The frustration of foreboding
Posted on | February 1, 2007 |
The class that can express its desires, rather than represent them, is the class that escapes the violence of the law. That which cannot be named, cannot be identified, cannot be charged, cannot be convicted.
Reading Ken Wark’s Hacker Manifesto this week (an online version is here), I’ve been reminded of some of the arguments Glen and I were making in our joint paper, “Where is the Law in ‘Unlawful Combatant’? Resisting the Refrain of the Righteous” (doc). Although it’s available to download from Cultural Studies Review, I’ve decided to make it available here while I wait for our e-prints archive to migrate to some no doubt really necessary new system at UQ. Unfortunately, it’s a paper that doesn’t seem to be losing any urgency.
The sections on the politics of representation and the state in Wark’s book draw heavily on the theories of Agamben, Hardt and Negri that were key references for the Italian Effect conference where I first gave the paper, about 2 and a half years ago now. Reading those ideas again, especially in the context of the manifesto genre, reminds me of the genuine concern I had with the innate progressivism assumed in much of that theory. Those of us reading it so belatedly in English then - not to mention whoever might be still reading it now - could hardly fail to see that the tactics of the Right were thriving in the new political environment foreshadowed by Agamben in particular. If the so-called War on Terror has done anything well, it has been to prove this as fallacy: ‘that which cannot be named, cannot be identified, cannot be charged, cannot be convicted’; as Glen and I were warning, these are precisely the ones who will suffer the violence of the law in a perpetual State of Exception.
In 2004, I was really outraged about the fate of David Hicks - so irate that I wrote the paper and delivered it at an activist conference (this is not normally something I do). I even flagellated myself with Italian theory long enough for the paper to get published in a venue I thought mattered. Well, I’m not sure it mattered that much in the end. The most significant reactions to the paper were that the head of a significant lobby group in Melbourne challenged me to a public debate on constitutional law at Sydney University (knowing full well I am not a qualified lawyer). Meanwhile, Simon During used it to prove a point about My Generation in an exchange subsequently published in the same journal.
But as the Howard government continues to rationalise why David Hicks is slowly being driven insane, and we begin to see how farcical the Bush versus Congress saga will be, I’m increasingly beyond words. That’s because, as Lauren Berlant’s work has shown, political disbelief and depression manifest viscerally. So I limit how many hours of news I let myself hear. I walk a little slower. I actually notice my muscles contracting. And I go to bed early, so the dullness in my mind and my heart might recede for a few hours longer than usual. The trouble with this is that all of these acts are movements inward, and a manifesto is supposed to impel me towards some kind of collectivity, to some kind of action.
Tell me, where can I find you all? And where will I ever find the energy to keep fighting this wrong, when there are so many more just as big?
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19 Responses to “The frustration of foreboding”
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February 1st, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
“Tell me, where can I find you all? And where will I ever find the energy to keep fighting this wrong, when there are so many more just as big?”
Christ, but that’s a good question. I don’t react the way you do (the dullness). I yell, in the company of like-minded individuals, who yell along, which of course does fuck all. I need a better plan than that.
February 1st, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
i understand the feeling of dullness. i feel numb, tired and depressed.
February 1st, 2007 @ 8:21 pm
‘Tell me, where can I find you all?’
you will find ‘us’ on every street, in corner stores, in the queue behind you, and the like. People taking small steps that change little things each day. having minor conversations that don’t seem to matter … but they do because they remind and inspire.
people who care continue to plod along regardless of disillusion, political and theoretical fads, and dismissal. Every time you think, write and act you join an army who do it every day Mel. And it works, it’s just that you do not see it working becuase there is so much difference to it.
for me mass movement or political change is rare, and possibly dangerous because it swamps such nuances. It also seems to be an illusion that provides an excuse for those who CAN excuse themselves.
‘And where will I ever find the energy to keep fighting this wrong, when there are so many more just as big?’
well, some don’t have any choice but to find the energy. move with them and think about them, they’ll remind you to keep going and welcome you.
So pull up those socks, put on those worn out shoes, and keep walkin’because that person who you will influence tomorrow can’t afford to miss out.
You’re not done yet
Not by a long shot …
February 1st, 2007 @ 8:56 pm
“So pull up those socks, put on those worn out shoes, and keep walkin’…”
Johnie Walker ad for the disaffected?
oh, the kynicism!
I have hope that the water thing will bite the pollies/public/media in all the right places, slow and full of anticipation, and with the arhythmic rhythm of a country holding its breath in a plateau of excitement like when finding a lover under the sheets with ones teeth.
::grip::
::breath::
…bite me, Turnbull! Next biggie is energy. Bring it. There is no way to do it half-arsed, and there are no stupid wedge politics either, that is why they are doing nothing.
And all the time tension mounts. Draught. High fuel prices. Tension. Play the tension. Twaaaang… (I believe it sounds like alt.country, but with less bundy-inflection or ute-timbre)
February 1st, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
Actually, Clif’s made me rethink. It isn’t the lounge-room yelling that matters, it’s the chats with cab drivers, and bar-room drunks, and fellow people-waiting-for-the-bus that matter. At least, when I engage in those forms of communicative action, they feel like they contribute to something. The episodic publics that don’t leave traces you can easily point to.
February 1st, 2007 @ 9:38 pm
I find your recent line of questioning very interesting Mel! Over the last couple of years of tracking your work I’ve felt, despite an affective connection to methodological aspects of your intellectual work, somewhat bemused by your optimism and faith in both the new media and the academic game more generally. I’m sure that, conversely, in comparison I come across as cynical and arrogant, and that would be true :).
But what you raise here is surely something about the limitations of language and the ability of academic work to achieve the lofty goals set by cultural studies’ founding fathers and mothers, who were set (appropriately) on upsetting the academic ivory towers in favour of “something real”. I think you know the kind of argument I make about how those goals have not aged well so I won’t bore you or your readers with repetition.
For me, if there is something to recover from the strident masculism of Italiano neo-Marxism, it is simply the emotional memory of punk rock: that the nihilistic gesture of “Fuck everything” is not a basis for a new political movement, but it does allow a whole lot of unhelpful cruft to get swept out of the way while one works out what is important to oneself. For me, at least, this has meant ditching certain “imagined communities” (”Australia” and “Cultural Studies” being the two most oedipal lol) in favour of a much more skeptical set of relationships with individuals and groups ,relationships that get tested much more rigorously. However, the irony has been that through this disavowal I have made deeper, more valuable relationships in both “Cultural Studies” and “Australia”. (Jean, I love a good cabbie chat as well, but I think that you seeking redemption for your work in it is probably related to your PhD completion status
)
To take my favourite quote from Katie King on this kind of methodology:
“To pay attention to and use such theory and methodology coming-into-focus requires a high tolerance for conflict and for beginning again, tasks with emotional, intellectual and political costs. Misunderstandings and mistakes and unrecognised privilege are the paradoxical “common ground†upon which such methodology is made, and they all have their own consequences, sometimes separate from the coming-into-being of such methodology, and not at all necessarily mended by it.â€
In the end, you have a certain set of capacities and relationships that you can activate effectively, and that means that there’s some things you can’t. Stepping outside the mediascape and treating it a bit more textually/peripherally is from my pov a good start to resetting one’s perspective.
And hey, you have a freaking audience here who read all your posts :). Most people have no-one who cares about their opinions on anything. That’s frustration!
February 1st, 2007 @ 9:51 pm
Danny, the cabbie chat is not “redemption for my work”. I don’t think my work is anywhere near as useful as a cabbie chat.
February 2nd, 2007 @ 12:32 am
Okay, Mel, but are people getting anywhere closer to freedom by being ‘named’?
I’m trying to understand how you could decide Agamben was grandiose and idealistic — isn’t he far too heavily influenced by Benjamin, far too melancholic-theological? (Negri and Hardt are another matter. But who is reading N&H now?) If you’re reading a manifesto in Agamben, maybe it’s the trace of McKenzie himself speaking? There were a lot of people for whom the manifestization of Italian marxian politics/theory in The Hacker Manifesto was just another effect of the circulation of academic cultural capital.
It’s interesting that the Italian Effect conference was so very differently read by the people who were there. The conference was odd (for me, anyhow) precisely because the theory, divorced from its material conditions in Italy, seemed to have assumed a kind of zombie life, animated by the concerns of up-and-coming academics who were keen to make a name for themselves by being ‘radical’. An Italian theoretical/political trajectory had more life and relevance when it was being read by squatters, no borders kids and people who used it to connect to the material/political conditions of life in Australia in the late 90’s and early 2000’s than at that conference. (And this was freely admitted by the people responsible for that first or second Australian wave of reading Negri, Agamben, Tronti, Bologna etc, many of whom were present at the conference. Not that I’d want to speak for anyone.) But anyhow… fads come, fads go.
And Danny, perhaps the antidote to the ’strident masculinism’ of ‘Italian theory’ is to read the Italian women philosophers like Federici, Dominjianni, Del Re, Dalla Costa.
February 2nd, 2007 @ 12:40 am
Jean, you undervalue yourself, which is the general point :). (I slipped between two different senses of “work” in that previous aside sorry).
I realise the irony of an academic outsider telling postdoc fellows you should love academic work more, but it’s true. Australasian academic practice is haunted by the idea of the importance of being able to talk to the cabbie, even though the cabbie will never actually read an academic journal. What CS can learn from the cabbie is that sometimes it doesn’t help to take work home with you.
February 2nd, 2007 @ 7:01 am
I think that’s what I meant, Danny. I do love my work in academia, but I recognise its situatedness and the fact it can’t transcend the context in which it is practised, or be the answer to everything on a personal level either. It’s not cynical to recognise that. But for some things, the cabbie chat (I wish we could find a better expression for vernacular discourse), which is also situated, is probably way more productive. And in fact, the introduction of any reference to Italian theorists would outright ruin the damn thing. But that’s just what i’ve found to be true, not a manifesto. And I still think I can probly do better than yelling at the telly.
February 2nd, 2007 @ 7:49 am
I guess where we might differ is that I’ll take a conversation per month with a peer who is pushing me to reconsider my approach to politics, over a hundred engagements on well-worn territory where our values are clear, such as Australia’s immigration policy or the state of the Labor party.
As you suggest, that’s a matter of personal experience and style to some extent, nevertheless I’ll battle on how well value judgements like “important” and “productive” fit on those. Perhaps that’s a conversation best had over a drink
I think where we’d all agree is that the number of PhD-educated organic cabbie intellectuals is only going to increase given the current academic job market, so my gut feeling is that academic political insights are going to increasingly find their way there regardless of our approaches to them :7
February 2nd, 2007 @ 7:52 am
Az, very true, what I learn from Angela’s work is that the big names as marketed to us are not the whole story in that field. Still, it’s what I know, and I think it’s fair to say that there is a very strong skew in the gender dimensions of how that work is taken up in this part of the world.
February 2nd, 2007 @ 8:10 am
‘I think where we’d all agree is that the number of PhD-educated organic cabbie intellectuals is only going to increase given the current academic job market, so my gut feeling is that academic political insights are going to increasingly find their way there regardless of our approaches to them’
ha! you’re funny bastard Danny. But it’s not such a stupid idea
I can see me now, lost at a T intersection and pontificating wether to go right or left 
And end up throwing my hands up in disgust at my po-mo indecision and driving straight ahed into someone else’s driveway and saying, it’s all relative anyways. The passenger/customer looking at me wierdly and slowly asking to get out of the cab … here … please … hehehehe
oh, and I’d have to be yelling at Allan Jones on the radio while spittle hits the windscreen … hehe
mind you, i would have one of the cool notebook holders on the dashboard, woohoo.
February 2nd, 2007 @ 9:01 am
Clif: LOL
Az: Thanks for this: ‘there were a lot of people for whom the manifestization of Italian marxian politics/theory in The Hacker Manifesto was just another effect of the circulation of academic cultural capital.’ I think that’s what I was trying to ask, especially because in some circles admitting on a blog in 2007 that you are reading The Hacker Manifesto is itself an out of date thing to admit.
Everything I was thinking about yesterday was to do with the circuits and temporalities of academic capital, political theory and wider social change. This is why I can’t read any particular affects into Agamben because I don’t imagine translation or my own parochial context give me the resources to do that (Simon During didn’t teach me that, Meaghan Morris did). It’s nice to hear your voice here again, as well as all you others.
February 2nd, 2007 @ 12:40 pm
Clif: you funny!
February 5th, 2007 @ 1:50 am
I tried to ignore the news almost entirely for about two years in the late 1990s, but in the end concluded that I had an obligation and a duty to start paying attention again, and to get involved politically again. But in many ways, I think I was happier when I wasn’t. But it’s quite correct to observe that this sort of internal privatisation is a symptom and an effect. I don’t believe Howard will lose this year, which doesn’t stop me from trying to make it so, but it does depress me deeply. But I think that this may point to the fact that happiness isn’t the only or the most important goal in life if it’s defined purely in a personal sense - taking on public and collective concerns can be rewarding even when the side you’re fighting on appears to have been defeated.
I think Andrew Bartlett made a very good point when he wrote about his reactions to the current imbroglio with the Queensland Police Union, because they go to the intertwining of action and fear and memory involved in a life lived politically:
http://www.andrewbartlett.com/blog/?p=1319
Mine are very similar.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/02/05/walls-have-eyes-and-phones-have-ears/
In thinking back on the resistance against Joh in the 80s, and the land rights and Murri struggles in the early 90s, both of which I was involved with and which were deeply interlinked, I was musing about the fact that such fights felt more pure in a way than what sometimes feels like futile political activity involving small gains and many compromises. They were also fights which created large or large enough communities, and indeed people who shared interlinked lives and lifestyles as well as politics. Perhaps that’s harder to find now, or perhaps we’re all just getting older. It was always also a concern of mine that it would be difficult to maintain the momentum of political activism after undergrad and dole days, but though the visible comrades aren’t there in the same numbers, the invisible and virtual ones are, as quite a number of people on this thread have demonstrated.
Keep the faith
Thanks also for giving people some space to think about these issues of politics and affect in these terms, Mel, and for your honesty and openness in doing so. Just by doing that, I think you are doing something very significant indeed.
February 5th, 2007 @ 1:51 am
Max Weber also summed up what politics is about - it feels like drilling through hard boards, he wrote.
February 8th, 2007 @ 3:14 am
From a novel I am reading:
“Language only ‘felt’ infinite; instead, everyone swam through surprisingly narrow channels when they spoke or wrote.”
(note-”felt” should be italicised, not in scare quotes, but I don’t know how to do that when posting to this dicussion :-()
February 8th, 2007 @ 3:16 am
er, d i (s) c u s s i o n :-p