p. 15- slippage between pain and comfort which will repeat throughout the novel; Kevin's tight grip is painful, the tight towel is comfortable.
p. 18- Dana's body is open and vulnerable to being taken at anytime, even when nude.
p. 25- struggle for the power to name/address: nigger master, etc.
p.26- first instance of how violence of slavery pervades the entire social apparatus, and even the dynamics of the family
p.33- fear of white riders related to fear of "street violence." p. 35- fear commingled with comfort of human presence.
p. 43- Dana almost scratches Kevin's eyes out. The affective atmosphere of slavery beginning to seap into their relationship. p.49- " 'Tie that cord around you again,' said Kevin. I obeyed silently."
p.52- labor then and now. Dana is more acculturated to the slavery of agency work because it's done on a "free" market and its violence is far less explicit and excessive.
p. 68 Rufus forming an emotional attachment to Dana which will in part characterize his other disturbed attachments to women throughout the novel.
p. 75- Dana must ingest food from the past to survive- indicates how she is becoming increasingly enmeshed in the past. Again slippage between her fear of disease and the comfort of a full stomach.
p. 77- slavery poses a different danger to Kevin, the danger that he'll become acclimated to it.
p.99- slave children playing auction game before they even know what slavery is. Power relationships internalized from an early age.
p. 123- Alice doesn't even have the right to say "no" to Rufus.
p. 140-echoes of the present: Rufus, after reading the history book, asks "why the hell they still complaining about it?"
p. 163-164- Rufus coming into authority racially and sexually, but this does not preclude his earlier, vulnerable relationships.
Something is wrong in America. Everyone can feel it. Everything seems shakier than it should be;
harder than it should be. We have lost something. We used to be the Land of the Free, the
“shining city upon a hill”, and “the Greatest Nation.” We were the superpower in the world. With God on our side, we defeated the Axis
powers in WWII by military strength and ingenuity and USSR in the Cold War
through the sheer power of our will and ideology. Now we seem to be apologizing for upsetting
puny nations of Godless camel riders.
Americans conquered the wild land and built this nation to unsurpassed
greatness in two short centuries. Now,
people with no regard for our laws, our language, or our values are pouring
across our borders, taking our jobs, and using our resources, and we are paying
them to do it. Something is wrong in
America, and it’s not us. It’s not hard
working, real Americans who built this country. It’s not our values, ideals, or
faith. Those principles were shared by
the Founding Fathers of this nation and used to craft the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution; documents second only to the Holy Bible as
the greatest writings of Man.
No, what’s wrong in America is not us, it must be someone
else: activist judges who have twisted
or ignored our founding documents for their own purposes; liberal politicians
who want to take the money we worked so hard for and give it to lazy people who
did nothing to earn it; politicians who strip away our rights so that we can
neither protest the injustice they impose nor defend ourselves from the
continued assault; government bureaucrats who value animals over humans and who
deny us access to the natural resources which God has provided for our benefit; unskilled, uneducated people whose first act
upon coming to our country was to break its laws by entering illegally. They
are what is wrong with America. They rob
us, imprison us, and enslave us. But, we
can resist. We know our enemy and we can
take back our country.
Often called “extremists”, “fascists,” “nuts,” or “fringe”
groups, the people who express hatred towards other groups are often shunned by
main-stream American culture. Though
subjects in these groups can feel separate or isolated from the larger society,
it is doubtful that they see themselves as very different from other members of
society. The movement of a subject from
feeling accepted and being accepting of others to a position of hate is not a
great leap. Rather it is just a few
small steps, not away from, but just tangent the mainstream. Nor does it require characteristics found only
in those who hate. All people possess
the capacity for hate and have likely felt hatred for another at some point in
our life. So why does hate and its
effects seem so natural to some and so irrational to others? It begins well before the object of hate is
ever encountered, before the threat is ever felt. It begins in the relationship between the
subject and what the subject loves. “The
‘doing’ of hate is not simply ‘done’ in the moment of its articulation. A chain of effects (which are at once
affects) are in circulation” (p. 57).
Before hate can be produced, there must first be love and a
fear of losing the object of one's affection.
The affect describe at the beginning of this narrative is neither
unreasonable nor uncommon. Many Americans, regardless of political ideology,
are frustrated by current economic conditions, the apparent gridlock in
Washington, and threats to personal and national security. Democrats and
Republicans, liberals and conservatives, recent immigrants and those who can
trace their families back to the founding of America, all express patriotism, a
belief in democratic principles, and the sanctity of individual rights and
liberty. It is not the love of America that sets the Tea Party apart from other
groups; it is the reaction to the fear of losing what is so precious that binds
Tea Party supporters. The Tea Party’s
response to the fear generated by current conditions is the objectification of
certain groups of people as embodiments of the threats they feel. As embodiments of these threats, these groups
have become objects of hate to many of those who identify themselves with the Tea
Party. As Ahmed (2004), “Such narratives
work by generating a subject that is endangered by imagined others whose
proximity threatens no only to take something away from the subject (jobs,
security, wealth), but to take the place of the subject” (p. 43).
Not quite a party.
So they are called the Tea Party, members of this movement
did not identify themselves as a party in the sense that Democrats are part of
the Democratic Party or Republicans part of the Republican Party. In fact,
frustration with current political parties is a common characteristic of Tea
Party members. Nor is this movement
organized as a typical political party. There is no central command or formal
party structure. A Google search of Tea Party produces multiple websites from
various groups all claiming affiliation with the Tea Party movement. The exact origin of the Tea Party is somewhat
unclear. Some site supporters of Congressman Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential
campaign as early founders of the movement.
New York Times journalist Kate Zernike reported that leaders within the Tea
Party credit Seattle blogger and conservative activist Keli Carender with
organizing the first Tea Party event in February of 2009 (Zernike,
2010). During the same month, CNBC Business News
editor Rick Santelli railed against a government plan to refinance mortgages in
response to the banking crisis. In his rant, Santelli suggested dumping the
derivatives in the Chicago River in a Tea Party style protest. Videos of the
speech quickly circulated across the Internet and spawned websites, blogs, and
other acts of support which adopted the Tea Party symbolism as a show of
solidarity (Last,2009).
Early incarnations of the Tea Party primarily advocated for
reforms in US government fiscal policy which included reduced government
spending, reducing the national debt, and tax cut. However, from the beginning, the Tea Party
became a vehicle to express grievance about the government and society that
were not simply related to fiscal matters.
Opposition to financial sector bail out, economic stimulus efforts, and
the administration’s healthcare reform as wasteful government spending, opened
the door to criticisms of President Obama generally. Individuals and Groups with more extremists
views push forward to share the in the national attention being given to the Tea
Party. As more extreme voices received
attention, others were emboldened to express similar views.
Screen capture from TeaPartyExpress.org. I can't understand why people think they might be racist.
Like the Aryan nation in Ahmed’s article, members of the Tea
Party would not describe themselves as a hate group. Indeed, most often they
describe themselves as patriots and loyal Americans. Even the name of the Tea
Party originates with the iconic and patriotic act of protest against the King
of England. Tea Partiers consistently use narratives and rhetoric which is
filled of expressions of devotion to this country and elevated principles of
democracy. Most often the rhetoric is
about “restoring” America. Consider
Ahmed’s chapter on disgust. In the Tea
Party narrative, America is based on principles of individual freedoms and
individual responsibility. Communism,
socialism, welfare, and excessive taxation are concepts contrary to those
principles, so as Americans we reject them.
Yet in effect and affect, America has become tainted. People who do not share its founding
principles, like liberals and immigrants, have infected. Tea Partiers are disgusted because they are
affected by what they have rejected (p.86).
Discussion Questions:
If the motivations of the Tea Party are based in genuine
patriotism and a desire to improve the lives of Americans, why are some people (who
also genuinely hold similar feelings) so appalled by the Tea Party? In other words, what’s so disgusting about
the Tea Party?
Is there a difference between what the Tea Party is doing,
and viewing the Tea Party as a threat to our country, and working against them?
In what ways are the subjects who hate threatened or damaged
even as they seek to protect themselves?
References:
Ahmed, S. (2004) The Cultural
Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge.
Last, J. V. (2009). Opposition to the
foreclosure bailout rises. Weekly
Standard. March 4.
Zernike, K. (2010). Unlikely activist
who got to the Tea Party early. The New York Times. February 27.
December 17, 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, a vegetable merchant from Sidi Bouzid (a small town 190 miles from the Tunisian capitol of Tunis) set himself on fire and sparked a revolutionary fervor across North Africa and the Middle East known in the popular discourse as the “Arab Spring.” This moment of self-immolation led to the fall of governments in Tunisia and Egypt, rebellions in Libya that overthrew the government of Muammar Gaddafi, the changing of leadership in Oman, Jordan, Lebanon, as well as Morocco, and a bloody civil war in Syria. But why and how did this event trigger such a chain of events throughout the so-called “Arab” world? What does Bouazizi’s act suggest to us about the place of the subaltern in historical and political discourse. Can the subaltern speak and effect political and historical change?We should see the subaltern as both an identity and the horizon of identity politics. As a voiceless identity the subaltern itself cannot speak, but individuals inhabiting the space of the subaltern are not overdetermined by that identity and can simultaneously occupy numerous subject positions. In this way, the “Arab Spring” demonstrates the potential of those occupying the space of subalternity to speak around the wall of subalterity and simultaneously the persistence of dominant economies of identity to reintegrate these irregularities back into their role as silenced, assimilated sub-others.
In her article “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatry Spivak begins by identifying the field of subaltern studies as an explicitly anti-subjectivist/anti-humanist orientation of study in the spirit of Michel Foucault. She is critical of Western attempts to give pluralized accounts of subject effects, claiming that this is merely the illusion of undermining the Western subject while in reality reconstituting it as the basis of knowledge. She differentiates the problem of the subaltern studies project from its genealogical predecessors, such as Marx, Foucault and Deleuze, by claiming that their projects assume that the oppressed can know and voice their subjected conditions, an assumption which she believes perpetuates the silencing of subaltern consciousness by setting standards for its liberation which are alien to it. This forces us to ask: who has the permission/ ability to narrate? She denies that the aim of deconstructing the subject to recover the agency of the subaltern. We want to say the subaltern has agency but are unable to do so through the language of the subject. The idea that structure and history produce the subject must be rejected because in the subaltern there is no subject. Instead she recommends a radical autonomy without subjectivity. Using a framework outlined by Guha, she identifies four groups discussed in the subaltern discourse: 1.) Dominant foreign groups 2.) National native elites 3.) Local/regional groups, and 4.) The subaltern. The first two have a history and a voice; however the subaltern does not. The subaltern is an ideal. A deviation from the ideal is a “buffer” or rather a regional group which may have had a history once but which is being supplanted by the historical process of colonialism. These kinds of groups are remarkably heterogeneous; they might maintain their historical status in one locale and yet be part of the voiceless oppressed in another. Their contradictory, semi-historical identity thus provides an opening for the trace of subaltern consciousness to emerge. The problem is that we’re taking subalterity historically, but not only is subalterity not exhausted by history (nothing is!) it is constituted as resistance to (certain forms) of history. It is resistance to appropriations by alien historical narratives.
In his piece “Subject Scenes, Symbolic Exclusion, and Subalternity” Brian Carr attempts to locate the subjectivity of the subaltern through a critique of Louis Althusser’s notion of interpellation, i.e. that ideology, as embodied in institutions, constitutes the nature of the individual subjectivity since a given situation always precedes the individual. In other words, the individual is a product of and becomes a (re)productive social force. The subject is an effect of the “hailing” of an Other. This is a two-fold process where the Other recognizes the hailed as an individual and the individual acknowledges the call, recognizing his own subjectivity. Yet, what happens not only when the object of the hailing refuses to turn around but also when different calls are used? These questions, however, cannot be applied to the subaltern who is precisely the produced non-subject who has no say in the official discursive exchange. Subalternity is the exclusion from subject-hood. But, can interpellation produce this sort of disqualified subject? The production of the subject relies on compliance with the regime of power. Working within a Lacanian framework the subaltern lacks a place and can only be understood as psychotic. Interpellation, in the colonial context, though, as Chatterjee contends, is “destined never to fulfill its normalizing mission because the premise of its power was the preservation of the alienness of the ruling group” and therefore requires the reproduction of the colonized subject as ruled (Carr, pg. 29). Subalternity then is never to become “real,” merely symbolic. Therefore, Carr contends that discussion of the subaltern category requires a “reading of symbolic exclusion that is somewhere between the success of ideological interpellation (where a subject can speak) and total failure of symbolic constitution (foreclosure in the real)” (Carr, pg. 30). The not “real” subaltern is merely symbolically constituted and therefore not cast outside of symbolic exchange – this is merely a byproduct of our conceptual framework.
In his article “Managing Ecstasy: a Subaltern Performative of Resistance,” Samir Dayal applies categories of Lacanian psychology to the 19th century Bengali mystic Ramakrishna in order to demonstrate the possibility of a subversive subaltern performance which deconstructs the colonized subject while simultaneously restoring agency. Dayal no doubts recognizes the inherent danger which such a project faces of producing yet another objectified subaltern specimen for the dissecting gaze of the Western subject, so he qualifies this encounter by stressing the need for a dialectic between the particular and the cosmopolitan; it is “between” these two entrenched worldviews, between psychoanalysis and religious ecstasy, at their discrete points of (near) contact, wherein the (virtual) terrain of resistance is traversed. The subaltern consciousness is like a fugitive; if s/he can be pinned down within a single framework, s/he can be reintegrated back into the colonial scenery as silenced furniture. Through performative excess, however, the normally incommensurable horizons of the subaltern world are superimposed and deconstructed; psychoanalysis takes on mystical connotations far-removed from its “scientific” grounding, while Ramakrishna’s “holy madness” appears to be a managed, articulated economy of psychological phenomena. Such a study is deconstructive, rather than destructive: its point is not to efface all differences between psychoanalysis and mysticism, but rather to suggest that such limiting/demarcating categories do not capture the full scope of agency. The excess of activity, whatever cannot be strictly assimilated by categories, instead forms a liminal space of “either/or/neither/nor,” a space which can, in turn, be politicized for the agency of subaltern consciousness.
Properly speaking, Ramakrishna fits into the “buffer zone” which Spivak describes in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” He is a Brahmin, a regional elite, yet in 19th century Bengal, the authority of this identity was under siege. Herein lies the heterogeneity of the buffer zone: a regional elite, which was dominant in one region, could be dominated in another. The latter, of course, was Ramakrishna’s experience, and his turn towards tantric religious practice is interpreted by Dayal as an attempt to subvert a “socially acquiescent castration.” To do so, Ramakrishna develops an ecstatic performative of his relationship with the Hindu goddess Kali. He takes on the form of “Woman,” entranced by, and speaking through, Kali’s gaze. His practice can be contextualized within the larger scope of tantric practices, yet he purposefully exceeds these well-tried practices through his own idiosyncratic speech and performance. These excesses, while shattering the conventional horizons of tantric practice, are amenable to the Lacanian categories of jouissance and the gaze. Jouissance, roughly translated as bliss, is the answer to the Lacanian question “Che vuoi?” Encountering ourselves within the gaze of another, we are troubled by the enigma of the Other’s desire and so use fantasy to fill this (mis)apprehended absence within the other. Yet this psychoanalytic argument insists that it is through such fantasy that we learn to desire. From this perspective, Ramakrishna’s “excessive” performance can be understood as his management of the encounter with the Other’s jouissance; through “Woman,” he is able to dissolve his own precarious subjectivity within the Other’s erotic gaze while simultaneously experiencing the unbridled bliss of the secret revealed. In this state, he claims that “woman could finally be known in a way that no physical woman could be enjoyed.”
Ramakrishna’s act of subversion is situated within the dynamics of these two perspectives. While the Lacanian categories can be mapped onto the excesses of tradition, by doing so they become dislocated, shrouded in the incense and mysticism of the practices they are superimposed on. Dayal emphasizes that this resistant performative does not encompass the entirety of Ramakrishna’s being; in everyday life, he remains caught within a “phallocentric economy” of petty resentments and fearfulness towards real women. Nevertheless, Dayal mentions the Derridian concept of the “example” as something given for others by one who perhaps neither has nor is the example itself. In this way, Dayal presents “Ramakrishna” as an example of subaltern resistance, which extends well beyond the bounds of the flesh and blood lived experience of Ramakrishna himself.
The popular Western narrative regarding the Arab Spring suggests that new forms of social media like Twitter and Facebook facilitated the organization and activism behind the upheaval. This would play into the conventional narrative that political liberation can come only through imitation of the West. Critics have seen the supposed importance of social media in the uprising as proof of an emergent cosmopolitan middle-class, which has repudiated the religious extremism of the Mujahedeen in favor of Western style consumerism and political culture. Even the use of the term “Spring” implies a western influence over the discourse of the movement. The use of Western tools like Facebook and Twitter proves “their” Westernization.
Of course, in light of the re-emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the recent attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya these assumptions appear increasingly hollow and premature. Yet, the role of the Middle-Eastern middle-class (whatever that might mean) brings to mind questions about why the revolution occurred in some places and not others. We may recall how our authors emphasized the importance of buffer groups in creating discursive openings for the subaltern. What could be called the ascending Middle-East middle-class are certainly a heterogeneous group without political identity – an identity dependent upon their localized relationship with a given regime. Therefore, far from being the drivers of revolutionary sentiment, “they” represent the reconceptualization/appropriation of the revolution by the West. “They” utilize the tools of the West to express their desires to realize their true self-hood as Western subjects. It is co-optation of the revolution.
In other words, the revolutionary subaltern itself does not speak except through some regional/local elite, which is then understood only through a Western lens. As the story goes, it was through the transmission of videos via Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace that Bouazizi’s story caught fire across the Arab world. But what can this narrative about modernity and the Middle East really tell us about an impoverished, frustrated fruit merchant?
Perhaps Bouazizi’s case demonstrates a different kind of liminality from the class-based ones emphasized in our readings. Until he committed suicide, Bouazizi was indistinguishable from other members of the subaltern. He had no voice. However, in a moment of desperate performativity he appeared to gain a voice, the voice of self-immolation. The biography we receive afterwards is largely a recreation, working backwards from the performance. This would seem to indicate that he gains a voice only in so far as he could be appropriated by the West as spectacle. And yet this is perhaps not the case. The only way the Western discourse on Islam and about Islam can understand such an act is as the suicidal violence of a fanatic (i.e. a terrorist). In this familiar narrative the Muslim terrorist comes across as an object of fear because he refuses the West’s rational calculus of costs and benefits. We cannot reason with someone willing to kill himself and others. Therefore, he is excluded from the community of reason and denied a voice. The discourse of terrorism is typically applied when members of the subaltern manifest themselves as discrete objects for the Western gaze. When someone bombs an embassy, they are no longer anonymous, but rather an object to be known, feared, and, ultimately, eliminated. Yet they offer no challenge to the actual discourse of power because, as irrational, suicidal murderers, they can make no legitimate claims. The terrorist’s identity is not like the identity of a 9 to 5 worker but rather one that suffuses his entire being. Bouazizi, on the other hand, cannot be dismissed so easily; his suicide is a performance, like an act of terrorism, but it does not need the legitimation of Western fear to constitute itself. In other words, the terrorist requires authorization by the terrorized. It can be understood through its historical context, a historicity shaped by the power relations of colonialism, yet it cannot be exhausted by this history. No amount of historical data can comprehensively account for why someone at that moment would set himself on fire. He is uncapturable. Bouazizi, therefore, is a liminal figure somewhere between the discreet object of the terrorist and the undifferentiated subaltern.
Thus, like Ramakrishna, Bouazizi finds agency in the desubjectivication of the self. As part of the subaltern he is a subject without a voice. He experiences his subjectivity as part of the masses. Yet, through this act of self-destruction he becomes an object with a name, a face, a place. Bouazizi solicits the gaze of history by lighting himself ablaze in public. He calls out for the gaze of history. It draws the gaze of history upon him while simultaneously rejecting the subjectivity through which history must see him.
So, can the subaltern speak? By definition the answer is, “No.” The subaltern are the silenced, voiceless other of a narrative. But, the subaltern also forces “us” to reconceive how we think of politics. There is no liberation of the subaltern nor can the subaltern be removed. In other words, it can neither be liberated nor omitted because it is the silent, haunting specter within all narratives of identity, since there can be no identity (politics) without exclusion or othering. The privileged subject must confront the implications of the subaltern or else repeat the violence, which constitutes it. The “Arab Spring” is both the people inhabiting the subaltern attempting to escape its constraints and their forging of alliances of mutual affect rather than presocial, essential identity. There is also a simultaneous movement in the popular discourse to assimilate / reintegrate these events into a friendly package for the West. Attempts to call the revolutions across the Middle East “Twitter Revolutions” are just that - attempts to fit these moments into a comfortable narrative that suggests “they” are trying to be more like “us”.
_____
1. Does the Arab Spring have an effect on American identity? Does the possibility of this question reaffirm the subaltern’s silence?
2. Is the Arab Spring an instance of the subaltern speaking? Is its importance tied to its success or failure in bringing about lasting regime change? Can a revolution only be authentic if regime change lasts?
3. Was the Arab Spring an assertion of Arab identity or was it a revolt against the historiography of Arab identity?
_____
Bibliography:
Brian Carr (2001): SUBJECT SCENES, SYMBOLIC EXCLUSION, AND
SUBALTERNITY, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 6:1, 21-33
Samir Dayal (2001): MANAGING ECSTASY: A subaltern performative of
resistance, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 6:1, 75-90
On July 13, 2011 the Canadian magazine AdBusters launched a
blog post that inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement. Below is an excerpt
from the original
post.
Alright you 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals out
there,
A worldwide shift in
revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future. The
spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain, is
captured in this quote:
"The antiglobalization movement was the first step on
the road. Back then our model was to attack the system like a pack of wolves.
There was an alpha male, a wolf who led the pack, and those who followed
behind. Now the model has evolved. Today we are one big swarm of
people."
— Raimundo Viejo, Pompeu Fabra University
Barcelona, Spain
The beauty of this new formula,
and what makes this novel tactic exciting, is its pragmatic simplicity: we talk
to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people's assemblies …
we zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the
imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of
the future … and then we go out and seize a square of singular symbolic
significance and put our asses on the line to make it happen.
The time has come to deploy this emerging stratagem against
the greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah
of America.
AdBusters, the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine urged U.S. Americans to follow in the steps of their oppressed brethren in Egypt and Spain and demand
that their government, our government, recognize the rights of its people.Certainly, the “problems” in the United
States were not the same as the “problems” in Egypt or Spain, but according to
AdBusters the root causes of them were the same—flawed government practices
that allowed the rich to get richer on the backs of the working class; that is,
on the backs of the working class people who actually had jobs. Occupied protestors across the worldunited under the umbrella of economic oppression. Never before had
such large numbers of citizens identified themselves as members of the same
group. Indeed, they were NOT members of the same group, or at least not members
of the same groups making the same demands. Still Occupy Americans saw
themselves wrought with the same financial struggles as the protestors in Egypt
and Spain. Easily enough the political corruption by top officials in Egypt was
equated with the political power of banks and multinational corporations in the
United States. The high unemployment rate in Spain (21% at the protest’s
outset) was equivocated with the jobless rate in the U.S. (9%). Their struggles
were our struggles, so different yet so much the same.
The role of affect in uniting what
has come to be known as the 99% (in the U.S.) cannot
be understated. AdBusters and other groups such as the anarchist collective Anonymous
tapped into an affective atmosphere that was filled with fear, anxiety,
dissatisfaction, and dread. At a time when many people were losing their jobs,
losing their homes, and losing hope for the future, the Occupy Movement offered
inspiration, but little else.Ahmed
recognizes that in affective economies, “emotions
do things, and they align individuals
with communities—or bodily space with social space—through the very intensity
of their attachments” (p.119). Emotions circulate through both the psychic and
social spheres sticking to some bodies and bypassing others. The affect is not
found in a particular body or sign, but in the circulation between these bodies
and signs. Over time, some bodies collect more affect and begin to appear to
contain it. However, that is not the case. Those bodies that appear affective
in themselves have only circulated more than others. It is this failure of
affect to be located in a specific body that allows it to continue to produce
effects. In this sense a threat or a
fear never dies, it simply changes form. The economic conditions that sparked
the Occupy Movement were not new. The United States has gone through several
periods of economic strife and recovered from each. However, when the
conditions from the past began to be recognized as a threat in the present, emotions
changed. Ahmed argues, “Through designating something as already a threat in
the present, that very thing becomes installed as ‘the truth,’ which we must
fight for in the future, a fight that is retrospectively understood to be a
matter of life and death” (p.133).The
threat of losing your job or your home was real. We had to do something or risk falling by the wayside. People needed an
emotional outlet and the Occupy Movement was there to help by providing a
common enemy for all working class citizens to fight against. Workers of the
world, unite!
This global sense of identification of the “working class” was only made
possible by the shifts in economic paradigms from agriculture to
industrialization to informatization. In agricultural or industrial societies,
workers could band together, but not on the large scale that we saw in the
Occupy Movement. The passage from industrialization to informatization is
“recognized through the migration from industry to service jobs [where service
is] characterized by the central role played by knowledge, information,
communication and affect” (Hardt, 91). Because of the focus on these
characteristics, the “informational economy” necessarily requires a change in the
quality of labor and labor practices. Factory
labor becomes dependent on communication from the market to determine when and
what will be produced as opposed to producers determining what consumers will
buy. In the service industry where no goods are produced, information exchange
is even more important in determining what and how services will be provided. Immaterial labor, as Hardt terms it, is
“labor that produces an immaterial good, such as services, knowledge, or
communication” (p. 94). Within this category of immaterial labor is affective labor, the type of labor that
produces no tangible product. It only produces affect—an unquantifiable emotion
that is entangled in human interaction. “What affective labor produces are
social networks, forms of community, biopower” (Hardt, 96). Although Hardt
recognizes that affective labor has “achieved a dominant position of the
highest value in the contemporary informational economy” (p. 97) and that the
U.S. will strive to keep the highest-value immaterial jobs in the country, these
are traditionally the jobs that many Americans feel are underpaid and/or
underrepresented. Teachers, civil servants, care-takers, and other affective
laborers are never ‘paid what they’re worth,’ but how can they be? How do you
put a price on affect? How much is it worth?
Negri describes the paradox of
value and affect in this way: “The more the theory of value loses its reference
to the subject (measure was this reference as a basis of mediation and
command), the more the value of labor resides in affect, that is, in living
labor that is made autonomous in the capital relation, and expresses—through
all the pores of singular and collective bodies—its power of self-valorization”
(p. 79-80). In other words, the value of labor, and this is not necessarily a
monetary value, is not found in the properties of the laborer. Rather, labor
value is determined by the interrelationships between producers and consumers.
Thus, affective labor generates its own value with no set referent. The value is circular and again we see the
difficulty in determining an affective laborer’s wage, a component of the
Occupy Movement’s complaint. The labor is worth what it is worth. It is both
outside of and beyond measure.Although the
value is outside of measure, it is still susceptible to biopolitical control
because of the productive nature of affect. The “political economy must in
every case bring productive force under control, and thus it must organize
itself to superimpose over the new figures of valorization (and new subjects
that produce it) new figures of exploitation” (Negri, 86). Affect-value must be
controlled. Yet, it cannot be contained because it is beyond measure. This is
bad news for affective laborers. Their struggles will continue, but not without
consequences. “Value-affect opens the way to a revolutionary political economy
in which insurrection is a necessary ingredient and which poses the theme of
reappropriation of the biopolitical context by the productive subjects” (Negri,
88). The move from industrialization to informatization, from use-value to
affect-value made the Occupy Movement possible. It also made it necessary.
The Occupy Movement did a lot of
things. It rallied thousands of people to fight for a cause they believed in.
It brought global attention to the struggles of the working class in several
different countries. It fostered a feeling of belonging to those who felt like
they were alone. It illustrated the power of citizens who were tired of feeling
exploited. But, the best way to describe the movement is affective. Perhaps this was
all it was meant to be. If Gregg’s description of office life is anywhere close
to accurate, it is easy to understand how workers just needed a break. Fed up
with email, emoticons, passive aggressive co-workers, and the increasingly
alienating nature of the information economy, workers (including unemployed
workers) needed a way to break the monotony of everyday life.
The Occupy Movement offered that reprieve from
the mundane. Apps (2011) describes the affective nature of the Occupy Movements
around the world as a bond centered on feelings of exploitation. “What they all
share in common is a feeling that the youth and middle class are paying a high
price for mismanagement and malfeasance by an out-of-touch corporate, financial
and political elite.” Occupiers banded together to stand-up to corporate bullies
who hide behind tax laws when they are caught with clenched fists. Rather than
make political demands and risk becoming one of ‘them’, the Occupy Movement
“identified the apparatus of the state as merely one of a number of
technologies of power which both discipline individuals and solicit
socio-cultural energies from populations in the context of contemporary
capitalism” (Kiersey, p. 158). In this sense, the movement recognized its involvement
with the regime that produced the current situation in which it found itself. To
combat this, it had to act in a manner that allowed the individual groups and
the larger collective to participate equally in the fight. Occupy employed
horizontal forms of decision making “to create the most open and participatory
spaces possible” (Sitrin, p. 33). While this was certainly the most democratic
way of doing things, it also presented a great deal of difficulty in defining
the goals of the group. Not a whole lot got done, but everyone felt good about
it. The movement excelled at generating more affect, but failed to accomplish
little else.
As important as protestor affect was
to the movement, the affect created by the political economy’s backlash to the
rebels was even more so. The failure of the Occupy Movement to have any real
impact on policy proved (once again) that the common man was no match for the governmental
giants. The political economy will control
its productive forces regardless of what those forces produce. The biggest problem
with the Occupy Movement as I see it was that it attempted to measure that which
could not be measured; it took a Marxist approach to a postmodern situation.
In an affective economy, there was no concrete solution to their problem. You
cannot put a value on affect, no matter how many protests you stage. This
conundrum helps to explain why organizers had such difficulty in expressing
their demands, why protestors were ultimately unsuccessful in changing policy,
and why the government was effective in shutting down the movement.
Argument: In its efforts to fight for recognition of the rights of the working class, the Occupied Movement became its own form of affective labor. It produced no tangible results (policy changes), only more affect. Further, as the Occupy Movement gained populararity and individuals became the collective 99%, the value of their affective labor moved further away from a referent subject which clouded its capacity for measure. In so doing, the movement gained numbers, but lost power. It was doomed from the beginning. The protests would not 'work.' They could not work because built into the system of affective labor is the neseccesity of the political econom to control it. The government had to intervene and remove the threat (by any means necessary) to its identity.
Questions:
1. Ahmed describes how emotions are circulated in affective economies, sticking to some bodies and passing by others. What affects stuck to which bodies through the Occupied Movement? How have you seen these affects at work in present day politics?
2. I argue that the Occupied Movement was ultimately a failure because it did little to effect policy in the United States. In a sense I am looking for a way to measure the affective labor of the movement. Am I commiting the same fallacy that I say was problematic for the movement? Can protests about affective labor ever produce anything other than more affect?
Bibliography
Ahmed, S. (2004). Affective Economies. Social
Text 79, 22(2), 117-139.
Gregg, M. (2010). On Friday Night Drinks: Workplace
Affects in the Age of the Cubicle. In M. Gregg, & G. Seigworth (Eds.), The
Affect Theory Reader (pp. 250-269). Durham & London: Duke University
Press.
Hardt, M. (1999). Affective Labor. boundary 2, 26(2),
89-100.
Kiersey, N. (2012). Occupy Wall Street as Immanent
Critique: Why IR Theory Needs a 'Mic Check!'. Journal of Critical
Globalisation Studies(5), 157-160.
Negri, A., & hardt, M. (1999). Value and Affect.
boundary 2, 26(2), 77-88.
Sitrin, M. (2012). Horizontalidad and Territory in
the Occupy Movements. Tikkun, 32-33, 62-63.
The latest refrain in the ongoing theater of terror involves an attack on the U.S embassy in Libya, an attack that was waged hours after a fervent protest of the film, "Innocence of Muslims" at the U.S. embassy in Egypt.The aftermath of the destruction ignited by rocket propelled grenades included the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens along with three other Americans. Libyan and Egyptian Muslims are not isolated in their ire as protesters in Yemen and Pakistan have also expressed their outrage.The White House has declared this act a terrorist act, another reminder of the current and perpetual state of global terror, where fear, anxiety and despair is abundant in a chain of unpredictable horrifying events.It matters not that the attacks were not premeditated; this attack epitomizes the idea that terrorism can occur unexpectedly with horrendous results. The assault of boundless terror is not merely an assault on bodies, institutions or sovereign states. It is an assault that never ceases assailing, our individual and collective psyches on edge in the face of constant threat.
Welcome to a world of terror where the possibility of catastrophe is never-ending, where dangers may not always be clear but certainly are always present. Welcome to a world where possibilities of diplomacy must be frozen as embassies close facing a persistent threat of violence. Welcome to a world where a trip to a movie may prompt you to carry your gun. Welcome to a world where threats against life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are ubiquitous and encompassing, no longer located abroad but possibly in your backyard. This world includes the possibilities of acts of domestic terrorism, that must be commemorated to remind us of our endless struggle with these unpredictable forces of evil, where we must maintain our resolve. Terrorist sympathizers may even be in your community, or someone from your community who is perpetrating terror abroad.The possibility of catastrophe may be concealed in a terrorist’s shoe or underwear. If these methods are not successful, they will be toiled with until they are perfected. We must learn to cope with this terror because it is here to stay, in a war that never ends.
In this blog post I present a two-pronged argument.
1)Following Ahmed’s discussion of affective economies, the ‘The War on Terror’ is based on an affective fear economy of ‘terrorism’, an economy that relies mainly on the signs of Islam and the Arab body, but also relies on ambiguous signs of the domestic terrorist. What makes terror so frightening is its ubiquity, the idea that anything can happen anytime, anywhere. This involves a multiplicity of potential actors, both against the state and potentially the state itself. Thus, the war on terror is a complex, promethean albatross of unending fear- a fear orgy. It is difficult to distinguish where it begins and it has no end.We are not merely afraid we must be terrified. Our fears beset us from all conceivable sides.
2)The ‘fear orgy’ that is the ‘War on Terror’ is an excess of affect that galvanizes the sociopolitical body in a perpetual state of hyper-vigilance. This excess of affect is necessary in the maintenance of national identity, as security and hyper-vigilance is essential for the nation-body’s productivity in the face of unending threat.
For the sake of brevity in this post, I will only begin this argument by highlighting a few key points, offer a few examples and engage different theories of affect. This only scratches the surface of my overall argument. A more detailed analysis is forthcoming.
John Walker Lindh
The Sticky Attachment of Islam in the Terror Economy
The functioning of the word ‘terrorist’ in the War on Terror has a particular attachment to Islam as the alignment of the sign with the religion that immediately triggers an association between the two.The alignment of the sign terrorism with Islam has a precarious trajectory that has traveled a long way from its original connotation with Robespierre’s Reign of Terror.Although terrorism has been associated with groups like the IRA, it has been inextricably linked to Islamic militants with catastrophic events attibuted to Black September and the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. With subsequent events in the 1980’s and 1990’s labeled as terrorist that involved Muslim actors, the mythos of the terrorist and its alignment became more prevalent in discourses and popular culture. All of this culminated in the epochal event that was 9/11, which bound the attachment between terror, Islam and the Arabic body.
Ahmed describes the stickiness of terrorist and Islam in The Affective Politics of Fear:
“Importantly, the word ‘terrorist’ sticks to some bodies as it reopens histories of naming, just as the word ‘terrorist’ slides into other words in the accounts of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (such as fundamentalism, Islam, repressive, primitive and so on). Indeed, the slide of metonymy can function as an implicit argument about the causal relations between terms (such as Islam and terrorism), but in such a way that does not require an explicit statement. The work done by metonymy means that it can remake links- it can stick words like ‘terrorist’ and ‘Islam’ together- even when arguments are made that seem to unmake those links” (Ahmed, 76)
The sticking of terrorism to Islam relies on the circulation of the narratives produced by popularculture as well as actual events. This attachment raises suspicion in the activities and presence of the Muslim or Arabic body, as objects like the burqa or hijab become objects that produce anxiety and trepidation among Westerners. As Ahmed notes, affective economies are built on emotion as emotions become property, “everyday language certainly constructs emotions as a form of positive resistance” (p. 119). Terror is the intensity of heightened fear, and when attached to Islam, it raises suspicion with anything labeled Islamic. Emotions move through associations bound with imagined histories, operating as a form of capital within collectives. The movement of signs carries emotional value as the imagined become symbols for affective circulation.
Adel Daoud
“Affect does not reside in an object or sign, but is an affect of the circulation between objects and signs…Some signs, that is, increase in affective value as an effect of the movement between signs: the more they circulate, the more affective they become, and the more they appear to “contain” affect “(Ahmed, 120).
This perpetual state of fear and anxiety surrounding Muslims becomes even more frightening when domestic agents convert and commit treasonous acts as in the cases of John Walker Lindh and Adam Yahiye Gadahn. Now any connection to Islam is enough to raise suspicion, promoting elaborate sting operations to expose the domestic terror underbelly, as in the recent case of Adel Daoud. The state of terror has no borders and can include unseen actors of domestic origin. This state of terror precipitates a need for hyper-vigilance in order to combat all possible threats.
Orgy of Fear- An Excess of Affect
Fear allows us to feel our own mortality as the specters of death, violence and extreme bodily harm paralyze us. Fear also prompts vigilance against the objects and abstractions that cause us discomfort. Facing the threat of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban following 9/11, prompted the passing of the Homeland Security Act, the USA PATRIOT act and the formation of the Department of Homeland Security. Nationalism and patriotic sentiment were at a peak following the attacks as we set aside our petty differences- at this interval we were all Americans.The danger of an ever-present threat in an excess of fear or terror, binds us together as all eyes must remain open to see, all ears must remained attuned to the possible threat.
Massumi describes the logic of preemptive power in the shadows of a multitude of threats. The invasion of Iraq originally launched under the guise of stopping Saddam’s WMD’s, turned out to be an exercise of hyper-vigilance as U.S. military intervention squashed the potential threat despite the lack of WMD’s in Iraq. Massumi explains this could-have/would-have logic:
“The could-have/would-have logic works both ways. If the threat does not materialize, it still always would have if it could have. If the threat does materialize, then it just goes to show that the future potential for what happened had really been there in the past.In this case, the preemptive action is retroactively legitimated by future actual facts”. (Massumi, 56)
Anderson discusses the excess of affect following Deleuze as the “control society” modulates power through an excess of mechanisms. These mechanisms are necessary to modulate the ‘orgy of fear’ significantly in a global context of deterritorialization, where borders no longer exist and potential threatsor terrorist networks could be operating anywhere at anytime, with unlimited capability for interaction.
“In the societies of control, on the other hand, what is important is no longer either a signature or a number, but a code: the code is a password, while on the other hand disciplinary societies are regulated by watchwords (as much as from the point of view of integration as from that of resistance). The numerical language of control is made of codes that mark access to information, or reject it. We no longer find ourselves dealing with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become “dividuals,” and masses, samples, data, markets, or “banks.” […] The disciplinary man was a discontinuous producer of energy, but the man of control is undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network.” (Deleuze, 1992:6)
Now our collective vigilance must extend to our networks as maintain our society and facilitate modes of production. Hyper-vigilance must extend to the digital realm as terrorism also threatens our networks.
From a higher standpoint, the cyber and biological attacks are particularly concerning because there is a lot of attention being paid now because of cyber espionage and attempted cyber attacks on control systems and I think that is likely to cause terrorists or nation-state actors to focus attacks on critical infrastructure using the Internet.- FORMER DHS SECRETARY MICHAEL CHERTOFF
We must be prepared for anything, anytime, anywhere. American hyper-vigilance is essential to American identity post 9/11. We must be prepared for terror attacks, cyber-attacks and even zombie apocalypses. Hyper-vigilance grounds the American socio-cultural milieu in the era of unending threat.
Be prepared for the zombie apocalypse!
Conclusion- Reflections on Power
Anderson in his examination of morale and “Total War” in the WWII era describes various techniques of modulating an excess of affect. In terms of the “War on Terror” we witness a consistent manipulation of affects via government apparatuses and media as it is necessary to modulate morale in a heightened state of fear. “The current “global war on terror” involves both providential and catastrophic techniques that take affects, including morale, as both their object and medium” (Anderson, 181). The morale of the United States depends on the technologies of hyper-vigilance to maintain our collective sanity in a dangerous and frightening world. The opportunity for catastrophe is unending and the climate of terror continues to produce an excess of fear as recent events continue to contribute to this affective economy.
Power is affective capacity and also a measure of affects with the highest intensity found at the intervals of life and death. Power is the ability to affect or endure adverse affects.In the current geo-political realm this affective power is not just wielded by wealthy men, large corporations or government apparatuses, but can also be exerted by singular unknown actors. The power of state apparatuses including the military to induce affect is obvious. However, we should not overlook the power of individual actors outside of state apparatuses to produce affect. This fact is evident in the case of a suicide bomber that is willing to pay the ultimate price to induce terror. The actions of a few hijackers precipitated the event that altered the way we view security and international relations forever. We are reminded of this every time we take our shoes off or go through the full body scan at the airport; we are reminded of this fact every September 11th.As new events unfold in this theater of terror we are reminded that this war can never end as the threat of catastrophe is forever imminent.
Questions 1. How do we situate power in the current geopolitical landscape considering the context of terrorism, where catastophic events may occur in a multitude of possible formations? How is the decntarlization of power connected to the control society and what are the implications for soveriegnty and nationalism? 2. Do you think the excesses of affect can ever be modulated away from the extreme realms of terror? How do you position the role of agency and political action in a seemingly endless war? Citations Ahmed, Sara. "Affective Economies". Social Text. 22. pp.117-139. 2004
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print
Anderson, Ben. "Modulating the Excess of Affect". Morale in a State of "Total War"
Deleuze, Gilles. "Postscript on the Societies of Control", from _OCTOBER_ 59, Winter 1992, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 3-7.
Massumi, Brian. "The Future Birth of the Affective Fact"
