Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Essentially Inarticulate: slouching "towards a radical democratic politics"

It is precisely this polysemic character of every antagonism which makes its meaning dependent upon a hegemonic articulation to the extent that, as we have seen, the terrain of hegemonic practices is constituted out of the fundamental ambiguity of the social, the impossibility of establishing in a definitive manner the meaning of any struggle, whether considered in isolation or through its fixing in a relational system. -- Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics
Clearly I'm not… that’s not where I am, because, you know, people... like... leave high school and go to college and they like… [inaudible, interviewer talks over] -- Marissa Johnson on Sarah Palin
For reasons unknown (but time will tell) Sandwichman's ear instinctively hears Laclau and Mouffe's monologue being spoken by the character Lucky from Waiting for Godot.

"Articulation" plays a privileged role in Laclau & Mouffe's analysis, in opposition to -- or, one might say, as the antithesis of -- "essentialism." Essentialism was reductivist (bad); its "last redoubt" was the economy. By elevating class struggle as the presumed locomotive of history, so the story goes, Marx and Engels had sidelined other differences such as gender, race or nationality.

Essentialism and articulation remain key terms within the burgeoning academic-activist intersectionality complex. Instead of presiding as the determining difference (even if only in the "last instance"), class -- often relabeled as poverty -- has been demoted to the status of a residual effect of the other, formerly subordinate, differences, which are, of course, legion.

The logic of Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza's complaint about "some weirdo populist economic determinism" follows from the critique that an economic class analysis inherently subordinates other forms of oppression to the presumably primary difference of class. The characterization tends toward the hyperbole that class analysis is inherently reductivist and thus must be eschewed in favour of some other analysis of (more essential?) categories of difference. This game of identity musical chairs is not debatable as any and all objection can be disallowed as "condescending weirdness."

There was a Polish joke about how under capitalism man exploits man but under communism it is the other way around. One might paraphrase that to say that under orthodox Marxism, class struggle subordinates all other differences but identity politics does just the reverse. Another variety of essentialism enters through the back door because the framing concept of "articulation" has proven to be incoherent -- it is essentially inarticulate.

11 comments:

Thornton Hall said...

Look, you can cite all the passages to the contrary, but Marx explicitly endorses a deterministic Newtonian view of history and economics.

Being right is essentially the talent of perceiving the pattern of your own prior wrongness and quickly ditching your priors when a novel example of that pattern appears before you.

The academy is utterly unprepared for #BlackLivesMatter. The police have been murdering approximately one unarmed black man a month for the past fifty years and the journalism/university complex is getting slapped in the face by both the fact and the fact of their prior ignorance.

Marxism is shit for analyzing race in America. Even after you admit it's imperialist nature, you're still stuck with the wrong priors. No tweaks are going to make your system coherent.

Sandwichman said...

Well, dear, you don't seem to be too good at reading "nuance." If you can show me where I say that Marxism is any good for analyzing race in America, I'll buy you a bottle of single malt scotch. Looks like you've bitten the dichotomy weiner -- if it isn't this it must be that; if it isn't that it must be this.

Thornton Hall said...

As for the dichotomy weiner, how bout the choice between class analysis or identity politics which you read into the logic of a Facebook post.

You're right. Calling the your comments above "Marxist" is not correct. But I don't want to put too fine a point on it either... I mean... what does one call an analysis of black Anerican protests that says, "we've known about your identity politics since back in 1949, and you're such a bunch of silly essentialists"? Not "Marxist". So... "racist"?

"Identity politics" as a term of art has an intellectual history that I am quite ignorant of. But in the current discourse it is a two word epithet that is explicitly designed to preserve racial hierarchy.

But worse: you are a person who engages in class analysis for a living. When a group of activists criticize a fellow class analyst, you point out how they are confused or inarticulate. Their behavior is unfair to people like you, people who share your identity.

Can't you see the lack of heroism, the victimhood, and the essentialism you are embracing? Silly "identity politics".

Sandwichman said...

Laclau and Mouffe:

"Why should we rethink the socialist project today?"

"As participating actors in the history of our time, if we are actually to assume an interventionist role and not to do so blindly, we must attempt to wrest as much light as possible from the struggles in which we participate and from the changes which are taking place before our eyes. Thus, it is again necessary to temper ‘the arms of critique’."

You see, Thornton? It is all about "assuming an interventionist role" -- SUBSTITUTING the critic for the historical subject, the activist for the struggling masses. THIS displacement is the object of my criticism, NOT the priority of class over race, as you seem to imagine.

You don't seem to grasp that I am not objecting to an analysis of racism, nor to political activity informed by that analysis. What I object to is a mode of "interventionist democratic centralism" in which the self-appointed activist substitutes herself for the oppressed group she purports to "represent".

Ah, but organizing is so tedious and unrewarding compared to leaping on stage and grabbing the mike.

But never mind what I'm saying. You have your preconceptions about what I must actually mean. That's how the discourse articulates.

Thornton Hall said...

You wrote:
You don't seem to grasp that I am not objecting to an analysis of racism, nor to political activity informed by that analysis. What I object to is a mode of "interventionist democratic centralism" in which the self-appointed activist substitutes herself for the oppressed group she purports to "represent".

How did I miss that? Sorry.

Still... it was a 600 word Facebook post.

Thornton Hall said...

Buy the actual problem is this: Continenal philosophy long ago freed itself from the need for nouns to describe "persons, places or things".

I realize that there are words that you can string together in response to the question "what is 'interventionist democratic centralism'?" And I realize that there are words to offer in rejoinder when I reply, "Ok, but what is that."

But at the end of the day, Continental Philosophy is a language that allows Stalin and Marx to say the exact same thing, both believe what they are saying, and both be saying something true. When words are unmoored from reality, paradise causes mass starvation and a woman who is tired of holier than thou white lefties telling her what to think about race is accused of all sorts of fancy words that--if they mean anything-- mean "Stop it lady!"

Thornton Hall said...

Because here's what the women actually said:
Look.
Please please PLEASE stop sending me your condescending weirdness about Bernie Sanders.
Number one: no candidate who is really about this werk would break a sweat in response to a question in the form of "Do Black Lives Matter?" The simple answer should be "Yes" not some weirdo populist economic determinism.

Sandwichman said...

"what is 'interventionist democratic centralism'?"

My descriptive term for organizational Bolshevism untethered to any specific ideology.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...


S-man,

Your "old Polish joke" is actually Soviet in origin.

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...


S-man,

Your "old Polish joke" is actually Soviet in origin.

Sandwichman said...

That may be, Barkley. But John Kenneth Galbraith reported it in an article about his visit to Poland. That's the earliest reference in English to the joke that I have come across.