Posthegemonic Comments
does anyone read your blog?
Hiya, Mick. Yup, one or two people read it. Shouldn't they?
No?!
hi Jon,
Is Mick a friend of yours? In any case, this is really great. Thanks for posting it.
I have two questions for you. I thought this was great: "Hegemony theory [...] is still a rationalism: people give up their consent because it seems reasonable to do so, given what they know and believe (even if those beliefs are themselves ideological or irrational). But this dichotomy between coercion and consent is a debilitating simplification."
Can you say more on the effects of this dichotomy? I quite like what I take to be your gesture toward a non-rationalist thought of politics, but I don't know if I can quite see what you're indicating.
Also, can you say what you mean by the legitimacy of the organization of the present? I'm trying to square legitimacy with abandoning rationalism - I don't know how to think legitimacy without something like a rationalism.
Best regards,
Nate
jon,
I'd also like to ask you a question regarding the wording of the above re: 'rationalism'. Mainly because I'd be keen to read your thoughts on Grossberg's attempt to combine a very simplistic conception of affect with cultstud style hegemony theory. What he calls the 'disciplined mobilisation' of the masses. Isn't the sedimentation of 'habit' a hegemonic process?
Ciao,
Glen.
Nate, nope, I have no idea who Mick is.
Regarding non-rationalism and politics, I guess I'd first observe that politics simply doesn't work rationally, whatever the social scientists want to tell us. That's why I look to the poltical functions (and dysfunctions) of affect and habit. It seems to me that it's through those immanent processes that the effect of legitimacy (for it can only be an effect) is achieved.
Glen, I should probably read more Grossberg, and with more attention. I think his work is interesting, if often more than anything as a symptom.
But no, I don't regard habit or habituation as a hegemonic process, though of course there is plenty of overlap with what Gramsci terms "common sense." Here, it's Bourdieu that I find useful, and his discussion of orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and doxa. But, to refer to some of your own blog entries recently, Massumi's notion of "attunement" is also in the same ballpark.
Regarding non-rationalism and politics, I guess I'd first observe that politics simply doesn't work rationally, whatever the social scientists want to tell us.
As a "social scientist" -- and worse, a "sociologist" -- I take exception to that comment! There is, of course, a large literature on the irrationality of mobs, crowds, and masses.
Ach, Craig... I was going to introduce a qualifier ("rational choice" social scientists), but hey...
Jezzer has already told me to get with the Sociology of Emotion crowd. I now consider myself doubly told.
Just saying! I'll my some comments soon, but Claude Lefort's work on the imaginary/symbolic is well worth reading in this regard. I say "well-worth reading" with the following proviso: I've only read about a hundred pages of his work so far, but it seems quite good. Castoriadis is next on my list.
"politics simply doesn't work rationally"
I'd agree absolutely that lots of political phenomena aren't entirely explicable in rationalist terms & many political "choices" can't be explained by reference to a model of deliberative judgement. However, it wouldn't necessarily follow that no political processes or programmes work at or appeal to reason or deliberation, which seems to be implied in your argument, although I may have missread you here. Wouldn't it be possible to formulate a 'mixed model' of the political which grasped its functioning at both affective & rational/cognitive levels, to varying degrees & in different ways depending on the political issue in question? I'm thinking of Zizek's comments in "The Sublime Object of Ideology" where he says conventional ideology critique, even if it's insufficient on its own, is still an important first step in precisley a kind of mixed model involving both that & his Lacanian formulation of 'traversing the fantasy', which, in a different language, is an attempt to address what you're calling the level of affect (& possibly habit also). Anyway, just thinking aloud...
Jeremy.
However, it wouldn't necessarily follow that no political processes or programmes work at or appeal to reason or deliberation, which seems to be implied in your argument, although I may have missread you here.
Maybe I'm missing the argument, but rationalism and 'an appeal to reason' are not the same thing. Many, many irrational acts in politics come through an 'appeal to reason'. It isn't hard to come up with examples.
Jezzer, just quickly, and in abbreviated form (I should be marking)... I'd put your point, or rather your point combined with Craig's, rather differently.
It is clear (I think) that there are political moves that manifestly appeal to, or work on, affect before reason. Indeed, this "post-ideology" seems especially to characterize contemporary politics. Bush, for instance, speaks from the gut to the gut. And the fact that his language, when dissected analytically, is often incoherent is beside the point. Hegemony, the attempt to rule through consent, is broken. (This is the first, historical, meaning of posthegemony.)
But does that mean that there was once a time when hegemony, ideology, and appeals to reason abounded. A time of eloquent political discourse and the like?
My argument is "No." (The second, analytic, meaning of posthegemony.) In fact politics always worked first on the body, via affect and habit, below ideology. We need to re-read processes that could earlier have been explained more or less persuasively by the theory of hegemony, and show what that theory misses. (My prime example here is populism: hegemony theory seems to explain populism perfectly, which is no great surprise as it's modelled on populism. And yet it gets populist politics so wrong.)
But here's the question. What difference does it make now that politics is baldly posthegemonic? Or, to put it the other way around, what work did the trappings of hegemony once do? What can we say about this "hegemony of hegemony," the fact that political actors could behave as though consent were what was at issue, as though appeal to reason were all?
Frankly, I'm not entirely sure of the answer. But I'm working on it...
Frankly, I'm not entirely sure of the answer. But I'm working on it...
If you find the answer, we'll be reading your interview on the next flash of riots to sweep the world -- and not Negri, Badiou or Zizek!
Hmm, I'm a bit dubious about the historical narrative involved here from hegemony to post-hegemony. Is this a version of Marx's remark about man holding the key to the anatomy of the ape or the owl of Minerva taking flight at dusk?
Jeremy.
Very interesting stuff Jon. Your comments make it all much clearer. I'm not as up on this affect stuff as you are, but insofar as I follow I like it. Your point about politics always having acted on the body (just that this acting on used to appear in the guise of hegemony/hegemony theory) reminds me of a story - I met this very nice anarchist guy at a conference once. He worked in a philosophy department and had done his PhD in the philosophy of logic. He told me that he thought it was odd that people think logicians all agree about what logic is, and that no one noticed a basic strangeness in intro to logic classes: many of his students began to act in keeping with the material presented in class not because they agreed with or believed in formal logic, but because they were coerced to act that way via the threat of bad grades.
take care,
Nate
Sorry to post again Jon, but I had another thought and a question. You write
"social order has to be disarticulated, to reveal both its mute underside and the process by which it has been ventriloquized, made to speak but in another’s voice."
What do you mean by 'mute underside'? This to me resonates with the whole 'we must be the voice for the voiceless' idea that I've encountered in a variety of settings and versions. I don't think that's what you mean, but I'm not clear what you do mean. I guess what I want to know is 'mute' in what sense or for whom? Do you mean in the sense of genuinely not speaking/writing (thinking)? I don't think so, but I can't tell. Or do you mean in the sense of having one's speech/writing/though not be considered speech by someone else? Riots and acts of widespread criminality could be said to be mute in one sense, insofar as they don't pose demands and engage with the state, but those acts couldn't be accomplished without speech at another register.
take care,
Nate
Nate, "ventriloquiz[ing], mak[ing] to speak but in another's voice" is meant precisely to refer to the notion of "be[ing] the voice for the voiceless." Obviously enough, I hope, I find that ventriloguism problematic.
I suppose, in the first instance, I mean "mute" in the sense that Spivak refers to the subaltern who cannot speak. But, more generally and more imporantly, I also mean the variety of processes that operate well beneath ideology and discourse, that the notion of hegemony hopes to make articulate, as if only its articulacy gave them life.
Of course, that's not to say that speech does not happen. In Spivak's terms, it's not as though the subaltern were literally without language. What's important is the relation between language and power.
And, Jezzer... I'm not entirely sure where you see the problem. There's much discussion of the so-called "post-political," which I reinterpret in terms of the manifest failure of hegemony as explanation. Are you contesting this argument?
Or are you protesting the next step, which no doubt is similar to the Marxist notion of man holding the key to the anatomy of the ape: re-reading what once could apparently be explained in terms of hegemony, but now in other terms.
Just seeking clarification.
Jon,
I don't think I'm 'contesting' anything really - this is the problem with written comments, it's very difficult to communicate tone, so that what's meant as an open question or query/request for clarification whose intention is to allow one to get a better handle on what precisely is being argued, all too often ends up sounding like criticism. So, it wasn't so much a criticism as an "I'm not sure I'm quite convinced by this but, then again, I'm not quite sure I've got what you're saying". I guess I was just wondering whether you're suggesting, and this is obviously over-simplified, (a) we're now in the age of post-hegemony, what used to work by hegemony no longer does so affect steps in, OR (b) from our current position, it's possible to see that what we used to think of as hegemony was in fact affect all along, OR (c) a combination of the two. In general, I'm a bit suspicious of any metanarrative that posits transitions from one form of let's call it governmentality to another & particularly any such narratives with a Hegelian bent (hence the remark about the owl of Minerva). But, to repeat, none of these are criticisms, as such, more in the line of queries, doubts, unformulated reactions, and none should give the impression that I don't think what you're trying to work through here isn't original and provocative, not the least since I fear I'm guilty in some of my recent work of employing a notion of affect as simplistic as the one found in Grossberg, which you rightly criticize.
Jeremy.
Jezzer, don't worry. I very much appreciate your comments.
In general, I'm arguing (b): "it's possible to see that what we used to think of as hegemony was in fact affect [and habit and multitude, I'd add] all along." However, I also subscribe to a form of (a), in that the appearance of something like hegemony must also have performed some political work, if not the work that hegemony theory ascribes to it.
I may try to write this up in a separate post, but I see this along the lines of Roberto Schwarz's argument about "misplaced ideas" in Brazil. Schwarz says that imported European ideologies in the nineteenth century performed a different function there than they did in Europe.
In Brazil (still at the time a society founded on slave labour), liberalism could no longer function as an ideological mystification of wage labour; it was, instead, somehow decorative.
But (as we've learned from deconstruction etc.) even the decorative produces effects, serves some function or other.
Anyhow, more on this later.
hi Jon,
Sorry if it seems I've accused of being, you know, one of Them. Not my intent. I know you're anti-ventriquilism and all that. By the same token, I think it's very easy to accidently repeat a moment of ventriliquizing in using received categories of thought (I do it all the time and have to catch myself). I was wondering if that was what was going on or not. I've not read Spivak so I can't comment, but I'm sure we both agree on rejecting a concept of a language-power relation that only values one idiom of speech, like that of articulating political contents of activities and posing demands, that is, the idiom of addressing the state as members of a public. It's also a move that I have encountered all over the place, this may be what I was reacting to in your post. I quite like your point about articulation (that is, specific articulations in one vs another idiom. Ranciere's quite good on this stuff, the tendency for some folks to treat the speech of others as not really speech but more like animal sounds.) At some point I'll have to read more the backstory to your work when I can, to get more of who you're reacting against.
take care,
Nate
I totally thought this was gonna be about Vaclav Havel and Gyorgy Konrad.
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