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Hi --
This has been sitting in my draftbox since Brian's response to Gerald.
Time to send since it doesn't look like I'll have the opportunity to
expand on it as I had planned... but I think this discussion is quite
crucial in many respects.
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Gerald:
| one problem (and at the same time the challenge) that i see in the
| term of transversality: the danger of a separated discourse on
| possible FORMS of cooperation while forgetting about the actual
| contents and contexts is as problematic as the widespread practice of
| political activism debating the content without reflecting about the
| organisational forms.
|
I am not sure that the failure to address the question of form in
political activism is so widespread-- I even think there may not be any
systemic 'failure' as such-- though I bet it depends which networks you
traverse (and I don't mean that pejoratively.) In my experience,
organisation at a variety of moments within the movement often engages--
both in terms of discourse and practice-- the formal problems of
organisation. This, I think, is consequent on the fact that there is not
yet a co-operative form sufficient to the political necessities of the
moment.
To furnish some examples, I would say that the People's Global Action
principles (see www.agp.org), derived from a deliberate engagement with
the problems of organisational form by way-- I think, though Brian may
correct me-- of the Zapatista-- have significantly inflected day-to-day
grassroots political organisation at many points. An epiphenomena of
this is the PGA hand-signs we now see commonly used during face to face
meetings all over the world. (although I think it may have been dying
off a bit in the last year.)
Parallel to that, 'the network form'-- not just in the sense that is
articulated, rather vaguely I think, in Empire-- has offered another
organisational motif that is constantly being explored and stressed. The
limitations of the mailing list are often discussed as a consequence of
the very widespread use of the mailing lists to organise. Ad-hoc
meetings on Silc, IRC, sIRC and so on also suggest their own
opportunities and problems. We talk again and again about the
problematic development of networked organisation as a de facto
alternative to representation. Networks exclude, in a very concrete way
that is unfailingly pointed out by those who still have an allegiance to
identity politics, inclusivity and so forth. In fact, I make so bold as
to observe that naming this issue of inclusivity in any meeting can
absolutely and completely run-it-to-ground. We just don't have any
answers for what a post-representative organisational form worth the
name would look like (it isn't, IMHO only or necessarily an 'open'
organisation.)
Less discussed publicly, but very much _transversally_ present in
discussions within activist communities is the major organisational
reliance of the movement in the 'global north' on a few individuals to
create the 'kernel' around which actions, meetings, thinking and
discussion occurs. Brian says:
| The point is to talk about activism and how it works. What I see in
| reality, over the last few years, is a way for relatively small and
| "consistent" groups to mesh temporarily into larger and pretty
| chaotic formations, then dissolve back into their consistent groups.
|
That's true, but it's also true that what runs in, across and through
those temporary constitutions and dissolutions are individuals who make
a lot of the running in deciding what happens, where and when-- the
obverse of 'flash mob' spontaneity. Though they never officially 'speak
for' others, a lot of decisions nonetheless emanate from them, and a lot
of moments revolve around them. It is certainly possible to make out
such figures within the networks-- supernodes, as it were, who not only
route more than their 'fair share' of traffic, but actively decide the
'content' that traverses the networks they form such an important part
of. You might call them a new avant-guarde, but the name wouldn't stick:
they shuck off designations smoothly, submerging themselves in and
surfacing in new networks and other temporary identities, 'running
things'-- mostly not with any malice, I add-- via command of ideas,
their ability to generate concern and excitement, and a solid
understanding of how transversal structures operate. Raising any of this
in a public meeting will raise the temperature pretty quickly. But it's
the dirty secret everyone's talking about.
Gerald:
| what is the difference of "free cooperation", "open cultures" and
| "autonomous networks" in an emancipatory and in a neoliberal
| discourse?
|
|
An interesting question. While it may pay to be very careful about
in/out discourse- 'we' (emancipators) so often use 'their' (neoliberal)
technologies, protocols and structures, ideas and-- most crucially--
'we' share 'their' language-- I agree completely that factoring
_temporality_ into the success-conditions of a particular form is
crucial. Something that can work for a while, even if it ultimately is
going to be co-opted, is still something that can work for a while. The
Sovereign's always swallowing us-- or, if you like, we're always-already
swallowed by it ;-) So then we should get over it, and get on with it...
| ... deleuze's and guattari's [... concept of] transversality could be
| helpful as one of many tools that help us grasp the difference in
| organisation between postmodern businesses and the constituent
| practices of european noborder-camps, sans papiers collectives or
| neo-zapatistas.
|
Or, on the other hand, it could be what points to a non-identity beyond
all these identities, an in-difference at the end of all the difference.
After all, the sovereign transversality operating in and through, e.g.
the devolution of state power to local organisations, open government,
the subtle flows between NGO bodies-- open networkedness is a reliable
mechanism of the global Sovereign because the domination of language
itself, biopower, already provides a clear channel, right down in the
dialogics, right where it hurts, there where we might hope to find the
'unknowable' stirrings of revolt. (The self-managing housing
co-operative behaves just like-- perhaps more efficently than-- the
council that gave it its mandate; charismatic leaders reside, nameless,
in the anti-hierarchical activist network; the freest subject desires
only the routes most prescribed-- which are, precisely, those _off_ the
beaten path. The spectacle designates the transverse, illuminates it--
and in the commodity it is brought-- hardly even struggling at all--
into the light of day.)
This makes it tempting to say that the quicker the emptying-out of the
constituent takes place, the better: the sooner the transversal is
recognised as _precisely where power operates now_, we'll be able to
think what _constituting_ might really mean. (I do see, however, that
this puts me in the peverse position of supporting the Disobedient's
hijacking of the name of 'multitude' for their attempt at parlaying
movement-power into a (funny sort of) statism!) Maybe that's why I like
Guattari's La Borde work-- and why I'm lightly obsessed with the work of
the SPK. I think maybe they take (self-)constitution seriously, whereas
there's a danger of the post-Empire movement reifying the constituent
without paying all that much attention into the ways in which it is
merely a Western imaginary, a compromised and, even, crippled thing that
is right now already co-opted by the very constituencies who should be
nurturing it. The investigation into the BTU that Brian describes seems
to me exactly what we need to conduct now and all the time-- assessments
of what configurations or forms today's organisations are taking, what
the concrete effects of those configurations are (running away, staying
put, getting caught, evading capture, 'getting things done' or not.)
What might be gained from carrying out a distributed transactional
analysis of these current forms is unknowable. What would certainly be
lost is any fetishising of 'our' transversality against 'theirs'-- if
you like, the search for an 'authentic' organisational form. 'We're' not
just horribly like 'them'- 'we' _are_ 'them' in many respects.
Back then, to how to get to the 'subject-group', the autonomous beating
heart, upon which the constituent must after all be predicated. We're
still subjecting ourselves; we still didn't calucate our way out of the
problem identified by Wilhelm Reich in his study of facism. And the
self-subjecting can't be ever be subversive... can it?
cheers,
jk
Public key for jam-*at*jamie.com
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