Thoughts on the Conclusion

Here is the gist of what I want to say about the conclusion. This will be a very long post. The last section is a recent bit from Dean about her idea of issue politics, that fragment is from Tuesday.

--dan

First, a characterization of alternative. The issue based alternative seems somewhat artificial at the end of the book. Issue based collations are not so much issue based but are contingent organizations that approach politics antagonistically. For example an anti-capitalist group would organize around resistance to a trade agreement, they wouldn't be generated by it. These groups would also have substantially different tactics from groups that are caught up in the fantasy of publicity. (172) Specifics about the movements operation or its ability to do bigger things aren't forth coming. We do know that this alternative is not to be read as a national program, page 153. Even if your not there yet, this entire argument is against the fantasy of fullness that constitutes communicative captialism, trying to pin a national alternative on here is not convincing. Quick aside, although it might be tempting and even interesting to start to roll out geopolitical examples, the block quote from Hozic should give us pause on page 172 as the focus on violence out there is another strategy to get right within communicative capitalism. This theory attempts to cut the link in fantasy between communicative capitalist political systems and agency. Dean is quite clear on 152 that a focus on sites of political action trades off with a focus on agency. I would suggest we read the conclusions conclusion as finishing a critique of the fantasy of fullness and a provisional approach to politics that would avoid these pitfalls. If you want a really nice readers digest of the fantasy of fullness argument check footnote 26. She also surveys a few other approaches here, that we are slightly more familiar with eg, radical pluralism and the Multitude. The most trenchant quote to support my reading that Dean is not offering a universal political program was on page 14, "the demand for reassuring alternative cuts to cut off critique before it starts." I am staging this as an "even if" type argument, even if you aren't satisfied with the alternative provided in the last ten pages the argument, she really didn't need it anyway. If anything that alternative is provided to ensure that we don't think she advocates the Leninist alternative that was salient in Zizek at that time. I wrote this entire paragraph to head off critiques of the alternative alone at the pass.

Second, I want to handle the Bush election/Larry Craig (LC herein) examples. Dean's take is on pages 160-1 and argues that Bush's performance of authority made him president. The footnote she constructs here is pretty interesting in constructing Scalia's argument as acting "as if" Bush were president. The legal decision was not the important aspect of election, but the affective power of the narrative after the election that allowed Bush to behave as if he were president. The LC example is handled as an aspect of the fantasy of transparency, which is itself caught up in the drive. (174) Page 162 backs this up effectively in that the feeling of lost legitimacy is actually a longing for it. LC then could be functionally vindicated through politics proper in terms of his function in Washington D.C. the new gaze that would be imposed on the residents of his district would really be the force that removes him from office.

Third, we should be wary of reading "technologies that believe for us" as some type of argument about the machines LITERALLY doing this. The account that Dean cites from Zizek in the Sublime Object is premised on Transference, the technology is a fetish object. To make a very short pop culture reference, Linus is to his blankey as the Cynical hipster is to myspace. We should really keep in mind when reading this that Dean is a Lacanian writing mostly about Zizek who was trained in Frankfurt school type political theory writing right now in Upstate New York. She is not an nostalgic Italian Communist or a disenchanted California Surfer turned Computer protege turned guru. Similar works in this genre are highly disorganized, are often internally and externally contradictory and are jargon packed. This particular piece is much easier and more coherent. I am somewhat skeptical of reading this a linear work to begin with for other reasons.

Fourth, Lacan driven work is somewhat different in terms of method from what we have read before. Historicity is not a goal for this type of analysis, Lacan is simultaneously structuralist and post-structuralist identifying the linguistically structured unconscious. To run this through my old school Universal Translator: these types of methods are looking for a universal set of reasons why people do things, not for the reactions of particular subjects to particular events. If we just have a discussion of core Lacan like the triad and pre-linguistic harmony I would be happy. One key note here, the version of drives that is getting picked up here is not the death drive thesis that has been discussed in much more detail in other venues. This theory of linguistic sublimation is far more similar to that of Copjec (of who I know little) or Stavrakakis (of who I know a whole bunch). This is my attempt at a spin move to get away form anti-Freud/anti-death drive stuff. That was my sports metaphor for the day.

This is a post from Jodi Dean's Blog from October 30 that might make her issue politics argument clearer. It doesn't really get played out that much as it appears almost at the very end of the book exclusively. This feels really straight forward. Here is Dean's text:

A good friend of mine has been working the past few years on an account of issue networks and issue oriented politics. Her basic point is no issue, no politics: politics unfolds or occurs through the spaces, conflicts, and connections produced by issues.

At first, I resisted this idea with the dismissal of "little issues struggling to be free." My point was that nothing is an issue prior to politicization and the tracing of an issue presupposes the politics it endeavors to reveal.

But, then I wondered if perhaps I could be wrong about this (and there are a few places in Publicity's Secret where I start to head in the direction of issue politics). What was appealing to me was theorizing a politics not rooted in identity (this is where I disagree with Laclau and Mouffe--they both continue to see politics as the construction/articulation/constitution of political identities). To ward off potential misunderstanding, I am thinking here of group identities, identities that necessarily require difference, that is, groups like those anchored in ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, gender, religion.

These days, I'm thinking that my first response was the better one. Colin Crouch's Post-democracy is persuasive on the ways that issue politics are fundamentally compatible with liberalism and neoliberalism. They fit perfectly with lifestyle politics and consumerism as temporary, momentary, particularized politics that refrain from governing, challenging the rules of the game, or confronting the economy. In a sense, issues can galvanize little groups around them and enable these groups, momentarily, to evade and avoid their fundamental disagreements.

Additionally, my friend is convinced that politics is never about lofty ideals of justice, fairness, equality, or freedom but about streets, dams, animals, and lightbulbs. Again, I disagree. I don't think the opposition between freedom and lightbulbs is useful. One can stand for the other depending on the context of the struggle or dispute.

But more, what I see on the ground, in the local campaigns for city council, is a great deal of investment in abstract notions--for the Republicans, the themes are safety and order; one of the Democrats urges process and community engagement in a collective process of forming a common vision of the city's future; the other Democrat--the incumbent--just seems to support continuity. When concrete questions of the lakefront come in (and this is one of the central issues in the debate), they tend to hide the disagreement that everyone knows is actually there. They hide it under technicalities and process, options and reports.

In fact, I should be clearer here: the Democrats (and Paul is VP of the local party so we've been doing lots of grunt work these days) have worked to make the lakefront the issue, to foreground it so as to made the difference between the candidates visible. This suggests to me that the issue is a tool or vehicle of political struggle, a site which can make options and alternatives apparent. But, this does not mean that the big themes are merely rhetoric, or that the party and community apparatus that produces and uses an issue is secondary to it. The issue doesn't come first. It's produced and used.