisms of popular participation in decision-making, or do you support government decisions you consider necessary for the country? Dialogue means simply agreeing rules for the dispute between us to shift to another terrain. The economic system is not on the table foe discussion. It’s the way we’re going to discuss it that is at issue. This is something Vicente Fox needs to understand. We ace not going to become ‘Foxistas’ at that sable. What the table has to achieve is to allow us to emerge with dignity so that neither I nor anyone else has to go back and don all that military paraphernalia again. The challenge before us is to construct not only the table, but also our interlocutor. We need to make a statesman, not a marketing product designed by image consultants, out of him. It won’t be easy. War was easier. But in war much more becomes irremediable. In politics, remedies can always be found. Your attire is a little strange: a threadbare scarf tied at she neck and a cap that’s falling apart. But you are also carrying a torch, which you don’t need here, a communications device which looks very sophisticated, condo watch on each wrist. Are they symbols? What does all this mean? The torch is because we have been put into a lightless pit and the radio is for my image consultants to dictate my answers to questions from journalists. No. More seriously: this is a walkie-talkie which allows me to communicate with security and with our people in the jungle in case there is a problem. We have received several death threats-The scarf was red and was new when we took San Cristobal de las Casas seven years ago. And the cap is the one I had when I arrived in the Lacandon jungle eighteen years ago. I arrived in that jungle with one watch and the other dates from when the ceasefire began. When the two times coincide it will mean that Zapatismo is finished as an army and that another stage, another watch and another time has started. How do you see the Colombian guerrillas and the armed conflict of our country? From here I see very little. Just what the media filter through: the current process of dialogue and negotiation, and its difficulties. So far as I can tell, its a very traditional kind of dialogue—it’s not innovative. Both sides are simultaneously sitting at the table and bringing their military forces into play to gain an advantage at the table. Or vice versa, because we don’t know what each of them has in mind. Perhaps the table offers advantages for military confrontations. We don’t pay much attention to the accusations of links to drug trafficking because it wouldn’t be the first time such charges are made and then they sum out not to be true. We give the Colombians the benefit of the doubt. We don’t label them good or bad, but we do keep our distance from them, as we do with other armed groups in Mexico, in so far as we consider it unethical to approve of any measures to secure the victory of the revolution. Including, for example, kidnapping civilians. The seizure of power does not justify a revolutionary organization in taking any action that it pleases. We do nor believe that the end justifies the means. Ultimately, we believe that the means are the end. We define our goal by the way we choose the means of struggling for it. In that sense, the value we give to our word, so honesty and sincerity, is great, although we occasionally sin out of naiveté. For example, on s January i994, before attacking the Army, we announced shat we were going to attack. They didn’t believe us. Sometimes this yields results and sometimes it doesn’t. But it satisfies us that, as an organization, we see creating an identity as we go along. 129 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 130 of 216 Kritik Is Verb The ultimate goal of a criticism is to reveal injustices, not to enact solutions that extend beyond the scope of what it represents. Subcomandante Marcos, Revolutionary/Leader in the EZLN Movement, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 7-8 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 Homosexuals, for example, were suspect as potential traitors, elements harmful to the socialist movement and state. While the indigenous peoples were viewed as a backward sector preventing the forces of production - - blah, blah, blah. So what was required was to clean out these elements, imprisoning or re-educating some, and assimilating others into the process of production, to transform them into skilled labor— proletarians, to put it in those terms. Guerrillas normally speak in the name of majorities. it seems surprising that you speak in the sense of minorities, when you could do so in the name of the poor or exploited of Mexico as a whole. Why do you do this? Every vanguard imagines itself to be representative of the majority. We not only think that is false in our case, but that even in the best of cases it is little more than wishful thinking, and in the worst cases an outright usurpation. The moment social forces come into play, it becomes clear that the vanguard is not such a vanguard and that those it represents do not recognize themselves in it. The EZLN, in renouncing any claim to be a vanguard, is recognizing its real horizon. To believe that we can speak on behalf of those beyond ourselves is political masturbation. In some cases it is not even that, because there is no pleasure in this onanism—at most, that of pamphlets read only by those who produce them. We are trying to be honest with ourselves and some might say that this is a matter of human decency. No. We could even be cynical and say that the honest admission that we only represent the indigenous Zapatista communities of one region of the Mexican South-East has paid off. But our discourse has reached the ears of many more people than those we represent. This is the point we have reached. That’s all. In the speeches we made in the course of our march to the capital, we told people—and ourselves—that we could not and should not try to lead the struggles we encountered on our journey, or fly the flag for them. We had imagined that those below would not be slow to show themselves, with so many injustices, so many complaints, so many wounds. . In our minds we had formed the image that our march would be a kind of plough, turning the soil so that all this could rise from the ground. We had to be honest and tell people that we had not come to lead anything of what might emerge. We came to release a demand, that could unleash others. But that’s another story. Were the speeches you gave along the route improvised from town to town until the address in Mexico City, or did you design them from the outset as a sequence, such that the last was not necessarily the strongest? Look, there is an official version and a real version. The official story is that we saw at each stop what we had to do. The real story is that we wove this discourse together over the course of the last seven years. A moment arrived when the Zapatismo of the EZLN was overtaken by many developments. Today we are not expressing what we were before 1994, or in the first days of 1994 when we were fighting; we are acting on a series of moral commitments we made in the last seven years. In the end we didn’t manage to plough the land, as we had hoped. But the mere act of our waiting on it was enough to bring all these buried feelings to the surface. In every town square, we told people: ‘We have not come to lead you, we have not come to tell you what to do, but to ask for your help’. Even so, we received during our march dockets of complaints going back to the time before the Mexican Revolution, given to us in the hope that finally someone might resolve the problem. If we could sum up the die. course of the Zapatista march to date, it would he: ‘No one is going to do it for us.’ The forms of organization, and the tasks of politics, need to be changed for that transformation to be possible. When we say ‘no’ to leaders, we are also saying ‘no’ to ourselves 130 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 131 of 216 Kritik Is Verb Kritiking is a process that creates an end in and of itself. Bernard Cassen , Revolutionary/Founder ATTAC, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 173 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 The World Social Forum is not an entity, but a process—a snowballing momentum that is bringing together forces which, though developing in the same direction, were without mutual contact and often completely unaware of each other. A global constellation is coming into being that is beginning to think along the same lines, to share its strategic concepts, to link common problems together, to forge the chains of a new solidarity. All this is now moving with astonishing speed. There has just been an Asian Social Forum in India, an area with which we hitherto had virtually no contact. In Brazil, the government’s agenda is set by all the problems identified at Porto Alegre. What will Lula do about the enormous debt that is crushing the country? He has said, of course, that Brazil will be meticulous in meeting its obligations. But will it actually be able to? I believe that a moment of truth is arriving in Argentina and Brazil, which could create the conditions for a radical, worldwide revision of the neoliberal order. If the President of Brazil were to say, ‘we are no longer going to pauperize our citizens to pay foreign bond-holders’, and Argentina and other Latin American countries followed him, what would happen? Wall Street could do very little about it, since as a leading banker has admitted privately, ‘Brazil is too big to fail’. The banks would have little alternative but to ‘save the furniture’, and accept losses of 30 or 40 per cent rather than write off 100 per cent of their investments, As for France, Chirac got less than a fifth of the electorate in the first round of the Presidential elections, and the Right that is now in power only just over a third. The political base of the new regime is very, very weak. The government is already extremely nervous, as it sees signs of social tension mounting, particularly about pensions. It is not looking for a confrontation. Growth is slowing to a crawl, the Stability Pact is strangling consumption, fixed costs are rising. If Chirac tries to increase taxes to cover the deficit, there will be an outcry at his betrayal, after so many electoral promises not to; if he tries to slash public expenditure, he will be heading once again for a show-down in the streets- The Right is caught in this dilemma, and its logic is explosive. What we are seeing today is a movement that, for the first time, is adopting the same perspectives, huffing at the same targets, and developing all over the world, linking local struggles to global objectives. History has accelerated so rapidly in the last ten or fifteen years that there is no reason to think it will stabilize now. I cannot help feeling that what we have achieved together so far will have some effect on what is to come. 131 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 132 of 216 Kritik Is Verb The alternative is a rejection of the neoliberal order. Only by rejecting and moving past it can we create space for an international alternative to be enacted. Our act of criticism is the alternative. Emir Sader, Emir Sader is Brazilian, coordinator of the Laboratory of Public Policies of the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, and a contributor to the IRC Americas Program., A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 259 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 The proliferation of alternative municipal governments and NGOs is the best example of this. The project of building an alternative to capitalism was abandoned in favour of resistance from within—opposition to neoliberalism rather than to the overall system. ‘Anti-totalitarianism’ now mutated into an antagonism towards any overarching analysis—any attempt to see historical processes as a whole. These would inevitably result in reductive programmes with the State as their monolithic agent. Pluralist democracy demanded more ‘complex’ diagnoses, irreducible to the ‘economism’ attributed to (actually existing) Marxism, and would therefore renounce ‘grand narratives’. It was in this context that local and sectoral forms of resistance—ecological, feminist, ethnic, human rights, municipal democracy—combined to form the movement that, together with union organizations and anti- WTO groups, would surface so explosively in Seattle in November 1999. If they represent an advance, in creating new spaces in which opposition forces can come together, many of them also implicitly renounce any attempt to construct an alternative society: as if our indefinite confinement within the limits of capitalism and liberal democracy was accepted as fact. The Social Forum is a unique meeting place for anti-systemic forces to gather at a world level. It is unprecedented both in its diversity— bringing together not only parties and political currents but social movements, NGOs, civil-rights groups, unions—and in its own non- state, non-partisan character It proposes to formulate global alternatives to current capitalist practices, and strategies for their implementation. In this sense, by its very existence the Forum creates a space in which the anti-neoliberal struggle can escape the narrow limits of the globalization versus nation-state binary, in which its opponents seek to imprison it. Basic to the Forum is the idea that alternatives to neoliberalism need to move beyond it, and therefore have to operate at the international level. The role of the nation-state in these proposals varies, but the common framework is an alternative globalization—not that of capital and the multinational corporations. Secondly, the Forums recreates the possibility of an alliance between radical forces in he periphery and those in the core—a connexion sundered by the triumph of neoliberalism and the fall of the USSR. 132 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 133 of 216 Kritik Is Verb The role of the ballot is an endorsement of critique. Our critique is not a thing, it is a process in which we, absent the ever oppressing state, engage in resistance and invent new modes of intervention. The Debate Community is uniquely posed to perform these actions. Brian Holmes, cultural theories, art critic, founder of Universete Tangente, wrote many works. 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 42-43 As supranational regions engulf ever-larger populations and the movemet1 across shifting borders becomes an ever-more common activity, geopoetics, is increasingly experienced in the flesh and in the imaginary, it is traced on the collective skin. This is when geopoetics becomes a vital activity, promise of liberation. How to interpret artworks and artistic-activist interventions so as t highlight the forms taken by the geopoetic imaginary? Through analytic work on the dynamics of form and the efficacy of symbolic ruptures, one can try to.approach the diagrammatic level where the cartography of sensatioti is reconfigured through experimentation. This level comes constantly into play whenever it is a matter of translating analysis back into intervention. Because of the transverse nature of global flows, it is possible to draw 011 the experiences of far away acts of resistance in the midst of one's own confrontations with power, both in its brute objective forms, and in its subtle in- teriorizations. The relation between the Argentine pot-banging cacerola: and the almost continuous urban mobilizations in Spain, from Februar 15, 2003, all the way up to the ouster of the mendacious and power-hungr\ Aznar government in March of 2004, is a large-scale example of this process of transfiguration. And this is the generative side of the contemporar continental drift. To sense the dynamics of resistance and creation across the interlinked world space is to start taking part in the solidarities and modes ot cooperation that have been emerging across the planet since the late 1990s. Just Doing It If you want to accomplish anything like this kind of research, don't expect much help from the existing institutions. Most are still busy adapting to the dictates of neoliberal management; and the best we could do for the first big round of meshworked critique was to hijack a few of their people and divert a few of their resources. What's more, the open windows that do exist are likely to close down with the neoconservative turn. Self-organized groups will have to generate a collective learning process about the effects of social atomization and economic subjugation-essentially, a new understanding of the forms of contemporary alienation-and they will have to explore the reactions to these trends, whether intensely negative (thc fascist and racist closure of formerly democratic societies) or positive and forward-looking (activist interventions, the invention of new modes of social self-management, cultural reorientations, ecologically viable forms ot development). Another goal of the critique is to raise the level of debate anti engagement in the cultural and artistic sectors-the vital media of social expression-where a narcissistic blindness to the violence of current conditions is still the norm. But the most important aim is to help relaunch the activist mobilizations that became so promising around the turn of the millennium . "Help" s the right word here, because there is no intellectual privilege n the activist domain. Activist-researchers can contribute to a short, middle, and long-term analysis of the crisis, by examining and inventing new modes of intervention at the micro-political scales where even the largest social 01oVem1t5 begin. Who can play this great game? Whoever is able to join or form a meshwork of independent researchers. What are the pieces, the terrains, the wagers and rules? Whichever ones your group finds most productive and ntagiou5. How does the game continue, when the ball goes out of your field? Through shared meetings in a meshwork of meshworks, through collective actions, images, projects, and publications. And most importantly, who wins? Whoever can provoke some effective resistance to the downward spiral of human coexistence at the outset of the 21st century. 133 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 134 of 216 Grassroots Solvency Only a grassroots movement which attempts to engage all groups has a chance to succeed, Chittaroopa Palit, Revolutionary/Leader in NBA Movement, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 82 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 So in May 2002, the NBA took the struggle to the glass-fronted banks and financial corporations in Mumbai, combining dialogue with coordinated mass protests. We compiled a list of serious financial irregularities in S. Kumars’ use of public money. The company got an ex-parte gagging order against the NBA, preventing us from organizing mass protests or puffing out ‘defamatory’ press releases. But die publicity stopped the dribble of public funding that was keeping the Maheshwar project alive. All construction work came to a halt and, 20 December 2002, the project’s ‘movable and immovable’ properties were impounded by one of the state financial institutions that had been backing it We learnt a lot about the structures and processes of globalization through these struggles—and about the need for global alliances from below, to confront it. But though international political factors—the character of the governments involved, the existence of able support groups in the North—play an important part, they cannot supplant the role of a mass movement struggling on the ground. Soon after the SPD government in Berlin refused a guarantee to Siemens for Maheshwar, it agreed to underwrite the company’s involvement in the Tehri dam in the Himalayas and the catastrophic Three Gorges Dam in China—both just as destructive as the Narmada project; but in neither instance were there strong mass struggles on the ground. We never thought, when we began the struggle against the Maheshwar project, that it would become such a full-fledged baffle against corporate globalization and privatization. One important outcome was that we found allies in other women’s groups, trade unions and left parties, who had not participated as vigorously in our earlier protests. 134 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 135 of 216 Grassroots Solvency Only a grassroots, non-violent approach can solve by arousing public conscious. Also, deciding how to act is, in and of itself, a form of criticism and action. Chittaroopa Palit, Revolutionary/Leader in NBA Movement, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 86-88 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 The rhythm of activism is also dictated by the pattern of the seasons. Every monsoon, as the people of the Valley face the rising waters, we hold a mass meeting. People from the various villages affected will come together for a whole day. sometimes two, to discuss the situation. How much submergence will take place, and how might it best be confronted? If the dam wall has been increased over the last year, what are the implications? What forms of resistance are most appropriate for each satyagraha? How should the logistics of wood, water, grain and transport be managed, in the context of the rising reservoir? Most of the time, we are fighting with our backs against the wall and we often have only a certain number of options to choose from—state officials to confront, buildings to occupy, sympathetic supporters to call on, and so forth. So the range of disagreement is limited and, in practice, there is a great deal of consensus about these decisions. After each set of meetings we hold a collective consultation, in which representatives from the different regions come together to work out broader strategies for calling attention to the distress and struggle of the Valley people. Further discussion takes place on the Coordination Committee, the samanvaya samiti, comprised of intellectuals and activists from outside the movement who contribute to forging wider links. Ground-level resistance needs to be supported by legal initiatives and media campaigns, and by alliances at national and international levels. The NBA’s attempt to question the development paradigm, for example, has involved taking the debate to the Indian middle classes, who are among the strongest supporters of the Narmada Valley project. We currently have some Go urban support centers, in cities all over India. There have been periods over the last decade when these structures have broken down or fallen into disuse; but it is clear to us that, without widespread consultation at many levels, both inside and outside the movement, sustained collective action would be impossible. Often, as on the question of what general course to take after the Supreme Court judgment, decisions are swift, consensual and to the point—reactions in other tribal areas were very similar, in that instance. But sometimes we cannot reach a consensus. For example, one senior activist wanted to respond to that crushing final verdict by ‘immersion’, or jal samarpan—where one remains motionless in the face of the incoming waters, up to death. This was hotly debated and opposed among the Valley people and their supporters—a stance that has so far prevented such a tactic from being deployed. In good times, we don’t require formal structures, elected representatives, articulated organizational principles. But in times of crisis or vacuum, when everything else has collapsed, we see the need for them. Can you describe some of your methods of struggle? How central is nonviolence to NBA philosophy—and how frustrating has this been, in the face of state repression? The main forms of mass struggle in the Valley have been non-violent direct actions—marches, satyagraha and civil disobedience. In Sardar Sarovar, for example, in the aftermath of Ferkuwa, hundreds of villages refused to allow any government official to enter. In Maheshwar, those affected by the dam have repeatedly occupied the site in the face of police repression. Other forms of satyagraha have involved people staying in their villages despite imminent submergence, or indefinite fasting to arouse the public conscience. State repression and indifference have often left us feeling frustrated and helpless, but I don’t see that as a failure of our tactics. In an increasingly globalised world, we have to search for richer and more compelling strategies; but that does not mean compromising on the principle of non-violence, which remains fundamental for the NBA. If we fight for the inalienable right to life, and insist that such concerns should form the basis for assessing any development paradigm, how can we resort to violence? There have been a few unplanned incidents involving self-defense that cannot count. 135 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 136 of 216 Grassroots Solvency We must have a collective network of specific struggles against the regime of neoliberalism. All who resist are equals engaging in the alternative of community. David Graeber, Revolutionary/ Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 203-204 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 The phrase ‘globalization movement’, though, is really quite apropos. If one takes globalization to mean the effacement of borders and the free movement of people, possessions and ideas, then it’s pretty clear that not only is the movement itself a product of globalization, but the majority of groups involved in it—the most radical ones in particular—are far more supportive of globalization in general than is the IMP or WTO. It was an international network called People’s Global Action, for example, that put out the first summons for planet-wide days of action auth as Jr8 and N3o—the latter the original call for protest against the 1999 WTO meetings in Seattle. And PGA in turn owes its origins to the famous International Encounter for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, which took place knee-deep in the jungle mud of rainy-season Chiapas, in August 1996; and was itself initiated, as Subcomandante Marcos put it, ‘by all the rebels around the world’. People from over 50 countries came streaming into the Zapatista-held village of La Realidad. The vision for an ‘intercontinental network of resistance’ was laid out in the Second Declaration of La Realidad: ‘We declare that we will make a collective network of all our particular struggles and resistances, an intercontinental network of resistance against neoliberalism, an intercontinental network of resistance for humanity’: Let it be a network of voices that resist the war Power wages on them. A network of voices that not only speak, but also struggle and resist for humanity and against neoliberalism A network that covers the five continents and helps to resist the death that Power promises us. This, the Declaration made clear, was ‘not an organizing structure; it has no central head or decision maker; it has no central command or hierarcities. We are the network, all of us who resist’ The following year, European Zapatista supporters in the Ya Basta! groups organized a second encuentro in Spain, where the idea of the network process was taken forward: PGA was born at a meeting in Geneva in February r998. From the start, it included not only anarchist groups and radical trade unions in Spain, Britain and Germany, but a Gandhian socialist farmers’ league in India (the KRRS), associations of Indonesian and Sri Lankan fisherfolk, the Argentinian teachers’ union, indigenous groups such as the Maori of New Zealand and Runs of Ecuador, the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement, a network made up of communities founded by escaped slaves in South and Central America-and any number of others. For a longtime, North America was scarcely represented, save for the Canadian Postal Workers’ Union—which acted as PGA’s main communications hub, until it was largely replaced by the internet and a Montreal-based anarchist group called CLAC. If the movement’s origins are internationalist so are its demands. The three-plank programme of Ya Basta! in Italy, for instance, calls for a universally guaranteed ‘basic income’, global citizenship, guaranteeing free movement of people across borders, and free access to new technology—which in practice would mean extreme limits on patent tights (themselves a very insidious form of Protectionism). 136 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 137 of 216 Grassroots Solvency We need a grassroots, micro/nano-level resistance against the neoliberal regime. Tom Mertes, Revolutionary/Editor of Movement of Movements, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 246-247 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 For all his reservations about the Brazilian PT, Hardt must acknowledge that, without its municipal government in Porto Alegre, the WSF would never have taken place- Naturally, most of the participants were from Latin America— Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay between them fielded over 7,000 delegates, Italy and France around 1,200. Travel problems precluded many more. The hard-working interpreters—translating into Portuguese, the host language, and English, although Spanish might have been a more natural lingua franca for most of those present—often went unpaid for their skills. Organizing from below is a fragile process, at threat from numerous different forces. A micro example: when LA-based activists recently sought to get in touch with maquiludora workers in Mexico, they first had to negotiate their way through a series of blocking attempts by the moderate NGOs that controlled the funds for transport and translators, and wanted to run the agenda too. When, finally, the Angelenos met with their Tijuana counterparts, they found that what the maqusiludoristas needed most was computers—to send information out but, above all, to get news in. The US side could come up with the computers what they couldn’t produce was electricity, decent phone lines, Spanishlanguage software and technical help. Hard as it is, this sort of grass-roots organizing remains crucial for building up relationships of mutual support, coalitions of resistance. In these nano-level processes of forging solidarity, the WSF— and especially perhaps its informal side: the youth camp, fiestas, lunches, marches— can play a vital role. ‘Chaotic, dispersive, unknowable’ as they may be, these messy, mass-scale, face-to-face encounters are the life-blood of any movement—an element that telecommunications metaphors can never attain. 137 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 138 of 216 Grassroots Solvency The alternative is in creating stable communities and engaging in a marketplace of ideas with one and another where we can provide for our needs absent exploitation. John Sellers, Revolutionary/Founder RUCKUS, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 186187 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 The message was; ‘If you don’t watch out, were going to make you into the leper of every cocktail party that you go to— we’re gonna turn you into an oil executive’. It worked. Then there has been the fight around factory trawlers, and the biotech campaign that bloodied Monsanto’s nose in public. We can be proud of all these. How far is the unity achieved at Seattle based just on anti-globalization, and how far does it have an anti-capitalist undertow—if you accept such a separation? Certainly, there are different tribes within the movement. There’s some classic Marxist, anti-capitalist energy, and a lot of the most thoughtful and intellectual material comes from these people. But there’s also a lot of input from college students and outfits wanting to create more sustainable and responsible corporations, more stable forms of capitalism, who aren’t going to have the same kind of systemic critique. They’re willing to take radical action to bring about a world with benign corporations, but they see the solution to our economic nightmare in something that would still look pretty much like it to people who want to get rid of the whole thing. What thinkers most inform the agenda of Ruckus? I think it’s really important to study all kinds of different historical movements and social philosophies. I like to read Gandhi and King, so if I were to pick out two particular thinkers I guess it would probably be those two. Marx’s critique of capital is terrific, but I’ve always thought Weber was right that human beings can find some way to exclude and oppress one another, without necessarily involving capital. At the moment I’m reading Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch, about America during the King years, which spends some time dissecting the decisions and calls that were made during the Civil Rights movement—questions like why was Rosa Parks chosen? What was her background? This is an important type of political analysis for me, and I think for Ruckus, We’re frying to create powerful symbols that will help to build a movement of populist resistance, We need to be funny, and smart. We want the kind of grass-roots social revolution that people will be attracted to So I look at the Yippies and Merry Pranksters, and the early culture-jamming those guys were pioneering. I like to read Adbusters magazine and look at the culture-jamming of The Onion today. I don’t read as much as I should. 1 don’t read a lot of social philosophy, but I watch a fair bit of corporate news to figure out how that medium functions. Anarchism has got a really bad rap, like communism, There are probably a lot of trainers in Ruckus who, if you forced them to identify themselves with anything, would say maybe they were anarchists-though they would never use the term to the media, because of the way the American public perceives it. I meet great anarchists all the time. It is a beautiful philosophy to believe that we can take care of one another without centralized institutions that take on a life of their own, and impose their will on us. When Ruckus is ready to develop a sense of its own intellectual place and push for solutions, we will have to think about how practical such a conception might be. For the moment, what we’re good at is saying to the corporate world; ‘Stop—you’re wrong, turn back’, but we do a very poor job of describing the sort of world we envisage. In my view, this has to start at the local level, in the effort to build sustainable communities that can provide for their own needs without exploiting others, that don’t depend on giant highways and massive infrastructure, can recreate green space and cover their own energy needs. That kind of vision is pretty anarchistic. The reputation of anarchism, however, has sometimes been damaged by unstrategic and potentially acts. Ruckus holds very near and dear the idea that you can be as radical and non-violently confrontational as you want, so long as you don’t scare people or endanger them. In Europe, a distinction is often drawn between vandalism and violence, which doesn’t seem to have played out in American consciousness, I get asked about this all the time. You’re right—Americans, even though we actually have a rich tradition of political acts of property destruction, starting with the Boston Tea Party, are very slow to grasp that. In Europe there have been major labour struggles and large-scale political riots in cities in much more recent times than in the States. But I also think there is a difference of intellectual tradition. In this country, we have so skewed a concept of private property—it’s such a sacred, inviolate value that people think any harm done to it is inherently violent; it’s actually written in our criminal code as violence to property. Time magazine even thought it worth quoting when I once imply remarked that violence can only be done to living beings. 138 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 139 of 216 Communities Good In the creation of communities and webs of intellectual debate, the coalition of movements is capable of enacting change. Naomi Klein, Prolific Author, Journalist, Activist, doesn’t like Capitalism, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 224 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 No activist I’ve met believes that the world economy can be changed one corporation at a time, but the campaigns have opened a door into the arcane world of international trade and finance. Where they are leading is to the central institutions that write the rules of global commerce: the WTO, the IM F, the PTAA, and for some the market itself. Here too the unifying threat is privatization—the loss of the commons. The next round of WTO negotiations is designed to extend the reach of commodification still further. Through side agreements like GATS (General Agreement on Trade and Services) and TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), the aim is to get still tougher protection of property rights on seeds and drug patents, and to marketize services like healthcare, education and water-supply. The biggest challenge facing us is to distil all of this into a message that is widely accessible. Many campaigners understand the connexions binding together the various issues almost intuitively— much as Subcomandante Marcos says, ‘Zapatismo isn’t an ideology, its an intuition.’ But to outsiders, the mere scope of modern protests can be a bit mystifying. If you eavesdrop on the movement from the outside, which is what most people do, you are liable to hear what seems to be a cacophony of disjointed slogans, a jumbled laundry list of disparate grievances without clear goals. At the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles last year, I remember being outside the Staples Centre during the Rage Against the Machine concert, just before I almost got shot, and thinking there were slogans for everything everywhere, to the point of absurdity. This kind of impression is reinforced by the decentralized, non- hierarchical structure of the movement, which always disconcerts the traditional media. Well-organized press conferences are rare, there is no charismatic leadership, protests tend to pile on top of each other. Rather than forming a pyramid, as most movements do, with leaders up on top and followers down below, it looks more like an elaborate web. In part, this web-like structure is the result of internet-based organizing. But it is also a response to the very political realities that sparked the protests in the first place: the utter failure of traditional party politics. All over the world, citizens have worked to elect socialdemocratic and workers’ parties, only to watch them plead impotence in the face of market forces and IMP dictates. In these conditions, modern activists are not so natve as to believe change will come from electoral politics. That’s why they are more interested in challenging the structures that make democracy toothless, like the IMP’s structural adjustment policies, the WTO’s ability to override national sovereignty, corrupt campaign financing, and so on. This is not just making a virtue of necessity. It responds at the ideological level to an understanding that globalization is in essence a crisis in representative democracy. What has caused this crisis? One of the basic reasons for it is the way power and decision-making have been handed along to points ever further away from citizens: from local to provincial, from provindal to national, from national to international institutions, that lack all transparency or accountability. 139 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 140 of 216 Communities Good Building a community, a coalition of movements is the necessary political action Michael Hardt, Political Philosopher at Duke, also doesn’t like Capitalism, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 231 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 This open encounter was the most important element of Porto Alegre. Even though the Forum was limited in some important respects—socially and geographically, to name two—it was nonetheless an opportunity to globalize further the cycle of struggles that have stretched from Seattle to Genoa, which have been conducted by a network of movements thus far confined, by and large, to the North Atlantic. Dealing with many of the same issues as those who elsewhere contest the present capitalist form of globalization, or specific institutional policies such as those of the IMF, the movements themselves have remained limited, Recognizing the commonality of their projects with those in other parts of the world is the first step toward expanding the network of movements, or linking one network to another- This recognition indeed, is primarily responsible for the happy, celebratory atmosphere of the Forum. The encounter should, however, reveal and address not only the common projects and desires, but also the differences of those involved— differences of material conditions and political orientation. The various movements across the globe cannot simply connect to each other as they are, but must rather be transformed by the encounter through a kind of mutual adequation. Those from North America and Europe, for example, cannot but have been struck by the contrast between their experience and that of agricultural labourers and the rural poor in Brazil, represented most strongly by the MST (Sem Terra Movement)— and vice versa. What kind of transformations are necessary for the Euro-American globalization movements and the Latin American movements, not to become the same, or even to unite, but to link together in an expanding common network? The Forum provided an opportunity to recognize such differences and questions for those willing to see them, but it did not provide the conditions for addressing them. The alternative is a system of criticisms, a process of elaborating alternative through the creation of community in intellectual debate. Emir Sader, Emir Sader is Brazilian, coordinator of the Laboratory of Public Policies of the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, and a contributor to the IRC Americas Program, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 261 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 This is made up of around sixty international networks from all continents, with a fairly representative range. The Committee decided on a more concentrated format for the Forums, with an agenda of five basic themes around which all others would be grouped, in order to move towards a more decisive way to - formulate comprehensive political proposals, and strategies to fight for them. It had already been decided that the Forums were not events, but a process of elaborating alternatives, and of struggle for their realization. With this in mind, continental and sectional Forums will take place, before the Forum of 2003, as before, in Porto Megre. The Social Forum represents a milestone, marking the shift from a period of fragmented, defensive resistance to a phase of accumulating forces, while looking towards the stage at which an international articulations of political, social and cultural movements can confront neoliberalism and overcome it The first decades of the new century are the setting for that challenge, to be taken up in full awareness of its complexity and of the huge discrepancy in relative scale that still exists. 140 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 141 of 216 Communities Good Non-hierarchal community creation is, in and of itself, an alternative. Immanuel Wallerstein, U.S. Sociologist, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 263 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 . The fourth and most recent variant has been the so-called anti-globalization movements—a designation applied not so much by these movements themselves as by their opponents. The use of the term by the media scarcely predates its reporting of the protests at the Seattle WTO meetings in 1999. Globalization’, as the rhetoric of neoliberal advocates of free-trade in goods and capital, had of course become a strong force during the r99os- Its media focus was the Davoa World Economic Forum, and its institutional implementation was brought about via the Washington Consensus, the policies of the IMP and the strengthening of the WTO. Seattle was intended as a key moment in expanding the role of the W’TO and the significant protests, which actually disrupted its proceedings, took many by surprise. The demonstrators included a large North American contingent, drawn from the Old Left, trade unions, new movements and anarchist groups. Indeed, the very fact that the AFL—CIO was ready to be on the aame side as environmentalist groups in so militant an action was something new, especially for the US. Following Seattle, the continuing series of demonstrations around the world against intergovernmental meetings inspired by the neoliberal agenda led, in turn, to the construction of the World Social Forum, whose initial meetings have been held in Porto Alegre; the second, in 2002, drew over 50,000 delegates from over a thousand organizations. Since then, there have been a number of regional meetings, preparing for the 2003 WSF. The characteristics of this new claimant for the role of antisystemic movement are rather different from those of earlier attempts. First of all, the WSF seeks to bring together all the previous types—Old Left, new movements, humanrights bodies, and others not easily falling into these categories—and includes groups organized in a strictly local, regional, national and transnational fashion. The basis of participation is a common objective—struggle against the social ills consequent on neoliberalism—and a common respect for each other’s immediate priorities. Importantly, the WSP seeks to bring together movements from the North and the South within a single framework. The only slogan, as yet, is ‘Another World is Possible’. Even more strangely, the WSF seeks to do this without creating an overall superstructure. At the moment, it has only an international coordinating committee, some 50-strong, representing a variety of movements and geographic locations. While there has been some grumbling from Old Left movements that the WSF is a reformist façade, thus far the complaints have been quite minimal. The grumblers question; they do not yet denounce. It is, of course, widely recognized that this degree of success has been based on a negative rejection of neoliberalism, as ideology and as institutional practice. Many have argued that it is essential for the WSF to move towards advocating a dearer, more positive programme. Whether it can do so, and still maintain the level unity and absence of an overall (inevitably hierarchical) structure, is the big question of the next decade. 141 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 142 of 216 Direct Democracy Good It is necessary to engage in direct democratic rule as an alternative to the global crisis of representative democracy. Walden Bello, Revolutionary/Founder of Focus on the Global South, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 68-69 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 Secondly, there’s been the ongoing crisis in Argentina, a social and economic catastrophe brought about by neoliberalism. Both have reignited a widespread skepticism about the corporate-globalization project. Thirdly, there has been the United States’ own performance. The Pentagon still hasn’t managed to get bin Laden, and is now becoming over-extended in areas from which it will be difficult for the US to extricate itself Going into Iraq will create even greater problems. Given the tensions in South Asia and the conflict in the in the Middle East, it’s arguable that the strategic situation of the United States is probably worse now than it was prior to September 11, precisely because of this over-extension. The American response has served to strengthen Islamic-fundamentalist tendencies rather than reduce them, Mahathir and Musharraf are bending over backwards for the United States, but a big gulf is emerging between these leaders and their populations Finally, I think there has been an evolution in the role of many of the anti-corporate globalization groups, who are now beginning to confront issues of warfare and militarism. In the recent conflict in Palestine we had quite a number of people trying to break through Israeli lines. There were 5o,ooo people at the World Social Forum this year, as opposed to 15,000 in January 2001. At the EU summit this March in Barcelona, there were 300,000 protesters—much bigger than Genoa. There’s a lot of work to be done before we get back to the situation we were in prior to September, but there are several indications that the movement is on its way back to a fighting stance. One example of this is that, when the US sent troops to the Philippines in January, we put out an appeal for people to participate in an international peace mission, and got so many volunteers that we were able to mount a full-scale investigation: to go to Basilan, study the situation, talk to people—including the Americans—and come back with a critical report that was lambasted by the Philippines government, and became an issue in the archipelago’s politics. This was an instance of people who had simply been concerned with trade questions moving towards broader security-related issues. The Euro parliamentarian, Matti Wuori, who went to Basilan is a former head of Greenpeace; these are the sort of links and transformations that are being made. You often allude to class politics, not all that common in the anti-globalization movement. Where do you see your intellectual tradition today coming from? I would say I’ve been a pragmatist, working with whatever seemed to be the task in hand. That obviously includes the theoretical arsenal of Marxism. But I wouldn’t call myself a Leninist any longer, because I think the crisis that hit the Communist societies was related to the elitist racier of Leninist vanguard organizations. One can understand the historical reasons why they emerged, in repressive situations, but when they become permanent and develop theoretical justifications for their lack of internal democracy, they can become a really negative force. I have been attracted to aspects of the new movement— its decentralized form, its strong anti-bureaucratic impulses and its working through the ideas of direct democracy, in the spirit of Rousseau—whether one labels that anarchism or not. Still, at this stage I think the movement’s most valuable contribution is its critique of corporate-driven globalization, rather than the model it offers for coming together and making decisions. But there is a global crisis of representative democracy throughout the West today, as well as in countries like the Philippines. The movement does represent an alternative to this. Can direct democracy work? It did in Seattle and Genoa; so we should ask how we can develop it further. How might we—I hate to use the word— institutionalize methods of direct democratic rule? 142 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 143 of 216 Direct Democracy Good The solution is direct democracy. Rejecting globalization is enough to open up a space for direct democracy to emerge preventing the re-emergence of a new global regime. Naomi Klein, Prolific Author, Journalist, Activist, doesn’t like Capitalism, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 225 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 What is the solution? To articulate an alternative, participatory democracy. If you think about the nature of the complaints raised against the World Trade Organization, it is that governments around the world have embraced an economic model that involves much more than opening borders to goods and services. This is why it is not useful to use the language of anti-globalization. Most people do not really know what globalization is, and the term makes the movement extremely vulnerable to stock dismissals like: ‘If you are against trade and globalization, why do you drink coffee?’ Whereas in reality the movement is a rejection of what is being bundled along with trade and so-called globalization—against the set of transformative political policies that every country in the world has been told they must accept in order to make themselves hospitable to investment. I call this package ‘McGovernment’. This happy meal of cutting taxes, pnvatizing services, liberalizing regulations, busting unions—what is this diet in aid of? To remove anything standing in the way of the market. Let the free market roll, and every other problem will apparently be solved in the tridcle down. This isn’t about trade. It’s about using trade to enforce the McGovernmeot recipe. So the question we are asking today, in the mo-np to the FTAA, is not: are you for or against trade? The question is: do we have the tight to negotiate the terms of our relationship to foreign capital and investment? Can we decide how we want to protect ourselves from the dangers inherent in deregulated markets—or do we have to contract out those decisions? These problems will become much more acute once we are in a recession, because during the economic boom so much has been destroyed of what was left of our social-safety net. During a period of low unemployment, people did not worry much about that. They are likely to be much more concerned in the very near future. The most controversial issues facing the WTO are these questions about selfdetermination. For example, does Canada have the right to ban a harmful gasoline additive without being sued by a foreign chemical company? Not according to the WTO’s ruling in favour of the Ethyl Corporation. Does Mexico have the right to deny a permit for a hazardous toxic-waste disposal site? Not according to Metaldad, the US company now suing the Mexican government for Si6.p million damages under NAFTA. Does France have the right to ban hormone-treated beef from entering the country? Not according to the United States, which retaliated by banning French imports like Roquefort cheese— prompting a cheese-maker called Boyd to dismantle a McDonald’s; Americans thought he just didn’t like hamburgers. Does Argentina have to cut its public sector to qualify for foreign loans? Yes, according to the IMF—sparking general strikes against the social consequences, it’s the same issue everywhere: trading away democracy in exchange for foreign capital. 143 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 144 of 216 Direct Democracy Good The new global movement has re-invented the meaning of democracy to avoid bouncing back and forth between majoritarian democracy and minimal democracy David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004 I noted earlier that all social orders are in some sense at war with themselves. Those unwilling to establish an apparatus of violence for enforcing decisions necessarily have to develop an apparatus for creating and maintaining social consensus (at least in that minimal sense of ensuring malcontents can still feel they have freely chosen to go along with bad decisions);as an apparent result, the internal war ends up projected outwards into endless night battles and forms of spectral violence. Majoritarian direct democracy is constantly threatening to make those lines of force explicit. For this reason it does tend to be rather unstable: or more precisely, if it does last, it’s because its institutional forms (the medieval city, New England town council, for that matter gallup polls, referendums...) are almost invariably ensconced within a larger framework of governance in which ruling elites use that very instability to justify their ultimate monopoly of the means of violence. Finally, the threat of this instability becomes an excuse for a form of “democracy” so minimal that it comes down to nothing more than insisting that ruling elites should occasionally consult with “the public”—in carefully staged contests, replete with rather meaningless jousts and tournaments—to reestablish their right to go on making their decisions for them. It’s a trap. Bouncing back and forth between the two ensures it will remain extremely unlikely that one could ever imagine it would be possible for people to manage their own lives, without the help of “representatives.” It’s for this reason the new global movement has begun by reinventing the very meaning of democracy. To do so ultimately means, once again, coming to terms with the fact that “we”—whether as “the West” (whatever that means), as the “modern world,” or anything else—are not really as special as we like to think we are; that we’re not the only people ever to have practiced democracy; that in fact, rather than disseminating democracy around the world, “Western” governments have been spending at least as much time inserting themselves into the lives of people who 144 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 145 of 216 Concensus Democracy Good The current movements ideology and alternative rests in its ability to effectively reorganize and reinvent life in a non-hierarchical consensus democracy. David Graeber, Revolutionary/ Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 211 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 Hardly surprising, then, that anarchism quickly came to seem unrealistic, if the ultimate measure of political effectiveness became the ability to maintain huge, mechanized killing machines. This is one thing that anarchists, by definition, can never be very good at. Neither is it surprising that Marxist parties—who have been only too good at it—seemed eminently practical and realistic in comparison. Whereas the moment the Cold War ended, and war between industrialized powers once again seemed unthinkable, anarchism reappeared just where it had been at the end of the nine- tenth century as an international movement at the very centre of the revolutionary Left. If this is right, it becomes clearer what the ultimate stakes of the current ‘anti-terrorist’ mobilization are, In the short run, things do look very frightening. Governments who were desperately scrambling for some way to convince the public we were terrorists even before September 11 now feel they’ve been given carte blanche; there is little doubt that a lot of good people are about to suffer terrible repression. But in the long run, a return to twentieth-century levels of violence is simply impossible. The September 11 attacks were dearly something of a fluke (the first wildly ambitious terrorist scheme in history that actually worked); the spread of nuclear weapons is ensuring that larger and larger portions of the globe will be for all practical purposes off-limits to conventional warfare. And if war is the health of the state, the prospects for anarchist-style organizing can only be improving. A constant complaint about the globalization movement in the progressive press is that, while tactically brilliant, it lacks any central theme or coherent ideology. (This seems to be the left equivalent of the corporate media’s claims that we are a bunch of dumb kids touting a bundle of completely unrelated causes—free Mumia, dump the debt, save the old. growth forests.) Another line of attack is that the movement is plagued by a generic opposition to all forms of structure or organization. It’s distressing that, two years after Seattle, I should have to write this, but someone obviously should: in North America especially, this is a movement about reinventing democracy. It is not opposed to organization. it is about creating new forms of organization. It is not lacking in ideology. Those new forms of organization are its ideology. It is about creating and enacting horizontal networks instead of top-down structures like states, parties or corporations; networks based on principles of decentralized, non-hierarchical consensus democracy. Ultimately, it aspires to be much more than that, because ultimately it aspires to reinvent daily life as a whole. But unlike many other forms of radicalism, it has first organized itself in the political sphere—mainly because this was a territory that the powers that be (who have shifted all their heavy artillery into the economic) have largely abandoned. 145 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 146 of 216 Concensus Democracy Good An alternative of consensus democracy can, through complete transparency involving all dissenting voices, solve for the flaws in today’s representative democracy. David Graeber, Revolutionary/ Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 212 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 Over the past decade, activists in North Amrtica have been puffing enormous creative energy into reinventing their groups’ own internal processes, to create viable models of what functioning direct democracy could actually look like. In this we’ve drawn particularly, as I’ve noted, on examples from outside the Western tradition, which almost invariably rely on some process of consensus finding, rather than majority vote. The result is a rich and growing panoply of organizational instruments —spokescouncils, affinity groups, facilitation tools, breakouts, fishbowls, blocking concerns, vibe-watchers and so on—all aimed at creating forms of democratic process that allow initiatives to tie from below and attain maximum effective solidarity, without stifling dissenting voices, creating leadership positions or compelling anyone to do anything which they have not freely agreed to do. The basic idea of consensus process is that, rather than voting, you try to come up with proposals acceptable to everyone_—or at least, not highly objectionable to anyone: first state the proposal, then ask for ‘concerns’ and try to address them, Often, at this point, people in the group will propose ‘friendly amendments’ to add to the original proposal, or otherwise alter it, to ensure concerns are addressed. Then, finally, when you call for consensus, you ask if anyone wishes to ‘block’ or ‘stand aside’. Standing aside is just saying, ‘I would not myself be willing to take part in this action, but I wouldn’t stop anyone else from doing it. Blocking is a way of saying ‘I think this violates the fundamental principles or purposes of being in the group’. It functions as a veto: any one person can kill a proposal completely by blocking it—although there are ways to challenge whether a block is genuinely principled. There are different sorts of groups. Spokescouncils, for example, are large assemblies that coordinate between smaller ‘affinity groups’. They are most often held before, and during, large-scale direct actions like Seattle or Quebec. Each affinity group (which might have between four and twenty people) selects a ‘spoke’, who is empowered to speak for them in the larger group. Only the spokes can take part in the actual process of finding consensus at the council, but before major decisions they break out into affinity groups again and each group comes to consensus on what position they want their spoke to take (not as unwieldy as it might sound). Break-outs, on the other hand, are when a large meeting temporarily splits up into smaller ones that will focus on making decisions or generating proposals, which can then be presented for approval before the whole group when it reassembles. Facilitation tools are used to resolve problems or move things along if they seem to be jogging down. You can ask for a brainstorming session, in which people are only allowed to present ideas but not to ctiticize other people’s; or for a non-binding straw poll, where people raise their hands just to see how everyone feels about a proposal, rather than to make a decision. A fishbowl would only be used if there is a profound difference of opinion: you can take two representatives for each side—one man and one woman—and have the four of them sit in the middle, everyone else surrounding them silently, and see if the four can’t work out a synthesis or compromise together, which they can then present as a proposal to the whole group. This is very much a work in progress, and creating a culture of democracy among people who have little experience of such things is necessarily a painful and uneven business, full of all sorts of stumblings and false starts, but—as almost any police chief who has faced us on the streets can attest—direct democracy of this sort can be astoundingly effective. And it is difficult to find anyone who has fully participated in such an action whose sense of human possibilities has not been profoundly transformed as a result. It’s one thing to say, ‘Another world is possible’. Its another to experience it, however momentarily. Perhaps the best way to start thinking about these organizations—the Direct Action Network, for example—is to see them as the diametrical opposite of the sectarian Marxist groups; or, for that matter, of the sectarian Anarchist groups.6 Where the democratic-centralist ‘party’ puts its emphasis on achieving a complete and correct theoretical analysis, demands ideological uniformity and tends to juxtapose the vision of an egalitarian future with extremely authoritarian forms of organization in the present, these openly seek diversity. Debate always focuses on particular courses of action; it’s taken for granted that no one will ever convert anyone else entirely to their point of view. The motto might be, ‘If you are willing to act like an anarchist now, your long-term vision is pretty much your own business’. Which seems only sensible: none of us know how far these principles can actually take us, or what a complex society based on them would end up looking like. 146 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 147 of 216 Movement Of Movements Good Today’s movement of movements, a coalition of movements, has created countless areas for criticisms and alternative action. Naomi Klein, Prolific Author, Journalist, Activist, doesn’t like Capitalism, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 219 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 What is ‘the anti-globalization movement’?’ I put the phrase in quote- marks because I immediately have two doubts about it. Is it really a movement? If it is a movement, is it anti-globalization? Let me start with the first issue. We can easily convince ourselves it is a movement by talking it into existence at a forum like this—I spend far too much time at them—acting as if we can see it, hold it in our hands. Of course, we have seen it—and we know it’s come back in Quebec, and on the US— Mexican border during the Summit of the Americas and the discussion for a hemispheric Free Trade Area, But then we leave rooms like this, go home, watch some TV, do a little shopping and any sense that it exists disappears, and we feel like maybe we’re going nuts. Seattle—was that a movement or a collective hallucination? To most of us here, Seattle meant a kind of coming-out party for a global resistance movement, or the ‘globalization of hope’, as someone described it during the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre. But to everyone else Seattle still means limitless frothy coffee, Asian-fission cuisine, e-commerce billionaires and aappy Meg Ryan movies. Or perhaps it is both, and one Seattle bred the other Seattle—and now they awkwardly coexist. This movement we sometimes conjure into being goes by many names: anti-corporate, anticapitalist, anti-free-trade, anti-imperialist. Many say that it started in Seattle. Others maintain it began five hundred years ago—when colonialists first told indigenous peoples that they were going to have to do things differently if they were to ‘develop or be eligible for ‘trade’. Others again say it began on 1 January 1994 when the Zapatistas launched their uprising with the words Ya Basta! on the night NAFTA became law in Mexico. It all depends on whom you ask. But I think it is more accurate to picture a movement of many movements— coalitions of coalitions. Thousands of groups today are all working against forces whose common thread is what might broadly be described as the privatization of every aspect of life, and the transformation of every activity and value into a commodity. We often speak of the privatization of education, of healthcare, of natural resources. But the process is much vaster. It includes the way powerful ideas are turned into advertising slogans and public streets into shopping malls; new generations being target-marketed at birth; schools being invaded by ads; basic human necessities like water being sold as commodities; basic labour rights being rolled back; genes are patented and designer babies loom; seeds are genetically altered and bought; politicians are bought and altered. At the same time there are oppositional threads, taking form in many different campaigns and movements, The spirit they share is a radical reclaiming of the commons. As our communal spaces—town squares, streets, schools, farms, plants—are displaced by the ballooning marketplace, a spirit of resistance is taking hold around the world. People are reclaiming bits of nature and of culture, and saying ‘this is going to be public space’. American students are kicking ads out of the classrooms. European environmentalists and ravers are throwing parties at busy intersections. Landless Thai peasants are planting organic vegetables on overirrigated golf courses. Bolivian workers are reversing the privatization of their water supply. 147 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 148 of 216 Movement of Movements Good We need a true coalition of movements that combines the globalized view of one movement to the specificity of another movement. In placing the particular within the universal, we are able to view the total inequality present in global neoliberalism and move towards collapsing it. Naomi Klein, Prolific Author, Journalist, Activist, doesn’t like Capitalism, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 227 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 On smaller scales, the same struggles for self-determination and sustainability are being waged against World Bank dams, clear-cut logging, cash-crop factory farming, and resource extraction on contested indigenous lands, Most people in these movements are not against trade or industrial development. What they are fighting for is the right of local communities to have a say in how their resources are used, to make sure that the people who live on the land benefit directly from its development These campaigns are a response not to trade but to a trade-off that is now five hundred years old: the sacrifice of democratic control and self determination to foreign investment and the panacea of economic growth. The challenge they now face is to shift a discourse around the vague notion of globalization into a specific debate about democracy. In a period of ‘unprecedented prosperity’, people were told they had no choice but to slash public spending, revoke labour laws, rescind environmental protections-deemed illegal trade bartiers—defined schools, not build affordable housing. All this was necessary to make us trade-ready, investment-friendly world-competitive. Imagine what joys await us during a recession. We need to be able to show that globalization-the version of gbbahzation-has been built on the back of local human welfare. Too often, these connexions between global and local are not made, Instead, we sometimes seem to have two activist solitudes. On the one hand, there are the international anti-globalization activists who may be enjoying a triumphant mood, but seem to be fighting far-away issues, unconnected to people’s day-to-day struggles. They are often seen as elitists: white middle-class kids with dreadlocks. On the other hand, there are community activists fighting daily struggles for survival, or for the preservation of the most elementary public services, who are often feeling burnt-out and demoralized. They are saying: what in the hell are you guys so excited about? The only clear way forward is for these two forces to merge. What is now the anti-globalization movement must turn into thousands of local movements, fighting the way neoliberal politics are playing out on the ground: homelessness, wage stagnation, rent escalation police violence, prison explosion, criminalization of migrant workers, and on and on, These are also struggles about all kinds of prosaic issues: the right to decide where the local garbage goes, to have good public schools, to be supplied with clean water. At the same time, the local movements fighting privatization and deregulation on the ground need to link their campaigns into one large global movement, which can show where their particular issues fit into an international economic agenda being enforced around the world. If that connexion isn’t made, people will continue to be demoralized. What we need is to formulate a political framework that can both take on corporate power and control, and empower local organizing and self-determination That has to be a framework that encourages, celebrates and fiercely protects the right to diversity: cultural diversity, ecological diversity, agricultural diver. sity—and yes, political diversity as well: different ways of doing politics. Communities must have the right to plan and manage their schools, their services, their natural settings, according to their own lights. Of course, this is only possible within a framework of national and international standards.....if public education, fossilfuel emissions, and so on. But the goal should not be better far-away rules and rulers, it should be close-up democracy on the ground. The Zapatistas have a phrase for this. They call it ‘one world with many worlds in it’, Some have criticized this as a New Age non-answer. They want a plan. ‘We know what the market wants to do with those spaces, what do you want to do? Where’s your scheme?’ I think we shouldn’t be afraid to say: ‘That’s not up to us’. We need to have some trust in people’s ability to rule themselves, to make the decisions that are best for them. We need to show some humility where now there is so much arrogance and paternalism. To believe in human diver. shy and local democracy is anything but wishywashy Everything in Mccovernment conspires against them. Neoliberal economics is biased at every level towards centralization consolidation, homogenization. it is a war waged on diversity. Against it, we need a movement of radical change, committed to a single world with many worlds in it, that stands for ‘the one no and the many yeses. 148 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 149 of 216 Movement of Movements Good The Zapatista movement is one example of democratic improvisation. Within the globalized context, these movements can spread quickly. David Graeber, ex-professor of Anthropology at Yale, 2007, Possibilities, p. 362-363 We’re finally back, then, where we began with the rise of global movements calling for new forms of democracy. In a way, the main point of this piece has been to demonstrate that the Zapatistas are nothing unusual. They are speakers of a variety of Maya languages – Tzeltal, Tojalobal, Chol, Tzotzil, Mam –originally from communities traditionally allowed a certain degree of self-governance (largely so they could function as indigenous labor reserves for ranches and plantations located elsewhere), who had formed new largely multi-ethnic communities in newly opened lands in the Lacandon (Collier 1999; Ross 2000; Rus, Hernandez & MaLdace 2003). In other words, they inhabit a classic example of what I’ve been calling spaces of democratic improvisation, in which a jumbled amalgam of people, most with at least some initial experience of methods of communal self-governance, find themselves in new communities outside the immediate supervision of the state. Neither is there anything particularly new about the fact that they are at the fulcrum of a global play of influences: absorbing ideas from everywhere, and. their own example having an enormous impact on social movements across the planet. The first Zapatista encuentro network, in 1996, far example, eventually led to the formation of an International network (People’s Global Action, or PGA), based on principles of autonomy, horizontality, and direct democracy, that included such disparate groups as the Movimento do Trabalhadros Rurais Sem Terra (MST) in Brazil; the Karnataka Stare Farmer’s Association (KRSS), a Grandhian socialist direct action group in India; the Canadian Postal Workers’ Union; and a whole host of anarchist collectives in Europe and the Americas, along with indigenous organizations on every continent. It was PGA, for instance, that put out the original call for action against the WTO meetings in. Seattle in November 1999. Even more, the principles of Zapatismo, the rejection of vanguardism, the emphasis on creating viable alternatives in one’s own community as a way of subverting the logic of global capital, has had an enormous influence on participants in social movements that, in some cases, are at best vaguely aware of the Zapatistas themselves and have certainly never heard of PGA. No doubt the growth of the Internet and global communications have allowed the process to proceed much faster than ever before, and allowed for more formal, explicit alliances; but this does not mean we are dealing with an entirely unprecedented phenomenon. 149 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 150 of 216 Fragmented Movements Good In today’s coalition of movements, contradictions are inevitable and should be welcomed. Our act of kritiking creates a public sphere permitting a complete disclosure of differences. Michael Hardt, Political Philosopher at Duke, also doesn’t like Capitalism, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 235 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 But the more important reason for a lack of confrontation may have had to do with the organizational forms that correspond to the two positions. The traditional parties and centralized organizations have spokespeople who represent them and conduct their battles, but no one speaks for a network. I-low do you argue with a network? The movements organized within them do exert their power, but they do not proceed through oppositions. One of the basic characteristics of the network form is that no two nodes face each other in contradiction; rather, they are always triangulated by a third, and then a fourth, and then by an indefinite number of others in the web. This is one of the characteristics of the Seattle events that we have had the most trouble understanding: groups which we thought in objective contradiction to one another—environmentalists and trade unions, church groups and anarchists—were suddenly able to work together, in the context of the network of the multitude. The movements, to take a slightly different perspective, function rather like a public sphere, in the sense that they can allow full expression of differences within the common context of open exchange. But that does not mean that networks are passive. They displace contradictions and operate instead a kind of alchemy, or rather a sea-change, the flow of the movements transforming the traditional fixed positions; networks imposing their force through a kind of irresistible undertow. Like the Forum itself, the multitude in the movements is always overflowing, excessive and unknowable. It is certainly important then, on the one hand, to recognize the differences that divide the activists and politicians gathered at Porto Alegre. It would be a mistake, on the other hand, to try to read the division according to the traditional model of ideological conflict between opposing sides. Political struggle in the age of network movements no longer works that way. Despite the apparent strength of those who occupied centre-stage and dominated the representations of the Forum, they may ultimately prove to have lost the struggle. Perhaps the representatives of the traditional parties and centralized organizations at Porto Alegre are too much like the old national leaders gathered at Bandung—imagine Lula of the PT in the position of Ahmed Sukarno as host, and Bernard Cassen of ATTAC France as Jawaharlal Nehru, the most honoured guest. The leaders can certainly craft resolutions affirming national sovereignty around a conference table, but they can never grasp the democratic power of the movements. Eventually, they too will be swept up in the multitude, which is capable of transforming all fixed and centralized elements into so many more nodes in its indefinitely expansive network. 150 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 151 of 216 Fragmented Movements Good Combining aspects from the multitude of movements today has the ability to solve. It is necessary to combine aspects of direct democracy with specific action in order to overwhelm the neoliberal regime. Tom Mertes, Revolutionary/Editor of Movement of Movements, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 242 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 One difference Hardt seems to miss is the question of scale. Many seemingly traditional bodies at Porto Alegre were actually mass organizations. The Brazilian Sem Terra is a case in point It counts in its ranks over a third of a million landless families—and this is not a passive, card-carrying membership but one defined by taking action: risking the wrath of latifundiarios and the state by occupying land. Within this layer there are, again, around 20,000 activists, the most energetic and committed, who have helped to organize their neighbors and who continue to attend courses and participate in regional and state-level meetings that elect the local leaderships. Over 10,000 delegates attended the MST national congress in 2000. Spokespeople—accountable to the membership— becomes necessity with numbers of this size. The North Atlantic networks, by contrast, are more likely to count their active core as a few dozen or less. The Ruckus Society, for example, has a full-time staff of four, and between 20 and 30 volunteers in close orbit around that; about t20 people will attend an annual camp. Other organizations like 50 Years is Enough and United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) are run by less than half a dozen flail-timers, who call other organizations into action. Rather than sweeping away and transforming all fixed positions, these networks often feel more at risk of being dissolved themselves into the powerful flows of American capitalism. Does size matter? For the authors of Empire, ‘we are immersed ins system of power so deep and complex that we can no longer determine specific difference or measure’. To the resounding reply of Sem Terra leader }Bo Pedro Stedile—asked what Northern sympathizers should do to help the landless farmers of Brazil—’Overthrow your neoliberal governments!’, their book provides no echo. Yet Stedile’s demand surely suggests a scale by which the movements can take stock of their opponents, and reckon their own strength. Hardt’s maritime metaphor—the ‘sea’ of networks—raises a further question, crucial to the ‘mutual adequation’ of the current movements: waves do not speak. How, if it cannot argue but only ‘sweep away’ its opponents, is Hardt’s network—or multitude—to hold an internal conversation, to debate and decide its strategy? For the Sem Terra, the question of how to develop democratically accountable forms of leadership and coordination, while avoiding the traps of ‘presidentialism’ and bureaucratization, has been literally a matter of life and death; militant farmers’ leaders in Brazil have traditionally been gunned down by landowners or the state. The attempt to answer it has led them to stress the importance of collective, elected bodies at all levels, from the village occupation committee up.” As a result, enormous efforts are put into gathering together the far-flung activists, most of them working farmers, for regional, state and national decision-making meetings. For North American pressure groups, radical NGOs and networks, while there is often a strong commitment to transparency and to rotating leadership, a different sort of process often prevails. Often these are run by a small group of dedicated individuals who tend to lead by default, by dint of their accumulated skills. ‘Obviously’, as the director of the Ruckus Society puts it, ‘those closest to the centre get more input than people who are further away from it. For example, I took the decision to hold the WTO camp (in Seattle in 5999], and that s how a lot of the decisions have been made since’.’2 USAS also embraces consensus building in decision-making, with all of its pitfalls; it has only one annual meeting of its university affiliates. With their relatively small numbers and higher educational level, the North American groups have focused on the quality of consensus-making around specific actions. 151 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 152 of 216 Fragmented Movements Good Fragmentation is not inherently detrimental to movements; multiple points of view and approaches still allow for a common action against a common cause, even if the underlying reasons conflict. Mark Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London and small- a anarchist, 2007, Possibilities, p. 323-325 At the moment, social theory is even more fragmented than it has usually been and there’s a good deal of debate as to whether this is a good or a bad thing. Some degree of theoretical fragmentation seems inevitable, given the way the object (social reality) has been constituted, as a somewhat battered residual set off from economics. As a theoretically unified neoclassical economics has become increasingly dominant, to the point of becoming the effective ideology of rule for just about all the emerging institutions of global governance, and as economic versions of “rationality” have increasingly begun to colonize other disciplines, it is understandable that this diversity might seem like a strategic weakness by those who resist the current status quo. Still, there’s no particular reason to imagine that an intellectual united front against economic should demand any sort of ideological uniformity, any more than a political one would. Or even that it demands complete commensurability. For example: many have recognized that the most profound way to challenge the economistic world-view is through the development of alternative theories of action, which expose the inherently alternating version of reality promulgated by economism by instead focusing on creativity, and, specifically, on trying to locate the capacity to create new social forms. There have been a number of attempts in this direction, ranging from Hans Joas’ work in the tradition of American pragmatism, to Alain Caille’s, which begins from the creation of new social relations in the gift, to my own attempt to rework some Marxian ideas of production as a value theory of action. It is not entirely clear, however, if all of these can be completely reconciled. It is also not entirely clear if this is a problem. Certainly, there are approaches out there that are utterly irreconcilable even in ontological terms, and these include some of the more interesting and productive ones. For instance, Actor Network Theory, which looks at “society” as an affect rather than a cause, cannot be squared with Critical Realism, which sees it as an emergent reality which cannot be entirely reduced to anything else. And my own argument earlier in this paper, about the mutual constitution of imagination and reality, probably cannot be reconciled with either. But I don’t think there is any reason this incommensurability cannot be seen as itself a value that allows pragmatic integration through a common project of action (the pursuit of some kind of truth, of certain value inextricable from my pursuit, etc.) which can be agreed on as what one might call a regulatory principle. What does seem certain is that, without something along those lines, we are likely to see even further dominancy by the logic of the market. 152 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 153 of 216 Fragmented Movements Good Traditionally radical politics have eliminated difference. By relying on a unifying system of thought, like neoliberalism, all other ideologies become removed. Mark Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London and small- a anarchist, 2007, Possibilities, p. 326 There is, of course, one enormous difference between the two arguments. The central claim of those who celebrated postmodernism is that we have a world in which all totalizing systems – science, humanity, nation, truth, and so forth – have all been shattered; where there are no longer any grand mechanisms for stitching together a world now broken into incommensurable fragments. One can no longer even imagine that there could be a single standard of value by which to measure everything. The neoliberals, on the other hand, are singing the praises of a global market which is, in fact, the single greatest and most monolithic system of measurement ever created, a totalizing system which would subordinate everything—every object, every piece of land, every human capacity or relationship – on the planet to a single standard of value. It is becoming increasingly obvious that what those who celebrated postmodernism were describing was in large part simply the effects this universal market system: which, like any totalizing system of value, ends to throw all others into doubt and disarray. The critical thing for present purposes is not so much to ask how they could fail to notice this, but to establish one simple truth: that it is absurd to pretend that one could really have an intellectual universe in which there is no principle of articulation between different perspectives whatsoever. Anyone who pretends to have eliminated such principles entirely will simply be opening the way to reintroducing the dominant ideology of the day in covert form. And this is precisely what much of the most epistemologically radical approaches have ended up doing: reintroducing the logic and spirit of the market (with its ethos of endless flux, choice. reinvention, etc.) in a different register. To do otherwise would require establishing some alternative principle of articulation. In order to prefigure change, current modes of thought must change into one of a common goal – where an ethic of commitment drove the project. Mark Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London and small- a anarchist, 2007, Possibilities, p. 326-27 In the above, I have sketched out some very preliminary thoughts on what such a principle might be like. Rather than develop a detailed argument (This is hardly the place), let me end, then, by suggesting that there’s no reason why social theory itself might not take of a certain “prefigurative” role: that is, embody, in its own organization, as an articulation of extremely diverse philosophies, a vision of what a more reasonable political order could possibly be like. I think it is possible. However, certain habits of thought would definitely have to change. In everyday practice, the way that different schools of thought interact docs not even resemble market relations so as the style of argument preferred by contending Marxist sects. We see all the same sectarian habits: of reducing other positions into hostile caricatures so as to be able to plug them into some prefab set of categories, each representing a type of ideological error; of treating minor differences as if they were moral chasms. There are profound historical reasons why this happened. The organization of intellectual schools or tendencies has always rather resembled that of vanguardist political parties (and also, in a way, avant-garde artistic movements); but this is, in part, because all three had their origins in the same places, in Saint-Simon and Comte, who differed merely on whether an artistic “avant-garde” or social scientists should form the priesthood of their new religions. In order to begin to unify the diverse strands in opposition to the hegemony of economism, it would be necessary, first of all, to overcome this pernicious history and formulate instead something like what I suggested at the end of the previous section: a collective approach, as if they were so many sects trying to seize power, but rather, by their shared commitment to a project and ethics which begins with the refusal to do so. It is a daunting prospect. Sectarian habits are very deeply ingrained. But it is hardly impossible Most of the best social research already adopts something like this attitude, at least implicitly. It is, again, more than anything else a matter of giving serious reflective thought to what we are already starting to do in practice. 153 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 154 of 216 SYNTHESIS OF IDEAS KEY In an egalitarian community, it is less about everyone agreeing fully, than about creating a synthesis of ideas and coming to a consensus on them. Mark Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London and small- a anarchist, 2007, Possibilities, p. 341-342 Normally, we tend to assume the two are effectively identical because common wisdom has it that democracy—much like, say, science, or philosophy—was invented in ancient Greece. On the face of it this is an odd assertion. Egalitarian communities have existed throughout human history – many of them far more egalitarian than fifthcentury Athens—and they each had some kind of procedure for coming to decisions in matters of collective importance. Often, this involved assembling everyone for discussions in which all members of the community, at least in theory, had equal say. Yet, somehow, it is always assumed that these Procedures could not have been, properly speaking, “democratic.” The main reason this argument seems to make intuitive sense is because in these other assemblies, things rarely actually came to a vote. Almost invariably, they used some form of consensus-building. Now this is interesting in itself. If we accept the idea that a show of’ hands, or having everyone who supports a proposition stand on one side of the plaza and everyone against stand on the other, are not really such incredibly sophisticated ideas that some ancient genius had to “invent” them, then why are they so rarely employed? Why, instead, did communities invariably prefer the apparently much more difficult tack of coining to unanimous decisions? The explanation I would propose is this: it is much easier, in a face-to- face community, to figure out what most members of that community want to do, than to figure our how to change the minds of those who don’t want to do it. Consensus decision-making is typical of societies where there would be no way to compel a minority to agree with a majority decision: either because there is no state with a monopoly of coercive force, or because the stare has no interest in or does not tend to intervene in local decision-making. If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, then the last thing one would want to do is to hold a vote: a public contest which someone will be seen to lose. Voting would be the most likely means to guarantee the sort of humiliations, resentments, and hatreds that ultimately lead the destruction of communities. As any activist who has gone through a facilitation training for a contemporary direct action group can tell you, consensus process is not the same as parliamentary debate and finding consensus in no way resembles voting. Rather, we are dealing with a process of’ compromise and synthesis meant to produce decisions that no one finds so violently objectionable that they are not willing to at least assent. That is to say two levels we are used to distinguishing—decision-making, and enforcement—are collectively collapsed here, it is not that everyone has to agree. Most forms of consensus include a variety of graded forms of disagreement. The point is to ensure that no one walks away feeling that their views have been totally ignored and, therefore, that even those who think the group came to a bad decision are willing to offer their passive acquiescence. 154 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 155 of 216 Role Of Ballot The judge is armed with the ballot and thus has the ability to create real change. David Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London and small- a anarchist, 2007, Possibilities, p. 342 For most of human history, it has been extremely unusual to have both at the same time. Where egalitarian societies exist, it is also usually considered wrong to impose systematic coercion. Where a machinery of coercion did exist, it did not even occur to those wielding it that they were enforcing any sort of popular will. It is of obvious relevance that Ancient Greece was one of the most competitive societies known to history. It was a society that tended to make everything into a public contest, from athletics to philosophy or tragic drama just about anything else. So it might not seem entirely surprising they made political decision-making into a public contest as well. Even more crucial, though, was the fact that decisions were made by a populace in arms. Aristotle, in his Politic, reDavids that the constitution of a Greek city-state will normally depend on the chief arm of its infantry: if this is cavalry, it will be an aristocracy, since horses are expensive. If hoplite infantry, it will be oligarchic, as all could not afford the armor and training. If its power was based in the navy or light infantry, one can expect a democracy as anyone can row, or use a sling. In other words, if a man is armed, then one pretty much has to take his opinions into account. One can see how this worked at its starkest in Xenophon’s Anabam, which tells the story of an army of Greek mercenaries who suddenly find themselves leaderless and lost in the middle of Persia. They elect new officers, and then hold a collective vote to decide what to do next. In a case like this, even if the vote was 60/40, everyone could see the balance of forces and what would happen if things actually came to blows. Every vote was, in a real sense, a conquest. 155 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 156 of 216 Nonviolence Good New, nonviolent approaches to defeating neo-liberalism have the ability to solve by revealing the contradictions inherent in globalization that necessitate violence. David Graeber, Revolutionar/ Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 207-208 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 Where once it seemed that the only alternatives to marching along with signs were either Gandhian non-violent civil disobedience or outright insurrection, groups like the Direct Action Network, Reclaim the Streets, Black Blocs or Tute Bianche have all, in their own ways, been trying to map out a completely new territory in between. They’re attempting to invent what many call a ‘new language’ of civil disobedience, combining elements of street theatre, festival and what can only be called non-violent warfare—non-violent in the sense adopted by, say, Black Bloc anarchists, in that it eschews any direct physical harm to human beings- Ya Basta!. for example, is famous for its lute bianche or whiteoveralls tactics: men and women dressed in elaborate forms of padding, ranging from foam armour to inner tubes to rubberducky flotation devices, helmets and chemical-proof white jumpsuits (their British cousins are well-clad Wombles). As this mock army pushes its way through police barricades, all the while protecting each other against injury or arrest, the ridiculous gear seems to reduce human beings to cartoon characters-misshapen, ungainly, foolish, largely indestructible. The effect is only increased when lines of costumed figures attack police with balloons and water pistols or, like the ‘Pink Bloc’ at Prague and elsewhere, dress as fairies and tickle them with feather dusters. At the American Party Conventions, Billionaires for Bush (or Gore) dressed in high-camp tuxedos and evening gowns and tried to press wads of fake money into the cops’ pockets, thanking them for repressing the dissent None was even slightly hurt—perhaps police are given aversion therapy against hitting anyone in a tuxedo. The Revolutionary Anarchist Clown Bloc, with their high bicycles, rainbow wigs and squeaky mallets, confused the cops by attacking each other (or the billionaires). They had all the best chants: ‘Democracy? Ha Ha Ha!’, ‘The pizza united can never be defeated’, ‘Hey ho. hey ho—ha ha, hee heel’, as well as metachants like ‘Call! Response! call! Response!’ and—everyone’s favourite—’Three Word Chant! Three Word Chant!’ In Quebec City, a giant catapult built along mediaeval lines (with help from the left caucus of the Society for Creative Anachronism) lobbed soft toys at the FTAA. Ancient-warfare techniques have been studied to adopt for non-violent but very militant forms of confrontation: there were peltasts and hoplites (the former mainly from the Prince Edwards Islands, the latter from Montreal) at Quebec City, and research continues into Roman-style shield walls. Blockading has become an art form: if you make a huge web of strands of yarn across an intersection, it’s actually impossible to cross; motorcycle cops get trapped like flies. The Liberation Puppet with its arms fully extended can block a four-lane highway, while snake-dances can he a form of mobile blockade. Rebels in London last Mayday planned Monopoly Board actions—Building Hotels on Mayfair for the homeless, Sale of the Century in Oxford Street, Guerrilla Cardening—only partly disrupted by heavy policing and torrential rain. But even the most militant of the militant—eco-saboteurs like the Earth liberation Front—scrupulously avoid doing anything that would cause harm to human beings (or animals, for that matter). It’s this scrambling of conventional categories that so throws the forces of order and makes them desperate to bring things back to familiar territory (simple violence): even to the point, as in Genoa, of encouraging fascist hooligans to run riot as an excuse to use overwhelming force against everybody else. One could trace these forms of action back to the stunts and guerrilla theatre of the Yippies or Italian ‘metropolitan Indians’ in the sixties, the squatter battles in Germany or Italy in the seventies and eighties, even the peasant resistance to the expansion of Tokyo airport. But it seems to me that here, too, the really crucial origins lie with the Zapatistas, and other movements in the global South. In many ways, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) represents an attempt by people who have always been denied the right to non-violent, civil resistance to seize it; essentially, to call the bluff of neoliberalism and its pretenses to democratization and yielding power to ‘civil society’. It is, as its commanders-say, an army which aspires not to be an army any more (it’s something of an open secret that, for the last five years at least, they have not even been carrying real guns). As Marcos explains their conversion from standard tactics of guerrilla war We thought the people would either not pay attention to us, or come together with us to fight. But they did not read in either of these two ways. It turned out that all these people, who were thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, did not want to rise up with us but…neither did they want to be annihilated. They wanted us to dialogue. This completely broke our scheme and ended up defining zapatismo, the neo-zqpatismo. Now the EZLN is the sort of army that organizes ‘invasions’ of Mexican military bases in which hundreds of rebels sweep in entirely unarmed to yell at and try to shame the resident soldiers. 156 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 157 of 216 Nonviolence Good Mass, non-violent protest have the ability to expose, delegitimize and dismantle mechanisms of control. David Graeber, Revolutionary/ Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 210 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 Similarly, mass actions by the Landless Workers’ Movement gain an enormous moral authority in Brazil by reoccupying unused lands entirely non-violently. In either case, it’s pretty dear that if the same people had tried the same thing twenty years ago, they would simply have been shot. However you choose to trace their origins, these new tactics are perfectly in accord with the general anarchistic inspiration of the movement, which is less about seizing state power than about exposing, delegitimizing and dismantling mechanisms of rule while winning ever- larger spaces of autonomy from it. The critical thing, though, is that all this is only possible in a general atmosphere of peace. In fact, it seems to me that these are the ultimate stakes of struggle at the moment: one that may well determine the overall direction of the twenty-first century We should remember that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when most Marxist parties were rapidly becoming reformist social-democrats, anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism were the centre of the revolutionary Left. The situation only really changed with World War I and the Russian Revolution. It was the Bolsheviks’ success, we are usually told, that led to the decline of anarchism-with the glorious exception of Spain—and catapulted Communism to the fore. But it seems to me one could look at this another way. In the late nineteenth century, most people honestly believed that war between industrialized powers was becoming obsolete; colonial adventures were a constant, but a war between France and England, on French or English soil, seemed as unthinkable as it would today. By 1900, even the use of passports was considered an antiquated barbarism, The ‘short twentieth century’ was, by contrast, probably the most violent in human history, almost entirely preoccupied with either waging world wars or preparing for them. 157 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 158 of 216 Intellectual Debate Good Criticism through intellectual debate is an alternative to the dominating power structures that exist today. Immanuel Wallerstein, , U.S. Sociologist, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 271 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 If, as I have argued elsewhere, the modern world-system is in structural crisis, and we have entered an ‘age of transition’—a period of bifurcation and chaos—then it is clear that the issues confronting antisystemic movements pose themselves in a very different fashion than those of the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, The two-step, state-oriented strategy has become irrelevant, which explains the discomfort of most existing descendants of erstwhile antisystemic organizations in putting forward either long-term or immediate sets of political objectives. Those few who try meet with scepticism from their hoped-for followers; or, worse, with indifference. Such a period of transition has two characteristics that dominate the very idea of an antisystemic strategy. The first is that those in power will no longer be trying to preserve the existing system (doomed as it is to self-destruction); rather, they will try to ensure that the transition leads to the construction of a new system that will replicate the worst features of the existing one—its hierarchy, privilege and inequalities. They may not yet be using language that reflects the demise of existing structures, but they are implementing a strategy based on such assumptions. Of course, their camp is not united, as is demonstrated by the conflict between the so-called centre-right ‘traditionalists’ and the ultra-right, militarist hawks. But they are working hard to build backing for changes that will not be changes, a new system as bad as—or worse than—the present one. The second fundamental characteristic is that a period of systemic transition is one of deep uncertainty, in which it is impossible to know what the outcome will be. History is on no one’s side- Each of us can affect the future, but we do not and cannot know how others will act to affect it, too. The basic framework of the WSF reflects this dilemma, and underlines it. A strategy for the period of transition ought therefore to include four components—all of them easier said than done. The first is a process of constant, open debate about the transition and the outcome we hope for, This has never been easy, and the historic antisystemic movements were never very good at it. But the atmosphere is more favourable today than it has ever been, and the task remains urgent and indispensable—underlining the role of intellectuals in this conjuncture. The structure of the WS F has lent itself to encouraging this debate; we shall see if it is able to maintain this openness. 158 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 159 of 216 Intellectual Debate Good We must carry out defensive political actions (i.e. rejection of the plan) while engaging in debate over the alternative to today’s hierarchal systems of power. Immanuel Wallerstein, , U.S. Sociologist, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 272 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 The second component should be self-evident: an antisystemic movement cannot neglect short-term defensive action, including electoral action. The world’s populations live in the present, and their immediate needs have to be addressed. Any movement that neglects them is bound to lose the widespread passive support that is essential for its long-term success. But the motive and justification for defensive action should not be that of remedying a failing system but rather of preventing its negative effects from getting worse in the short run. This is quite different psychologically and politically. The third component has to be the establishment of interim, middle- range goals that seem to move in the right direction. t would suggest that one of the most useful—substantively, politically, psychologically—is the attempt to move towards selective, but ever-widening, decommodification. We are subject today to a barrage of neoliberal attempts to commodify what was previously seldom or never appropriated for private sale-the human body, water, hospitals. We must not only oppose this but move in the other direction, Industries, especially failing industries, should be decommodified. This does not mean they should be ‘nationalized—for the most part, simply another version of commodification. It means we should create structures, operating in the market, whose objective is performance and survival rather than profit. This can be done, as we know, from the history of universities or hospitals— not all, but the best Why is such a logic impossible for steel factories threatened with delocalization? Finally, we need to develop the substantive meaning of our long- term emphases, which I take to be a world that is relatively democratic and relatively egalitarian. I say ‘relatively’ because that is realistic. There will always be gaps—but there is no reason why they should be wide, encrusted or hereditary. Is this what used to be called socialism, or even communism? Perhaps, but perhaps not. That brings us back to the issue of debate. We need to stop assuming what the better (not the perfectt society will be like. We need to discuss it, outline it, experiment with alternative structures to realize it; and we need to do this at the same time as we carry out the first three parts of our programme for a chaotic world in systemic transition. And if this programme is insufficient, and it probably is, then this very inaufficiency ought to be part of the debate which is Point One of the programme. 159 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 160 of 216 Must Continue To Kritik A criticism which enables further criticisms is a success. Chittaroopa Palit, Revolutionary/Leader in NBA Movement, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 88 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 Yet the real challenge is to begin from where we are, with our own constituencies. If we work only at the state or national levels, there is a real danger of losing the organic leaders who have emerged from the Narmada movement and form our real strength. There are hundreds of capable tribals, women, fisherfolk, with high levels of consciousness— the outcome of sixteen years of collective resistance. The real success of our struggle lies not only in stopping dams but in enabling such leaders to play a guiding role in broader struggles, not just against displacement, but against corporate globalization and communalism: to lead the defence of democracy in this country, and shape its economic and political future. It is the marginalized people of the Narmada Valley who know the system at its worst, and have some of the richest experiences in struggling against it. Their lives and tragedies have made them both sensitive to what is needed in the long term and courageous in their willingness to undergo whatever sacrifices prove necessary for prolonged resistance. We must continue to kritik and recognize the colonization of our minds and communities. This in itself is an alternative. Njoki Njehu , Revolutionary/Founder of 50 Years is Enough, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 102-103 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 1980 is when structural adjustment programmes began to be introduced around the world, implemented by the World Bank, IMP and, to a lesser extent, regional banks. In Africa, this was a period of ascendancy for the IMP and World Bank, bolstered by the US’s aggressive push for Cold War dominance under Reagan. Africans were told to tighten their belts, and that the short-term pain of cuts in expenditure would bring gains in the long term. But twenty years later, those gains haven’t materialized—and this is a point that I made in my evidence to Congress, the year before last. Looking at the periods before and since structural adjustment, you can track the drop in literacy and immunization rates, declining numbers of hospital beds and doctors, and increasing agricultural insecurity, as governments cut credit to farmers who are not producing for export. The numbers are getting worse. Ghana is supposed to be one of the Bank’s success stories but, in the 1990s, the Bank itself calculated that it would take the average Ghanaian forty years to regain the standard of living she had had in the 1970’s. Imagine what that means for the so-called basket-cases’ such as Somalia, Sierra Leone or Cameroon. The World Bank recently released a report containing figures on healthcare provision, literacy rates, and so on. When it was pointed out that the country with the best indicators was Cuba—not a member of the IMP or World Bank, subject to US embargo for 40 years, and not following the policies of the Washington Consensus—Wolfensohn said he wasn’t embarrassed to admit this was the case. But these people are so wedded to the orthodoxy that they can’t envisage alternatives. This is really the heart of the struggle for Africa’s second liberation—we need to examine how these institutions and their policies have become embedded in our communities, our economies, our continent, without the people’s consent. The only consent given is that of the finance minister, or the president. or the governor of the Central Bank—themselves usually educated at Harvard, Yale, Chicago or Stanford, and often former employees of the World Bank or IMP. There is also the HIV-AIDS crisis. In Zimbabwe, the fastest-growing sector is carpentry because of all the coffins needed for people dying from the pandemic. There is, in fact, a connection between HIV-AIDS and structural adjustment programmes: by the time the crisis hit, health systems had been completely undermined. Kenya had a network of community or village clinics at local level, and then hospitals at the district, provincial and national levels, with private and church-run hospitals in between. It used to be a place where people from outside Kenya— black South Africans, for instance—would come for treatment. 160 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 161 of 216 Must Continue To Kritik We must continue to kritik. We have realized the interconnectedness of the world and we must now deepen our analysis of the problems in the world today. Njoki Njehu , Founder of 50 Years is Enough, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 102 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 After September 11, a lot of people woke up to the need—not to bring the world under the control of the United States, as the neo-conservatives would have it—but to realize the ways in which we are connected as people across the planet. We have a real opportunity to deepen and broaden our analysis of what other challenges face us, from perpetual war, to famine, to HIV-AIDS, to international debt. There are also questions of police brutality, environmental racism, union busting—and all the other issues, from lack of health care insurance, to homelessness, to safe drinking water and so on. If we recognize these circumstances as a totality then there are no divisions. The Institute for Policy Studies, the American Friends Service Committee, the Washington Peace Centre and a lot of groups that we work with on all kinds of other issues have taken a lead against the war on Iraq. To me, this means that there is no difference between a peace activist, a global 5uatice activist or an anti-corporate globalization activist. That it is necessary for us to make those connections. Every time they raise the tenor alert level, there is the great sucking sound of civil liberties going out the window, because it becomes the excuse for all kinds of draconian measures. We have to be vigilant. We need to continue to push on the issue of justice, on immigrant tights, in the same way that we are pushing for a cleaner environment and an end to exploitation. 161 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 162 of 216 Small Issues First We must critique and fight for individual rights at home in order to engage the larger enemy of neoliberalism Jose Bov , Revolutionary/Leader of SECC, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 138 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 There were two strands. One was the libertarian thinking of the time— anarcho-syndicalist ideas, in particular: Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon, the anarchists of the Spanish Civil War. There were still a lot of Civil War veterans living in Bordeaux, and we used to have discussions with them. The other was the example of people involved in non-violent action strategies: Luther King and the civil tights movement in the States; César Chavez, the Mexican-Amereican farm-worker who organized the Latino grape-pickers in California. There was a strong Gandhian influence, too: the idea that you can’t change the World without making changes in your own life; the attempt to integrate powerful symbolic actions into forms of mass struggle. In much of Europe and the United States, there was a clear rupture between the struggles of the sixties and seventies and those of today, with big defeats— Reagan, Thatcher—lying in between. In the States, in particular there seems to be a new generation involved now in the anti-globalization protests. In France, there has perhaps been less sense of a clear-cut deft at, but less generational renewal, too? The seventies were years of powerful militancy in France, coinciding with a political situation in which there was a possibility of the left parties taking office for the first time. There was a lot of hope in 1981, when Mitterrand was elected. The ebb came in the eighties. Some people argued, ‘We mustn’t do anything that would damage the Socialists’. Others were disillusioned and quit politics, saying: ‘We thought this would change things, but nothing has changed’. They were the years of commercialization, of individual solutions, when cash was all-important. We weren’t affected by that so much in the peasants’ movement On the Larzac plateau, after our victory against the army in ‘81, we started organizing for self-management of the land, bringing in young people to farm, taking up the question of Roquefort and intensive farming, fighting for the rights of small producers, building up the trade-union networks that eventually came together in the Confederation Paysanne. So for us, the eighties were very rich years. There was no feeling of a downturn. As for the young generation: it’s true that many of the campaigns of the nineties were a bit drab. They made their point, but they did not thaw many people in. It was the emergence of another set of issues—the housing struggles of the homeless, the campaigns of the sans-papiers— that began to create new forms of political activity, crystallizing in the anti-globalization movement of the last few years. At the trial over dismantling the McDonald’s in Millau in June 2000, we had over 100,000 supporters, lots of them young people. Since then, in Nice, Prague, Genoa, there has been a real sense of a different sort of consciousness. It comes from a more global way of thinking about the world, where the old forms of struggle—in the work-place or against the state—no longer carry the same weight. With the movement against a monolithic world- economic system, people can once again see the enemy more clearly. That had been a problem in the West. It’s been difficult for people to grasp concretely what the new forms of alienation involve, in an economy that has become completely autonomous from the political sphere. But at the same time—and this may be more specific to France—the anti-globalization movement here has never cut itself off from other social forces. We’ve always seen the struggle for the rights of immigrants and the excluded, the sans-papiers, the unemployed, the homeless, as part of the struggle against neoliberaliam. We couldn’t conceive of an anti-globalization movement that didn’t fight for these rights at home. 162 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 163 of 216 Borders First We must confront the imprisoning mechanism of neoliberalism in order to ensure its collapse: borders. David Graeber, Revolutionary/ Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 206 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 These connexions—and the broader links between neoliberal policies and mechanisms of state coercion (police, prisons, militarism)—have played a more and more salient role in our analyses as we ourselves have confronted escalating levels of state repression. Borders became a major issue in Europe during the IMP meetings at Prague, and later EU meetings in Nice. At the FTAA summit in Quebec City last summer, invisible lines that had previously been treated as if they didn’t exist (at least for white people) were converted overnight into fortifications against the movement of would-be global citizens, demanding the right to petition their rulers. The three-kilometre ‘wall’ constructed through the centre of Quebec City, to shield the heads of state junketing inside from any contact with the populace, became the perfect symbol for what neoliberalism actually means in human terms. The spectacle of the Black Bloc, armed with wire cutters and grappling hooks, joined by everyone from Steelworkers to Mohawk warriors to tear down the wall, became—for that very reason—one of the most powerful moments in the movement’s history. There is one striking contrast between this and earlier internationalisms, however, The former usually ended up exporting Western organizational models to the rest of the world; in this, the flow has if anything been the other way around. Many, perhaps most, of the movement’s signature techniques-including mass non-violent civil disobedience itself— were first developed in the global South. In the long run, this may well prove the single most radical thing about it, In the corporate media, the word ‘violent’ is invoked as a kind of mantra—invariably a large action takes place: ‘violent protests’, ‘violent clashes’, ‘police raid headquarters of violent protesters’, even ‘violent riots’ (there are other kinds?). Such expressions are typically invoked when a simple, plain-English description of what took place (people throwing paint-bombs, breaking windows of empty storefronts, holding hands as they blockaded intersections, cops beating them with sticks) might give the impression that the only truly violent parties were the police. The US media is probably the biggest offender hereand this despite the fact that, after two years of increasingly militant direct action, it is still impossible to produce a single example of anyone to whom a US activist has caused physical injury. I would say —- that what really disturbs the powers-that be is not the ‘violence’ of the movement but its relative lack of it; governments simply do not know how to deal with an overtly revolutionary movement that refuses to fall into familiar patterns of armed resistance. If the effort to destroy existing paradigms is usually quite self-conscious. 163 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 164 of 216 Exchange of Experiences Key We must develop a global vision in order to combat neo-liberalism. The exchange of opinions and experiences through kritiking is what creates a space for intellectual debate. Jose Bov , Revolutionary/Founder Confederation Paysanne, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 138 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 We’ve argued for an International Trade Tribunal—in parallel to the International Court of Human Rights—with a Charter, and judges nominated by the UN. There should be transparency of action, and private individuals, groups and trade unions should be able to bring cases, as well as states. The Tribunal would play a constitutional role, advising on whether international economic accords should be ratified: they would have to concur with the individual and collective rights to which UN members are signatories—the right to food, to shelter, to work, education, health. These rights need to be imposed upon the market; they should be respected not just by states but by economic institutions. It’s a similar process to that of the Kyoto accords on the environment. Kyoto surely doesn’t offer a very powerful precedent? I agree. But these things take time. The call for an International War Crimes Tribunal has now been ratified by 30 or 40 countries, although it’s taken almost four decades, But it’s essential to ask what structures we do want for multilateral trade. We have to develop a long-term global vision, without being naive. That will require a certain balance of forces. Others in Via Campesina—the MST for instance—have called for the abolition of the WTO, rather than its reform. Are the experiences of North and South at odds here? ‘Food out of the WTO’ is Via Campesina’s demand. We’re all agreed on the three main points—food sovereignty, food safety, patenting. For the people of the South, food sovereignty means the tight to protect themselves against imports. For us, it means fighting against export aid and against intensive farming. There’s no contradiction there at all. We can stage an action in one part of the world without in any way jeopardizing the interests of the peasants elsewhere, whether it’s uprooting genetically modified soya plants with the Landless Movement in Brazil, as we did last January, or demonstrating with the Indian farmers in Bangalore, or pulling up GM rice with them when they came to France, or protesting with the peasants and the Zapatistas in Mexico – effectively - our demands are the same. Of course there are different points of view in Via Campesina— it’s the exchange of opinions and experiences that makes it such a fantastic network for training and debate. It’s a real farmers’ International, a living example of a new relationship between North and South. Shouldn’t the anti-globalization movement oppose globalized forms of military power- NATO, for example, as well as the WTO? That’s more complicated. It’s not to say that one shouldn’t fight against NATO. But behind the military conflict there is often a far more cunning and destructive form of economic colonization going on, through the programmes imposed by the IMf and world bank—opening regions up to the multinationals, dismantling public services, privatizisig utilities. In Sarajevo in the midnineties, for instance, there were people in the French military contingent who weren’t officers at all but representatives of the multinational, Vivendioriginally Eaux de France. They spent their whole time studying the water mains and the infrastructure. When the fighting was over, they were on the spot to offer their services in reconstructing Bosnia’s utilities. Today, it’s Vivendi that runs Sarajevo’s water system as a private service. It’s a form of economic domination that we’re seeing throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia and elsewhere. We do need to denounce the role of the sole military superpower as world policeman. But its economic dominance is more important. There tend to be anti-war protests against particular conflicts, rather than around militarism as such. There was quite a big mobilization in France against the Gulf War, although it wasn’t easy since it was a Socialist government that was prosecuting the War. But the way the West struck simply in order to control the oil was so brazen that it did generate real protest. In Bosnia and Kosovo, the situation was much more ambiguous. There was a lot of debate inside the movement between those who opposed the NATO intervention and others who said, quite rightly, that Milotevic’s regime was a rotten, red-brown affair—the old Stalinism in Serb national dress. And people had known what was going on in Kosovo for years. There was a lot of discussion as to what form resistance and solidarity should take. But for me, there can never be a good war. As soon as you reach that stage. it is inevitably the people who lose. I was against both forms of military intervention, as I oppose the American bombardment of Afghanistan. 164 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 165 of 216 Exchange of Experiences Key We must connect with the masses and can only accomplish true change without winning the greater battle which is done by connecting with the masses. Trevor Ngwane , Revolutionary/Leader SECC, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 133 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 In terms of general questions, I think the issue of political power remains crucial. Some people attack the idea of targeting state power— the argument that globalization undermines the role of the nation-state gets translated into an excuse for avoiding the fight with your own national bourgeoisie. But we in South Africa can’t not confront the ANC and Mbeki. American activists can’t not confront Bush- The COSATU leaders, the SACP, are happy to fight imperialism everywhere except here at home. It’s been good to demonstrate against world summit meetings in Seattle, Genoa, even Doha, but there are problems with following the global elite around—it’s not something poor people can afford to do. What if they hold their next conference on the moon? Only millionaire activists will be able to go there. The point is, we have to build where we are- We have had workshops on the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and we’ve got strong people working on those issues- We’ve set up structures for the Campaign Against Neoliberalism in Southern Africa. But in the end we had to get down to the most basic questions: what are the problems facing people on the ground that unite us most? In Soweto, it’s electricity. In another area, it is water. We’ve learned that you have to actually organize—to talk to people, door to door; to connect with the masses- But you have to build with a vision. From Day One we argued that electricity cuts are the result of privatization. Privatization is the result of GEAR. GEAR reflects the demands of global capital. which the ANC are bent on pushing through. We cannot finally win this immediate struggle unless we win that greater one. But still, connecting with what touches people on a daily basis, in a direct fashion, is the way to move history forward. 165 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 166 of 216 Action Before Alternative Taking an action against the neoliberal state is a pre-requisite to creating an alternative. The criticism creates space for an alternative to emerge. David Graeber, Revolutionary/Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 202 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 It’s hard to think of another time when there has been such a gulf between intellectuals and activists; between theorists of revolution and its practitioners. Writers who for years have been publishing essays that sound like position papers for vast social movements that do not in fact exist seem seized with confusion or worse, dismissive contempt, now that real ones are everywhere emerging. It’s particularly scandalous in the case of what’s still, for no particularly good reason, referred to as the ‘anti-globalization’ movement, one that has in a mere two or three years managed to transform completely the sense of historical possibilities for millions across the planet This may be the result of sheer ignorance, or of relying on what might be gleaned from such overtly hostile sources as the New York Times; then again, most of what’s written even in progressive outlets seems largely to miss the point—or at least, rarely focuses on what participants in the movement really think is most important about it. As an anthropologist and active participant—particularly in the more radical, direct-action end of the movement—I may be able to clear up some common points of misunderstanding; but the news may not be gratefully received. Much of the hesitation, I suspect, lies in the reluctance of those who have long fancied themselves radicals of some sort to come to terms with the fact that they are really liberals: interested in expanding individual freedoms and pursuing social justice, but not in ways that would seriously challenge the existence of reigning institutions like capital or state. And even many of those who would like to see revolutionary change might not feel entirely happy about having to accept that most of the creative energy for radical politics is now coming from anarchism—a tradition that they have hitherto mostly dismissed— and that taking this movement seriously will necessarily also mean a respectful engagement with it. I am writing as an anarchist; but in a sense, counting how many people involved in the movement actually call themselves ‘anarchists’, and in what contexts, is a bit beside the point. The very notion of direct action, with its rejection of a politics which appeals to governments to modify their behavior, in favour of physical intervention against state power in a form that itself prefigures an alternative—all of this emerges directly from the libertarian tradition. Anarchism is the heart of the movement, its soul; the source of most of what’s new and hopeful about it. In what follows, then, I will try to clear up what seem to be the three most common misconceptions about the movement—our supposed opposition to something called ‘globalization’, our supposed ‘violence’, and our supposed lack of a coherent ideology—and then suggest how radical intellectuals might think about re-imagining their own theoretical practice in the light of all of this. 166 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 167 of 216 Idealism Good If pure democracy has a chance, it must be believed in despite opposition. David Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London and small- a anarchist, 2007, Possibilities, p. 362-363 It is in this context that I might suggest that the anarchist solution – that there really is no resolution to this paradox – is really not all that unreasonable. The democratic state was always a contradiction. Globalization has simply exposed the rotten underpinnings, by creating the need for decision- making structures on a planetary scale where any attempt to maintain the pretense of popular sovereignty, let alone participation, would be obviously absurd. The neo-liberal solution, of course, is to declare the Davidet the only form of public deliberation one really needs, and to restrict the state almost exclusively to its coercive function. In this context, the Zapatista response – to abandon the notion that revolution is a matter of seizing control over the coercive apparatus of the state, and instead proposing to refound democracy in the self-organization of autonomous communities – makes perfect sense. This is the reason an otherwise obscure insurrection in southern Mexico caused such a sensation in radical circles to begin with. Democracy, then, is for the moment returning to the spaces in which it originated: the spaces in between. Whether it can then proceed to engulf the world depends perhaps less on what kind of theories we make about it, but on whether we honestly believe that ordinary human beings, sitting down together in deliberative bodies, would be capable of managing their own affairs as well as elites, whose decisions are backed up by the power of weapons, are of managing it for them – or even whether, even if they wouldn’t, they have the right to be allowed to try. For most of human history, faced with such questions, professional intellectuals have almost universally taken the side of the elites. It is rather my impression that, if it really comes down to it, the overwhelming majority are still seduced by the various ugly mirrors and have no real faith in the possibilities of popular democracy. But perhaps this too could change. 167 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 168 of 216 Idealism Good In order to rid the world of systems of domination one must embrace that a better world is possible David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004 So in this case, the question becomes: What sort of social theory would actually be of interest to those who are trying to help bring about a world in which people are free to govern their own affairs? This is what this pamphlet is mainly about. For starters, I would say any such theory would have to begin with some initial assumptions. Not many. Probably just two. First, it would have to proceed from the assumption that, as the Brazilian folk song puts it, “another world is possible.” That institutions like the state, capitalism, racism and male dominance are not inevitable; that it would be possible to have a world in which these things would not exist, and that we’d all be better off as a result. To commit oneself to such a principle is almost an act of faith, since how can one have certain knowledge of such matters? It might possibly turn out that such a world is not possible. But one could also make the argument that it’s this very unavailability of absolute knowledge which makes a commitment to optimism a moral imperative: Since one cannot know a radically better world is not possible, are we not betraying everyone by insisting on continuing to justify, and reproduce, the mess we have today? And anyway, even if we’re wrong, we might well get a lot closer. manifesto): Here of course one has to deal with the inevitable objection: that utopianism has lead to unmitigated horror, as Stalinists, Maoists, and other idealists tried to carve society into impossible shapes, killing millions in the process. This argument belies a fundamental misconception: that imagining better worlds was itself the problem. Stalinists and their ilk did not kill because they dreamed great dreams—actually, Stalinists were famous for being rather short on imagination—but because they mistook their dreams for scientific certainties. This led them to feel they had a right to impose their visions through a machinery of violence. Anarchists are proposing nothing of the sort, on either count. They presume no inevitable course of history and one can never further the course of freedom by creating new forms of coercion. In fact all forms of systemic violence are (among other things) assaults on the role of the imagination as a political principle, and the only way to begin to think about eliminating systematic violence is by recognizing this. And of course one could write very long books about the atrocities throughout history carried out by cynics and other pessimists... So that’s the first proposition. The second, I’d say, is that any anarchist social theory would have to reject self-consciously any trace of vanguardism. The role of intellectuals is most definitively not to form an elite that can arrive at the correct strategic analyses and then lead the masses to follow. But if not that, what? This is one reason I’m calling this essay “Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology”—because this is one area where I think anthropology is particularly well positioned to help. And not only because most actually-existing selfgoverning communities, and actually-existing non-Davidet economies in the world have been investigated by anthropologists rather than sociologists or historians. It is also because the practice of ethnography provides at least something of a model, if a very rough, incipient model, of how nonvanguardist revolutionary intellectual practice might work. When one carries out an ethnography, one observes what people do, and then tries to tease out the hidden symbolic, moral, or pragmatic logics that underlie their actions; one tries to get at the way people’s habits and actions makes sense in ways that they are not themselves completely aware of. One obvious role for a radical intellectual is to do precisely that: to look at those who are creating viable alternatives, try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are (already) doing, and then offer those ideas back, not as prescriptions, but as contributions, possibilities—as gifts. This is more or less what I was trying to do a few paragraphs ago when I suggested that social theory could refashion itself in the manner of direct democratic process. And as that example makes clear, such a project would actually have to have two aspects, or moments if you like: one ethnographic, one utopian, suspended in a constant dialogue. 168 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 169 of 216 Direct Action Good Only by taking true action and engaging multiple groups in society can we defeat capital. Trevor Ngwane , Revolutionary/Leader SECC, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 133 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 Some in the anti-globalization movement say that the working class is finished, that the social movements or even ‘civil society’ itself are now the leading force for change. But if we’re honest, some of these social movements consist of nothing more than an office and a big grant from somewhere or other. They can call a workshop, pay people to attend, give them a nice meal and then write up a good report. They build nothing on the ground. ‘Civil society’ can be even more problematic, extending to the business sector and to NGO’s tendering for contracts for privatized government services. Of course the working class faces greater obstacles, both political and organizational, with the neoliberal turn of the ANC and other mass parties, and the casualization and de-unionization of labour But it remains a key component of any alternative left strategy. The high level of unemployment is a real problem here. It does make workers more cautious. We need to organize both the employed and the unemployed, to overcome capital’s divide-andconquer tactics. The ideology of the new movement resides in its call to action, its desire to change the status quo. David Graeber, Revolutionary/ Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 215 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 Their ideology, then, is immanent in the anti-authoritarian principles that underlie their practice, and one of their more explicit principles is that things should stay this way. Finally, I’d like to tease out some of the questions the directaction networks raise about alienation, and its broader implications for political practice. For example: why is it that, even when there is next to no other constituency for revolutionary politics in a capitalist society the one group most likely to be sympathetic to its project consists of artists, musicians, writers, and others involved in some form of non-alienated production? Surely there must be a link between the actual experience of first imagining things and then bringing them into being, individually or collectively, and the ability to envision social alternatives-particularly the possibility of a society itself premised on less alienated forms of creativity? One might even suggest that revolutionary coalitions always tend to rely on a kind of alliance between a society’s least alienated and its most oppressed; actual revolutions, one could then say, have tended to happen when these two categories most broadly overlap. This would, at least, help explain why it almost always seems to be peasants and craftsmen—or even more, newly proletarianized former peasants and craftsmen-who actually overthrow capitalist regimes; and not those inured to generations of wage-labour, It would also help explain the extraordinary importance of indigenous people’s struggles If in the new movement: such people tend to be simultaneously the very least alienated and most oppressed people on earth. Now that new communication technologies have made it Possible to include them in global F revolutionary alliances, as well as local resistance and revolt, it is well-nigh inevitable that they should play a profoundly inspirational role 169 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 170 of 216 Direct Action Good Through direct action change is possible. Prefiguring society can displace the current order and create change. Mark Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London, 2007, Possibilities, p. 378 Not so for what most in the movement were actually for. If there was one central inspiration to the global justice movement, it was the principle of direct action. This is a notion very much at the heart of the anarchist tradition and, in fact, most of the movement’s central organizers—more and more in fact as time went on—considered themselves anarchists, or at least, heavily influenced by anarchist ideas. They saw mass mobilizations not only as opportunities to expose the illegitimate, undemocratic nature of existing institutions, but as ways to do so in a form that itself demonstrated why such institutions were unnecessary, by providing a living example of genuine, direct democracy. The key word here is “process”—meaning, decision-making process. When members of the Direct Action Network or similar groups are considering whether to work with some other group, the first question that’s likely to be asked is “what sort of process do they use?”—that is: Do they practice internal democracy? Do they vote or use consensus? Is there a formal leadership? Such questions are usually considered of much more immediate importance than questions of ideology.2 Similarly, if one talks to someone fresh from a major mobilization and asks what she found most new and exciting about the experience, one is most likely to hear long descriptions of the organization of affinity groups, clusters, blockades, flying squads, spokescouncils, network structures, or about the apparent miracle of consensus decision making in which one can see thousands of people coordinate their actions without any formal leadership structure. There is a technical term for all this: “prefigurative politics”. Direct action is a form of resistance which, in its structure, is meant to prefigure the genuinely free society one wishes to create. Revolutionary action is not a form of self-sacrifice, a grim dedication to doing whatever it takes to achieve a future world of freedom. It is the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free. The problem with today’s intellectuals is the gulf between theorizing and actual revolution. We need to engage in direct action. David Graeber, Revolutionary/ Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 202 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 It’s hard to think of another time when there has been such a gulf between intellectuals and activists; between theorists of revolution and its practitioners. Writers who for years have been publishing essays that sound like position papers for vast social movements that do not in fact exist seem seized with confusion or worse, dismissive contempt, now that real ones are everywhere emerging. It’s particularly scandalous in the case of what’s still, for no particularly good reason, referred to as the ‘anti-globalization’ movement, one that has in a mere two or three years managed to transform completely the sense of historical possibilities for millions across the planet This may be the result of sheer ignorance, or of relying on what might be gleaned from such overtly hostile sources as the New York Times; then again, most of what’s written even in progressive outlets seems largely to miss the point—or at least, rarely focuses on what participants in the movement really think is most important about it. As an anthropologist and active participant— particularly in the more radical, direct-action end of the movement—I may be able to clear up some common points of misunderstanding; but the news may not be gratefully received. Much of the hesitation, I suspect, lies in the reluctance of those who have long fancied themselves radicals of some sort to come to terms with the fact that they are really liberals: interested in expanding individual freedoms and pursuing social justice, but not in ways that would seriously challenge the existence of reigning institutions like capital or state. And even many of those who would like to see revolutionary change might not feel entirely happy about having to accept that most of the creative energy for radical politics is now coming from anarchism—a tradition that they have hitherto mostly dismissed— and that taking this movement seriously will necessarily also mean a respectful engagement with it. I am writing as an anarchist; but in a sense, counting how many people involved in the movement actually call themselves ‘anarchists’, and in what contexts, is a bit beside the point. The very notion of direct action, with its rejection of a politics which appeals to governments to modify their behavior, in favour of physical intervention against state power in a form that itself prefigures an alternative—all of this emerges directly from the libertarian tradition. Anarchism is the heart of the movement, its soul; the source of most of what’s new and hopeful about it. In what follows, then, I will try to clear up what seem to be the three most common misconceptions about the movement—our supposed opposition to something called ‘globalization’, our supposed ‘violence’, and our supposed lack of a coherent ideology—and then suggest how radical intellectuals might think about re-imagining their own theoretical practice in the light of all of this. 170 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 171 of 216 Movement Against Neoliberalism Good The movement of movements is a movement against neoliberalism – market fundamentalism. David Graeber, Revolutionary/ Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 203 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 The phrase ‘anti-globalization movement’ is a coinage of the US media and activists have never felt comfortable with it. Insofar as this is a movement against anything, it’s against neoliberalism, which can be defined as a kind of market fundamentalism-or, better, market Stalinism—that holds there is only one possible direction for human historical development. The map is held by an elite of economists and corporate flacks, to whom must be ceded all power once held by institutions with any shred of democratic accountability; from now on it will be wielded largely through unelected treaty organizations like the IMF, WTO or NAFTA. In Argentina, or Estonia, or Taiwan, it would be possible to say this straight out: ‘We are a movement against neoliberalism’. But in the US, language is always a problem. The corporate media here is probably the most politically monolithic on the planet: neoliberalism is all there is to see—the background reality; as a result, the word itself cannot be used. The issues involved can only be addressed using propaganda terms like ‘free trade’ or ‘the free market’. So American activists find themselves in a quandary: if one suggests putting ‘the N word’ (as it’s often called) in a pamphlet or press release, alarm bells immediately go off: one is being exclusionary, playing only to an educated elite. There have been all sorts of attempts to frame alternative expressions—we’re a ‘global justice movement’, we’re a movement ‘against corporate globalization’. None is especially elegant or quite satisfying and, as a result, it is common in meetings to hear the speakers using ‘globalization movement’ and ‘anti-globalization movement’ pretty much interchangeably. Decolonization of our mind through criticizing the neoliberal order is an alternative to the neoliberal regime. Bernard Cassen , Revolutionary/Founder ATTAC, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 170 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 This kind of outlook influenced all the parties. including the Communists. Le Mantle diplomatique and ATTAC have developed a consistent critique of it, with arguments that have crystallized into an active framework of education and action, in an international context where they have Teal resonance. It is perfectly true that we have had little impact on the French governments to date. But we always thought of a medium-term strategy. and never paid much attention to the electoral cycle in France. The elites don’t care much about us, but movements and citizens do. Still, our target audience is ultimately international, rather than national. Our fundamental aim, as I have often said, is to decontaminate people’s minds. Our heads have been stuffed with neoliberalism, its virus is in our brain cells, and we need to detoxify them. We have to be able to start thinking freely again, which means believing that something can be done. For the overwhelming conviction at present is that, politically speaking, nothing can be done- That is why our slogan, ‘Another world is possible’ amounts to something like a cultural revolution. It means that we are not condemned to neoliberalism. we can envisage other ways of living and organizing society than those we have at present. So our task is to persuade the largest number of people possible of the viability of such alternatives, and prepare the ground for a Gramscian hegemony that would allow different policies to be realized. For the moment, our influence is considerable at the level of public opinion in general and finds some echo in the political parties. even of the Right. But there is still very little advance there. This morning I had to give a talk to a conference of the PS whose first session was devoted to the question: ‘what forms of organization do we need?’, while the second asked ‘what kind of ideas do we need?’ As if you could decide matters in that order! t told them that for us the basic line of division is what attitude one takes to neoliberal globalization. So long as you are not clear about that, you might as well give up—there is no just milieu that will allow you to evade the issue: saying yes to the Commission and no to the IMP is a farce that no longer fools anyone. The majority of the audience was openly hostile, of course. But a strong minority is beginning to listen, and to ask questions. Intellectually, we have by and large won the game, as you can see from the titles that sell in French bookshops. 171 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 172 of 216 Movement Against Neoliberalism Good In order to achieve the collapse of neoliberalism, we must fight against a system of control which entraps people. David Graeber, Revolutionary/ Fired Anthropologist at Yale, now with London School of Economics, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 204 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 The no-border network-their slogan: ‘No One is Illegal’—has organized week-long campsites, laboratories for creative resistance, on the Polish—German and Ukrainian borders, in Sicily and at Tarifa in Spain. Activists have dressed up as border guards, built boat-bridges across the River Oder and blockaded Frankfurt Airport with a full classical orchestra to protest against the deportation of immigrants (deportees have died of suffocation on Lufthansa and KLM flights). This summer’s camp is planned for Strasbourg, home of the Schengen ‘Information System, a search- and-control database with tens of thousands of terminals across Europe, targeting the movements of migrants, activists, anyone they like. More and more, activists have been trying to draw attention to the fact that the neoliberal vision of ‘globalization’ is pretty much limited to the movement of capital and commodities, and actually increases barriers against the free flow of people, information and ideas—the size of the US border guard has almost tripled since the signing of NAFTA. Hardly surprising: if it were not possible to effectively imprison the majority of people in the world in impoverished enclaves, there would be no incentive for Nike or The Gap to move production there to begin with. Given a free movement of people, the whole neoliberal project would collapse. This is another thing to bear in mind when people talk about the decline of ‘sovereignty’ in the contemporary world: the main achievement of the nation-state in the last century has been the establishment of a uniform grid of heavily policed barriers across the world. It is precisely this international system of control that we are fighting against, in the name of genuine globalization. The neoliberal logic has created coalitions of opposition capable of overthrowing it. It is only necessary to mobilize these coalitions. Naomi Klein, Prolific Author, Journalist, Activist, doesn’t like Capitalism, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 221 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 Maude Barlow spearheaded the campaign against NAFTA in Canada twelve years ago. Since NAFTA became law, she’s been working with organizers and activists from other countries, and anarchists suspicious of the state in her own country. She was once seen as very much the face of a Canadian nationalism. Today, she has moved away from that discourse. ‘I’ve changed’, she says, ‘I used to see this fight as saving a nation. Now I see it as saving democracy.’ This is a cause that transcends nationality and state borders. The real news out of Seattle is that organizers around the world are beginning to see their local and national struggles—for better funded public schools, against union-busting and casualization, for family farms, and against the widening gap between rich and poor—through a global lens. That is the most significant shift we have seen in years. How did this happen? Who or what convened this new international people’s movement? Who sent out the memos? Who built these complex coalitions? It is tempting to pretend that someone did dream up a master plan for mobilization at Seattle. But I think it was much more a matter of large-scale coincidence. A lot of smaller groups organized to get themselves there and then found to their surprise just how broad and diverse a coalition they had become part of. Still, if there is one force we can thank for bringing this front into being, it is the multinational corporations. As one of the organizers of Reclaim the Streets has remarked, we should be grateful to the CEOs for helping us see the problems more quickly. Thanks to the sheer imperialist ambition of the corporate project at this moment in history—the boundless drive for profit berated by trade deregulation and the wave of mergers and buyouts, liberated by weakened anti-trust laws-multinationals have grown so blindingly rich, so vast in their holdings, so global in their reach, that they have created our coalitions for us. Around the world, activists are piggy-backing on the ready-made infrastructures supplied by global corporations. This can mean cross-border unionization, but also crosssector organizing—among workers, environmentalists, consumers, even prisoners, who may all have different relationships to one multinational. So you can build a single campaign or coalition around a single brand like General Electric. Thanks to Monsanto, farmers in India are working with environmentalists and consumers around the world to develop direct-action strategies that cut off genetically modified foods in the fields and in the supermarkets. 172 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 173 of 216 Movement Against Neoliberalism Good The criticism of the status quo creates possibility for ‘a new type of activist’, a new type of alternative that can alter the landscape of neoliberalism. Naomi Klein, Prolific Author, Journalist, Activist, doesn’t like Capitalism, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 223 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 Thanks to Shell Oil and Chevron, human rights activists in Nigeria, democrats in Europe, environmentalists in North America have united in a fight against the unsustainability of the oil industry. Thanks so the catering giant SodexhoMarriott’s decision to invest in Corrections Corporation of America, university students are able to protest against the exploding US for-profit prison industry simply by boycotting the food in their campus cafeteria. Other targets include pharmaceutical companies who are trying to inhibit the production and distribution of low-cost AIDS drugs, and fast-food chains. Recently, students and farm workers in Florida have joined forces around Taco Bell. In the St Petersburg area, field hands—many of them immigrants from Mexico— are paid an average $7,500 a year to pick tomatoes and onions. Due to a loophole in the law, they have no bargaining power the farm bosses refuse even to talk with them about wages. When they started to look into who bought what they pick, they found that Taco Bell was the largest purchaser of the local tomatoes, So they launched the campaign Yo No Quiero Taco Bell together with students, to boycott Taco Bell on university campuses. It is Nike, of course, that has most helped to pioneer this new brand of activist synergy. Students facing a corporate takeover of their campuses by the Nike swoosh have linked up with workers making its branded campus apparel, as well as with parents concerned at the commercialization of youth, and church groups campaigning against child labour—all united by their different relationships to a common global enemy. Exposing the underbelly of high-gloss consumer brands hat provided the early narratives of this movement, a sort of call-and-response to the very different narratives these companies tell every day about themselves through advertising and public relations. Citigroup offers another prime target, as North America’s largest financial institution, with innumerable holdings, which deals with some of the worst corporate malefactors around. The campaign against it handily knits together dozens of issues—from clear-cut logging in California to oil-and-pipeline schemes in Chad and Cameroon. These projects are only a start. But they are creating a new sort of activeist: ‘Nike is a gateway drug’, in the words of Oregon student activist Sarah Jacobson. By focusing on corporations organizers can demonstrate graphically how so many issues of social, ecological and economic justice are interconnected. 173 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 174 of 216 Movement Against Neoliberalism Good The movement against neoliberalism needs to be globalized in away where movements represent every sector of the oppressed in society. Michael Hardt, Political Philosopher at Duke, also doesn’t like Capitalism, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 230 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 Rather than opposing the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre to the World Economic Forum in New York, it is more revealing to imagine it as the distant offspring of the historic Bandung Conference that took place in Indonesia in 1955. Both were conceived as attempts to counter the dominant world order colonialism and the oppressive Cold War binary in the case of Bandung, and the rule of capitalist globalization in that of Porto Alegre. The differences, however, are immediately apparent.’. On one hand, the Bandung Conference, which brought together leaders primarily from Asia and Africa, revealed in a dramatic way the racial dimension of the colonial and Cold War world order, which Richard Wright famously described as being divided by the ‘color curtain Porto Alegre, in contrast, was a predominantly white event. There were relatively few participants from Asia and Africa, and the racial differences of the Americas were dramatically underrepresented. This points toward a continuing task facing those gathered at Porto Alegre: to globalize further the movements, both within each society and across the world—a project in which the Forum is merely one step. On the other hand, whereas Bandung was conducted by a small group of national political leaders and representatives, Porto Alegre was populated by a swarming multitude and a network of movements. This multitude of protagonists is the great novelty of the World Social Forum, and central to the hope it offers for the future. The first and dominant impression of the Forum was its overflowing enormity; not so much the number of people there—the organizers say 8o,ooo participated—but rather the number of events, encounters and happenings. The programme listing all the official conferences, seminars and workshops—most of which took place at the Catholic University—was the size of a tabloid newspaper, but one soon realized that there were innumerable other unofficial meetings taking place all over town, some publicized on posters and leaflets, others by word of mouth. There were also separate gatherings for the different groups participating in the Forum, such as a meeting of the Italian social movements or one for the various national sections of ATTAC. Then there were the demonstrations: both officially planned, such as the opening mass May Day-style parade, and smaller, conflictual demonstrations against, for example, the members of parliament from different counties at the Forum who voted for the present war on terrorism. Finally, another series of events was held at the enormous youth camp by the river, its fields and fields of tents housing i5,ooo people in an atmosphere reminiscent of a summer music festival, especially when it rained and everyone tramped through the mud wearing plastic sacks as raincoats. In shop, if anyone with obsessive tendencies were to try to understand what was happening at Porto Alegre, the result would certainly have been a complete mental breakdown. The Forum was unknowable, chaotic, dispersive. And that overabundance created an exhilaration in everyone, at being lost in a sea of people from so many parts of the world who are working similarly against the present form of capitalist globalization. 174 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 175 of 216 Movement against Neoliberalism Good Individual struggles against forms of neoliberalism are necessary in identifying the over-all neoliberal enemy. Working against the nation state is a plausible alternative. Tom Mertes, Revolutionary/Editor of Movement of Movements, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 239 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 But the experience presented by activists at Porto Alegre—especially those from Latin America, where the neoliberal crisis is at its most intense—proposed a more modulated view of the specific units and gradations of power than Hardt’s ‘all or nothing’ approach. Rather than an intuitive uprising of the multitude against Empire, they suggested a more differentiated field. The nation state precisely because of its role in pushing through the social engineering required by neoliberalism, remains an essential instrument for global capital—and hence a key zone of contestation. It is against their own governments that both South Africans and Latin Americans have been mobilizing to fight against water and electricity privatizations, Peruvians successfully resisted an electricity sell-off—this time at local-state level, in Arequipa— earlier this year; Bolivian ‘water wars’ rattled Banzer’s regime in April 2000; ‘Vivendi, go homel’ is the cry in Argentina. CONAIE, the national confederation of indigenous 2’ peoples, brought down the Ecuadotian government early in 2000, and after broken promises from the military and the new regime were back on the streets a year later to oppose austerity measures, deforestation, privatizatior, of electricity and oil pipelines. There have been protests _.. along similar lines in El Salvador, India, Nigeria, Ghana, Papus New Guinea. Last spring, the shanty towns of Caracas rallied to the defence of Chavez in order to fight US-backed plans for the privatization of their oil and the still greater reduction of their living standards. ‘The first question of political philosophy today’, write Hardt and Negri, ‘is not if or even why there will be resistance and rebellion, but rather how to determine the enemy against which to rebel’ . The Latin American mobilizations of the past few years display not a faith in the transcendent power of national sovereignty but, precisely, a grasp of the immediate enemy—and, often, a clear intuition of the forces that stand behind him. The architecture alone of most Third World US embassies—those massive, reinforced blocks that loom more ominously than any national government buildings—not to mention the plain facts of the local USAF military base, is evidence enough. It is a common enough contradiction today that a willingness to pursus ‘the radiant horizons of capitalist wealth’ can sit quite easily with a sour dose of home-grown cynicism about the uses of Yanqui power. This is the great ambivalence at the heart of Empire. Regional struggles against neoliberalism can help destroy it Tom Mertes, Revolutionary/Editor of Movement of Movements, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 241 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 . The US is, of course, no transcendent, deterritorialized sovereign force but only a mega-state within an international state system—as is all too clear to those who have felt its force. There are real debates to be had around questions of counterglobalization strategy at national and— more commonly proposed today—at regional level. Via Campesina’s campaign for ‘food sovereignty’, for the right so raise protective tariffs that will prevent multinational companies wiping out local farmers by their dumping practices, is one example.6 It is widely acknowledged that the ability of the Malaysisns and the pre-WTO Chinese to impose control on capital flow during the 1997—98 financial crisis protected their populations from much of the devastation that ravaged Indonesia, Focus on the Global South has tightly counseled Vietnam against joining the WTO, pointing out the social and economic consequences this would entail. It suggests instead ‘deglobalization’ to build strong regional in.. markets within the South that would have some autonomy from global financial interests.7 175 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 176 of 216 Movement against Globalization Good The struggle against globalization today is the struggle against capitalism and neoliberalism as well as being a fight for democracy. Naomi Klein, Prolific Author, Journalist, Activist, doesn’t like Capitalism, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 220 Edited by Tom Mertes, 20 04 Outfits like Napster have been creating a kind of commons on the internet where kids can swap music with each other, rather than buying it from multinational record companies. Billboards have been liberated and independent media networks set up. Protests are multiplying. In Porto Alegre, during the World Social Forum, Jose Bové, often caricatured as only a hammer of McDonald’s, traveled with local activists from the Movimento Sem Terra to a nearby Monsanto test site, where they destroyed three hectares of genetically modified soya beans. But the protest did not stop there. The MST has occupied the land and members are now planting their own organic crops on it, vowing to turn the farm into a model of sustainable agriculture. In short, activists aren’t waiting for the revolution, they are acting right now, where they live, where they study, where they work, where they farm. But some formal proposals are also emerging whose aim is to turn such radical reclamations of the commons into law. When NAFTA and the like were cooked up, there was much talk of adding on ‘side agreements’ to the free-trade agenda, that were supposed to encompass the environment, labour and human rights. Now the fight-back is about taking them out, José Bové—along with the Via Campesina, a global association of small farmers—has launched a campaign to remove food safety and agricultural products from all trade agreements, under the slogan ‘The World is Not for Sale. They want to draw a line around the commons. Maude Barlow, director of the Council of Canadians, which has more members than most political parties in Canada, has argued that water isn’t a private good and shouldn’t be in any trade agreement There is a lot of support for this idea, especially in Europe since the recent food scares. Typically these anti-privatization campaigns get under way on their own. But they alan periodically converge—that’s what happened in Seattle, Prague, Washington, Davoa, Porto Alegre and Quebec. What this means is that the discourse has shifted. During the battles against NAFTA, there emerged the first signs of a coalition between organized labour, environmentalists, farmers and consumer groups within the countries concerned. In Canada, most of us felt we were fighting to keep something distinctive about our nation from ‘Americanization’. In the United States, the talk was very protectionist: workers were worried that Mexicans would ‘steal’ away ‘our’ jobs and drive down ‘our’ environmental standards. All the while, the voices of Mercans opposed to the deal were virtually off the public radar—yet these were the strongest voices of all. But only a few years later, the debate over trade has been transformed. The fight against globalization has morphed into a struggle against corporatization and, for some, against capitalism itself. It has also become a fight for democracy. 176 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 177 of 216 Working Through The State Good Working through the state supplies the movements with a crucial weapon in the struggle against neoliberalism. Emir Sader, Revolutionary, A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Page 253 Edited by Tom Mertes, 2004 It was due to this central role of NGOs that the Forum assumed the function of a meeting place for ‘civil society’—a key notion for the new movements— with all the multiple and diverse meanings this concept provides. This is not the place to explore their genealogy, but two features—one inclusive, one exclusive—need to be pointed out. The first relates to the use of NGOs as agents for neoliberalism within civil society—particularly through the World Bank’s tactic of using these organizations to implement its social-compensation policies. Mexico has been a test-site for these attempts—increasingly so, under Fox. The NGO practice of entering into ‘partnerships’ with big business—though never announced as such—is another aspect of the same problem. The ambiguities this overlap has created have not, as yet, had a negative impact on the their engagement with popular movements and, above all—as in Porto Alegre—their participatory budgets. Anti-neoliberal character of the Forum, established under the strong propulsion of another founding element, the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle. The second, exclusive aspect of the emphasis on ‘civil society’ lies in its rejection of parties and governments, its embrace of the civil society/State opposition. This is more serious, not only because it means rejecting a potential weapon in a radically unequal contest but also, and more importantly, because the movement thus distances itself from the themes of power, the State, public sphere, political leadership and even, in a sense, from ideological struggle—elements that were essential to the choice of Porto Alegre as the Forums’ venue. The result of this exclusion of parties and State, if pushed through, would severely limit the formulation of any alternatives to neoliberalism, confining such aspirations to a local or sectoral context—the NGOs’ mantra, ‘Think global, act local’; proposals for fair trade; ‘ecologically sustainable development’— while giving up any attempt to build an alternative hegemony, or any global proposals to counter and defeat world capitalism’s current neoliberal project. These limitations were acutely embodied in the structure of the first two Forums, organized, respectively, into twenty-four and twenty-seven round-table discussions on extremely fragmented themes which tended to dissipate still further—giving the whole an academic overtone, with a corresponding intellectual division of labour. 177 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 178 of 216 Anarchy Good Anarchism is an attitude as old as time, seeking to live freely without hierarchical domination. Mark Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London and small- a anarchist, 2007, Possibilities, p. 303 I don't think this is just because the academy is behind the times. Marxism has always had an affinity with the academy that anarchism never will. It was, after all was invented by a Ph.D.; and there's always been something about its spirit which fits that of the academy. Anarchism on the other hand was never really invented by anyone. True, historians usually treat it as if it were, constructing the history of anarchism as if it's basically a creature identical in its nature to Marxism: it was created by specific 19th century thinkers, perhaps Godwin or Stirner, but definitely Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, it inspired working-class organizations, became enmeshed in political struggles... But in fact the analogy is rather strained. First of all, the 19th century generally credited with inventing anarchism didn't think of themselves as having invented anything particularly new. The basic principles of anarchism--self-organization, voluntary association, mutual aid--are as old as humanity. Similarly, the rejection of the state and of all forms of structural violence, inequality, or domination (anarchism literally means "without rulers"), even the assumption that all these forms are somehow related and reinforce each other, was hardly some startlingly new 19th century doctrine. One can find evidence of people making similar arguments throughout history, despite the fact there is every reason to believe that such opinions were the ones least likely to be written down. We are talking less about a body of theory than about an attitude, or perhaps a faith: a rejection of certain types of social relation, a confidence that certain others are a much better ones on which to build a decent or humane society, a faith that it would be possible to do so. Movements must prefigure their outcomes. By acting and converging anarchistically, diversity will flourish and open up new solutions that would otherwise be impossible. Mark Graeber, ex-professor of Anthropology at Yale, 2007, Possibilities, p. 322-323 The revolutionary imaginary being adopted within the globalization movement finds its roots less in the Marxist tradition than the anarchist, which was always dedicated to starting to build a new world “within the shell of the old,” and on prioritizing an ethics of organization and practice over a delegitimizing, and undermine mechanisms of global rule, while simultaneously creating spaces of autonomy which are, as Cindy Millstein puts it, “pre-figurative,” which themselves embody the viability of radical alternatives. It is a way of permanently invoking what Negri calls “constituent powers.” Mass direct actions like Seattle, Washington, Prague, or Genoa, aimed to do all this simultaneously, since their own directly democratic, leaderless organization itself a vast social experiment, and for most participants, a dazzling successful one. At the same time, permanent enclaves can be established: from the autonomous municipalities of Chiapas to the occupied factories of Argentina. In such a strategy, one of the most constantly invoked words is “process.” Unlike Marxist parties, which have always tended to demand ideological conformity combined with top-down, usually highly authoritarian, decision-making structures, anarchist-inspired revolutionary “networks” and “convergences” employ decision-making processes which assume that no ideological uniformity can or should be possible. Rather, these forms become ways of managing a diversity, even incommensurability, which is seen as a value in itself. The assumption is that this can be managed through a spirit of reasonableness and mutual compromise that emerges from commitment to shared projects of action. That is, anarchist-inspired groups tend to studiously avoid political arguments about the definition of reality, and assume that decision-making structures should concentrate instead on immediate questions of action in the present, on maintaining egalitarian process in doing so, and making those forms of process the main model of (or, better perhaps, elementary, germ-like template for) their vision for a just society. This is, in effect, a way of preserving diversity as a resource and a value at the same time: since, if one sees one's work as essentially practical problem solving, then it is pretty obvious that ten people with diverse (even formally incommensurable) perspectives arc more likely to be able to come tip with a workable solution than ten people who all share exactly the same experience and point of view. What I am saying then is that it is precisely what most take to be the foolishness and naiveté of the movement (their apparent lack, of a coherent ideology) has turned out to be a token of their most sophisticated accomplishments and contribution to revolutionary theory. It was not that the new movements lack ideology. As I have argued in the past, these new forums of organization, which presume and are ways of articulating a diversity of perspectives, are its ideology. 178 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 179 of 216 Anarchy Good Anarchism is an ethic of practice; in order to change society, the desired goal must be acted out as if it is present. Mark Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London and small- a anarchist, 2007, Possibilities, p. 305-306 Now, this does imply there's a lot of potential complementary between the two (and indeed there has been: even Mikhail Bakunin, for all his endless battles with Marx over practical questions, also personally translated Marx's Capital into Russian.) One could easily imagine a systematic division of labor in which Marxists critique the political economy, but stay out of organizing, and Anarchists handle the day-to-day organizing, but defer to the Marxists on questions of abstract theory; i.e., in which the Marxists explain why the economic crash in Argentina occurred and the anarchists deal with what to do about it. (I also should point out that I am aware I am being a bit hypocritical here by indulging in some of the same sort of sectarian reasoning I'm otherwise critiquing: there are schools of Marxism which are far more open-minded and tolerant, and democratically organized, there are anarchist groups which are insanely sectarian; Bakunin himself was hardly a model for democracy by any standards, etc. etc. etc.). But it also makes it easier to understand why there are so few anarchists in the academy. It's not just that anarchism does not lend itself to high theory. It's that it is primarily an ethics of practice; and it insists, before anything else, that one's means most be consonant with one's ends; one cannot create freedom through authoritarian means; that as much as possible, one must embody the society one wishes to create. This does not square very well with operating within Universities that still have an essentially Medieval social structure, presenting papers at conferences in expensive hotels, and doing intellectual battle in language no one who hasn't spent at least two or three years in grad school would ever hope to be able to understand. At the very least, then, it would tend to get one in trouble. All this does not, of course, mean that anarchist theory is impossible--though it does suggest that a single Anarchist High Theory in the style typical of university radicalism might be rather a contradiction in terms. One could imagine a body of theory that presumes and indeed values a diversity of sometimes incommensurable perspectives in much the same way that anarchist decision-making process does, but which nonetheless organizes them around an presumption of shared commitments. But clearly, it would also have to selfconsciously reject any trace of vanguardism: which leads to the question the role of revolution intellectuals is not to form an elite that can arrive at the correct strategic analyses and then lead the masses to follow, what precisely is it? This is an area where I think anthropology is particularly well positioned to help. And not only because most actual, self-governing communities, non-market economies, and other radical alternatives have been mainly studied by anthropologists; also, because the practice of ethnography provides at least something of a model, an incipient model, of how non-vanguardist revolutionary intellectual practice might work. Ethnography is about teasing out the hidden symbolic, moral, or pragmatic logics that underly certain types of social action; the way people's habits and actions makes sense in ways that they are not themselves completely aware of. One obvious role for a radical intellectual is precisely that: the first thing we need to do is to look at those who are creating viable alternatives on the group, and try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are (already) doing might be. 179 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 180 of 216 AT State Key Empirically, the state has been the assumed agent of change, but recently the movement has been away from relying on it. Mark Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London and small- a anarchist, 2007, Possibilities, p. 317-318 If social reality only becomes an object (indeed, only becomes a reality) in the face of some imaginary which tries to shape it – of which the paradigm, I have argued, is revolution – then it makes it easier to understand why globalization has left sociology with such an “identity crisis.” It is not just because the immediate onset of globalization saw what appeared to be a strange and unprecedented realignments, with free-market economists suddenly posing as wild-eyed revolutionaries (by around 2000, New York Times op-ed writers were fervently insisting that Che Guevara, were he alive today, would certainly be a free-market reformer, just for the sheer joy of radical transformation). All that was the product of one giddy moment that faded almost immediately. It is because the theater for potential revolution, just like that of more modest projects of social reform, had always been the state. If utopian dreams were brought to bear on some stubborn social reality, it was always assumed – usually without even having to state it, so much was it the very basis of Left, Right, liberal, radical, and conservative thought – that this could only be accomplished through the coercive mechanisms of government. As Immanuel Wallerstein has been arguing for some years now, we seem to be witnessing the death of a kind of tacit agreement about the nature of polities that has existed since roughly the French Revolution. This has rested, he says, on three assumptions. The first is that social change is inevitable and, at least if properly managed, good. The second is that the appropriate mechanism to manage social change is the state. The third is that the state apparatus derives its legitimacy, its right to do so, from an entity referred to as “the people.” In 1720, very few educated Europeans would have agreed with any of these statements. By 1820, just about everyone had to at least pay lip service. What’s more, social theory as we know it developed almost entirely within this framework. It’s only in recent decades, he notes, that we have seen significant portions of the global educated classes moving away from these positions. But as they do so, now that the state is not assumed as one’s implicit point of reference from which to gaze down at stubborn realities, it is no longer clear what that “resistant object” is even supposed to be. It is only difficult to conceive of a state-less existence because we lack the words to describe it in. Mark Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London and small- a anarchist, 2007, Possibilities, p. 319 Let me take one vivid example: the question of global citizenship. This is an issue that comes up quite a lot nowadays: sometimes within the neoliberal framework and, even more, because it is a very common demand among new social movements calling for global freedom of movement. But what exactly would global citizenship mean? The most common objection to the idea is that any such notion would imply some kind of global state, and this is the last thing most of those calling for it would want to see. So, then, the question becomes how to theorize a citizenship apart front the state? This is often treated as a profound, perhaps insuperable problem. But, if one considers the matter historically, it is a bit odd that it should, Modern Western notions of citizenship and political freedoms are usually seen to derive from two traditions, one originating in ancient Athens, the other primarily stemming from Medieval England (where it tends to be traced back to the assertion of aristocratic privilege against the Crown in the Magna Cain, Petition of Right. etc. and then the gradual extension oi these same rights to the rest of the population). In fact, there is no consensus among historians that either classical Athens or Medieval England were stales at all—and, moreover, precisely for the reason that citizens’ rights (in the first) and aristocratic privilege (in the second) were so strung. In other words, our very ability to think about the present is hobbled in our lack of categories with which to talk about the past. If these were not states, or states in the classic sense, what were they? A theory of complex political entities that are not states is almost completely lacking. How could one talk about rights and responsibilities in the absence of a sate? Again, it’s hard to know where to start. 180 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 181 of 216 KRITIK OF MEDIA Mainstream media dominates culture, determining what is accurate and not. Any ideology that acts counter to the hegemon is dismissed as trivial. David Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London, 2007, Possibilities, p. 377 The movement’s disarray was not simply due to heightened levels of repression. Another reason was, however paradoxical this may seem, that it reached so many of its immediate goals so quickly. After Seattle, the WTO process froze in its tracks and has never really recovered. Most ambitious global trade schemes were scotched. The effects on political discourse were even more reDavidable. In fact the change was so dramatic that it has become difficult, for many, to even remember what public discourse in the years immediately before Seattle was actually like. In the late ‘90s, “Washington consensus”, as it was then called, simply had no significant challengers. In the US itself, politicians and journalists appeared to have come to unanimous agreement that radical “free Davidet reforms” were the only possible approach to economic development, anywhere and everywhere. In the mainstream media, anyone who challenged its basic tenets of this faith was likely to be treated as if they were almost literally insane. Speaking as someone who became active in the first months of 2000, I can attest that, however exhilarated by what had happened at Seattle, most of us still felt it would take five or ten years to shatter these assumptions. In fact it took less than two. By late 2001, it was commonplace to see even news journals that had just months before denounced protestors as so many ignorant children, declaring that we had won the war of ideas. Much as the movement against nuclear power discovered in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, the direct action approach was so effective that short-term goals were reached almost immediately, forcing participants to have to scramble to redefine what the movement was actually about. Splits quickly developed between the “anti-corporates” and the “anti-capitalists”. As anarchist ideas and forms of organization became increasingly important, unions and NGOs began to draw back. What’s critical for present purposes is that all this became a problem largely because the initial movement was so successful in getting its message out. The mainstream media works to retain the status quo ideology while squashing any subversive messages for fear of being “hijacked.” In order to circumvent their control, it is necessary to look to alternative media outlets. David Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London, 2007, Possibilities, p. 379 I do not want to leave the reader with the impression that many of those involved in the global justice movement see their main task as getting a message out through the media. It is a somewhat unusual feature of this new movement that large elements of it are openly hostile to any attempt to influence what they called “the corporate media”, or even, in many cases, to engage with it at all. Companies like CNN or the Associated Press, they argue, are capitalist firms; it would be utterly naïve to imagine they would been willing to provide a friendly venue for anyone actively opposed to capitalism—let alone to carry anti-capitalist messages to the public. Some argue that, as a key element in the structure of power, the media apparatus should itself be considered appropriate targets for direct action. One of the greatest accomplishments of the movement, in fact, has been to develop an entirely new, alternative media network— Independent Media, an international, participatory, activist-driven, largely internet based media project that has, since Seattle, provided moment-to-moment coverage of large mobilizations in email, print, radio, and video forms. All this is very much in the spirit of direct action. Nonetheless, there are always activists —even anarchists—who are willing to do more traditional media work. I myself can often be counted among them. During several mobilizations, I ended up spending much of my time preparing press conferences, attending meetings on daily spins and sound bites, and fielding calls from reporters. I have in fact been the object of severe opprobrium from certain hardcore anarchist circles as a result. Still, I think the anarchist critique is largely correct—especially in America. In my own experience, editors and most reporters in this country are inherently suspicious of protests, which they tend to see not as real news stories but as artificial events concocted to influence them.3 They seem willing to cover artificial events only when constituted by proper authorities. When they do cover activist events, they are very self-conscious about the dangers that they might be manipulated—particularly if protests they see as “violent”. For journalists, there is an inherent dilemma here, because violence in itself is inherently newsworthy. A “violent” protest is far more likely to be covered; but for that reason, the last thing journalists would wish to think of themselves as doing is allowing violent protestors to “hijack” the media to convey a message. The matter is further complicated by the fact that journalists have a fairly idiosyncratic definition of “violence”: something 181 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 182 of 216 KRITIK OF MEDIA like ‘damage to persons or property not authorized by properly constituted authorities’. This has the effect that if even one protestor damages a Starbucks window, one can speak of “violent protests”, but if police then proceed to attack everyone present with tazers, sticks and plastic bullets, this cannot be described as violent. In these circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that anarchist media teams mainly end up doing damage control. One can now begin to understand the environment in which images of Black Bloc anarchists smashing windows, and colorful puppets, predominate media coverage. “Message” is largely off-limits. Almost every major mobilization has been accompanied by a day of public seminars in which radical intellectuals analyze the policies of the IMF, G8, and so on, and discuss possible alternatives. None to my knowledge have ever been covered by the corporate press. “Process” is complicated and difficult to capture visually; meetings are usually off-limits to reporters anyway. Still, the relative lack of attention to street blockades and street parties, lockdowns, banner drops, critical mass rides and the like, is harder to explain. All these are dramatic, public, and often quite visually striking. Admittedly since it is almost impossible to describe those engaged in such tactics as “violent”, the fact that they frequently end up gassed, beaten, pepper-sprayed, shot at with plastic bullets, and otherwise manhandled by police provides narrative dilemmas most journalists would (apparently) prefer to avoid. 4 But this alone does not seem an adequate explanation.5 In order to remain in control, the dominant media fashions stories about subversive movements to incriminate. David Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London, 2007, Possibilities, p. 389-390 This same period began to see increasingly outlandish accounts of what had happened at Seattle. During the WTO protests themselves, I must emphasize, no one, including the Seattle police, had claimed anarchists had done anything more militant than break windows. That was the end of November 1999. In March 2000, less than three months later, a story in the Boston Herald reported that, in the weeks before an upcoming biotech conference, officers from Seattle had come to brief the local police on how to deal with ‘Seattle tactics’, such as attacking police with “chunks of concrete, BB guns, wrist rockets and large capacity squirt guns loaded with bleach and urine”.15 In June, New York Times reporter Nicole Christian, apparently relying on police sources in Detroit preparing for a trade protest across the Canadian border in Windsor, claimed that Seattle demonstrators had “hurled Molotov cocktails, rocks and excrement at delegates and police officers.” On this occasion, after the New York Direct Action Network picketed their offices, the Times ended up having to run a retraction, admitting that according to Seattle authorities, no objects had been thrown at human beings. Nonetheless, the account appears to have become canonical. Each time there is a new mobilization, 16 stories invariably surface in local newspapers with the same list of “Seattle tactics”—a list that also appears to have become enshrined in training manuals distributed to street cops. Before the Miami Summit of the Americas in 2003, for example, for example, circulars distributed to local businessmen and civic groups listed every one of these “Seattle tactics” as what they should expect to see on the streets once anarchists arrived: Wrist Rockets - larger hunter-type sling shots that they use to shoot steel ball bearings or large bolts. A very dangerous and deadly weapon. Molotov Cocktails - many were thrown in Seattle and Quebec and caused extensive damage. Crow Bars - to smash windows, cars, etc. They also pry up curbs, then break the cement into pieces that they can throw at police officers. This was done extensively in Seattle. Squirt guns - filled with acid or urine. Again, according to local police’s own 17 accounts, none of these weapons or tactics had been used in Seattle and no one has produced any evidence they’ve been used in any subsequent US mobilization.18 In Miami, the predictable result was that, by the time the first marches began most of downtown lay shuttered and abandoned. 182 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 183 of 216 UNLEASH THE IMAGINARY In order to break from the coordinates of power, it is necessary to unleash the imaginary onto reality. David Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London, 2007, Possibilities, p. 385-386 Still, if giant puppets, generically, are gods, most are obviously, foolish, silly, ridiculous gods. It as if the process of producing and displaying puppets becomes a way to both seize the power to make gods, and to make fun of it at the same time. Here one seems to be striking against a profoundly anarchist sensibility. Within anarchism, one encounters a similar impulse at every point where one approaches the mythic or deeply meaningful. It appears to be operative in the doctrines of Zerzanites and similar Primitivists, who go about self-consciously creating myths (their own version of the Garden of Eden, the Fall, the coming Apocalypse), that seem to imply they want to see millions perish in a worldwide industrial collapse, or that they seek to abolish agriculture or even language—then bridle at the suggestion that they really do. It’s clearly present in the writings of theorists like Peter Lamborn Wilson, whose meditations on the role of the sacred in revolutionary action are written under the persona of an insane Ismaili pederastic poet named Hakim Bey. It’s even more clearly present among Pagan anarchist groups like Reclaiming, who since the anti-nuclear movement of the ‘80s,10 have specialized in conducting what often seem like extravagant satires of pagan rituals that they nonetheless insist are real rituals which are really effective—even, that represent what they see as the deepest possible spiritual truths about the world.11 Puppets simply push this logic to a kind of extreme. The sacred here is, ultimately, the sheer power of creativity, of the imagination—or, perhaps more exactly, the power to bring the imagination into reality. This is, after all, the ultimate ideal of all revolutionary practice, to, as the ‘68 slogan put it, “give power to the imagination.” But it is also as if the democratization of the sacred can only be accomplished through a kind of burlesque. Hence the constant selfmockery, which, however, is never meant to genuinely undercut the gravity and importance of what’s being asserted, but rather, to imply the ultimate recognition that just because gods are human creations they are still gods, and that taking this fact too seriously might prove dangerous. 183 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 184 of 216 FRAMEWORK/POLICY BAD In response to our kritik, the Affirmative feels challenged and resorted to a framework to exclude our argument. This is analogous to policemen who utilize violent beaurocracy. David Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London, 2007, Possibilities, p. 404 It might be helpful here to reflect on the nature of the violence—”force”, if you like—that police represent. A former LAPD officer writing about the Rodney King case pointed out that in most of the occasions in which a citizen is severely beaten by police, it turns out that the victim was actually innocent of any crime. “Cops don’t beat up burglars”, he observed. If you want to cause a policeman to be violent, the surest way is to challenge their right to define the situation. This is not something a burglar is likely to do. 36 This of course makes perfect sense if we remember that police are, essentially, bureaucrats with guns. Bureaucratic procedures are all about questions of definition. Or, to be more precise, they are about the imposition of a of pre-established schema to a social reality that is, usually, infinitely more complex: a crowd can be either orderly or disorderly; a citizen can be white, black, Hispanic, or an Asian/Pacific Islander; a petitioner is or is not in possession of a valid photo ID. Such simplistic rubrics can only be maintained in the absence of dialogue; hence, the quintessential form of bureaucratic violence is the wielding of the truncheon when somebody “talks back”. I began by saying that this was to be an essay of interpretation. In fact, it has been just as much an essay about frustrated interpretation; about the limits of interpretation. Ultimately, I think this frustration can be traced back to the very nature of violence—bureaucratic or otherwise. Violence is in fact unique among forms of human action in that it holds out the possibility of affecting the actions of others about whom one understands nothing. If one wants to affect another’s actions in any other way, one must at least have some idea who they think they are, what they want, what they think is going on. Interpretation is required, and that requires a certain degree of imaginative identification. Hit someone over the head hard enough, all this becomes irrelevant. Obviously, two parties locked in an equal contest of violence would usually do well to get inside each other’s heads, but when access to violence becomes extremely unequal, the need vanishes. This is typically the case in situations of structural violence: of systemic inequality that is ultimately backed up by the threat of force. Structural violence always seems to create extremely lopsided structures of imagination. Gender is actually a telling example here. The notion of “policy” assumes a system of domination David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004 Even more than High Theory, what anarchism needs is what might be called Low Theory: a way of grappling with those real, immediate questions that emerge from a transformative project. Mainstream social science actually isn’t much help here, because normally in mainstream social science this sort of thing is generally classified as “policy issues,” and no self-respecting anarchist would have anything to do with these. against policy (a tiny manifesto): The notion of “policy” presumes a state or governing apparatus which imposes its will on others. “Policy” is the negation of politics; policy is by definition something concocted by some form of elite, which presumes it knows better than others how their affairs are to be conducted. By participating in policy debates the very best one can achieve is to limit the damage, since the very premise is inimical to the idea of people managing their own affairs. 184 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 185 of 216 WESTERN INSTITUTIONS BAD Anarchy does not operate well within western institutions David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004 Obviously, everything I’ve said has been something of a caricature (there have been wildly sectarian anarchist groups, and plenty of libertarian, practiceoriented Marxists including, arguably, myself). Still, even so stated, this does suggest a great deal of potential complementarity between the two. And indeed there has been: even Mikhail Bakunin, for all his endless battles with Marx over practical questions, also personally translated Marx’s Capital into Russian. But it also makes it easier to understand why there are so few anarchists in the academy. It’s not just that anarchism does not tend to have much use for high theory. It’s that it is primarily concerned with forms of practice; it insists, before anything else, that one’s means must be consonant with one’s ends; one cannot create freedom through authoritarian means; in fact, as much as possible, one must oneself, in one’s relations with one’s friends and allies, embody the society one wishes to create. This does not square very well with operating within the university, perhaps the only Western institution other than the Catholic Church and British monarchy that has survived in much the same form from the Middle Ages, doing intellectual battle at conferences in expensive hotels, and trying to pretend all this somehow furthers revolution. At the very least, one would imagine being an openly anarchist professor would mean challenging the way universities are run—and I don’t mean by demanding an anarchist studies department, either—and that, of course, is going to get one in far more trouble than anything one could ever write. anarchism aims to undermine systems of domination while proving that those systems are not necessary David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004 This doesn’t mean anarchists have to be against theory. After all, anarchism is, itself, an idea, even if a very old one. It is also a project, which sets out to begin creating the institutions of a new society “within the shell of the old,” to expose, subvert, and undermine structures of domination but always, while doing so, proceeding in a democratic fashion, a manner which itself demonstrates those structures are unnecessary. Clearly any such project has need of the tools of intellectual analysis and understanding. It might not need High Theory, in the sense familiar today. Certainly it will not need one single, Anarchist High Theory. That would be completely inimical to its spirit. Much better, I think, something more in the spirit of anarchist decision- making processes, employed in anything from tiny affinity groups to gigantic spokescouncils of thousands of people. Most anarchist groups operate by a consensus process which has been developed, in many ways, to be the exact opposite of the high-handed, divisive, sectarian style so popular amongst other radical groups. Applied to theory, this would mean accepting the need for a diversity of high theoretical perspectives, united only by certain shared commitments and understandings. In consensus process, everyone agrees from the start on certain broad principles of unity and purposes for being for the group; but beyond that they also accept as a matter of course that no one is ever going to convert another person completely to their point of view, and probably shouldn’t try; and that therefore discussion should focus on concrete questions of action, and coming up with a plan that everyone can live with and no one feels is in fundamental violation of their principles. One could see a parallel here: a series of diverse perspectives, joined together by their shared desire to understand the human condition, and move it in the direction of greater freedom. Rather than be based on the need to prove others’ fundamental assumptions wrong, it seeks to find particular projects on which they reinforce each other. Just because theories are incommensurable in certain respects does not mean they cannot exist or even reinforce each other, any more than the fact that individuals have unique and incommensurable views of the world means they cannot become friends, or lovers, or work on common projects. 185 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 186 of 216 UNIVERSITY BAD Stevphen Shukaitis, research fellow at the university of London, queen mary. Member of the planetary autonomist network and editoral collective of autonomedia, David Graeber, associate professor of anthropology recently fired from Yale University and worker for the direct action movement, 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 15-18 On the other hand one could just as well ask: why is it we assume that live and relevant ideas should be coming out of universities in the first place? The modern university system has existed only a few hundred years during most of that time, universities were not places that much fostered vation or the questioning of received knowledge. They were largely es for compiling and redacting received knowledge and teaching stus to respect authority. The old-fashioned stereotype of the professor as 6 greybeard pedant fussing over some obscure interpretation of a Latin epode unaware of or disdainful of the world around him, was not really that far from the truth. For the most part, universities were dominated by figures who were scholars but in no sense intellectuals. This has not changed as much as we'd like to think. Graduate school is not on the whole meant to foster creativity or encourage students to produce new ideas. For the most part, it's designed to break students down, to foster insecurity and fear as a way of life, and ultimately to crush that sense of joy in learning and playing with ideas that moved most students to dedicate their lives to the academy to begin with. For this it substitutes an imperative for obsequiousness, competitiveness, and slick self-presentation that is referred to as "professionalization."5 Graduate school is designed to produce academic functionaries who when they finally do have tenure, and can say whatever they want, are almost certain not to have anything too dramatic or relevant to say. Of course there are always those who refuse to be crushed. The majority are kicked out or marginalized; a select minority promoted to superstar status and treated as charismatic heroes so obviously exceptional that their very existence serves to remind mere mortals of their limitations. And the casualization of academic labor, of course, has made all this even worse. From this perspective, what we saw in the '60s was something rather unusual: a brief moment when the model changed. Universities were supposed to encompass intellectual life, intellectual life was to be creative and. politically radical. By now the pretense is wearing thin. In US universities, the only folks coming up with really innovative ideas in the social or cultural field are involved with postcolonial studies-expats and intellectuals with roots in the global south, a group that will most likely increasingly abandon imperial universities as American power itself begins to fade. The realign ment is already starting to happen. The largest departments for American studies, for example, are currently in universities in India and China. For present purposes, this matter is something of an aside. The critical thing is that universities were never meant to be places for intellectual creativity. If it happens, it's not because it is especially conducive to them, but only because if you pay enough people to sit around thinking, some new ideas are bound to get through 186 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 187 of 216 WE DON’T OVERTHROW STATE Being revolutionary doesn’t mean violently overthrowing the state or doing nothing, but walking the middle path and enacting a synthesis. David Graeber, Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of London, 2007, Possibilities, p. 408 This essay thus ends where it should perhaps have begun, with the need to thoroughly rethink the idea of “revolution”. While most of those engaged with the politics of direct action think of themselves as, in some sense, revolutionaries, few, at this point, are operating within the classic revolutionary framework where revolutionary organizing is designed to build towards a violent, apocalyptic confrontation with the state. Even fewer see revolution as a matter of seizing state power and transforming society through its mechanisms. On the other hand, neither are they simply interested in a strategy of “engaged withdrawal” (as in Virno’s “revolutionary exodus”), and the founding of new, autonomous communities.43 . In a way, one might say the politics of direct action, by trying to create alternative forms of organization in the very teeth of state power, means to explore a middle ground precisely between these two alternatives. Anyway, we are dealing with a new synthesis that, I think, is not yet entirely worked out. 187 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 188 of 216 CONSENSUS BAD Efforts to achieve consensus in society result mask an inner violence. David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004 Of course, all societies are to some degree at war with themselves. There are always clashes between interests, factions, classes and the like; also, social systems are always based on the pursuit of different forms of value which pull people in different directions. In egalitarian societies, which tend to place an enormous emphasis on creating and maintaining communal consensus, this often appears to spark a kind of equally elaborate reaction formation, a spectral nightworld inhabited by monsters, witches or other creatures of horror. And it’s the most peaceful societies which are also the most haunted, in their imaginative constructions of the cosmos, by constant specters of perennial war. The invisible worlds surrounding them are literally battlegrounds. It’s as if the endless labor of achieving consensus masks a constant inner violence— or, it might perhaps be better to say, is in fact the process by which that inner violence is measured and contained—and it is precisely this, and the resulting tangle of moral contradiction, which is the prime font of social creativity. It’s not these conflicting principles and contradictory impulses themselves which are the ultimate political reality, then; it’s the regulatory process which mediates them. 188 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 189 of 216 A2 – TURN WE SOLVE INEQUALITIES Eliminating Structural Inequalities Will not Solve for the Violence and Terror that they Produce David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004 Note how in each case there’s a striking contrast between the cosmological content, which is nothing if not tumultuous, and social process, which is all about mediation, arriving at consensus. None of these societies are entirely egalitarian: there are always certain key forms of dominance, at least of men over women, elders over juniors. The nature and intensity of these forms vary enormously: in Piaroa communities the hierarchies were so modest that Overing doubts one can really speak of “male dominance” at all (despite the fact that communal leaders are invariably male); the Tiv appear to be quite another story. Still, structural inequalities invariably exist, and as a result I think it is fair to say that these anarchies are not only imperfect, they contain with them the seeds of their own destruction. It is hardly a coincidence that when larger, more systematically violent forms of domination do emerge, they draw on precisely these idioms of age and gender to justify themselves. Still, I think it would be a mistake to see the invisible violence and terror as simply a working out of the “internal contradictions” created by those forms of inequality. One could, perhaps, make the case that most real, tangible violence is. At least, it is a somewhat notorious thing that, in societies where the only notable inequalities are based in gender, the only murders one is likely to observe are men killing each other over women. Similarly, it does seem to be the case, generally speaking, that the more pronounced the differences between male and female roles in a society, the more physically violent it tends to be. But this hardly means that if all inequalities vanished, then everything, even the imagination, would become placid and untroubled. To some degree, I suspect all this turbulence stems from the very nature of the human condition. There would appear to be no society which does not see human life as fundamentally a problem. However much they might differ on what they deem the problem to be, at the very least, the existence of work, sex, and reproduction are seen as fraught with all sorts of quandaries; human desires are always fickle; and then there’s the fact that we’re all going to die. So there’s a lot to be troubled by. None of these dilemmas are going to vanish if we eliminate structural inequalities (much though I think this would radically improve things in just about every other way). Indeed, the fantasy that it might, that the human condition, desire, mortality, can all be somehow resolved seems to be an especially dangerous one, an image of utopia which always seems to lurk somewhere behind the pretentions of Power and the state. Instead, as I’ve suggested, the spectral violence seems to emerge from the very tensions inherent in the project of maintaining an egalitarian society. Otherwise, one would at least imagine the Tiv imagination would be more tumultuous than the Piaroa. 189 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 190 of 216 COUNTERPOWER/RESISTANCE CARNIVAL Counterpower is based in the imagination and is responsible for the creation of new social forms David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004 Counterpower is first and foremost rooted in the imagination; it emerges from the fact that all social systems are a tangle of contradictions, always to some degree at war with themselves. Or, more precisely, it is rooted in the relation between the practical imagination required to maintain a society based on consensus (as any society not based on violence must, ultimately, be)—the constant work of imaginative identification with others that makes understanding possible—and the spectral violence which appears to be its constant, perhaps inevitable corollary. 2) In egalitarian societies, counterpower might be said to be the predominant form of social power. It stands guard over what are seen as certain frightening possibilities within the society itself: notably against the emergence of systematic forms of political or economic dominance. 2a) Institutionally, counterpower takes the form of what we would call institutions of direct democracy, consensus and mediation; that is, ways of publicly negotiating and controlling that inevitable internal tumult and transforming it into those social states (or if you like, forms of value) that society sees as the most desirable: conviviality, unanimity, fertility, prosperity, beauty,however it may be framed. 3) In highly unequal societies, imaginative counterpower often defines itself against certain aspects of dominance that are seen as particularly obnoxious and can become an attempt to eliminate them from social relations completely. When it does, it becomes revolutionary. 3a) Institutionally, as an imaginative well, it is responsible for the creation of new social forms, and the revalorization or transformation of old ones, and also, 4) in moments of radical transformation—revolutions in the old-fashioned sense—this is precisely what allows for the notorious popular ability to innovate entirely new politics, economic, and social forms. Hence, it is the root of what Antonio Negri has called “constituent power,” the power to create constitutions. To institute change we must create a “resistance carnival” David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, 2004 It is common wisdom among anarchists, autonomists, Situationists, and other new revolutionaries that the old breed of grim, determined, self-sacrificing revolutionary, who sees the world only in terms of suffering will ultimately only produce more suffering himself. Certainly that’s what has tended to happen in the past. Hence the emphasis on pleasure, carnival, on creating “temporary autonomous zones” where one can live as if one is already free. The ideal of the “festival of resistance” with its crazy music and giant puppets is, quite consciously, to return to the late medieval world of huge wickerwork giants and dragons, maypoles and morris dancing; the very world the Puritan pioneers of the “capitalist spirit” hated so much and ultimately managed to destroy. The history of capitalism moves from attacks on collective, festive consumption to the promulgation of highly personal, private, even furtive forms (after all, once they had all those people dedicating all their time to producing stuff instead of partying, they did have to figure out a way to sell it all); a process of the privitization of desire. The theoretical question: how to reconcile all this with the disturbing theoretical insight of people like Slavoj Zizek: that if one wishes to inspire ethnic hatred, the easiest way to do so is to concentrate on the bizarre, perverse ways in which the other group is assumed to pursue pleasure. If one wishes to emphasize commonality, the easiest way is to point out that they also feel pain. 190 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 191 of 216 STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE -> BUREAUCRACY The stupidity in bureaucracy lies in its foundation of structural violence. David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Beyond Power/Knowledge an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity. 5-25-2006 This essay is not, however, primarily about bureaucracy—or even about the reasons for its neglect in anthropology and related disciplines. It is really about violence. What I would like to argue is that situations created by violence— particularly structural violence, by which I mean forms of pervasive social inequality that are ultimately backed up by the threat of physical harm—invariably tend to create the kinds of willful blindness we normally associate with bureaucratic procedures. To put it crudely: it is not so much that bureaucratic procedures are inherently stupid, or even that they tend to produce behavior that they themselves define as stupid, but rather, that are invariably ways of managing social situations that are already stupid because they are founded on structural violence. I think this approach allows potential insights into matters that are, in fact, both interesting and important: for instance, the actual relationship between those forms of simplification typical of social theory, and those typical of administrative procedures. 191 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 192 of 216 A2 FOUCAULT/WEBER Thinkers like Foucault and Weber empowered bureaucrats. David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Beyond Power/Knowledge an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity. 5-25-2006 When we pass to the more rarified domains of theory, even that “yes, but” usually disappears. Consider the hegemonic role, in US social theory, of Max Weber in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and of Michel Foucault ever since. Their popularity, no doubt, had much to do with the ease with which each could be adopted as a kind of anti-Marx, their theories put forth (usually in crudely simplified form) to argue that power is not simply or primarily a matter of the control of production but rather a pervasive, multifaceted, and unavoidable feature of any social life. I also think it’s no coincidence that these sometimes appear to be the only two intelligent people in human history who honestly believed that bureaucracies work. Weber saw bureaucratic forms of organization as the very embodiment of rationality, so obviously superior to any alternative that they threatened to lock humanity in a joyless “iron cage”, bereft of spirit and charisma. Foucault was far more subversive, but in a way that made bureaucratic power more effective, not less. Bodies, subjects, truth itself, all become the products of administrative discourses; through concepts like governmentality and biopower, state bureaucracies end up shaping the terms of human existence in ways far more intimate than anything Weber would have possibly imagined. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, in either case, their popularity owed much to the fact that the American university system during this period had itself become increasingly an institution dedicated to producing functionaries for an imperial administrative apparatus on a global scale. The current ascendancy of Foucault seems trace back to ‘60s radicals’ rejection of Talcott Parson’s version of Weber for precisely this reason; the ultimate result however was a kind of division of labor, with the optimistic side of Weber reinvented in even more simplified form for the actual training of bureaucrats under the name of “rational choice theory”, while of the pessimistic side was relegated to the Foucauldians. Foucault’s ascendancy in turn was precisely within those fields of academic endeavor that both became the haven for former radicals, but that were themselves most completely divorced from any access to political power, or increasingly, even to real social movements—which gave Foucault’s emphasis on the “power/knowledge” nexus, the assertion that forms of knowledge are always also forms of social power, indeed, the most important forms of social power, a particular appeal. No doubt any such historical argument is a bit caricaturish and unfair; but I think there is a profound truth here. It is not just that we are drawn to areas of density, where our skills at interpretation are best deployed. We also have an increasing tendency to identify what’s interesting and what’s important, to assume places of density are also places of power. The power of bureaucracy shows just how much this is often not the case. 192 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 193 of 216 VIOLENCE KEY Violence is the only way to influence the decisions of someone whom you know nothing about. David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Beyond Power/Knowledge an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity. 5-25-2006 Violence’s capacity to allow arbitrary decisions, and thus to avoid the kind of debate, clarification and renegotiation typical of more egalitarian social relations, is obviously what allows its victims to see procedures created on the basis of violence as stupid or unreasonable. One might say, those relying on the fear of force are not obliged to engage in a lot of interpretative labor, and thus, generally speaking, do not. This is not an aspect of violence that has received much attention in the anthropological literature on the subject The latter has tended instead to emphasize the ways that acts of violence are meaningful and communicative. It seems to me this is an area where we are particularly prone to fall victim to the confusion of interpretive depth and social significance: that is, to assume that the most interesting aspect of violence is also the most important. This is not to say that acts of violence are not, generally speaking, also acts of communication. Clearly they are. But this is true of any other form of human action as well. It strikes me that what is really important about violence is that it is perhaps the only form of human action that holds out even the possibility of having social effects without being communicative. To be more precise: violence may well be the only form of human action by which it is possible to have relatively predictable effects on the actions of a person about whom you understand nothing. Pretty much any other way one might try to influence another’s actions, one at least has to have some idea who they think they are, who they think you are, what they might want out of the situation, their aversions and proclivities, and so forth. Hit them over the head hard enough, all of this becomes irrelevant. It is true that the effects one can have by disabling or killing someone are very limited, but they are real enough, and critically, they are predictable. Any alternative form of action cannot, without some sort of appeal to shared meanings or understandings, have any predictable effects at all. What’s more, while attempts to influence others by the threat of violence do require some level of shared understandings, these can be pretty minimal. It’s important to bear in mind that most human relations—particularly ongoing ones, whether between longstanding friends or longstanding enemies—are extremely complicated, dense with experience and meaning. Maintaining them requires a constant and often subtle work of interpretation, of endlessly imagining others’ points of view. Threatening others with physical harm allows the possibility of cutting through all this. It makes possible relations of a far more schematic kind (i.e., ‘cross this line and I will shoot you’). This is of course why violence is so often the preferred weapon of the stupid: indeed, one might say it is one of the tragedies of human existence that this is the one form of stupidity to which it is most difficult to come up with an intelligent response. 193 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 194 of 216 ALIENATION Alienation is the experience of living outside a structure of imagination. David Graeber, professor in the anthropology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Beyond Power/Knowledge an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity. 5-25-2006 If I had more time I would suggest why I feel this approach could suggest new ways to consider old problems. From a Marxian perspective, for example, one might note that my notion of “interpretive labor” that keeps social life running smoothly implies a fundamental distinction between the domain of social production (the production of persons and social relations) where the imaginative labor is relegated to those on the bottom, and a domain of commodity production where the imaginative aspects of work are relegated to those on the top. In either case, though, structures of inequality produce lopsided structures of the imagination. I would also propose that what we are used to calling “alienation” is largely the subjective experience of living inside such lopsided structures. This in turn has implications for any liberatory politics. For present purposes, though, let me just draw attention to some of the implications for anthropology. New Synthesis conceives new forms of institutions Anarchism, Or The Revolutionary Movement Of The Twenty-first Century By David Graeber and Andrej Grubacic January 06, 2004, http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/9258 What would this new synthesis look like? Some of the outlines can already be discerned within the movement. It will insist on constantly expanding the focus of anti-authoritarianism, moving away from class reductionism by trying to grasp the "totality of domination", that is, to highlight not only the state but also gender relations, and not only the economy but also cultural relations and ecology, sexuality, and freedom in every form it can be sought, and each not only through the sole prism of authority relations, but also informed by richer and more diverse concepts. This approach does not call for an endless expansion of material production, or hold that technologies are neutral, but it also doesn't decry technology per se. Instead, it becomes familiar with and employs diverse types of technology as appropriate. It not only doesn't decry institutions per se, or political forms per se, it tries to conceive new institutions and new political forms for activism and for a new society, including new ways of meeting, new ways of decision making, new ways of coordinating, along the same lines as it already has with revitalized affinity groups and spokes structures. And it not only doesn't decry reforms per se, but struggles to define and win non-reformist reforms, attentive to people's immediate needs and bettering their lives in the here-and-now at the same time as moving toward further gains, and eventually, wholesale transformation.(7.) And of course theory will have to catch up with practice. To be fully effective, modern anarchism will have to include at least three levels: activists, people's organizations, and researchers. The problem at the moment is that anarchist intellectuals who want to get past old-fashioned, vanguardist habits-the Marxist sectarian hangover that still haunts so much of the radical intellectual world-are not quite sure what their role is supposed to be. Anarchism needs to become reflexive. But how? On one level the answer seems obvious. One should not lecture, not dictate, not even necessarily think of oneself as a teacher, but must listen, explore and discover. To tease out and make explicit the tacit logic already underlying new forms of radical practice. To put oneself at the service of activists by providing information, or exposing the interests of the dominant elite carefully hidden behind supposedly objective, authoritative discourses, rather than trying to impose a new version of the same thing. But at the same time most recognize that intellectual struggle needs to reaffirm its place. Many are beginning to point out that one of the basic weaknesses of the anarchist movement today is, with respect to the time of, say, Kropotkin or Reclus, or Herbert Read, exactly the neglecting of the symbolic, the visionary, and overlooking of the effectiveness of theory. How to move from ethnography to utopian visions-ideally, as many utopian visions as possible? It is hardly a coincidence that some of the greatest recruiters for anarchism in countries like the United States have been feminist science fiction writers like Starhawk or Ursula K. LeGuin (8. It is becoming increasingly clear that the age of revolutions is not over. It's becoming equally clear that the global revolutionary movement in the twenty first century, will be one that traces its origins less to the tradition of Marxism, or even of socialism narrowly defined, but of anarchism. Everywhere from Eastern Europe to Argentina, from Seattle to Bombay, anarchist ideas and principles are generating new radical dreams and visions. Often their exponents do not call themselves "anarchists". There are a host of other names: autonomism, anti-authoritarianism, horizontality, Zapatismo, direct democracy... Still, everywhere one finds the same core principles: decentralization, voluntary association, mutual aid, 194 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 195 of 216 ALEINATION the network model, and above all, the rejection of any idea that the end justifies the means, let alone that the business of a revolutionary is to seize state power and then begin imposing one's vision at the point of a gun. Above all, anarchism, as an ethics of practice-the idea of building a new society "within the shell of the old"-has become the basic inspiration of the "movement of movements" (of which the authors are a part), which has from the start been less about seizing state power than about exposing, de-legitimizing and dismantling mechanisms of rule while winning ever-larger spaces of autonomy and participatory management within it. There are some obvious reasons for the appeal of anarchist ideas at the beginning of the 21st century: most obviously, the failures and catastrophes resulting from so many efforts to overcome capitalism by seizing control of the apparatus of government in the 20th. Increasing numbers of revolutionaries have begun to recognize that "the revolution" is not going to come as some great apocalyptic moment, the storming of some global equivalent of the Winter Palace, but a very long process that has been going on for most of human history (even if it has like most things come to accelerate of late) full of strategies of flight and evasion as much as dramatic confrontations, and which will never-indeed, most anarchists feel, should never-come to a definitive conclusion. It's a little disconcerting, but it offers one enormous consolation: we do not have to wait until "after the revolution" to begin to get a glimpse of what genuine freedom might be like. As the Crimethinc Collective, the greatest propagandists of contemporary American anarchism, put it: "Freedom only exists in the moment of revolution. And those moments are not as rare as you think." For an anarchist, in fact, to try to create non-alienated experiences, true democracy, is an ethical imperative; only by making one's form of organization in the present at least a rough approximation of how a free society would actually operate, how everyone, someday, should be able to live, can one guarantee that we will not cascade back into disaster. Grim joyless revolutionaries who sacrifice all pleasure to the cause can only produce grim joyless societies. These changes have been difficult to document because so far anarchist ideas have received almost no attention in the academy. There are still thousands of academic Marxists, but almost no academic anarchists. This lag is somewhat difficult to interpret. In part, no doubt, it's because Marxism has always had a certain affinity with the academy which anarchism obviously lacked: Marxism was, after all, the only great social movement that was invented by a Ph.D. Most accounts of the history of anarchism assume it was basically similar to Marxism: anarchism is presented as the brainchild of certain 19th century thinkers (Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin...) that then went on to inspire working-class organizations, became enmeshed in political struggles, divided into sects... Anarchism, in the standard accounts, usually comes out as Marxism's poorer cousin, theoretically a bit flat-footed but making up for brains, perhaps, with passion and sincerity. Really the analogy is strained. The "founders" of anarchism did not think of themselves as having invented anything particularly new. The saw its basic principles-mutual aid, voluntary association, egalitarian decision-making-as as old as humanity. The same goes for the rejection of the state and of all forms of structural violence, inequality, or domination (anarchism literally means "without rulers")-even the assumption that all these forms are somehow related and reinforce each other. None of it was seen as some startling new doctrine, but a longstanding tendency in the history human thought, and one that cannot be encompassed by any general theory of ideology. On one level it is a kind of faith: a belief that most forms of irresponsibility that seem to make power necessary are in fact the effects of power itself. In practice though it is a constant questioning, an effort to identify every compulsory or hierarchical relation in human life, and challenge them to justify themselves, and if they cannot-which usually turns out to be the case-an effort to limit their power and thus widen the scope of human liberty. Just as a Sufi might say that Sufism is the core of truth behind all religions, an anarchist might argue that anarchism is the urge for freedom behind all political ideologies. 195 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 196 of 216 NEGATION - SCREAMING Stevphen Shukaitis, research fellow at the university of London, queen mary. Member of the planetary autonomist network and editoral collective of autonomedia, David Graeber, associate professor of anthropology recently fired from Yale University and worker for the direct action movement, 20 07, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 12 In the beginning is the scream. We Scream. When we write or when we read, it is easy to forget that the beginning is not the word, but the scream. Faced with the mutilation of human lives by capitalism, a scream of sadness, a scream of horror, a scream of anger, a scream of refusal: NO. The starting point of theoretical reflection is opposition, negativity, struggle. It is from rage that thought is born, not from the pose of reason, not from the reasoned-sitting-back-and-refiecting-on-the-mysteries-of-existence that is the conventional image of the thinker. We start from negation, from dissonance. The dissonance can take many shapes. An inarticulate mumble of discontent, tears of frustration, a scream of rage, a confident roar. An unease, a confusion, a longing, a critical vibration.' More than anything else, it's a book about knowledge. Holloway argues that reality is a matter of humans doing and making things together: what we perceive as fixed sell-identical objects are really processes. The only reason we insist on treating objects as anything else is because, if we saw them as they really are, as mutual projects, it would be impossible for anyone to claim ownership of them. All liberatory struggle therefore is ultimately the struggle against identity. Forms of knowledge that simply arrange and classify reality from a distance-what Holloway refers to as "knowledgeabout"-may be appropriate for a vanguard party that wants to claim the right to seize power and impose itself on the basis of some privileged "scientific" understanding, but ultimately it can only work to reinforce structures of domination. True revolutionary knowledge would have to be different. It would have to be a pragmatic form of knowledge that lays bare all such pretensions; a form of knowledge deeply embedded in the logic of transformational practice. 196 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 197 of 216 . DIRECT ACTION KEY Ben Holtzman et al, an independent researcher and activist, editor in NYC, Craig Hughes, activist and researcher who lives in Washington DC, Masters in History, Kevin Van Meter, attends the Graduate center of the City university of New York, studying political theory and resistance, 20 07, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg.44-45 the powers that be,,, Stephen Duncombe wrote, "do not sust7 their legitimacy by convincing people that the current sysiL is The Answer. That fiction would be too difficult to sustain the face of so much evidence to the contrary. What they must do, and wi they have done very effectively, is convince the mass of people that tI€ is no alternative." Indeed, this outlook of hopelessness was common CV among activists of the 1960s era. As one former 1960s activist explain the idea of "we can change the world" became "what good did it all do ,, way."' However, even as the political climate during the 1970s worsen, a means of circumventing the powers-that-be emerged through the T.Tk Yourself (DIY) ethic. DIY is the idea that you can do for yourself the act ties normally reserved for the realm of capitalist production (wherein pr ucts are created for consumption in a system that encourages alienation nonparticipation). Thus, anything from music and magazines to educat and protest can be created in a nonalienating, self-organized, and purpos anticapitalist manner. While production mostly takes place through SI, and localized means, extensive and oftentimes global social networks utilized for distribution.' Though DIY is most prominent in the realm ol tural production, it is continually being expanded to reclaim more corn[ forms of labor, production, and resistance. DIY has been effective in empowering marginalized sectors of sod while simultaneously providing a means to subvert and transcend cap' ism. As a means of re-approaching power, DIY became a way of withholding support from capitalism and the state while constructing and experimenting with other forms of social organizing. Through involvement ill ion of DIY culture, participants have constructed alternatives that re than symbolic-they have created space for empowerment, nonting production mutual aid, and struggle. DIY is not simply a means adding alternative forms of social organizing or a symbolic example of :r society; it is the active construction of counter-relationships and the mobilization against and beyond capitalism. And as we will demonstrate, complishmet5 of DIY have contributed to its sustained importance capitalist struggle in the United States over the past twenty-five years, simjlarly in the movement against neoliberalism. e concept of DIY has been and continues to be debated among its pants.4 It is fluid and fragmentary, constantly being modified and exI by its actors.' DIY can, however, be understood as a two-step proirst addressing value and then social relationships. It undermines ex2-value while simultaneously creating use-value outside of capitalism. ills becomes synonymous with bringing life to "self-determining labor capitalism seeks to reinternalize for its own development, but which 2dly breaks free to craft new kinds of human activity constitutive of social relations transcending capitalism."' When a DIY commodity is ed, it is created for its use-value, rather than for its exchange-value. part of the process of undermining capitalism by forming relationnot intended by capitalism-inverting value and undermining the imn of work that is embodied in capitalist commodities.' while DIY still takes place in a monetary economy, and all the vestigial ts of capital have not left its processes, commodities produced in DIY have expanded their use-values in relation to their exchange-value. value is no longer the predominant attribute of the commodity, 2-value----"worth," to its participants-is primary. DIY as a form of creates value outside of capitalism. While this is not noncapitalist since a commodity still does exist, it is a first step in the process of beyond capital.' Y reconstructs power relationships differently than those found unital, by abandoning the institutions of capital and the state, and cong counter-institutions based upon fundamentally different principles lectures.' DIY social relationships, especially in regards to production, escape all four aspects of alienation that Marx described." "Capital," c notes, is "a social relation," which can thus only be overcome by other social relationships." In DIY, we find the process of creating relationships. 197 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 198 of 216 DIY AND MUSIC BREAK DOWN CAP Ben Holtzman et al, an independent researcher and activist, editor in NYC, Craig Hughes, activist and researcher who lives in Washington DC, Masters in History, Kevin Van Meter, attends the Graduate center of the City university of New York, studying political theory and resistance, 20 07, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 51-53 All of the examples discussed above have been, both directly and indirectly, at the forefront of the struggle against capitalism in the United States." Indeed, DIY, in the age of neoliberalism, has continued to be an instrumental form of resistance for the current political and economic situation. Punk has introduced thousands of young people each year to DIY. Song lyrics give voice to anticapitalist critique. Indeed, as the punk band Brother Inferior sang, "Building their empire .... Expanding their hatred, expanding their crimes, expanding their slavery, leading the third world to its demise under salvation's guise."" The cultural network of punk-producing zines, records, literature, documentaries, art, social spaces, etc.-has continued to serve as a working example of a noncapitalist social and economic sys- tern. DIY punk has also encouraged involvement in explicit political action against capitalism, with thousands of punks participating in the recent protests against neoliberalisrn.63 Zines have played an important role in continuing to educate, empower, and mobilize people in the movement against neoliberalisrn. They contrib.i uted greatly to the organizing efforts of the protests held during the meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in 1999. Numerous zines, including those whose locus was primarily outside of politics, "devot ed pages to sharing information about globalization of the economy, specifically the role that the [WTO] plays in international trade and labor issues"4 Though the Internet and face-to-face organizing were also significant, zines served as a principal means by which information and dialogue about the actions spread in the year before the protests took place. Food Not Bombs and the groups inspired by them have served food at all of the major demonstrations against neoliberalism. In addition, FNB was one of the few movements in the United States that emphasized non-hierarchical, bottom-up organizing throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. Many of the principal organizers in the movement against neoliberalism "had their start as Food Not Bombs volunteers .1115 As one organizer explains, "Our model of organizing by affinity groups, our history of organizing blockades and other acts of non-violent direct action is now the basis of protests against corporate control."" While FNB was not the only group that utilized this form of directly democratic organizing, it is among the most prominent and most credited with sustaining this method "through the dark ages of the US left in the early 80s."67 Critical Mass and RTS have also played crucial roles in the large and i diverse movement against neoliberalism. Indeed, the celebratory and party- like atmospheres evident in the streets of Seattle to Genoa can be traced, at least partially, to the influence of these groups." Furthermore, both have, been a constant presence at these protests. RTS also had direct roles in several of the major international demonstrations against neoliberalism in the ' years before Seattle." In addition, these groups have proved important for helping to expand and maintain the movement by encouraging continual local action and organizing outside of the large-scale protests. This has contributed to building local communities of resistance and providing outlets for expression and experimentation on a smaller and consistent basis." The emphasis within DIY cultural production on removing hierarchies between producer and consumer as well as on empowering, informing, and F development of Independent Media Centers (IMCs), which have been the principal means by which the movement against neoliberahsm has represented itself. Indeed, every facet of "reporting" is done by movement participants, themselves. IMCs have been able to circumvent the relative stranglehold .corporate Media has held over popular representations of protesters and struggles JMCs have utilized advancements in technology to overcome the Ijoiltations that have plagued previous attempts of movements to produce 1iwdia.7' While presentations by the mainstream media remain important, iMCs have provided a means for those engaged in the struggle against neoliberalism to produce widely disseminable counter-narratives to the discourses of the mainstream media. 198 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 199 of 216 A2 – NO ALTERNATIVE Ben Holtzman et al, an independent researcher and activist, editor in NYC, Craig Hughes, activist and researcher who lives in Washington DC, Masters in History, Kevin Van Meter, attends the Graduate center of the City university of New York, studying political theory and resistance, 20 07, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 54 By moving within and expanding on DIY culture, participants ha been able to escape the idea that there is no alternative. As a distinct form or anticapitalist struggle, DIY culture has provided a means of circunivei7tj1 the power of capitalist structures, while at the same time creating substantive alternatives. This is evident not only in DIY cultural production hut -social relationships and the creation of use-values outside and independent of capitalism. They are an extension of the struggles against the social Idolatry and further the recomposition of the marginalized populations In a strategic sense, the DIY elements found in the current movement against capitalism are among the most successful. They are highly participatory, practical, positive, constructive, non-ideologically based, and oft go beyond simplistic oppositional politics and critique. These elements actively creating an alternative in the United States (and across the world -a bottom-up globalization. It is for this reason that discussion of state within the movements against capitalism should address DIY. This essay's purpose is not to portray DIY as a blueprint for a new society. Rather, among our purposes is to expand the definition of politics,,,, political action and to highlight a largely unrecognized contemporary for of activity outside the realm of traditional political action. We see DIY,,,, political concept, but one based on composition rather than ideology. 11 concept is flexible, has the potential of being utilized across a broad are activities and struggles, and is not simply applicable only to those of a -particular counterculture or music-oriented youth culture. Ultimately, however the direction of DIY is up to the participants themselves. Certain forms of DIY activity have been privileged in this essay, however others exist and need similar attention." Further, this political process is in need of a proper analysis of the success of these activities-which ha.. worked and been sustainable, which are no longer useful, and hence strategic expansion of those that are successful-in moving beyond capita ism. The forms of resistance that we have discussed have been some odd crucial components to the recent struggles against capitalism. These m similar activities can serve as positive examples of new forms of social relations, and within them, new worlds. 199 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 200 of 216 COMMUNITY ACTIVISM SOLVES BIOPOLITICS Antonio Negri, independent research, communist militant, and former professor at the University of Paduahis work has been important in the changing tendencies of capitalism and possibilities for resistance. 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 70-71 Although we adopted the biopolitical as our research framework We never progressed by way of contact with bodies per se. Each is defined as corporeality, but biopolitical corporeality is not merely biological: it is also social. For instance, when we deal with an issue like the precarictarisation of labour, we certainly grasp its exhausting physical effect:, on the labourer-the mobility and flexibility of labour-but we also see that possibilities inherent in the new labour-power.' In other words, on one hand we have the terrible conditions that constrain precarious labour, and, on the other hand, its new potentials. In this way we can grasp precariousness by fluctuating between identity and difference, while seeing the common as the basis of exploitation and, at the same time, the activity of resistance. On this note, we shift to practice and the practical option: the rediscovery of antagonism. But where exactly is this transition, and where does the option of antagonism lie? The theoretical proposal, from what has been said so far, would identify exploitation in command in the labour process as the expropriation of cooperation; that is, as the ability to block the activity of the multitude. Exploitation is established precisely on the wealth of the common and the productivity of the multitude. It attempts to impede their expression, to silence them, to disembody them, to eliminate them and take away their properties. Here we should grant alienation a strong materiality that relates to every aspect of the body. It is an expropriation and a disembodiment that clashes against singularities and the common, and clearly collides with a practice that springs from the expression of the common and the processes of its construction. I think that the only way to begin to place a stronger emphasis on our research is by insisting on the singular and common configuration of new subjects of production, and on the exploitation that deepens them, advancing from the things that dance and move before our eyes in postmodernity. Let us posit one last question very openly: what is it that we want? We obviously want democracy, democracy at a global scale, that is, for all. The term "democracy" is not a happy one for sure, but we have no others. Every time we say that we want democracy, we seem to fall into a trap because we are immediately asked: but what exactly do you want? Give us a list of all the democratic demands you claim to bring to this platform! I do not think that it is a case of making a list. If anything, on the basis of what has been• said we need to start outlining a scheme of what the desire for democracy, or better yet,for the "common" is, as a methodological criterion for evaluating the alternative proposals that continue to arise. At times, I am under the impression that a whole series of proposals that had, until recently, seemed completely utopian, today appear increasingly real-as if our awareness of having entered a new epoch has matured. We should draw up something analogous to the cahiers de doleances, which were published before the explosion of the French Revolution. These documents presented the commits of the Third Estate, but were more than simple protestations: they P denunciations of injustices as well as proposals for their solution. The ,uth oil that acts from below moves through critique in order to provide a ,,active response./ The issue today is how to conceive of a democracy at the global level. A jj -ct critical focus (as expounded in Empire) demonstrates the development of imperial mechanisms of control, division, and hierarchy. We have also Scott how these mechanisms are deployed in the exercise of permanent war. TIit' real problem will be that of augmenting the subversive desire of the common that invests the multitude, by opposing it to the war, institutionality it and transforming it into constituent power. In the course of the previous lectures, we have noted that there are at least three elements capable of defining the multitude in terms of the comnon. The first element relates to social ontology: the affirmation that immaterial and intellectual labour does not call for command in the labour process and that it can create in excess. This excess is developed in a "network." From the point of view of the ontology of labour, this means raising the problem of how to guarantee forms of networks for the future democracy. The network is a system of communication in which values of cooperation in the full sense, both productive and political, are formed. The second element is that of the "common," that is, the material premise of production that no longer requires either capital or exploitation in order to exist. From this perspective, capitalism becomes increasingly parasitic with respect to the accumulation of the common. The common permits the constitution of being and cannot be reappropriated or privatised by anyone. So while, on the one hand, labour theories show us the inefficiency of command, on the other hand-and paradoxically-social theories show us the inalienable nature of the common. The common is the inalienable matter on which we can build democracy. The third main element that configures the multitude is freedom. Without freedom there is no creative labour, without freedom there is neither cooperation nor common Once these elements are investigated, critique can move onto juridical and bourgeois conceptions of rights and democracy. On this issue, I think that Marx's writings on rights are still valid, especially his critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right. His critique needs to be extended to current democratic rights, to show how formal equality and substantial inequality still constitute their foundation. 200 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 201 of 216 INDECISION GOOD Colectivo Situaciones, a collective of militant researchers based in Buenos Aires. Participated in numerous grassroots movements. Published many articles and 5 books. 20 07, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 82-84 In turn, this (in)decision implied a whole series of operational resolutions: we had to reorganize ourselves as a smaller group, an intense affective affinity, and reorganize our way of working entirely. This process, which culminated in the formation of the collective, was frenetic during the years 1999 and 2000. In practical terms, what has research militancy meant for us since then? That politics abandoned power as an image in which to recognize itself and created in its place a more powerful interlocutor. And that our way of thinking was related precisely to practices, that thought and politics depended on the capacity for experience, involvement, and encounter; and that the subject of knowledge or political action could not be conceived as transcendent with respect to situations, but made itself present for us as a result of those encounters. If there was a hinge decision, in this sense, it was that of thinking from and within the situation; that is, without conceiving practices, theories, or subjects a priori. The emergence of Colectivo Situaciones was directly linked to other practices that emerged in Argentina in the late 1990s, as both cause and product of the social and political crisis17 that was brewing at the time." We found ourselves involved in the hyper-accelerated dynamic of the crisis (which peaked with the events of December 19 and 20, 2001), and in the dizzying transformations that occurred in the country. In this context, we developed some working hypotheses, which were, perhaps, precarious but suitable at least in order to participate in this process still open, under very ambivalent forms-in an active way. At this point in the story, it might be useful to pose some of the questions that we formulated for ourselves in order to ponder the problems of this trajectory. We also aim to avoid a history of "happy decisions," one that would erase every real David of concrete labor. With what perceptual and conceptual mechanisms is it possible to capture the emergence of these new elements of sociability if they demand a new precise disposition to feel and think? How to link ourselves to the fragility of this emergence, helping its development rather than contributing to its neutralization? What degree of inorance do we need to arm ourselves with in order to make research a real organizer of our practices and not merely a tactical façade? According to our friend in Precarias a la Deriva, "the driving force of our militant research is a desire for common ground when the common ground is shattered. That is why it has, for us, a performative-connective function: something like the activity of a communicative Wobbly, of a weaver of affective-linguistic territorialities." This force that gives impulse to Precarias a la Deriva, that search for the common ground that has shattered, remains for us a fundamental question: bow to produce consistency between experiences/experiments of a counterpower that neither emerges as unified nor does it desire an external, imposed, state-like union? How to articulate the points of power and creation without developing a hierarchizing unity in charge of thinking on behalf of everyone, of leading everyone? How to draw lines of resonance within the existing networks without either subordinating or submitting to them? Research militancy takes shape as a series of operations that, in the face of concrete problems (or of anguish that stubbornness turns into productive interrogations), establish bonds capable of altering our subjectivities and finding some sort of community in the middle of today's radical dispersion. How to provoke interventions that strengthen horizontality and resonances, avoiding both hierarchical centralism and pure fragmentation? And, to continue in this line: how to co-articulate thinking in common with the experiences/experiments that have been elaborating hyperintelligent practices? How to produce authentic compositions, clues that later circulate through the diffuse network of counterpower, without being perceived as an outsider to the experience of thought, but, at the same time, without merging with experience(s) that is/are not directly our own? How to avoid ideologization, the idealization that everything which generates interest is welcome in our times? What kind of writing does justice to the singular situation? What is to be done with the friendships that arise from these encounters and how do we continue them? And, finally, what to do with ourselves, if with each experience/experiment we get further away from our initial subjectivities, without any mode of return? The list of these (in)decisions gives an idea of the problems that arise among experiences/experiments in militant research. Our friends from Universidad Trashumante say, when they begin a workshop, they know "how to start, but not how to end."" If there is a productive (in)decision, it is precisely that of not knowing in advance how are we going to go through all these issues and be ready to face them time and again, to the point that the absence of this insistence speaks more of the collapse of the ongoing experience than of its maturation-or its being overcome. Indeed, the consistency of the experience that follows the encounter is based more on these procedures than on the invocation of a common ideal In our experience, the labor of dissolving ossifying ideological cement (be it autonomist, horizontalist, situationist, or multiple) has turned out to be decisive. We hold that idealization is a destructive force. A real, contradictory, rich, and always conflicted experience is placed on the one-dimensional pedestal of the redeeming ideal. Operations are idealized, permitting the experience/experiment to produce an existence. This is, then, transformed into an example to apply anytime and anywhere, as a new set of a priori principles. It is then asked to be able to confirm this ideal 201 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 202 of 216 for everyone. The fragility of the experience/experiment creates tensions. How to sustain that burden? Later, of course, deception comes and, with it, destruction continues: "I thought this time it really was it, but it was only a fraud." What to do when we are faced with this mechanism of massive adherences and rejections, which elevate and dethrone radical experiments, repeating the I consumerist mechanisms of the society of the spectacle? What resources do we have in hand to look after this unexpected front of exteriority to which the ideal subordinates us? What can effectively place us inside these procedures-in their reality-and no longer in their idealization? Indeed, in our experience, there is a very strong component of working against ideals in their function as promise. That is to say: how to work from the power (potencia) of what is and not of what "ought to be?" Above all, when the ideal is a-more or less arbitrary-personal projection to which nobody is obliged to adapt. Research militancy does not extract its commitment from a model of the future, but from a search for power (potencia) in the present. That is why the most serious fight is against the a priori, against predefined schemes. Fighting the a priori, then, does not imply giving up for dead any stretch of reality. Nothing needs to die. It does imply, however, a permanent introspective revision over the type of perceptions that we are bringing into play in each situation. We believe that the labor of research militancy is linked to the construction of a new perception, a new working style towards tuning up and empowering (potenciar) the elements of a new sociability Perhaps clay is the metaphor to describe it: it has the capacity to receive affections without opposing resistances, in order to understand the real play of powers (potencias). The question is not, then, to configure a center that thinks radical practices, but to elaborate a style that allows us to become immanent to this multiplicity, without being insiders to each multiple: a multiple among multiples, a métier that, while doing its own thing, is involved with the others. It will be clear, then, that the main (in)decision of research militancy is shared by the multiplicity in which it operates, and does not belong (except in fantasy) to the group that claims to be doing the research, as if it existed before and outside this multiple. 202 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 203 of 216 IMPULSE GOOD Gavin Grindon, PhD student at the University of Manchester, England, studying the theoretical development of the concept of carnival as radical activism. 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 94 He was surrounded by angry patriots with pepper spray and batons at the ready. To hop down would be to take a beating and maybe a felony charge, so he did the only thing he could: he breathed deep, lifted his arms, and flung himself straight out over the cops and the crowd, stage-diver style. The crowd let out a collective frightened gasp. It was the shocked response of people watching something so daring it looked, at first glance, suicidal .. ...My heart stopped too in that moment. It seemed both lightning quick and eternal, that one second when the flying anarchist hovered horizontally in the air. When he fell to earth, landing in the arms of his comrade and escaping the police, everything felt different, like we were living in the pages of history, as though in that moment there was a crystal clear delineation of past and future. Something had just Happened... the problems in the world had looked impossible before .... In that incredibly bold leap over the heads of the riot police, the option of saving the world from the jaws of destructive, violent capitalism seemed possible somehow. One quick, bold move-it made other acts of amazing audacity seem possible.. if that flying anarchist taught me nothing else, it was that when shit looks absolutely impossible, don't worry. Don't stop to analyse too much. Be courageous. Do what they don't expect. Take a leap. Anything is possible.-Sophia Delaney, "Anarchists Can Fly," in Notes from Nowhere (Ed.), We Are 203 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 204 of 216 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD Stevphen Shukaitis, research fellow at the university of London, queen mary. Member of the planetary autonomist network and editoral collective of autonomedia, David Graeber, associate professor of anthropology recently fired from Yale University and worker for the direct action movement, 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 179 Between circulating moments of rupture, through circuits and cycles of * struggle, we find the processes through which communities are formed in resistance. By confronting and overcoming exploitation and oppression, how affective bonds and solidarities grow, turning collections of people who occupy the same physical space or time into arrangements united in under5anding their position and how it can be overcome. Whether building and acclaiming new forms of commons through the planting of food or demanding that housing be a right for one and all, common demands and victories Locate new forms of common experience and connection generated through and by resistance. Based on struggles that do not make demands upon the state, the tactics and politics of direct action are important in these experiences. Solutions fur common problems are found without recourse to state intercession; action is founded upon the notion that the authority of the state is illegitimate. Direct action becomes a strategy and tactic that is not just about attaining particular goals, but about the process through which this happens. It is not just about putting our bodies on the line to oppose any number of questionable financial institutions or state structures (as important as that might be), but also about finding solutions to problems through common struggle and creativity. The formation of communities of/in resistance is about being open to the possibility that opportunities often come from unexpected tactics and places. New social bonds can be woven while crafting resistance in front of a chain-link fence or in the warmth of a shared meal. It can be grown in a community garden or over coffee shared during a boycott. Far from excluding people who are not able to participate, direct action is not so much about the particular tactics used, as it is about the strategies that are based upon the common social wealth of human capacities found within our communities. This wealth does not need the state to exist: it simply does. Moving between providing resources that people need to survive and the campaigns to secure them, collectively reclaiming the materials of life is both a form of political action and shared joy. 204 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 205 of 216 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD Benjamin Shepard, author and editor of two books, 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 184-185 In responding to these contemporary developments, we find that we have to contend with something that was less of a problem for the first Diggers During their time, it was fairly clear to people that their land was being stolen, their labor was being exploited and that nationalism, racism, and sexism were being9 used to sow dissent amongst the motley crew of commoners, peasants, artisans, and the emerging proletariat throughout the world Today, many of the things that the Diggers fought against-private property and the nation state with its public lands-are so hegemonic that to mere* question them is to open yourself up to ridicule and perhaps much worse As Audre Lorde pointed out long ago, we live in a time when we are enthralled by the very instruments used to oppress and exploit us. The enclosure of common lands has been accompanied by the enclosure of out imaginations. The notion of the goodly public space is one such instrument of colonization. The global system of national states, with its legalization not the expropriating practices of capitalists, has been and continues to bean integral feature of capitalist colonization. The fostering of national identities, particularly those of oppressed nations, is seen as a sign of empowerment, and eventual liberation instead of seeing such identities as the prison in which to contain us in the service of capitalist globalization. This is evident in the progressive rhetoric that complains about the loss of citizen's rights while remaining largely mute about the exploitation of non-citizens and/or that of people living in other nations-an outcome that Oliver Cromwell himself had hoped for so many centuries ago. This is evident in both mainstream and progressive versions of nationalism around the world. The goal of our papaya planting is to stir desires of self-sustenance that are not based on the self-righteous desires of national entitlements for citizens. We erected a sign next to the papaya seedlings. It says: These papaya plants have been planted here for everyone. When they bear fruit, in about a year, you are welcome to pick them as you need. We will return to feed the plants with organic fertilizer once a month. Please feel free to water and weed. Do not use chemical weed killers as this will poison the fruits and those that eat them-The Diggers By associating our planting with the Diggers movement, we are reiterating the legitimacy of the commons as an alternative way to relate to the land. We are reasserting the authority of a community built upon a politics of communal eating and needs over the needs of capitalist ideology and expansion By doing so, we hope to fuel the recognition of the politics global interdependence of all those struggling for control of their communal lands. Such of communal eating and land use instigates the shared dreams of 11eedom from capitalists and national states that, at best, sell us the notion of lie public id place of our freedom from rulers. An old man walked by while \C planted and said, "Oh free papayas. Now I can eat them” 205 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 206 of 216 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD Anita Lacey, activist and researcher living and working in Windsor, Canada, Her research fields and interests include global anticapitalist and justice movements. 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 193-194 To bridge the GJM's praxis divide, many have come to look back at a number of classic community organizing approaches. According to Robert Fisher, US-based community organizing can be distinguished as social welfare, radical, and conservative approaches to social change practice." For -lack Rothman, approaches to purposeful community change work within three distinct communities: urban, rural and international." These approaches are divided into three additional categories of practice: locality development, social planning/policy, and social action. Locality development assumes that social change takes place through active participation in local decision-making to determine goals, tactics and strategies for action. The style is deliberately inclusive and democratic." Social planning/ Policy involves the process of identifying of social problems, assessment of their scope, data collection, and solutions on a governmental-policy level. This style is deliberately technocratic and rational. Community participation is often minimal. Professionals are thought to be best able to engage in this mode of social change practice. 206 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 207 of 216 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD Anita Lacey, activist and researcher living and working in Windsor, Canada, Her research fields and interests include global anticapitalist and justice movements. 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 204-205 Fast forward five years. Facing a mounting boycott and pressures f/on: workers, students, and activists around the world, Taco Bell agreed to thn core demands advanced by the CIW on March 8, 2005. The CIW could celebrate what amounted to a complete victory against one of the largest fast food corporations in the world." David Solnit suggests the campaign be understood as a best-practice example for a GJM facing a praxis divide. Through its use of highly theatrical guerilla theater, organizers involved in the campaign successfully bridged the movement's broad critique with an effective organizing strategy and messaging. This also helped bring ne' workers into the campaign." After all, Solnit suggests: "People join campaigns that are fun and hopeful. It's always been there-in the Civil Rights movement, and art helped shut down the WTO." This creativity helped 1u.-1 -light the social and economic issues involved in their campaigns in countless engaging ways .41 It involved combinations of art, research, well-targeted theatrics, and grassroots, non-hierarchical organizing utilized by the CIW4 A vital part of this consciousness-raising included an engagement between arts, playfulness, and creativity capable of inspiring action. The C IV, explain: "By looking at the roots of the agricultural industry's problem we’re able to come up to change the problems that ill our community. We do this through popular education: flyers, drawings, heater, videos, weekly meetings, and visits to the camps. We draw on the innate leader that exists in every worker.' \ 207 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 208 of 216 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD Anita Lacey, activist and researcher living and working in Windsor, Canada, Her research fields and interests include global anticapitalist and justice movements. 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 246-247 justice are discussed, debated, and practiced by activists in shared physical and emotional convergence spaces that are constituted equally in the planjung of actions and their execution. Rather than acting simply as a political slogan, "solidarity" describes the bonds felt amongst activists. The street can act simultaneously as a protest space and a site of community. Activists coalesce on the street and form emotional communities where desires for social justice act as a link or inexplicable glue between diverse peoples. Militant particularism forges space for difference and also for commonalities to emerge from difference. It is vital to note the non-instrumental elements, the social divine, that binds activists on the streets and in forums, social relations are established at actions we have witnessed in recent years in cities across the globe. These relations are often built upon pre-existing ones whereby local collectives and/or friendship circles travel together to the site of an alternative globalization demonstration. New relations also emerge at the protest sites themselves: I came to Genoa to be with people, who like me, felt that intense rage against inequality and injustice .... I wanted to feel that solidarity, that warmth of people like me, and I also wanted some outlet for my anger, and they [the G8 leaders] as the most powerful politicians in the world seemed a justifiable target .... The atmosphere was great. I, and the people I was with, got to know people from all over the world there, in the few days before the demos, we ate together, laughed together and all shared the same sleeping space (Jones 2001: 9). The spaces described by Jones are referred to as "convergence spaces." The notion of a convergence space offers a way to contextualize the spatial relations of loose or contested coalitions of divergent site-specific social movements that together constitute global networks. Convergence spaces can also embody both the militant particularisms of a physical location and diverse spaces or flows of planning and shared ideas. Routledge argues that it is the ability to conceptualize and value difference that makes the notion of convergence spaces such a valuable tool when looking at alternative globalization activist networks (2004: 14-15). This difference is expressed in the composition of groups outside the meetings and summits. It is expressed in the multiple modes of communication and rhizomatic organizational styles, in the celebration of diverse voices and views: it is expressed in the way alternative globalization activists carry out globalized local actions and localized global actions. The idea of alternative globalization protests as convergence spaces allows for a more complete recognition of the sense of emotional community that supports and evolves from collective dissent. The spaces of justice that emerge from alternative globalization activists' gatherings are generated in part by the act of being together physically or symbolically. Ideas of social The protest spaces formed in response to neoliberal globalization are ,multaneously tangible, albeit fleeting, physical protest spaces, but also rhetorical and emotional spaces. Doreen Massey argues that there is a need to rethink place as something beyond physical location, to explore it as a locale of social interactions. What defines a place is not only its physical location-the ability to articulate where it is on a map-but also the web of "social relations, social processes, experiences, and understandings" that occur there (1993: 66). The protest spaces generated by alternative globalization activists are fluid and open; signed-up, paid-up membership is not equired to participate, there are no physical barriers to involvement and the actual physical space changes tactically. Considering the sites of alternative globalization protest as both physical and emotional protest spaces where the social divine is created and practiced allows for an understanding of the connections between activists across physical space and time-that there is simultaneous fragmentation and fluidity in their coming together. The WSF can itself be seen as a temporal place-a physical space that reconstitutes itself in multiple arenas-and also as an open space of dialogue and relationships in direct opposition to the workings of neoliberalism. There is a sense of camaraderie in the accounts above. To overlook the debates that often rage between activists would be a mistake. The spaces of social justice that are forged in opposition to the current dominance of neoliberalism are heterogeneous: difference is celebrated. On Fire, a collection of activist accounts of the G8 protests in Genoa in 2001, celebrates solidarity, but is also largely a reflection of the ongoing debate amongst activist networks about tactics and directions (One Off Press: 2001). At such events, activists coalesce and create participatory, open, and inclusive protest spaces that convey not only their dissatisfaction with global injustices perpetrated by transnational neoliberal agencies, but also positive alternatives. Diffuse activists continue to come together to collectively to express that another world is possible. Both this shared expression and the act of being together, in person or across distance, continue to provide a feeling of belonging amongst diverse alternative globalization networks and simultaneously fuels the resistance to neoliberalism. 208 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 209 of 216 COMMUNITY RESISTANCE GOOD How we live and structure our resistance is crucial Anita Lacey, activist and researcher living and working in Windsor, Canada, Her research fields and interests include global anticapitalist and justice movements. 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 254 Central to this project, and perhaps contrary to more common-sense activist and academic notions of the political, is the belief that how we think and narrate has everything to do with how we live and change politics. Similarly, how we live our everyday lives has everything to do with the projects we aspire to create and enact. Theory, analysis, and narration are a central part of our daily actions, and these daily actions are, by definition, the materiality of politics. We are working on this journal not to create yet another isolated academic or intellectual analysis of what social movements and groups do, or ought to do, but rather because we believe that theory, analysis, and narration are critical and inseparable parts of our actions. 209 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 210 of 216 HOMELESS NARRATIVE BRE, Toronto based organizer who has spent times in the streets and in school. Currently involved in the Tornoto Free space and the free skool. 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 243-244 On the streets there’s no forgetting your body. Its hunger gnaws at you constantly. Tired bones offer regular reminders that pavement makes a rotten mattress. Skin burns from the heat of sun and lash of wind. The wet cold of rain…the entire body shivers from the narrow outward. My homeless body is the low-end site of biopolitics. It is the low-rent district in which postmodern struggles are engaged. The street is perhaps the prime example of what Mary Lousie Pratt calls a contact zone, those spaces in which cultures meet, clash, and wrestle with each other. Despite the postmodern emphasis on playful encounter these contracts are quite brutal and vicious. Poor people are subjected to ongoing violence simply because of the poverty that we embody. “those cheaters on welfare are useless,” the young man says. “The Bestthing to do is set up a machine gun at Hastings and Main and open fire. They’re gonna die anyway, so it might as well be sooner as later.” (Cameron 1995) Sandy Cameron’s poem expresses a view that I have overheard many times from “respectable citizens” – my life is not worth living. My body is expendable. My body is viewed as garbage. In a popular series of ads for a local Toronto radio station, a homeless person is shown sitting on a garbage can. Emblazoned on the photo is the word “PEST.” A middle-class tourist is overheard saing abou those of us who rest outside his hotel: “The kindest thing would be to get them all drunk and just put them to sleep. Nobody would knw the difference. Nobody knows them. They’d never be missed.” Graffiti screaming “kill the poor” has appeared around town over the last few years. The threatened violence is too often played out for reall. There has been an increase recently in the number of physical attacks on hompless people by neo-Nazi gangs. We are reminded of the vulnerability of our bodies when a friend is killed while sleeping in a park, or dies from the cold of a inter night, or her body urns up in an alley near the streets where she worked. Not long ago I was physically attacked by a self styled street vigilante screaming at me that he was “cleaning the garbage off the streets.” The intersection of inferiorized subject positions was clear in his thinking as he identified me as a “faggot” and my partner as a “whore” simply by virtue of our being on the streets. As Jean Swanson suggests, the poor in Canda are not yet being murdered by government bullets, although some of them are being murdered when they try to supplement inadequate welfare rates with prostitution.” Swanson also points out that “the contempt, the lies, the innuendo, and the stereotypes of the media and the politicians are the first manipulating steps to the hatred that must be necessary before killing seems acceptable” (2001: 104-105) When I’m living on the streets, my body is painfully exposed. I have no shelther and few defenses. Our life expectancy in Canada is six and a half years shorter than wealthier people. My body simply stands less of a chance of being around for a while, less than the likely reader of this book. Mine is an ephemeral body, even in the mortal human terms of life expectancy; a term that exists for others with time time to sit around and worry about it. This is bare life. As Giorgio Agamben (2000) notes in his discussions of naked life, we are the ones whose lives are considered worthless. We are the exception to the human subject of modern sovereignty: the citizen. We are the naked lives, and there are man, including indigenous people and nonstatus immigrants, who are deemed not to be part of the decisionmaking body: the citizenry. Being labeled criminals, deviants, even “thugs” and “pests” as homeless people too often are, erases my humanity; it places me in a postmodern realm, the realm of the post-human. I was human once, but that was before I “chose” to abandon the civil society and its work ethic and became the despised street youth, the mee echo of a person, a post-human. Naked Life. A condition of violence. This politics of exclusion removes our poor bodies from civil society and the realm of citizenship. Exclusion, being rendered invisible, immaterial, is a common bodily experience. Goverments don’t invite us to take part in discussions on issues that affect our lives. The comfortable chirs at summits on living and working opportunities are not filled by poor people. We are not asked to tell our own stories and we do not get many opportunities. We are treated as objects rather than subjects. “poor people have as much ontrol over government experiments or think-tank theorizing about their future as lab rats have in a cancer experiment” (Swanson 2001: 77-78). We don’t ask which questions 210 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 211 of 216 HOMELESS NARRATIVE to address. We don’t design the experiment and we are not invited to present the findings. bell hooks argues that while it is now fashionable to talk about overcoming racism, and sexism, class remains “the uncool subject” that makes people tense. Despite being such a pressing issue, lass it not talked about in a society where the poor have no public voice. As hooks(2000:vii) notes, “we are afraid to have a dialogue about class even though the ever widening gap between rich and poor has already set the stage for ongoing and sustained class warfare.” Breaking this silence is crucial. So we must present it ourselves.We must do autoethnography. We don’t have much access to computers and we have even less access to publications that will relay our stories, so autoethnography is expressed in more direct, one might say, traditional means. Oral traditions are strong among us, and we can spin yarns all afternoon under the right circumstances. 211 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 212 of 216 DEFENCE OF NARRATIVE By sharing our experiences, we can develop a community that causes ruptures in the normal organizational and authoritative fabric. This rupture allows the possibility of resistance, a resistance not named or labeled or following a specific trajectory, but rather embracing that we are all participants in resisting neoliberalism. The state might be inevitable, but our form of resistance allows us to shape it and work within it so that at one point, the state will no longer be necessary. Stevphen Shukaitis, research fellow at the university of London, queen mary. Member of the planetary autonomist network and editoral collective of autonomedia, David Graeber, associate professor of anthropology recently fired from Yale University and worker for the direct action movement, 2007, Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization. Published by AK Press, pg. 30-33 One striking example of this can be seen with the Wages for Housework campaigns that began in the early '70s. In 1972, Mariarosa Dalla Costa (who was involved in Potere Operaio and help to found Lotta Continua) and Selma James (who was involved with the struggles for independence in the West Indies and feminist organizing in the UK) published a book called The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community. Their arguments, drawing from their experiences of struggles and debates emerging within the feminist movement, provided a crucial turning point for reorienting organizing strategies. Through its understanding of the work of housewives as a key component of class struggle, it developed a method for understanding the organizing of a whole host of struggles not usually considered within the confined notion of the industrial proletariat (housewives, the unemployed, students, agrarian workers), as interconnected and important. By focusing on a demand for recognition of housework as work, this opened the door for a renewed consideration of forms of social protagonism, and the autonomy of forms of struggle, to develop what Dalla Costa and James described as "not a higher productivity of domestic labor but a higher subversiveness in the struggle."" These arguments led to the founding of Wages for Housework campaigns across the world. Their writings were translated into multiple languages. This focus on the importance of considering unwaged labor in the discourse on capitalism filtered through various networks and connections. For instance, these arguments proved extremely significant for a number of individuals in New York City in this period, who would go on to form a collective (with a corresponding publication) called Zerowork. These currents mutated and crossbred with similar currents developing at the time, from the collaboration between the IWW and Surrealism emerging in Chicago in the late '60s to debates around the nature of class struggle that occurred in the UK in the 'SOs. Zerowork, which would over time morph into the Midnight Notes collective, came to draw from the experiences of its memers in Nigeria to describe the creation of new enclosures founded upon an ongoing process of primitive accumulation that was backed by the IMF and other state agencies. These arguments, in turn, would come to be used by many in the revived global justice movement that has become more familiar through the media in recent years. What we want to emphasize are the ways that the constant circulation of ideas, strategies, and experiences occurring across ever-increasing geographic areas have produced new connections and collaborations that are often ignored and under-appreciated by the allegedly critical and subversive academics one might logically think would take the greatest interest in their development. It might be of historical interest to map out the many connections and routes these genealogies of resistance contain, but that is not the task at hand right now. What is most striking to us are the ways this living history and the memories of struggles have been taken up, reused, reinterpreted, and redeployed in new and creative directions. The contents of this book draw together many strands and lineages, and tease them out in different directions to create new possibilities. Colectivo Situaciones, for instance, draws inspiration from Italian currents of radicalism and the writing of Baruch Spinoza, not to mention the rich tradition of struggles in Argentina and Latin America. In their piece for this book, they engage in dialogue with Precarias a la Deriva, a Madrid-based feminist collective. Maribel Casas-Cortds and Sebastian Cobarrubias draw from the experiences and ideas of Precarias a la Deriva and Bureau d'dtudes to map strategies of resistance as teaching assistants in North Carolina; Angela Mitropoulos uses Mario Tronti's ideas to consider the nature of autonomy and refusal in organizing around migration and border issues in Australia; Harry Halpin sits in a tree somewhere outside of Edinburgh contemplating the ambivalent nature of technological development and forms of organizing; Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma are in Hawai'i, drawing inspiration from another set of radicals, the Diggers, to use the planting of papayas to create new forms of the commons. They are all reclaiming existing traditions through new practices. Again, what is important to us is not necessarily to draw out all the different and multiple connections that exist, as interesting as that might be. What we want to do here is draw from these histories, experiences, and moments to ask questions about methods through which social research creates new possibilities for political action. That also means we wish to explore the ways in which militant praxis and organizing are themselves modes of understanding, of interpreting the world, and expressing modes of social being. 212 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 213 of 216 DEFENCE OF NARRATIVE Research draws upon the multivector motion of the social worlds we inhabit and develops methods for further movement within that space, whether it's using militant ethnography within the globalization movement in Barcelona or applying autoethnographic methods as a homeless organizer in Toronto. As Graeme Chesters and Michal Osterweil describe, it's a question of forging a space, ethic, and practice appropriate to where we find ourselves, whether in a classroom or university space, a social center, a factory, or knitting at a summit protest. There is no pure social space in which new practices and ideas will emerge from an ideal revolutionary subject that we only need to listen to. Our lives are constantly distributed across a variety of compromises with institutions and arrangements of power that are far from ideal. The question is not to bemoan that fate but rather to find methods and strategies of how to most effectively use the space we find ourselves in to find higher positions of subversiveness in struggle. This is a process of finding methods for liberating life as lived imagination from the multiple forms of alienation that are reproduced through daily life and throughout society. Alienation in this sense is not just something that exists from a lack of control in one's workplace, or a process that di vorces one from being able to control one's labor. Rather, as all of society and our social relations are creatively and mutually co-produced processes, alienation is lacking the ability to affect change within the social forms we live under and through. It is the subjective experience of living within structures of the imagination warped and fractured by structural violence. This violence occurs not only in striking forms (prisons, wars, and s forth), but also through the work of bureaucratic institutions that organize people as "publics," "workforces," populations, etc.; in other words, as aggregated segments of data whose form is imposed rather than mutually constituted and created. From census surveys and Davideting research to even sometimes the most well-intended social movement research, research finds itself used as a tool to categorize and classify; it becomes part of the process of i organizing forms of knowledge that are necessary to the maintenance of 1 alienating structures, from the most horrific to the most mundane. Constituent power is what emerges most fully and readily when these institutional structures are shattered, peeling back bursts of time for collective reshaping of social life. It is from these moments that archipelagoes of rupture are connected through subterranean tunnels and hidden histories, from which one can draw materials, concepts, and tools that can help guide us today, wherever we might find ourselves. Trying to put a name on the directions of tomorrow's revolutionary fervor is for that reason perhaps a bit suspicious, even if well-intended, because the process of tacking a name on something is often the first step in institutionalizing it, in fixing it-it is the process that transforms the creativity of the constituent moment back upon itself into another constituted form and alienating structure. But if we are not trying to come up with definitive versions of reality (naming the world in order to control it), what are we doing? This question of rethinking the role of thought and knowledge production as a part of organizing, of appreciating multiple perspectives rather than universal truths and plans, is exactly what the contributors for this volume are doing. It would be silly to think that in this volume such a question could be definitively answered, or that it would be possible to capture and represent the vast experiences, accumulated practices, and knowledges that have been sheer amount of developed by organizers and militant researchers. Just the excellent proposals and submissions received for this project indicated to us how much interest in the pursuit of new forms of engaged research practice has grown. They simply all couldn't fit in one book (although perhaps in an encyclopedia devoted to the subject). The point is to use these developments to construct new possibilities, to follow the paths of our collective wanderings in ways that we could not have even dreamed of before starting this project. These hastily sketched maps and guides will orient our directions. We are stashing reserves of affective Essential nourishment and conceptual weapons under our belts as we find new [8 and passages. Eduardo Galeano once observed that "Utopia is on the horizon: I walk two steps, it takes two steps back. I walk ten steps and it is ten steps further away. What is utopia for? It is for this, for walking."" What tisen is theory for? It is a question that is best answered through walking, , rough a constant process of circulation and movement that we begin here, ji3llowing in the footsteps of many who have come before us. 213 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 214 of 216 Discourse Fails The current discourse of alternative energy fails to solve environmental crisis and only replicates the problems in a worse form John Byrne and Noah Toly 06 (Transforming Powe: Energy, Environment, and Society In Conflict, “Energy as a social Project” p. 1, Noah Toly is Director of Urban Studies and Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations. Prior to joining the faculty at Wheaton, he served as Policy Fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy in the University of Delaware's School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy.) From climate change to acid rain, contaminated landscapes, mercury pollution, and biodiversity loss, the origins of many of our least tractable environmental problems can be traced to the operations of the modern energy system. A scan of nightfall across the planet reveals a social dilemma that also accompanies this system’s operations: invented over a century ago, electric light remains an experience only for the socially privileged. Two billion human beings—almost one-third of the planet’s population—experience evening light by candle, oil lamp, or open fire, reminding us that energy modernization has left intact—and sometimes exacerbated—social inequalities that its architects promised would be banished (Smil, 2003: 370 - 373). And there is the disturbing link between modern energy and war.3 Whether as a mineral whose control is fought over by the powerful (for a recent history of conflict over oil, see Klare, 2002b, 2004, 2006), or as the enablement of an atomic war of extinction, modern energy makes modern life possible and threatens its future. With environmental crisis, social inequality, and military conflict among the significant problems of contemporary energy-society relations, the importance of a social analysis of the modern energy system appears easy to establish. One might, therefore, expect a lively and fulsome debate of the sector’s performance, including critical inquiries into the politics, sociology, and political economy of modern energy. Yet, contemporary discourse on the subject is disappointing: instead of a social analysis of energy regimes, the field seems to be a captive of euphoric technological visions and associated studies of “energy futures” that imagine the pleasing consequences of new energy sources and devices.<p.1.> Empirics is on our side – nuclear weaponry proves the failure in this discourse John Byrne and Noah Toly 06 (Transforming Powe: Energy, Environment, and Society In Conflict, “Energy as a social Project” p. 1, Noah Toly is Director of Urban Studies and Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations. Prior to joining the faculty at Wheaton, he served as Policy Fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy in the University of Delaware's School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy.) The euphoria of contemporary energy studies is noteworthy for its historical consistency with a nearly unbroken social narrative of wonderment extending from the advent of steam power through the spread of electricity (Nye, 1999). The modern energy regime that now powers nuclear weaponry and risks disruption of the planet’s climate is a product of promises pursued without sustained public examination of the political, social, economic, and ecological record of the regime’s operations. As early as 1934, Lewis Mumford (see also his two-volume Myth of the Machine, 1966; 1970) critiqued the industrial energy system for being a key source of social and ecological alienation (1934: 196): The changes that were manifested in every department of Technics rested for the most part on one central fact: the increase of energy. Size, speed, quantity, the multiplication of machines, were all reflections of the new means of utilizing fuel and the enlargement of the available stock of fuel itself. Power was dissociated from its natural human and geographic limitations: from the caprices of the weather, from the irregularities that definitely restrict the output of men and animals.<P.2-3> 214 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 215 of 216 Discourse Fails Faith in the large-scale centralized energy system and its discourse will make catastrophe inevitable John Byrne and Noah Toly 06 (Transforming Powe: Energy, Environment, and Society In Conflict, “Energy as a social Project” p. 1, Noah Toly is Director of Urban Studies and Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations. Prior to joining the faculty at Wheaton, he served as Policy Fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy in the University of Delaware's School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy.) Such solutions also attempt to mediate the increasing risk that accompanies techno-fixes of the conventional energy regime. The current phase of industrialization is replete with efforts to harmonize market and technological logics in a way that leaves the large-scale centralized energy system intact despite its tendencies to breed significant potential social and environmental crises (Byrne et al, 2002: 287; see also Beck, 1992). Progress [has] necessitated commitments to advancing knowledge and its application, along with the distinctive threats that only modernity could augur. Societies are obliged to place their faith in experts, technocratic systems, and management institutions, in the expectation that these offer social and environmental protection. At the same time, catastrophe-scale mistakes are inevitable. Those least equipped to ‘model’ their problems become the ‘lab mice’ as human intelligence works out management schemes. Conventional techno-fixes to increase energy supplies cannot remove risks, nor can market economics, but together they seek to convince society that abandonment of the modern energy project is nonetheless unwarranted.<p. 11> 215 Constituent Imaginary DDI 2008 page 216 of 216 Tech as Social Project The only alternative to the erroneous discourse is to view energy as a social project and examine its social relations to truly deal with environmental problems John Byrne and Noah Toly 06 (Transforming Powe: Energy, Environment, and Society In Conflict, “Energy as a social Project” p. 1, Noah Toly is Director of Urban Studies and Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations. Prior to joining the faculty at Wheaton, he served as Policy Fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy in the University of Delaware's School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy.) The problems of the conventional energy order have led some to regard reinforcement of the status quo as folly and to instead champion sustainable energy strategies based upon non-conventional sources and a more intelligent ideology of managed relations between energy, environment, and society consonant with environmental integrity. This regime challenger seeks to evolve in the social context that produced the conventional energy regime, yet proposes to fundamentally change its relationship to the environment (at least, this is the hope). Technologies such as wind and photovoltaic electricity are purported to offer building blocks for a transition to a future in which ills plaguing modernity and unsolved by the conventional energy regime can be overcome (Lovins, 1979; Hawken et al., 2000; Scheer, 2002; Rifkin, 2003; World Bank, 2004b). <p13> 216

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