[smygo] Historicizing the Postmodernist Revolution
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Nicholas Spencer, "Historicizing the Spontaneous Revolution"
Date: Wednesday June 11, @06:43AM
Posted by: jim
Topic: Theory
From the one-no,-many-spaces dept.
"Historicizing the Spontaneous Revolution: Anarchism and the
Spatial Politics of Postmodernism"
by Nicholas Spencer, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Wendell V. Harris, Jeffrey T. Nealon, Colin Falck, Camille
Paglia, Mas'ud Zavarzadeh, Donald Morton -- these are just
some of the many writers who have pronounced the demise of
postmodern and/or poststructuralist thought. It seems that
the regime of the sign and discourse analysis has given way
to materialist critique and cultural studies, and while some
people may not perceive any essential antinomy between
discourse and materialism, many others welcome these
developments as finally exposing the faddish and pretentious
nature of postmodernism. As the heady self-referentialism of
postmodern culture continues, a cooling of academic interest
may enable scholars to examine the traditions and influences
relevant to postmodernism's career more clearly.
The histories of Tel Quel written by Patrick French and
Danielle Marx-Scouras, Peter Starr's recovery of the
post-revolutionary climate of French theory, and Francois
Dosse's recently translated two-volume History of
Structuralism are all excellent examples of this project. I
propose to make a small contribution to this process of
historicization by seeking to find clues to the true
politics of postmodernism within leftist traditions of the
past one hundred and fifty years.
According to Brian McHale, postmodernism represents an
intensification of the epistemological dominant of modernism
into an ontological dominant. In other words, modernism
asked the question, "What can I know about the world?"
whereas postmodernism asks, "Which world is this?" and
"Which 'I' is asking?" Postmodernism's radical
problematization of the ontological integrity of the world
and the subject is apparent in much literature and theory,
and Linda Hutcheon argues that effects such as the
decentering of the subject, reflexivity, and the
destabilization of referentiality and representation
constitute the politics of postmodernism. However, the
metaphorical application of these discursive tropes within
the political sphere is unconvincing, as Hutcheon herself
seems to conclude. While arguing that postmodernism "is not
a degeneration into hyperreality but a questioning of what
reality can mean and how we can come to know it" (Hutcheon
34), Hutcheon also states that postmodernism is both
complicitous with the systems of power it seeks to critique
and devoid of any "theory of positive action on a social
level" (Hutcheon 22). Even where postmodernism's undermining
of the master narratives of western culture is affirmed, as
in Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition,
metaphorical application takes precedence over political
identification, as Lyotard makes the provisional contracts
of postmodern language games and the science of chaos and
catastrophe theory into metaphors for one another. Of course
it could be argued that political identity, in the sense
implied by democratic representation, is precisely what
Lyotard objects to; yet this does not alter the fact that
Lyotard fails to acknowledge that his critique is part of an
ongoing tradition of political philosophy. Not content to
rest with weakly political or apolitical readings, Richard
J. Bernstein has probed more deeply than most into the
political "horizons" of postmodernity. For example,
Bernstein argues that the writings of Jacques Derrida are
fundamentally ethical-political. However, Bernstein is
bemused by the fact that these texts "can be read . . . as
being nihilistic, obscurantist, self-indulgent logorrhea
and. . . passionate, political, subversive, committed to
opening the spaces for diffrance and respecting what is
irreducibly other"; Bernstein's frustrated conclusion is
that Derrida rejects political methods or "positions," while
simultaneously "point[ing] us toward the promised land of a
postmetaphysical ethics and politics without adumbrating its
geography" (Bernstein 191).
One way to begin adumbrating the geography of the politics
of postmodernism is to characterize the most prominent
arguments of the critics of postmodernism, i.e., those made
by left-wing figures such as Terry Eagleton, David Harvey,
Jurgen Habermas, and Christopher Norris. All these critics
subscribe to some version of the Marxist model of a rational
or scientific understanding of historical processes, which
culminate in a class-based revolution at the end of
dialectical time. Each has a particular emphasis in their
criticisms of postmodernism: Eagleton chides postmodern
vogues for turning potential radicals away from leftist
political activism; Harvey attacks the postmodern notion
that discourse is as primary a social process as economics;
Habermas perceives the postmodern abandonment of the
rational program of modernization as "neoconservatism"; and
Norris seeks to preserve the sanctity of Derrida's
philosophy from the taint of meaningless postmodern
posturing a la Baudrillard, Foucault, et al. What unites
these critics is their belief that postmodernism, by
rejecting rationalism and history, has forfeited all claims
to a revolutionary political identity, and, in so doing, has
bolstered the power of corporate multinational capitalism.
Many of these criticisms have frequently been used by
leftist officials and organizers to destroy the political
credibility of the anti-authoritarian revolutionary
philosophy of anarchism. Conversely, those of an anarchist
persuasion have often criticized the Marxist emphasis on
rational history as a counter-revolutionary justification
for the authority of the state and political party leaders.
Both anarchists and Marxists consider themselves the
spokespersons for the authentic political revolution; by
detailing a number of confrontations between these two
revolutionary viewpoints, we can establish a context within
which the politics of postmodernism might be understood.
The inaugural struggle between Marx and the anarchists took
place during the era of the First International Working
Men's Association, founded in September 1864. The first four
years of the International were characterized by the
conflict between, on the one hand, Marx's attempt to form
the International into a centralized political party that
would gradually achieve victories on behalf of the working
class, and, on the other hand, the views of anarchist
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who rejected mass political struggle
in favor of a network of spontaneously-formed mutual aid
societies organized along federalist lines. The demise of
the Proudhonist Paris Commune of 1871 reinforced Marx's
power in the International, and at the Hague Congress of
1872 Marx achieved his definitive victory over anarchist
thought by defeating Mikhail Bakunin and his adherents.
Bakunin refuted Marx's claim to represent the proletariat
and argued that the authoritarianparty could only promote
its own power and not that of the proletariat. In turn Marx
characterized Bakunin as a bourgeois apologist, arguing that
Bakunin's opposition to a unified and bureaucratic political
party and his anti-state (as opposed to pro-proletarian)
motivation were indicative of the complete absence of
revolutionary and political elements in anarchism.
Such is the power of Marx's rhetorical strategy that
anarchism has continued to be synonymous with unrealistic
and mystical aspirations and a wildly romantic understanding
of human nature. Anarchist political philosophy is by
definition difficult to identify precisely, since
"anarchism" is an umbrella term for various concepts and
practices rather than being a codified doctrine; the legacy
of Marx's attack has been to exacerbate the invisibility of
anarchist political philosophy, so that even the most
widely-accepted anarchist notions have been eliminated from
the almost universal understanding of politics in terms of
party authority and representation. One such notion is the
theory of spontaneous revolution, which was a major feature
of nineteenth-century anarchist thought, and which is most
closely associated with the name of Rosa Luxemburg.
Luxemburg was not an avowed anarchist, but her theoretical
criticisms of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and her
practical involvement in the spontaneous Spartacist uprising
in Germany in 1919 indicate an anarchist disposition. For
example, Luxemburg was a fierce advocate of direct action
democracy and spurned both Leninist dictatorship and the
bourgeois democracy proposed by Karl Kautsky. While
Luxemburg supported the need for party leaders and
organization to guide revolutions according to the
historical science of dialectical materialism, she also
posited that the revolutionary moment cannot be predicted
and instead can only occur spontaneously as an expression of
the people's will. From Lenin's associate Grigori Zinoviev
onwards, Luxemburg's views on spontaneous revolution have
been castigated as counter-revolutionary nonsense, and the
contrast between the success of the Soviet revolution and
the failure of the Spartacist uprising has been cited by
Marxists to destroy the legitimacy of anarchist tendencies
within radical groups. What is ironic about this
interpretation, according to some historians, is that the
groundswell of revolutionary feeling, which the Spartacist
uprising exemplified, was thwarted not by its own
incoherence but by the blunting of political will resulting
from the attempts of groups such as the Revolutionary Shop
Stewards and the Berlin Congress of the Workers' and
Soldiers' Councils to commandeer power and impose
organization.
According to anarchist philosophy, belief in history is the
guarantor of political authority, since change over time
implies the need for a centralized body to guide the
processes of change. The anarchist appeal to spontaneous
revolution is one symptom of the rejection of history;
another is the spatial or geographical emphasis which is
apparent throughout anarchist literature. Such an emphasis
is evident in the activities of the Situationist
International, a political and artistic grouping that was
heavily involved in the mobilization of students and workers
in Paris, May 1968. In their expose of the commodification
of human psychology and behavior and their identification of
capitalist society as "the spectacle" of universal
non-participation, the situationists broke with dialectical
leftists who sought to justify control over revolutionary
events by prioritizing history and economics. As in the
Berlin of January 1919, the revolution of May 1968 was,
according to Christopher Gray and other pro-situ historians,
undermined because groups such as the Council for the
Maintenance of Occupations were marginalized by the action
committees of more powerful leftist groups, who demanded
short-term reform of the universities and police power
rather than total revolution.
A fundamental aspect of the situationists' critique of the
authority of dialectical history was their belief that
social power relations are best understood spatially.
Situationist theorists such as Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem,
Ivan Chtcheglov, and Asger Jorn wrote on issues such as
housing, urbanism, traffic regulations, and other
geographical structures to argue that revolutionary activity
is primarily a matter of the spontaneous rearrangement of
local spatial configurations. Considering history and
political representation to be simulations, the
situationists turned to spatial revolutionary tactics such
as the following: the derive was a drifting walk through the
urban environment which attempted to inscribe authentic
desire into social space; psychogeographical analysis
involved the examination of social space in terms of its
potential transformation into the site of situations (where,
again, authentic desire could be liberated); and
detournement was the means by which situationists tried to
undermine the power of advertisements and other ideological
formations of capitalist society, not by opposing them
dialectically, but by subtly altering them, so that the
ideological power of the original could be hijacked for
revolutionary ends. While detournement may seem less spatial
a procedure than the drive or psychogeography, it is based
on the assumption that the space of dialectical opposition
is non-existent. Detournement is, therefore, a reinscription
of pre-existing social space rather than a move in the game
of deferred historical revolution.
Geographical or spatial concerns form a powerful link
between situationist thought and both anarchist traditions
and postmodernism. The geographical emphasis of anarchism is
easily demonstrated. The professional expertise of
geographer Peter Kropotkin, one of the major anarchist
theorists of the nineteenth century, informed his political
philosophy, which was concerned with models of the
decentralized distribution of locally-owned farms and
factories, as exemplified by the Russian mir or village
commune, rather than the concentration of power in the
state. The influence of Kropotkin and the French writer
Elise Reclus upon anarchist geographers such as Patrick
Geddes, Ebenezer Howard, Paul Goodman, and Lewis Mumford is
incalculable, and all these writers posit that the
implementation of social justice requires a spatial, more so
than a historical, redistribution of power; moreover, some
urban historians such as Peter Hall have argued that the
modern discipline of regional planning was the product of
anarchist thought. Like many of the aforementioned
geographers, the situationists did not identify themselves
as anarchists for reasons which feature heavily in anarchist
history, i.e., for those of an anarchist persuasion, issues
of group identification and representation are deeply
problematic. Nevertheless, their spatial politics of
spontaneous revolution place them in the tradition of
anarchist thought, and these politics continue to inform
postmodernism.
In the postmodern era we are likely to give more credibility
to terms such as cultural politics, appropriation,
commodification, recuperation, playful disruption, and
reification than the language of dialectical materialism,
and while there are many currents that have created this
situation (and many things to mourn about the dominance of
cultural, as opposed to political, politics), the
situationist current emanating from Georg Lukacs' writings
on the commodity and reification and dada and surrealist art
is one of the most significant. For example, the influence
of dtournement is strong, as is evidenced by the postmodern
art of Cindy Sherman, Kathy Acker, and many others; also,
the most prominent French theorists of the postmodern or
post-Marxist phase, such as Baudrillard, Lyotard, Deleuze
and Guattari, etc., acknowledge the situationists'
influence. The criticisms made of Lyotard by Habermas are to
a considerable extent a restatement of the criticisms made
of Bakunin, Proudhon, Luxemburg, and the situationists by
dialectical leftists. Lyotard was involved in political
groups such as Socialisme ou Barbarie and Mouvement du Mars,
which had strong ties with the situationists, and Sadie
Plant argues that Lyotard's thought "is a theoretical
translation of the situationist drive" (Plant 164). Also,
Lyotard's appeal to chaos theory marks him as a spontaneous
revolutionist, since the unmediated transition from linear
order to non-linear "chaos" in, say, meteorological systems
is clearly a metaphor for non-dialectical revolution; yet,
as we have seen, Lyotard's discourse does not move beyond
metaphorical terms of reference. One of the most important
continuations of situationist thought subsists in the
writings of Edward Soja, who, like Baudrillard and Guy
Debord, takes Henri Lefebvre as one of his major theoretical
reference points.
Like the situationists and other upholders of anarchist
perspectives, Soja welcomes the spatial emphasis, which he
regards as being reasserted in contemporary social theory.
Through his concept of postmodern geography, Soja argues
that the primary characteristic of postmodernism is its
replacement of historical with spatial concepts. Soja's
formulation shows how historians have promoted their own
discipline as analytical while demeaning geography as "mere
description," explains why it is hard for us to perceive
political geography as anything more than stating the
obvious, and makes a case for geography as a sophisticated
analytical discipline. Sojas interest in the "urban
imaginary" and discursivity of postmodern geography leads
him to criticize the hegemony of rational historical models
of social processes, such as those put forward by leftist
geographer David Harvey. In so doing, Soja reenacts the
conflict between spatial anarchists and historical Marxists,
reaffirms that this conflict is still alive in the
supposedly post-ideological age, and returns it to the
domain of geography. Nowhere does Soja identify either
himself or his objects of study as anarchists (although he
does refer to Foucault as "neo-anarchistic" [Soja 42]), nor
does he speak of spontaneous revolution; nevertheless,
Soja's work helps us to view the will-to-power of
dialectical history in the widespread assumption that the
writings of Baudrillard, Foucault, and others, since they
lack any representationalist political methodology, cannot
be regarded as legitimate political studies of society. If
we understand the current interest in spatial conceptions of
society in terms of the suspicion of history endemic to both
anarchism and postmodernism, this may enable us to realize
that postmodernism does not lack a political identity,
neither is that political identity simply metaphorical.
Postmodernism's spatial understanding of spontaneous change
may be bad politics or naive politics but it remains a
politics of revolution. It is important to state this
because there are many people interested in postmodernism
who believe those who say they are devoid of a political
identity. At a time when liberationist, decentralizationist,
and anti-governmental views are becoming increasingly
prominent, postmodernists must become aware of their own
political traditions. Without such an awakening of
awareness, our political future may well be reduced to a
choice between the paranoid individualism of the right and
the simulatory practices of "democratic representation."
Works Cited and Consulted
Bernstein, Richard, J. The New Constellation: The
Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.
Frolich, Paul. Rosa Luxemburg. New York: Pluto Press, 1972.
Hall, Peter. Cities of Tomorrow. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988.
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1990.
Home, Stewart (Editor). What Is Situationism? A Reader. San
Francisco: AK Press, 1996.
Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. London:
Routledge, 1989.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report
on Knowledge. Translation from the French by Geoff
Bennington and Brian Massumi. Foreword by Frederic Jameson.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible: A History of
Anarchism. London: Fontana, 1992.
Marx, Karl. The First International & After. Edited and
Introduced by David Fernbach. New York: Vintage, 1974.
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Methuen,
1987.
Plant, Sadie. "The Situationist International: A Case of
Spectacular Neglect." 153-72 in Home.
Sloterdijk, Peter. Critique of Cynical Reason. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of
Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso, 1989.
--
Dan Clore
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
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