While I hated jurisprudence (essentially legal philosophy) at undergrad (apologies to Manolis if he does read this), I discovered quite a passion for it while I was doing my Masters. I’d always been interested in politics when I was younger, and took the last academic year to read around the ideas I’d come across before during discussions with my friends and family. I did a module in Law and Social Theory, which obviously involved a lot of philosophy and sociology, but a fair amount of my Human Rights module was also theoretical, and I seem to recall spending a few days in bed with flu reading ‘On Liberty’ and ‘Utilitarianism’ again. I spent a lot of time debating these ideas with people (from what I can remember these readings were an influence for me to start this clog). My philosophising continued throughout this last summer, particularly with ‘the Fountainhead’, which I loved comparing to Habermas’ ideas (both in the value of democracy and ideas of a free press), and also applying a lot of the theory I’d been looking at over the past couple of years to the work I was doing on the European Court of Justice and the Lisbon Treaty. While I came to hate my dissertation with some passion, my interest in the EU continues unabated, especially the Habermasian themes.

Then BPP happened. At first my plan to work solidly nine until six, five days a week worked pretty well, but I was so tired in the evening I just didn’t want to read anything other than fiction, if I could bear to put my glasses on again at all. I spent most of the weekends with the people I’d ended up avoiding during the week due to my permanent status in the library. Slowly though, BPP started taking up more of my time, so it’s unusual for me to have more than one evening off a week, and still have a little to do over the weekends. As my lack of updating on this blog will show, I’ve ended up doing very little that required some actual thought behind it. As well as the workload though, the LPC isn’t exactly an inspiration for high academic thought. While it’s quite clearly a postgraduate course, it isn’t about debating the law and its origins anymore; the LPC is about knowing the law and how to apply it, not how to question it. The lack of input if new ideas from my studies has made it even harder to keep thinking about different theories, let alone write about them (or write about anything else – while I’ve started a few different blog posts recently, I haven’t managed to finish any of them).

My interests are the same; I still love Harbermas and Arendt, but I just don’t seem to have the same amount of time to read them. I really do want to get back into it, I’m just concerned it won’t happen for a while; I have mocks and Christmas coming up, then the real exams. With any luck things might calm down after that (around February). The problem is that, without encouragement from my studies, it’s hard to kick-start myself into reading more philosophy again.

Ok, I think I’m getting closer to being able to articulate Arendt a little better as opposed to my former very unsophisticated attempt. So here goes:

As Helstein (2005) had identified, identity and community are so interconnected that it is difficult to envisage a community without being grounded in unified identities. Community is, as she writes, typically conceptualized through appeals to shared identification—we form a community because we have things in common, which necessarily excludes those who do not share these commonalities with us. However, through an Arendtian lens, this is not necessary. In fact, in thinking community with Arendt we can see how a female athletic community is not grounded in a female athletic identity per se, but rather is grounded in plurality. It is political action that creates a community as opposed to pre-formed solidarity or pre-articulated political goals. If this is the case, however, then w might ask “Where does this leave our studies of the female athletic community in the sporting realm?” First, identity as we currently articulate it is cautionary in our studies of community and, second, the avoidance of constructing fixed subject positions appears to be the challenge of Arendt’s politics of action. Scholars may look to Arendt’s notion of “inter-est” (see the Human Condition, 1958) and therefore to the spaces between athletes that unite them in the hope of achieving democratic sporting sphere. Moreover as a scholarly project, we may look theoretically to the spaces that unite scholarly endeavors in articulating a conceptual community to rethink it (community) as a political project. Specifically in the case of Semenya, scholars ought to avoid conceptualizing political action in a strictly female identity because such a move would prevent plurality through the homogenization of female gender; it would fail to recognize both the differences between women, and the difference of others who may support the female athlete cause without being female. Arendt can help us understand how, in the case of Semenya, while she may be consider herself female and may biologically (and legally) be deemed “intersex,” we might posit that this is a political fact as opposed to an essential truth and, if she herself refutes this and through action her political “identity” as a female is brought to light and is recognized as such by other female athletes or those involved in articulating a female athletic community more generally, this may be enough to spur political change and policy/regulation reform. In this respect, Arendtian politics is not grounded in essential identity categories per se, but, rather, political identities, or “who” we are, “arise from the occasions that demand them” (Adams, 2002, p. 12). Yet it is also not a revolutionary politics grounded in force or violence given that Arendt clearly differentiates these concepts from power, which is conversely productive. Instead, Arendt’s revolution relies on opening up spaces to discuss public issues, to debate, to challenge, and to assert change through political action through communication with others. An Arendtian non-identity based politics can only be envisaged in terms of action, which in turn incites the power that “springs up” in between individuals to form community.

Accordingly, Arendt would posit that scholarly appeals to the identity category “woman” to assert fundamental rights in the sporting realm is problematic in several ways. First, appealing to a unification of women for group rights asserts that women have a fixed, essential identity (whether this is biologically or culturally essential). We know from Arendt’s work that she rejects this conception of identity. Second, such characterization of women is only ever a description of “what” those involved in the female athletic community are and does not reveal the “who” that Arendt privileges. Third, and concomitantly, this “who” can only come to light in a politically active sphere whereby those who believe in the equality of women in sport act spontaneously and create new modes of being. This would suggest that those advocating for equality ought to challenge gender boundaries in sport when they arise rather than reinforce them.

If we take Arendt’s ideas seriously, we could conceptualize this new politics of action as spontaneous and inciting new beginnings for a female athletic community; not by justifying our actions through principles that would fail to be spontaneous and new, but by practicing freedom through recognizing the political performances of individuals that actually negate or challenge the identity category of “woman.” This would require an engagement with others in the interest of female athletes in general in that it considers negating “what” we are for recognition of “who” others can become. In this way, political action in sport is about inciting new beginnings as opposed to relying on existing sets of conditions that constrain us. It is to open up the female sporting community to a position of constant flux, amenable to change through public debate and discussion as opposed to an authoritarian governance through force or legality. Hence, Arendtian coalition recognizes the “absence of universal truths, the danger of safe assumptions, the falsity of common sense—or the lack of any supposed common basis in reason or rationality that promises to simultaneously transcend and unite difference” (Adams, 2002, p. 2).

This spontaneity of political action that questions current structures, oppression, and force is not a separation of knowing and doing (or knowledge and praxis) but rather the recognition that, when acting, we cannot rely on follow regulated rules (or laws). Politics is instead about not knowing the results of our actions—and not endeavoring to be masters of ourselves in the same vein. We should not assume, therefore, that a female athletic community can be assembled in appeals to sameness because its members share a common “whatness.” Our understanding must move beyond identity as sameness; yet embracing difference does not mean solidarity cannot be achieved. As Disch (1995) suggests, through Arendtian politics we can conceive of an “articulated solidarity” (p. 206).

Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence.

Hannah Arendt

This is less of an academic blurb about Arendt and more of a vent of my frustrations with her. I am STRUGGLING to relate her to feminism in sport, even though I am pretty confident she would introduce some key theoretical concepts to the field. I guess my problem is because I started writing a paper on her theory, then wanted to relate it to sport (first I chose Indie car racer, Danica Patrick—that didn’t work…). Now I’m trying to use Arendt to speak to how we might solve the “problem” of Caster Semenya in sport. Basically, I want to ask the question of how Semenya can be included in the female sporting community given that she’s currently excluded as “intersex”. I also want to avoid ascribing her a third identity category because part of the problem with current conceptions of community is that they’re grounded in identity per se. I want to envisage a community without identity and here is where I think Arendt can help without turning to deconstruction (although I’d argue that Arendt is nicely situated between deconstruction and modernism since she shares a lot with Foucault in terms of her understanding of power but was also influenced greatly by Marx). I think my basic point is that feminism that theorizes community currently considers the female athletic community to be a community of women. Through Arendt I want to posit that although being female may be biologically accurate—or what Arendt would deem a “political fact”—it is certainly not a truth per se. This is related to Arendt’s distinction in The Human Condition to the “what” and the “who”. She says that whenever we want to describe someone we always resort to saying “what” they are. i.e. describing their physical features or their essential character, so for Caster Semenya we’ve been describing her as a hermaphrodite (intersex); however, according to Arendt true politics is grounded in revealing the “who” of others and having our “who” recognized by others too. This “who”, however, is not a priori true, nor is it something we can decide upon ourselves. It requires spontaneous political action and new beginnings (what Arendt terms “natality” which is like a second birth) which incite our “who” in the political sphere. For example, Semenya has recently been trapped in a controversy surrounding this article in You magazine: http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26049025-5006343,00.html . She’s been slammed for conforming to Western dominant ideals of femininity—those ideals that are said to have excluded her in the first instance from the female athletic community—however, might we read this move as a subtle political act by Semenya to call for inclusion in the community and, further, look to the actions taken by other female athletes involved in the community as to whether she ought to be included?

La trasparenza non è un fine, ma un mezzo. La trasparenza è il presupposto della possibile partecipazione attiva dei cittadini alla vita democratica ed è l’unico modo con cui essi possono controllare e valutare l’opera dei propri eletti nelle istituzioni rappresentative. Qualcuno, credendosi più pragmatico, penserà che è più semplice ed anche opportuno che il controllo democratico avvenga in base ai risultati. Ma i fatti dicono che non è così. In primo luogo perchè questo approccio equivale all’accettazione della politica in cui “il fine giustifica i mezzi” estranea ad una cultura democratica. In secondo luogo perchè i risultati dell’azione politica di un governo o di una qualsiasi amministrazione pubblica dipendono da una tale quantità di fattori esterni variabili, che non è possibile una valutazione oggettiva. La trasparenza è il pallino del ministro Brunetta e, per i motivi detti, su questo gli auguriamo il maggior successo. Ma qual’è il fine della sua disgustosa e controproducente campagna mediatica in cui la generalità dei dipendenti pubblici appare come una massa di parassiti? A cosa serve pubblicare su internet i curricula ed i numeri di telefono dei dirigenti, se invece i meccanismi di funzionamento della macchina amministrativa restano oscuri e la politica di basso profilo impone le sue regole in luogo di quelle della buona amministrazione, mortificando ogni tentativo di partecipazione ai processi decisionali? La visione proto-industriale di Brunetta lo porta a ritenere a che il miraggio di quote di stipendio legate alla competizione con i propri colleghi possa portare ad un miglioramento di efficienza. Ma questo porterà invece al disastro, perchè nessuna comunità di persone può progredire senza una base di valori condivisi in cui possa mettere in gioco il meglio di sè. Se dovessimo individuare una scala di valore degli elementi alla base di una sana organizzazione del lavoro, la motivazione è l’elemento esseziale, mentre la valutazione è un elemento accessorio.

Hannah Arendt scrisse: “Lavoro e fabbricazione non realizzano qualità umane, dal momento che anche un animale può lavorare e una divinità arteficie potrebbe produrre. Specificatamente umano è, invece, l’agire insieme, che costituisce l’ambito della politica e presuppone il linguaggio come mezzo essenziale per il rapporto fra una pluralità di individui“.

Hannah Arendt

Viceversa al ministro Brunetta sembra non importi nulla dell’uomo che c’è dietro la figura professionale del dipendente pubblico nè del suo agire insieme. Se così non fosse avrebbe prima di tutto dovuto modificare le regole del gioco per cui gli amministratori pubblici, che sono i primi responsabili del basso rapporto qualità/spesa nelle amministrazioni pubbliche, non rispondono mai delle loro colpe.

Invece, come dice anche il Sole 24 Ore di lunedì, “il pallino resta in mano alla politica” come è sempre stato. Quella politica che ha creato un debito pubblico spaventoso utilizzando le istituzioni come centri di potere. Questo brodo di coltura ha prodotto i cosiddetti fannulloni, che invero sono un’estrema minoranza, utilizzati ad arte come alibi per la bassa politica. Anche nel nuovo decreto di riforma gli organi politici continueranno a condurre le danze senza pagare pegno per la loro incapacità di far funzionare il sistema, mentre è certo che le conseguenze più pesanti ricadranno su chi non ha alcun potere nè decisionale, nè controllo.

Se è vero che, a parte qualche eccezione, i media fanno da cassa di risonanza ad una campagna fuorviante che cerca di distogliere lo sguardo sulle vere responsabilità del disastro pubblico italiano, non resta che a noi dipendenti pubblici cominciare a raccontare come stanno veramente le cose. Dobbiamo imparare a raccontare, quasi come un diario, le cose incredibili di cui siamo quotidianamente spettatori e partecipi, nostro malgrado. Per cominciare usiamo questo blog. Scrivere in tanti e passare parola.

Agamben wrote of the doctor who, terminally ill with leukemia, turns his body into a laboratory. This marks a certain extreme point in the production of the biopolitical body.  But what are we to make of the plastic surgeons who operates on the mere surface of bodies, and even their own — or, rather, who affect this surface from just behind it.  Can we speak of a threshold beyond the threshold: of a space of pure surface, in which the involuted topology of the biopolitical body has been folded out again into a contact, essential and irreducible, with the values (metaphysical, spectacular, even ideological) that have always concealed its presence. Of course: the surface is just a surface.  But doesn’t this surface already come from beyond the depths?

The beauty of appearance resists biopolitical formations.  The cosmetic surface of the body, as limit and boundary, is the zone of a coming-into-appearance that always transcends the structure of sovereign domination.  Hannah Arendt, in the Human Condition, saw this clearly: the fateful turn of metaphysics was from the idea of beauty to the idea of the good.  We cannot exactly follow her in a move that threatens to aestheticize politics, but there is this grain of truth: the superfluity of beauty resists the gesture by which power enforces itself through the production of depths. It is the anti-metaphysical moment of metaphysics: the surface of metaphysics that betrays its inner truth. There can be no return to the polis: but perhaps we can recognize in the everyday a residual space of appearance.

Yet this resistance — this is the decisive point — only becomes operative by an overexposure.  The skin, exposed, becomes doubly exposed.  Beauty can only appear by being rent, even gouged, apart. What is only skin deep can no longer be only skin deep.

The plastic surgeon wants to operate on himself. This is impossible for every other surgeon.  But for the plastic surgeon it is almost possible. The next best thing is to get a friend to do it: surgery, the most violent of interventions, becomes the gift of friendship.

A strange exchange.  Politicians becoming doctors, doctors becoming politicians — this is the terrible story of the 20th century.  But now doctors become friends…

The greatness of the modern television drama is this: the perfect fusion of kitsch sentimentality and macabre, Baroque, sophistication.  If there were only aesthetic daring, the relentless exposure of nasty truth, it would be much more insipid, predictable, easy.  The plastic surgeon  — like the vampire, like the undertaker — is a metaphor for this uncanny conjunction.  The corpus, invoked in the first gestures of political modernity, becomes the beautiful corpse.

Is the camp the paradigm of biopolitical modernity? Or is it not, rather, Miami: the city overwhelmed with floods of every kind — of refugees, of drugs, of crime, and every sort of “contamination.”  The city exposed: the city as the exposure and porosity of national boundaries.  But also of savage, fake beauty…

El enfoque de Arendt es de inspiración fenomenológica, piensa que las estructuras con las que analizamos la realidad se hallan incrustadas en la experiencia, que no son impuestas por el sujeto, lo que significa que, en la medida en que formamos parte del mundo, la experiencia nos concede un acceso directo al mismo.

La vida activa del hombre se desarrolla en tres actividades: la labor, el trabajo y la acción.

Cada una de ellas se relaciona con una característica específica de la condición humana: la labor se ocupa de la satisfacción de las necesidades vitales, del proceso biológico; el trabajo se ocupa de lo no natural de la existencia del hombre, buscando la utilidad; la acción le permite relacionarse con la pluralidad, con los otros. La actividad humana, en la antigüedad, se desarrollaba en tres espacios muy concretos –la casa, el taller y el ágora– cuyos límites aparecen desdibujados por completo en la actualidad y cuya jerarquía ascendente ha sido invertida.

La estabilidad y durabilidad de los productos del trabajo es lo que posibilita la objetividad. A partir de lo que la naturaleza nos da, levantamos, mediante el trabajo, un mundo independiente y artificial, donde se dan los objetos. El proceso de fabricación está enteramente determinado por las categorías de medio y fin. Es gracias a la acción y a la palabra que el mundo se convierte en un espacio posible para la vida. Frente a la procesualidad de la labor y a la proyectabilidad del trabajo, la acción se distingue por su libertad constitutiva, por ser imprevisible.

La acción sólo puede ser política si va acompañada de la palabra, del discurso. Siempre percibimos el mundo desde el lugar que ocupamos en él, sólo podemos experimentarlo como mundo común en la comunicación con los otros. Tal como es caracterizada por Arendt, una acción comenzaría por sí misma una cadena causal, iniciando una cadena de acontecimientos que entra en una red de relaciones y referencias ya existentes, por lo que sus consecuencias son impredecibles. Actuar implica tomar una decisión (sinergia), un rumbo, efectuando una ruptura con el pasado al introducir un elemento nuevo. Actuar es añadir algo propio al mundo.

La política como espacio de relación

La pluralidad es condición de posibilidad y condición ontológica (pues la hace necesaria) de la política.

La traducción de zoon politikon por animal social de Tomás de Aquino ha sido un grave malentendido. El carácter social es algo que el ser humano tiene en común con los demás animales, por lo que no puede considerarse algo definitorio, sino que se trata más bien de una limitación impuesta por las necesidades biológicas, principalmente la reproducción. Animal social no es, por tanto, nada más que una expresión redundante.

De todas las actividades humanas, sólo dos se consideran políticas, la acción y el discurso. En el espacio público, los productos de la acción son valorados por los demás sin atender a su utilidad. Todo lo meramente necesario o útil debería, por tanto, quedar excluido de manera absoluta de la política. El discurso no es un tipo de acción, el discurso está al servicio de la acción, es necesario para explicarla. Ser político, vivir en la polis significaba que todo se conseguía por medio de palabras y de persuasión, al contrario que en el ámbito doméstico. Lo que distinguía la convivencia en la polis era la libertad. El ciudadano se distinguía por poder participar en la Asamblea. La libertad del hombre político era principalmente libertad de expresión, de narrar su acción entre iguales.

Por naturaleza los hombres no son iguales, necesitan de una institución política para llegar a serlo: Las leyes autorizan la posibilidad de la palabra y de la acción, limitan el espacio político. La ley (nomos) limita y, al mismo tiempo, permite multiplicar las ocasiones para la acción y el discurso.

El espacio público emerge siempre y en todo lugar en que los hombres libres actúan en concierto. El poder (macht), al contrario que la violencia (gewalt) no puede ser nunca detentado por un único individuo porque surge de la actuación conjunta de muchos.

La libertad

Existen y han existido diversas maneras de entender la libertad. En Roma, la libertad era entendida como un legado de los fundadores, heredado por el pueblo que lo tiene que aumentar y preservar.

La libertad es entendida por Arendt como la característica fundamental de la existencia humana en el mundo. Los hombres sólo son libres mientras actúan. La palabra incluso es entendida como un tipo especial de acción, que confiere sentido y durabilidad al mundo y nos sirve para declarar nuestra responsabilidad con respecto a él.

Lo político en la Grecia clásica, se centraba en una libertad que era comprendida, en sentido negativo, como no ser dominado ni dominar, y en positivo, como un espacio establecido por muchos en el que moverse entre iguales. Quién domina sobre los demás puede que sea más feliz o envidiado, pero no sería más libre, pues también él se mueve en un espacio sin libertad.

Oasis, desierto y tormentas de arena

En la época moderna, con la progresiva sustitución de lo político por lo social, el espacio público, el mundo entre los hombres, se ha ido deshabitando. La tormenta de arena de los totalitarismos ha amenazado a la pasión y a la acción, las dos únicas capacidades que permiten cambiar el desierto.

Buscamos refugio en los oasis, pero en nuestra fuga corremos el riesgo de llenarnos los zapatos de arena del desierto.

…

continúa en http://miguelgarcialopez.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/descifrando-a-arendt-parte2/

Rancière is skeptical of the persistent critiques of the “crisis of democracy” and its link to individualism, narcissism, and capitalist logic. Yes, Rancière concedes, democracy as we know it today is problematic, but not necessarily for these reasons. Rather, democracy is problematic in its exclusionary practices. Both in the sense that at present the democratic system is based on a distinction between the public and private realms, and in the sense that the masses are controlled by a minority of the population deemed to have expertise in governing. Thus, we need to challenge expertise and who is telling us democracy is the best or most legitimate form of governing[1]. We also need to recognize that democracy really isn’t about the power of the people; this is a point the critics have right. The distinction between the public and private realms keeps us in what Rancière describes as a double state of inclusion and exclusion because it separates man from citizen (like the Arendtian distinction) and therefore those who can vote from those who cannot, who can participate in politics and who can’t. Instead of suggesting like Arendt that rights are problematic because not all people can claim them, Rancière—like Badiou in many ways—suggests we should start claiming rights, even if we are excluded. Thus, for Rancière, democracy (which he does NOT consider to be a form of government or state) is about fracturing the public-private distinction and counting those who don’t count. Democracy, then, isn’t implicitly evil; we just need to recognize that the democracy we talk about is not the democracy we should be envisaging. (This is a strange argument; why does he call it democracy then? Why not just critique democracy and call his own political vision something else?)

Question: what is democracy?

• Etymologically, democracy comes from “an expression of hatred” (p. 2). Rancière however is explicit that he is not interested in following such a critique in this manner.
• Democracy allegedly means “power/government of the people by the people”. Everyone has a stake. Yet, democracy is inherently contradictory; it can never be achieved because it would require absolute equality. Those in charge of democracies (oligarchies) want us to think we are all equal. Really, as Rancière says, this isn’t the case. We aren’t all represented equally.
• As Rancière explains, democracy in one respect places itself in opposition to other governmental regimes which are deemed “malevolent” such as tyranny, totalitarianism, dictatorship. Yet, in this way because democracy plays a role in controlling life as democratic it is not so unlike these regimes after all (p.7).
• Democracy has been aligned with democratic individualism. (Individuality as logic of capital, narcissistic, against ‘common good’, only for “elites”): “Democratic life becomes the apolitical life of the indifference consumer of commodities, minority rights, the culture industry and children produced in laboratories. It comes to be identified purely and simply with ‘modern society’, which in the same blow is transformed into a homogeneous anthropological configuration” (p. 29).  This, he argues is problematic. It’s known as the “crisis of democracy” whereby democracy is pathology: an illness; “the reign of the limitless desire of individuals in modern mass society” (p. 1).
• This vision of democracy is opposed to the collective good.
• Therefore, there is a “double bind” in democratic government: how do we control both collective activity and individual withdrawal/privatization inherent to a democratic life? (p. 8).

N.B. Sounds like Foucault’s “Shepherd’s paradox”* See Security, Territory, Population

            Hence, Rancière discusses “pastoral power” (p. 30): “Democratic crime has its origin, then, in the          primitive scene that consists in forgetting the pastor” (p. 30).

Shepherd’s Paradox & Pastoral Power

 Question: How does this relate to Schmitt’s idea of secularization and the fact that sovereignty is still      founded on theological beliefs?

Question: Where does the idea of “transcendence” fit into all this? (see pg. 30).

“The distress of democratic individuals…is that of people who have lost the standard by which the One can be harmonized with the multiple and everyone can unite in a whole. This standard cannot be based on any human convention but only in the care of the divine pastor, who looks after both the whole flock and each member of it” (p. 30-1).

• In times where we no longer necessarily have theological beliefs we are bound to the idea of kinship as a saving grace; hence, “the law of kinship” replaces the bond we have under God. E.g. divine right of kings.
• Democracy goes against kinship though, so in a way it is considered sacrilege (p. 33). I.e. “the Moderns cut off the heads of kings so they could fill up their shopping trolleys at leisure” (p. 33)!
• The only person who can rule without any injustice is the shepherd (p. 34). But, Rancière asks, “how turning back toward the lost shepherd has come to impose itself as the ultimate consequence of a certain account of  democracy conceived as the society of individual consumers” (p. 34).
• For Plato, democracy (as opposed to a republic) is about pleasure, individual liberty and a disregard for collectivity. “The term democracy, then, does not simply mean a bad form of government and political life. It strictly means a style of life that is opposed to any well-ordered government of the community” (p. 36). (This is one reason why Rancière says that democracy isn’t a form of government per se).
• If we interpret democracy in this way which is to say that everyone is equal, no one has authority over anyone else, and that basically all the hierarchies in society are inverted, we may think this is crazy. But, Rancière says it’s positive; it highlights the fact that we had a previous homogeneous view of society which was based on a hierarchy of positions based on the law of kinship, and believed this hierarchy to be continuous with nature (p. 40). Politics begins, however, when we separate government from kinship; when we sever the ties with the shepherd or God. Democracy—or the absence of a title—is what breaks this bond between government and kinship (p. 41). The notion of the individual, narcissistic consumer merely conceals the deeper issue which is that it is “simply dissolving of any standard by which nature could give its law to communitarian artifice via the relations of authority that structure the social body. The scandal lies in the disjoining of entitlements to govern from any analogy to those that order social relations, from any analogy between human convention and the order of nature. It is the scandal of a superiority based on no other title than the very absence of superiority” (p. 41).
• The paradox is that for a government to be political it must be founded on “the absence of any title to govern” (i.e. birth or nature)—left to chance (or other means of deciding/modern politics of opinion?)
• “Democracy is not a modern ‘limitlessness’ which destroys the heterotopy necessary to politics. It is on the contrary the founding power of this heterotopy, the primary limitation of the power of forms of authority that govern the social body” (p. 45).

Question: What does he mean by “democratic Europe…is born in genocide”? (p. 10). Does this relate to the idea of HOMOGENEITY? (I.e. we require equality in democracy and therefore sameness. Any differences need to be assimilated and if they cant be assimilated they must be exterminated…)

• “There is only one good democracy, the one that represses the catastrophe of democratic civilization” (p. 4). Essentially, democracy is strategic in the sense that it is problematic when we allow it to be “corrupted” and use it to appeal to equality at the same time as respecting difference, yet it is deemed positive when we want to rally up individuals to form patriotic solidarity to defend “civilization”—which basically means to defend Western individualism and impose this on subordinate, “threatening” nations [N.B. Think how things have changed post 9/11][2]. We impose democracy onto other cultures and don’t realize the potential harm this can cause (p.6).
• According to Rancière, “we live in societies and States known as ‘democracies’, a term by which they are distinguished from societies governed by States without law or with religious law” (p. 71).
• Democracy is not a form of State. It is “beneath and beyond these forms” (p. 71).
• Democratic politics, for Rancière, is the taking part of those who have no part (Chambers, 2005. p.1). Democracy, however, cannot be a ‘regime’; it’s the practice of politics—performativity?
• “Democracy is not a constitution, nor a form of society” (p. 46).
• We can’t just get rid of this power of democracy by the critiques previously made; if so we would have to get rid of politics itself (p. 48).  
• The police is the system of distribution and legitimization. So, almost everything that we would think of as politics is actually police. Interest group pluralism in liberal democracy can’t add up. Dissensus shows us this.
• Democracy should therefore be seen as a struggle against privatization of the public sphere (p. 55). This doesn’t mean appealing to State encroachment on society; it means including those who are excluded from police logic and changing our understanding of representation so it doesn’t refer to representing dominant interests (p. 55-6).
• Essentially, the people who claim a “crisis of democracy” and the horrors of democratic individualism aren’t necessarily defending collectivity; rather, it’s a specific collectivity under the guise which ranks knowledge under the “wise elite” (see p. 67-8). Moreover, as Rancière explains, individualism itself is not problematic; it’s just problematic when anyone and everyone can share in it. Basically, the hatred of democracy is the hatred of equality. “…‘democratic individualism’ is simply the hatred of equality by which a dominant intelligentsia lets it be known that it is the elite entitled to rile over the blind herd” (p. 68).

Question: How does the notion of Human Rights (or the Rights of Man) fit into this?

Question: Why is the public/private distinction important?

Human Rights/ The Rights of Man

Individual sovereignty/liberal individualism        Vs.       Collective/common good & egalitarianism           (“good” democracy)                                                                         (“bad” democracy)

The Declaration of Human Rights was viewed as the charter that epitomized this delicate balancing of the collectivity and guarantees of individual freedom. The contrary of democracy at the time was referred to as totalitarianism. The dominant discourse designated States as totalitarian if, in the name of the power of the collective, they denied both individuals’ rights and constitutional forms of collective expression: free elections, and the freedom of expression and association. The term totalitarianism was reserved for designating the principle of that twofold denial. A total State was a State that suppressed the duality of the State and society, extending the sphere of its exercise to the totality of collective life (Rancière, 2007, p. 11).

 Such duality has been problematised by Burke, Arendt (“via Marx”), and Agamben (see pg 58-9).

Problem? à why do we need two principles for politics (i.e. to be a man and a citizen?) Why isn’t just being a man (a human being) enough?

Typically we can see this division as outlined in the following table:

Rancière wants to fracture this divide through a different conception of democracy.

• Comment: The logic of universal/particular is strange as you would think the life of man would be universal given that this is the life available to each and every one of us when stripped of political association/ citizenship rights.
• P. 81: Rancière speaks of oligarchic government inventing “supra-State institutions” which he posits “are not States…are not accountable to any people, they realize the immanent ends of their very practice: depoliticize matters, reserve them for places that are non-places, places that do not leave any space for the democratic invention of polemic. So the State and their experts can quietly agree amongst themselves”. Although Rancière provides the EU Constitution as an example of this, so too could be the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights…

Question: How does this relate to biopolitics?

Biopolitics

Question: Could we say that if politics was based merely on being human and not on being a citizen (i.e. having an identity which is not merely human) we would be reducing politics to bare life? Or, is        this what politics is reduced to anyway since citizenship rights may appear to exist formally in politics but they cannot be claimed by all? (See Caldwell, 2004).

• Arendt: “. . .human rights are an illusion because they are the rights of that bare humanity that is without rights” (p. 16); “Bare humanity…is not a political subject” (Rancière, p. 58). Arendt is of the opinion that we need to enter the sphere of politics in order to gain rights and become political subjects. Without this subject status we are mere life/bare humanity. Yet, as Arendt explains in The Origins of Totalitarianism, the individuals who need to claim political rights are precisely those who are excluded from claiming them (the stateless).
• According to Rancière, however, although Arendt privileges citizens as political subjects this, too, is not the case: “The subject of politics can precisely be identified neither with ‘humanity’ and the gatherings of a population, nor with identities defined by constitutional texts. They are always defined by an interval between identities determined by social relations or juridical categories.” (p. 58-9).
• The key difference between Arendt and Rancière is that for Arendt the equality of men is grounded in citizenship and this is only found in the juridico-political sphere (p. 57). This buys into the distinction between public and private which allows domination because it is domination which keeps them separate. Democracy is problematic in that it allows the public man to lead a life in common by allowing him in public but in doing so it dichotomizes man and citizen. Hence, the citizen of constitutional texts is no more a subject than man without citizenship rights.
• Agamben: democracy is the state of exception—hence, for Agamben rights claims are dangerous in that the power (and violence) of law enters the realm of life from the moment of birth which can be detracted at any moment (see Rancière p. 16)

• Marx: Those who have rights are the bourgeoisie; those who possess the means of production: the State of human rights was the instrument of the dominant class (Rancière, p. 17).  
• Rancière is saying that these critiques of human rights and thereby democracy are problematic in that they “reduce democracy to a form of society” (p.20). As Rancière states: “We do not live in democracies. Neither, as certain authors assert—because they think we are all subjected to a biopolitical government law of exception—do we live in camps” (p. 73).

Question: Is he saying, then, that we need to consider the sphere of politics, society, and economy             separately since, as Lasch and Bell identified, they’ve been collapsed into the notion of “self- realization” and individual hedonism (p. 21)?

Essentially, for Rancière, “The ‘rights of man and of the citizen’ are the rights of those who make them a reality” (p. 74).

• The citizen is supposed to circumvent the private inequalities of birth/wealth as all men are deemed equal as citizens in the public sphere. When we refer to “man” we are opposing someone to this sphere. I.e. someone who is merely man/human cannot enter the public realm of politics and is therefore not considered equal (p. 59-60)
• “The opposition of bare life to political existence itself can be politicized” (p. 60)
• This is marked by the particularity of the private sphere and the universality of the public sphere.

            *Served to oppress women’s rights and contain them to the private (p. 60).

• As Rancière explains, Arendt and Burke claim:

Either the rights of man are the rights of the citizen, that is to say, the rights of those who have rights, which is a tautology; or the rights of the citizen are the rights of man. But as bare humanity has no rights, then they are the rights of those who have no rights which is an absurdity (p. 61).

• A Third way?

“Women’s and citizen’s rights are the rights of those who have not the rights that they have and have the rights that they have not” (p. 61).  Thus, in this instance, political acts which claim rights without having rights supposes a “double relation of exclusion and inclusion inscribed in the duality of the human being and the citizen” (p. 61).

• For Rancière, then, the democratic process is about subjects who break the public/private distinction; who don’t have political identities (or who work the interval between them) and can, in the process of claiming rights they do not have, “reconfigure…the universal and the particular” (p. 61-2).

Question: How does this relate to Badiou?

In “Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?”, Rancière appears to strike a similar argument to Badiou. Taking his departure from Arendt’s claim that the Rights of Man are either “the rights of those who have no rights or the rights of those who have rights”, Rancière argues that this position is tautological because the individual in need of claiming them is stateless and therefore does not have the right to claim them, and the individual citizen who already has rights does not require further rights.

To overcome this problem, Rancière posits the following: “the Rights of Man are the rights of those who have not the rights that they have and have the rights they have not” (p. 302). To elucidate he explains how women were born equal citizens and therefore had rights, yet at a point in time they did not actually possess these rights in society because they were subordinate to men. Hence, women “acted as subjects that did not have the rights that they had and had the rights that they had not” (p. 304). 

“DISSENSUS”: This is what Rancière terms a “dissensus”—“putting two worlds in one and the same world” (p. 304)—which sounds very similar to Badiou’s ethics. Here it is worth quoting Rancière at length: 

A political subject…is a capacity for staging such scenes of dissensus. It appears that man is not the void term opposed to the actual rights of the citizen. It has a positive content that is the dismissal of any difference between those who “live” in such or such sphere of existence, between those who are not qualified for political life”. The very difference between man and citizen is not a sign of disjunction proving that the rights are either void or tautological. It is the opening of an interval for political subjectivization. Political names are litigious names, names whose extension and comprehension are uncertain and which open for that reason the space of a test or verification. Political subjects build such cases of verification. They put to the test the power of political names, their extension and comprehension. They not only confront the inscriptions of rights to situations of denial; they put together the world where those rights are valid and the world where they are not. They put together a relation of inclusion and exclusion” (p. 304).

Badiou’s Void

• In a way, this appears very similar to Badiou’s politics. For example, for Rancière, politics is not about counting the counted but counting the uncounted; a point similar to that expressed by Badiou in Metapolitics. For example, he argues in that we must count that which has not been counted—which is the void—to be counted as one, which is the totality.
• Thus, Badiou’s argument that sans-papiers must be counted by the state is the same notion Rancière prescribes when he discusses the example of the women being counted in politics. The sans-papiers work in France but because they are illegal immigrants they do not have any rights. Therefore instead of viewing them in the way Arendt would which is to say they have rights but cannot claim them, Badiou would likely concede with Rancière that they should be included—yet for Rancière this would be by means of dissensus whereas Badiou would opt for a political militancy and a radical break from the situation by shattering the idea of belonging.
• Hence, Badiou would probably agree with Rancière’s critique of Agamben (and Arendt?) in that he “misses the logic of political subjectivization. Political subjects are surplus subjects. They inscribe the count of the uncounted as a supplement” (p. 305).

References:

Caldwell, A. (2004). Biosovereignty and the emergence of humanity, Theory & Event, 7(2). Retrieved             from Project Muse Premium Collection 

Enns, D. (2007). Political life before identity, Theory & Event, 10(1). Retrieved from Project Muse      Premium Collection

Rancière, J. (2004)Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man? Theory & Event 103(2/3). Retrieved from           Project Muse Premium Collection

Rancière, J. (2001). Ten theses on politics, Theory & Event 5(3). Retrieved from Project Muse Premium         Collection

Republicanism (Plato) and Sociology:

• 2 sides of the same coin (p. 64).
• A hierarchical social body
• It doesn’t limit society by the State but, rather, tries to educate through institutions. E.g., those privileged by birth able to become elites with capabilities (those who have more time to become learned and therefore educate others). (p. 65).

• [2] * This relates to Jasbir Puar’s argument in Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, where she argues that “homonationals” (middle class, white, gay males) are included in democracy to fight the “war on terror” in a time where patriotism is required. As soon as this minority group is no longer needed they return to being a minority and respect for difference vanishes. Question: Could Rancière’s work be read as a new way to understand identity politics?

[3] Politics Versus ‘Police’ 

• Police as a “symbolic constitution of the social”.
• This is opposite to politics which is those who have no part in the whole (i.e. the excluded part) still participating in the common.

Public/ Private Distinction “Political action…opposes to the police logic that separates into spheres another usage of the same juridical text, another staging of the duality between public man and private individual. It overturns the distribution of terms and places by playing man against citizen and citizen against man” (p. 59).

I was recently at the annual North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) conference in Ottawa and, after chatting with another graduate student, discovered that Badiou’s name had spread like wild fire and was a hot topic at his university too.  Having presented on Jacques Ranciere, Badiou’s contemporary and oftentimes political ally, I was pleased to have a fellow graduate student involved in our field who is interested in this “hot” theorist. I was lucky enough to take a class on Badiou and Ranciere, and have some working notes/questions to share with others interested in these theorists and hope to start thinking through their application to sport in more detail…

The following themes are taken from Badiou’s Metapolitics to discuss:

Arendt and Kant on Common Sense and the Political Kant and Arendt place the following in opposition with one another: Philosophy Politics “Truth” V Opinion/ Doxa. Because truth cannot be “tyrannical” or “univocal”, freedom must be found through opinion. For Arendt, following Kant, this occurs in the public sphere as opposed to the private sphere. In What is Enlightenment?, Kant argues that an enlightened subject is one who is rational, liberal, and has reached the age of majority (i.e. we are able to distinguish between private beliefs such as religion, and questions of public import such as property). The distinction is based on the premise that in the public sphere, where one acts politically (and therefore votes), one is rational and has “common sense”. This common sense is what Arendt continues in her discussion of politics. Hence for Arendt, politics occurs in public because we need other people (a community) to act politically and our ability to share collective beliefs comes from our universal common sense. Problematically for Badiou (and many others who reject Enlightenment ideas of rationality), the question becomes a matter of believing that because the political sphere is so closely linked to the State, “common sense” as it were may just be an ideological ploy by the State and consequently not “truth” or “real democracy” (p. 23-4). Thus, as Badiou posits, Arendtian philosophy merely sustains the State.

Question: How does the notion of public/private fit into this?

Badiou’s position could be read in two ways. From one perspective he is a classic anti-humanist in that he wants to rid us of the notion of collective rationality in the public realm which neo-Kantian scholars appeal to. Thus, he dismisses the notion of man as animal rationale. However, conversely, one could argue that he in fact ascribes to a liberal humanist discourse because he represses culture (i.e. he considers culture to be a means of division and difference—an appeal to the Other), and is in favour of a “politics of thought” which reinforces the man/animal dichotomy and appears to reinforce the public/private distinction (yet from Badiou’s perspective would have to be a “Stateless” distinction).

Question: How can we talk about culture in Badiou’s politics? It sounds like we cannot because multiculturalism is reduced to, in Oliver Marchart’s (2007)Heideggarian summation, to the realm of the ontic (being) as opposed to the ontological (Being) because multiculturalism supposes “infinite multiplicity” whilst Badiou is concerned with the ontological notion of being “indifferent to difference” (p. 117). Real politics, instead, is “the prescription of a possibility in rupture with what exists” (p. 24). *Real politics instead of cultural politics? Agency and Subjectivity The notion of agency is, arguably, problematic in Badiou’s thought and as a scholar committed to political activism this is somewhat surprising (Hewlett, 2006). Badiou posits that subjectivity occurs only in the void of an event and thereafter when maintaining fidelity to it. Thus, “The universality of political truth that results from such a fidelity is itself legible like all truth, retroactively [italics added]” (p. 23). This appears to leave the notion of subjectivity retroactive—hence one can only become a subject post-event. As Hewlett (2006) posits, this supposes that one cannot plan an event, for example a political revolution, and therefore can have no control over an event. Further, this places us in a passive position as individuals whereby in fact we can perhaps go through our lives never experiencing an event and therefore never knowing subjectivity. In a sense, Badiou’s argument is ultimately deterministic.

Question: How can we generate agency in Badiou’s theory in order to act politically? It appears that it is a deterministic argument in the sense that we are passive “recipients” or “consumers” of an event—does that make us, rather than from Adorno’s perspective a “cultural dupe/dope”, an “evental dupe?” (If the event can’t be predicted or even generated by political militancy then it sounds “divine” like the Altogether Other for Levinas.). Moreover, how does this relate to the point made in Badiou’s text on Saint. Paul that we can have fidelity to an event that is yet to come? Violence

Question: Violence appears to play a central role in Badioiu’s politics since any seizure of truth requires militant action. Could we say that Badiou’s idea of the event or the rupture with knowledge (referred to as “grace” in the book on St. Paul) is analogous to Benjamin’s mythic/divine violence, whereby mythic violence is the normal law preserving status (i.e. fact/law for Badiou) and divine violence is the law destroying violence—remembering of course that divine violence is not meant in a transcendental way (the void/event—a rupture with thought from nowhere)? According to Žižek (2007), Badiou’s violence is “subjective” whilst Benjamin’s divine violence is not something “transcendental”—he meant terror; revolution. Does this mean their notions of violence are allied? As Žižek (2007) explains: In a way, it is the “optimistic” mirror image of the model you find in someone like Agamben, who presents not so much a pessimism but a “negative” teleology, in which the entire Western tradition is approaching its own disastrous end, the only solution to which is to await some “divine violence.” But what is Benjamin talking about? Revolution—that is, a moment when you take the “sovereign” (this is Benjamin’s word) responsibility for killing someone. What does violence mean for Agamben? He responds with “playing with the law” and so on. Power, Knowledge, and Truth

Question: How does power operate for Badiou? Badiou posits the following: “Why was Foucault (whom Lazarus salutes as the ‘first theoretician of singularities’), after having isolated irreducible configurations within his category of episteme, unable to achieve a true thought of interiority?”: “Because after having posited that the operator for the identification of singularities was the relation of words to things, he did not localise this operator and left unclear the whereabouts of the enunciated multiplicity of epistemai. The result of this omission is that the words/things relation remains external. Foucault’s singularities (analysis of discursive formations, positivities, and the corresponding knowledge) remain composite, lacking an identification of the prescriptive or subjective kernel that lies at their heart. Foucault did not think his own thought. But his immense merit was to have bequeathed us the question of how it might be done, since his teaching persuades us that ‘declaring the existence of singularities does not resolve the problem of thought which permits their investigation.” (p. 44-5). Here I think Badiou, via Lazarus, is critiquing Foucault for his understanding of power being “everywhere”; embedded in discourse without a single site of operation (i.e. power is not hierarchical). Perhaps the two scholars are suggesting that Foucault’s own work is infused with power and therefore is not separable from the State or ideological power (i.e. he tries to escape State power but in a sense it is embedded in his own teachings). Foucault does not “prescribe” a new politics, in which case his theory is not revolutionary and does not suppose a break with current knowledge or an event. This is further reflected in Badiou’s critique of Foucault’s “archaeology” (p. 51-2), which is a historical technique (and therefore is anti-philosophical and positivisitic, undermining his attempt to “escape” totalising power through an appeal to singluarities) In some ways, however, Badiou’s theoretical perspective appears to be an extension of Foucauldian understandings of power and knowledge, rather than a break with Foucault and other postmodern/ poststructural scholars as Badiou asserts. For Foucault, knowledge and power are indiscriminate (hence, power is bound to knowledge through discourse). Therefore, truth cannot be attainted because power saturates knowledge and cannot be located in an origin per se. In terms of politics, Foucault would argue that power operates in this way through discourse in order to construct and shape beliefs and values in society, yet in Badiou’s terms Foucault would argue that we can never really “know” whether a political event was true per se (in the same way post-structural scholars argue that there can be no “subject” in the sense that identity is merely representational). This is why Badiou considers Foucauldian and other post-structural theories relativistic. Badiou, in contrast, suggests that we should not give up on the idea of “truth” and we should state axioms, but we should recognise that it cannot be attributed to the State and needs to be distanced. In many ways Foucault agrees with the distancing from the State (i.e. power cannot be hierarchical) but disagrees with any attempts to find a “truth”. Although Foucault believes we cannot rely on historically situated happenings for “truth” (therefore an event cannot arise from historically grounded or emerging beliefs because these are imbued with power (or are ideological), Badiou still conceives of Foucault’s perspective to be grounded in these very assumptions he wishes to terminate. As Badiou (2002) explains, “knowledge” is “the past”, not “truth”. While I think Foucault would concede that because knowledge is so tightly linked to power we can never know “truth” per se, Badiou’s argument suggests we can rupture this power/knowledge nexus from the void. Hence, truth is different to knowledge which is merely repetition (i.e. history, which is positivistic) and instead must be something new. Therefore, it might be read as more of an extension of Foucault’s argument rather than as a break.

Naming, Spatiality and Temporality

“The name is nothing other than the Real”. As the translator notes, the Real is not “reality” per se, but “knowledge which lies outside of our grasp but which we can come to know—albeit retroactively, after the event—by way of a truth procedure” (p. xxv).

Like Lacan’s “Real”, Badiou’s “Void” is external to the situation and can only be known retroactively. See below:

Lacan/ Badiou

Real/ -The Void (resists representation)

Symbolic/The Event

Imaginary/The Subject and Simulacrum

Question: Can we link Lacan and Badiou in this way?

References:

Badiou, A. (2002). The event of truth (Online Lecture). European Graduate School, Retrieved January 29th, 2009, http://www.truveo.com/Alain-Badiou-The-event-of-Truth-2002-1/id/1088990719

Hewlett, N. (2006). Politics as thought? The paradoxes of Alain Badiou’s theory of politics. Contemporary Political Theory, 5, 371-404. McNulty, T. (2007). The commandment against the law: Writing and divine justice in Walter Benjamin’s critique of violence. Diacritics, 37.2-3, 34-60.

Marchart, O. (2007). Post-foundational political thought: Political difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou, and Laclau. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Wright, C. (2008). Event or exception?: Disentangling Badiou from Schmitt, or, towards a politics of the void. Theory & Event, 11(2).

Žižek, S. (2007). Divine Violence and Liberated Territories: SOFT TARGETS talks with Slavoj Žižek Retrieved February 1st, 2009, from: http://www.softtargetsjournal.com/web/zizek.php

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“Was uns bevorsteht, ist die Aussicht auf eine Arbeitsgesellschaft, der die Arbeit ausgegangen ist, also die einzige Tätigkeit, auf die sie sich versteht. Was könnte verhängnisvoller sein?”

Hannah Arendt (1958)

Domingão de sol, dia de arrastão no Shopping Tacaruna. Qual título cai melhor:  ”A classe operária vai ao paraíso” ou “Galerosos em fúria”? Há relatos de que Ortega foi visto na C&A, enquanto Hannah Arendt comprava a Folha Dirigida na banquinha de revista e Adorno tomava um milkshake de Ovomaltine no Bob’s.

http://www.diariodepernambuco.com.br/2009/11/10/urbana2_0.asp

Bernard Stiegler: What Will We Become

Bernard Stiegler has reframed the question concerning technology around the concept of human becoming. Stiegler sees an intrinsic relationship between the evolution of human beings (anthropogenesis) and technology (technogenesis). Stiegler makes two central claims: (1) that human beings are inherently technological and (2) that they develop through the evolution of technology. For Stiegler, the question concerning technology is not “How shall we act?” or even “How shall we live?” but rather “What shall we become?”

Stielger claims that human beings are intrinsically technological. His claim rests on the connection between technics and time as he explains:

There is today a conjunction between the question of technics and the question of time, one made evident by the speed of technical evolution, by the ruptures in temporalization (event-ization) that this evolution provokes, and by the processes of deterritorialization accompanying it. It is a conjunction that calls for a new consideration of technicity. The following work aims to establish that organized inorganic beings are originarily and as marks of the de-fault of origin out of which there is [es gibt] time—constitutive (in the strict phenomenological sense) of temporality as well as spatiality, in quest of a speed “older” than time and space, which are the derivative decompositions of speed. Life is the conquest of mobility. As a “process of exteriorization,” technics is the pursuit of life by means other than life (Stiegler, Bernard, Technics and Time, I: The Fault of Epimetheus, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, Originally published as La Technique et le temps, 1: La faute d’Epiméthée, Galilée: Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, 1994, 17.)

While Stiegler agrees with Heidegger’s claim that Dasein is a temporal being, who is thrown into existence and stretched along between birth and death which constitutes the historical temporality of Dasein (Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1962. Originally published as Sein und Zeit. Tubingen: Neomarius Verlag, 1926. Ibid., 174, 425, 427.) he questions whether this temporality is a intratemporality and criticizes Heidegger for overlooking the fact that human temporality is externalized in technics. As such, Dasein is essentially “prosthetic,” that is, Dasein is always seeking to temporalize itself externally through artefacts (Gaston, Sean, “Technics of Decision: An Interview,” Journal of Theoretical Humanities, Vol. 8, no. 2 (August 2003): 156.) Stiegler explains:

Mortals are prosthetic, that is to say they are endowed with artefacts and are capable of altering the artefacts which they adopt. In this sense, they are not doomed to a predestination, they “have to be” what they are, they are destined to decision, that is, to time understood in this sense, which is not that of life (Ibid., 156.)

Additionally, Dasein temporlizes itself technically as Stiegler points out.

Dasein is outside itself, in ec-stasis, temporal: its past lies outside it, yet it is nothing but this past, in the form of not yet. By being actually its past, it can do nothing but put itself outside itself, “ek-sist.” But how does Dasein eksist in this  way? Prosthetically, through pro-posing and pro-jecting itself outside itself, in front of itself. And this means that it can only test its improbability programmatically (Stiegler, Technics and Time, 234.)

The temporality of Dasein is constituted prosthetically which also means that time is constituted through technology or what Stiegler prefers to call “technics”. Time is therefore inscribed in technics which leads Stiegler to conclude that human becoming, that is its temporality, is through technology. He calls the mode of human becoming “epiphylogenesis” which involves “the evolution of the living by other means than life (Ibid., 135.)” Whereas, Heidegger saw being and time as constitutive of Dasein’s facticity, Stiegler argues that it is constituted in an “epigenetic layer of life” which is an “epigenetic sedimentation, a memorization of what has come to pass, is what is called the past, what we shall name the epiphylogenesis of man, meaning the conservation, accumulation, and sedimentation of successive epigeneses, mutually articulated (Ibid., 140.)” At a very primitive and basic level, language can be seen as an epigenetic layer and therefore a technic through which human beings temporalize themselves. If we now return to Heidegger’s notion of technology as a mode of disclosure we can see the implications of Stiegler’s claim.  If Dasein is temporal, and time is constituted through technics as Stiegler claims, then technology becomes the mode of human becoming.

The contrast between Heidegger and Stiegler could not be more stark. Whereas Heidegger sees an ontological distinction between Dasein and the tools it takes up, Stiegler sees both as intertwined. This intertwining is a process of externalization which he refers to as instrumental maieutics. Instrumental maieutics is the process whereby human temporality is externalized through the use of instruments and simultaneously given back to the human being. Stiegler puts it this way, “the cortex is determined by the tool just as much as that of the tool by the cortex: a mirror effect whereby one, looking at itself in the other, is both deformed and formed in the process (Ibid., 158.)” This claim is similar to Marx’s claim that “man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and his social life (Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, trans. Stanley Moore (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 241.)” Human becoming is intrinsically linked with technological development.

Stiegler’s anthropology gets its metaphysical bearings by returning to the myth of Prometheus retold by Plato in the Protagoras (Plato, “Protagoras,” in Plato: Complete Works, eds. John M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchison (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 320d-322d.) In Plato’s retelling of this myth the gods assigned Prometheus (forethought) and his brother Epimetheus (afterthought) the task of assigning powers and abilities to mortals. Epimetheus begged Prometheus to let him have the exclusive responsibility of assigning powers and abilities to the mortals. Prometheus agreed, and Epimetheus began assigning powers and abilities in such a way as to bring harmony and balance to the natural world. But, by the time Epimetheus came to the human being he was out of powers and abilities and Prometheus had to steal the art of fire (empuron technen) (Plato, “Protagoras,” 321e.) from Hephaestus in order for the human being to have a power and ability. Stiegler sees this myth as pointing to a fundamental “lack”  or “de-fault” (défaut ) in the metaphysical origins of the human being which is overcome through technics; that is to say the art of fire compensates for the human beings lack of power and ability. Human beings are metaphysically undetermined and contingent; that is, human beings are finite. This leads Stiegler to claim that “discovery, insight, invention, imagination are all, according to the narrative of the myth, characteristic of a default.” The origins of human technology are therefore bound up with the origins and finitude of humanity. Thus, for Stiegler, the question concerning technology is not “How shall we act?” or “How shall we live?” but rather “What shall we become?” As Sean Gaston, has put it:

For Stiegler, the technical is more than the tool, more than the machine: it involves the invention of the human. Life is already reliant on technics. Technics makes the transmission of the past and the anticipation of the future possible.     Without technics there can be no memory, no heritage, no adoption, no invention.  Technics give us time (Gaston, Sean, “Technics of Decision: An Interview,” Journal of Theoretical Humanities, Vol. 8, no. 2 (August 2003): 151.)”

Stiegler views technics as “the horizon of all possibility to come and of all possibility of a future” which philosophy has “repressed as an object of thought (Stiegler, Technics and Time, ix.)” In response to this repressive approach Stiegler has argued that “the modern age is essentially that of modern technics (Ibid., 7.)”

Conclusion

In this article, I have attempted to present three ways the question concerning technology has been re-framed in order to bring into relief what is really at stake in the question. I began with Hannah Arendt’s reframing of the question around human activity. Arendt’s analysis of the question concerning technology pointed to a Janus-faced problem. On the one hand technology makes us masters of our world through machinery. On the other hand, it also puts the capability of destroying the world in our hands. Next, I presented Martin Heidegger’s reframing of the question around the human being. Heidegger recognized both the danger and the possibilities for human life in its relationship with technology and highlighted art is a way of coming closer to the dangerous power of modern technology so that its saving power may shine forth. Finally, I presented the view of the contemporary French philosopher Bernard Stiegler who reframes the question around human becoming. Stiegler’s insight into the interrelationship between technics and time and his conclusion that human temporality is constituted technologically helped to bring into relief what is really at stake in the question concerning technology, namely, that the future of humanity will be determined through technology.

Technology has been part of human life since the dawn of consciousness and it will not fade from the mortal horizon. Human beings are inherently technological, in fact we are human because we are technological, and therefore our destiny is bound up with a Janus-faced system full of threats and promises. To face Janus we must learn to act and live in a free and reflective relationship with technology, mindful of the dangers and hopeful of the promises so that who we become will remain human and not monstrous.

Martin Heidegger: How Shall We Live?

Martin Heidegger reframed the question concerning technology around the concept of human being. Heidegger’s 1953 essay “The Question Concerning Technology” approaches the question of modern technology as a pervasive and Janus-faced fact of modern human life. Drawing on Rousseau he captures the problem in his opening statement: “everywhere we remain free and chained to technology (Heidegger, Martin, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Ferrell Krell, 1977, repr. New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 1993, 311.)” Technology cannot be approached uncritically, according to Heidegger. Instead, it must be approached freely and reflectively because the essence of technology, as a way of revealing the totality of being, is enframing which both endangers and saves being.

Heidegger argues that “technology is a way of revealing (Ibid., 318.)” To ground this claim he recovers the Greek understanding of technology (techne) as revelatory (aletheia) and suggests the natural triadic process of physis-poesis-aletheia for understanding how technology can be revelatory (Ibid., 317-319.) Heidegger points out that for the Greeks; physis (Nature) was the “arising of something out of itself,” as such it was a disclosure or unconcealment (aletheia) of being (Ibid., 317.) This process of this unconcealment was understood as a “bringing-forth (poesis)” of being. The same was true for crafts or works of art (techne). The craftsman or artist brings forth or reveals what is concealed in nature (Ibid., 318.) Thus, Heidegger concludes, technology is a way of revealing, a way of bringing forth the totality of being. The problem, of course, is that not all revealing is poetic. Heidegger claims that the essence of modern technology is enframing (Gestell) (Ibid., 325.) As such, modern technology is a type of revealing that orders and determines. As Heidegger puts it, “enframing means the gathering together of the setting upon that sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the actual, in the mode of ordering, as standing reserve (Ibid., 325.)” Heidegger contrasts this type of revealing with the Greek notion of techne as a poesis of aletheia. Although both the Greek understanding of techne and modern technology are both forms of aletheia, they reveal the totality of being in vastly different ways (Ibid., 326.) Techne as poesis allows nature to “come forth in unconcealment,” whereas modern technology as Gestell, challenges nature to come forth as a “standing reserve.” Nature is therefore set upon, ordered and determined in a way that leads to a concealment of its truth instead of a revealing of it. Modern technology in this mode of revealing is therefore dangerous (Gefahr) both to Nature and to humanity (Ibid., 331.)

In order to illustrate the distinction between poesis and Gestell Heidegger offers the example of a hydroelectric power plant that sets upon the Rhine River as a source of power (standing reserve) and an old wooden bridge “joined bank with bank for hundreds of years (Ibid., 321.)” The power plant enframes the river in such a way that it can no longer be a river but must be a power source. The bridge on the other hand, while equally technological, allows the river to be what it is: a river. But Heidegger does not leave the issue separated into categories of “acceptable” and “unacceptable” technology. Instead he turns to face the Janus-faced question concerning technology and reframes it.

Heidegger recognizes that technology is ambiguous (Ibid., 338.) Given that the essence of modern technology is enframing, it “blocks every view into the propriative event of revealing” and therefore endangers the truth of being (Ibid., 338.) But enframing also “lets man endure… that he may be the one who is needed and used for the safekeeping of the essence of truth (Ibid., 338.)” Thus, the essence of modern technology as enframing both conceals and reveals the truth of being and therefore contains both a danger and a saving power (Ibid., 338.) But, as Heidegger points out, while “we can look into the danger and see the growth of the saving power” we are nevertheless “not yet saved (Ibid., 338.)” We must find a way of living in a “free relationship” with technology (Ibid., 311.) The question is not “Do we accept or reject technology?” but rather “How do we live with it?” Heidegger’s answer to the question concerning technology reframed in this way is: art. Art is essentially poetical and therefore contains the potential for “the bringing forth of the true into the beautiful (Ibid., 339.)” Heidegger does not say that art will poetically reveal the truth of being; only that it is possible (Ibid., 340.) But art is a way of coming closer to the dangerous power of modern technology so that its saving power may shine forth.

But have Arendt and Heidegger missed something in their analysis of modern technology? Is it possible that Arendt in her ardent concern for the human condition has missed a vital aspect of it that changes our understanding of the relationship between humanity and technology? Is it possible that in Heidegger’s characterization of technology as separate from nature he has missed a common foundation for both? Bernard Stiegler thinks this is the case.

Introduction

The question concerning technology is a perpetually human question that arises from a Janus-faced technology that holds within it both threats and promises. The technological progress of human history is a testament to this fact with its advances in science and medicine that gave birth to both cures and curses, like polio vaccines and the atom bomb. It is therefore necessary to continually reframe the question concerning technology in order remain in a free and reflective relationship with it. In this article, I will attempt to present three ways the question has been re-framed in order to bring into relief what is really at stake in the question. I will begin with the approach of Hannah Arendt in her book The Human Condition where she reframed the question around human activity.  Next, I will present the approach of Martin Heidegger who reframed the question around the concept of human being in his essay “The Question Concerning Technology.” Although Arendt’s work appeared after Heidegger’s essay it provides an effective historical framework within which to situate Heidegger’s approach . Finally, I will present the view of the contemporary French philosopher Bernard Stiegler who reframes the question around human becoming. Each of these attempts to reframe the question concerning technology will point us in the direction of what is at stake in our relationship to technology and allow us to face Janus in a free and reflective way.

Hannah Arendt: How Shall We Act?

Hannah Arendt has reframed the question concerning technology around human activity. More specifically, she has distinguished between three types of human activity; namely, labor, work and action. For Arendt, labor “corresponds to the biological process of the human body,” work is “the unnaturalness of human activity… that provides an ‘artificial’ world of things,” and action is “the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter (Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1958), 7.)” Labor assures the survival of both the individual and the species (Ibid., 8.) Work assures the permanence and durability of our fragile human existence through the manufacture of artifacts (techne)(Ibid., 8.) Action creates history through founding and preserving political bodies (Ibid., 9.) For Arendt the realm of human activity is constitutive of the human condition. What is interesting about Arendt’s account of human activity is the conclusion she draws about the human condition. She writes:

The human condition comprehends more than the conditions under which life has been given to man. Men are conditioned beings because everything they come in contact with turns immediately into a condition of their existence. The world in which the vita activa spends itself consists of things produced by human activities; but the things that owe their existence exclusively to men nevertheless constantly condition their human makers (Ibid., 9.)

The “things produced by human activities” conditions their producers. The made becomes the maker. This is the problem of technology which leads Arendt to ask “How shall we then act?”

For Arendt, the modern advent of automated technology begins with a transition from tools to machinery which ceases to involve an adjustment of the tool to the man and instead requires the adjustment of the man to the machine (Ibid., 147.) She sees it developing in two distinct stages. She marks the first stage with the invention of the steam engine which led to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century (Ibid., 148.) Arendt characterizes this stage as relatively banal in that it “was still characterized by an imitation of natural processes and the use of natural forces for human purposes (Ibid., 148.)” However, in the next stage Nature was no longer imitated, it was “denaturalized” and separated from the artificial world of human fabrication (Ibid., 148.) This stage arose through the use of electricity and came to condition the use of all future technology(Ibid., 148.) It is during this stage that the Arendt sees the loss of the categories of homo faber (the tool maker) for whom ends were achieved through the use of instruments. The end result is the assembly line of manufacturing (Ibid., 149.) Arendt calls this stage: automation. It involves “channeling natural forces into the human world” so that they become mechanized and artificial(Ibid., 149, n.12.) One obvious example of this type of “channeling of natural forces” is atomic energy which brought with it the threat of global annihilation. As Ann Chapman has pointed out, the stability of the earth is threatened by automation because the new elements, chemicals and organisms that develop as a result of automation are incorporated into the “processes of the earth [and] are in effect the starting of new natural processes. These new processes mean that nature can no longer be relied upon to behave in the same way as it did in the past (Chapman, Ann, “Technology as World Building,” Ethics, Place and Environment, Vol. 7, no. 1-2 (March/June 2004), 68.)” The consequences of this transition raise the question of technology. If our actions, namely automated manufacturing through machines, are changing the earth so that life itself is transformed and even jeopardized, how should we act? Arendt concludes by saying:

….. homo faber, the toolmaker, invented tools and implements in order to erect a world, not—at least, not primarily—to help the human life process. The question therefore is not so much whether we are the masters or the      slaves of our machines, but whether machines still serve the world and its things,  or if, on the contrary, they and the automatic motion of their processes have begun to rule and even destroy world and things (Arendt, The Human Condition 151.)

Arendt’s analysis of the question concerning technology points to a Janus-faced problem. On the one hand technology makes us masters of our world through machinery. On the other hand, it puts the capability of destroying the world in our hands also. No philosopher has reframed this aspect of the question more cogently than Arendt’s former teacher Martin Heidegger.

Sí, por qué no empezar hablando de política, tratándose de aquello que por desgracia invade prácticamente todos los ámbitos de nuestra vida, aquello sobre lo que casi todo el mundo opina y cree conocer.

Pero, ¿qué es la política? ¿cómo funciona? ¿par qué sirve (si es que sirve para algo)?

«En nuestro tiempo, si se quiere hablar de política, debe empezarse por los prejuicios que todos nosotros, si no somos políticos de profesión, albergamos sobre ella», dice Hannah Arendt en ¿Qué es la política? (libro que merece por sí mismo un artículo propio).

Casualmente ayer encontré publicado en el diario ADN un artículo titulado ¿Qué les pasa a los políticos?, lleno de dichos prejuicios. Señala el artículo en cuestión cuatro problemas del «desapego» de la ciudadanía hacía la política, que parecen a simple vista cuatro grandes prejuicios: la corrupción, la falta de liderazgo, la desconexión con la sociedad y el intervencionismo.

La corrupción, omienza diciendo el artículo, «es un problema global de la política, sostienen los expertos.» Pero, ¿qué expertos? Resulta difícil de creer hasta que punto el periodismo actual se deja llevar por prejuicios en lugar de intentar guiarse por un espíritu crítico. En cuanto al famoso prejuicio de que el poder corrompe ya lo definió Lord Acton en 1887 cuando escribió en una carta a Mandell Creighton que «power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely».

Recoge el artículo varias opiniones en las que merece la pena detenerse.

Por una parte la de Manuel Milián Mestre, ex diputado, para quién la situación de la política actual es un «ejercicio de inmoralidad notable. Los políticos [secuestran] el poder soberano del pueblo, (…) secuestran al ciudadano y hacen lo que les da la gana», o lo que les dictan las encuestas de opinión» [sobre esta sondeocracia hay textos muy interesantes de G. Sartori].

Por otra, la de Fernando Vallespín, ex presidente del CIS: «La ciudadanía percibe que el político está más interesado por los despojos que genera ser político (tener un coche oficial, etc.) que en los intereses generales». Para acabar, la de una estudiante de Ciencias Políticas, que sentencia con otro gran prejuicio: «El debate político está desvinculado de los temas que preocupan a la mayoría de la población».

Es decir el fútbol, Gran Hermano, Belén Esteban… Ójala. La política trata hoy esos temas sin ningún sonrojo. Como ya avistaba Carl Schmitt, «en esta modalidad de estado, todo es potencialmente político». Buenos ejemplos son las disputas por el control de las cajas de ahorros o el Consejo General del Poder Judicial.

Las categorías clásicas de la política han perdido sentido. Las relaciones entre estados no se dan ya en términos de amistad u hostilidad (categorías validas, eso sí, para describir la disputa entre partidos), y las relaciones que se dan en el interior de éstos son regidas por lo económico, lo moral o lo estético.

]]> http://aosugo.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/totalitarismo/ Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:24:05 +0000 Victor Hugo http://aosugo.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/totalitarismo/

Em “A Era dos Extremos” Eric Hobsbawn nos mostra que o século XX é marcado pelas guerras “totais”, a guerra em que todo um país entra em esforço de guerra até seu último homem, sua última bala. Tropas inteiras em favor de umas poucas causas mobilizadas para destruir o adversário até o seu extermínio total. A tecnologia bélica desenvolve-se ao ponto em que já não é mais necessário entrar em um combate “corpo-a-corpo” para subjugar o adversário. Embora possa parecer alguma outra história sombria e pessimista de ficção como V de Vingança, 1984 e Distrito 9, após alguns exemplos totalitários presenciados durante este século já não reside mais apenas na imaginação dos homens quais seriam as últimas conseqüências quando se põe à prova a condição humana.

Embora muitos estudiosos da mente humana como psicólogos e psicanalistas estejam à procura de uma explicação “psicopatológica” para a loucura de Hitler e Stalin, como também a capacidade destes homens motivarem massas inteiras sob seu comando, as décadas de 30 e 40 do século XX ainda estão longe de serem totalmente compreendidas. Enquanto cientistas sociais buscam através de seus rígidos métodos lógicos por uma explicação sensata para o que aconteceu naquele período, enfrentam um dilema até então desconhecido na história das civilizações humanas: como procurar pela lógica de sistemas que não possuem lógica?

Até que ponto podemos aceitar a mobilização de massas motivadas pela “loucura”, ou mesmo como podemos identificar o que é ou o que foi esta “loucura”? Podemos nos ater na expressão hoje vista como cliché que “situações desesperadas exigem soluções desesperadas” para começar a discussão, já que nos embasaremos no texto de Hanna Arendt, “O Sistema Totalitário”. Roland Littlewood estabelece um modelo antropológico para compreender como a loucura poderia ser “justificada”, sendo necessário no entanto que ocorressem algumas circunstâncias específicas: em duas delas, a loucura só poderia existir desde que correspondesse a determinadas situações da “audiência”, ou seja, não bastaria ser “louco” para estar no poder, pois a própria idéia não se mantém logicamente por muito tempo: confirmada a loucura de um governante ele logo é considerado inapto ao poder e imediatamente retirado de sua condição de chefe.

Como afirma Hanna Arendt, em tempos de crise e miséria sócio-econômica em que a própria dignidade do homem é extirpada, movimentos que não exigem a lógica convencional dos regimes políticos de até então podem acender ao poder, como os sistemas totalitários. Em situações em que a “audiência” ou as massas “aceitam” determinadas condições nunca antes previstas, temos as motivações e bases necessárias para que o totalistarismo se instaure como nova forma de regime.

Todavia, não é suficiente que apenas esta “audiência” seja não apenas a fonte deste tipo de governo, mas é necessário também que o mantenha. Neste sentido, embora muitos estudiosos das ciências sociais tentem procurar alguma lógica em um movimento à primeira vista “sem lógica”, o que devemos entender é que tais movimentos se baseiam em uma lógica interna própria que fornece a sua sustentação no poder. A partir deste momento, cria-se uma realidade fictícia e objetivos ilimitados, como exterminar um grupo étnico inteiro ou “dominar o mundo”, dando ao movimento um aspecto de instabilidade e constante[1] reformação, ao contrário do que tinha se visto até então na política. Algumas destas características aparentemente “ilógicas” como o “amorfismo” das instituições, o poder entre partido e Estado, a polícia secreta e o antiutilitarismo merecem destaque aqui, como veremos a seguir.

O “amorfismo” do Estado totalitário sempre foi tido por muitos como uma das mais altas expressões da aparente falta de lógica deste tipo de governo. A constante multiplicação de instituições, o remanejamento constante de pessoal, a promoção e eliminação instantânea de cargos sempre foram características do sistema totalitário em que o que mais se almeja é a liderança. Como observado na Alemanha nazista, várias instituições competiam pela liderança de determinada região, geralmente com jurisdições sobrepostas, porém nunca se sabendo qual destas detinha o real domínio, até que o verdadeiro poder do Mein Führer se instalasse em qualquer lugar. Nesta situação, todos vigiam todos, todas as pessoas, ligadas ou não às instituições envolvidas, passam a se policiar umas às outras atrás da almejada “liderança”.

Enquanto que na Alemanha nazista tínhamos a multiplicação de instituições e todo o efetivo pessoal destas continuando a existir, na URSS Stalin preferia a eliminação e criação de novas instituições, sendo que todo o efetivo pessoal de uma instituição a ser extinta seria eliminada com ele, garantindo que, com esta renovação de pessoal nunca se firmasse um sentimento de solidariedade[2]. Esta paranóia de nunca se saber quem detém o poder faz parte das premissas do movimento, a de deixar o sistema instável. Um dos maiores perigos para o movimento seria se, após a obtenção do poder, tudo se estabilizasse e “acalmasse” o “espírito” de reformar o mundo. O movimento passa a adquirir características de reformação do mundo, não tem e nunca teve raízes em um determinado país, o que nos mostra o total desprezo pelo nacionalismo[3].

Mesmo neste clima de paranóia sabe-se que quem detém o poder é o partido, no entanto, de uma forma muito peculiar: quanto mais se sabe sobre determinada função no Estado, menos efetivo ele é, ou seja, as verdadeiras raízes do poder num sistema totalitário reside no segredo e na ocultação dos objetivos finais. Desse modo, o Estado passa a ser um meio para que o partido seja representado perante às demais nações. A polícia secreta passa a ser a verdadeira fonte de todo o poder, muito mais do que as próprias forças armadas, detentora dos verdadeiros objetivos do partido. Uma “realidade fictícia” é passada para os que não pertencem a este meio, uma mentira tão amplamente difundida que mantém os verdadeiros princípios e fins do partido ocultos do mundo, de modo que quando se defronta com o “verdadeiro mundo” passamos a não acreditar que aquilo seria possível, como os Campos de Concentração.

Temos no totalitarismo uma inovação, uma nova concepção de poder que nos escapa à lógica. O poder sempre foi tido como obtenção de meios materiais, porém neste regime vemos o total desprezo pelo “desejo do poder”, mas pela fé em uma ideologia, um idealismo fundado na simples agressão, o que foge à corrente lógica utilitarista dos outros países não-totalitários. Invade-se um território, mas suas riquezas não são exploradas; continuamente contingentes são enviados aos campos de concentração, mas pouco se obtém através deste trabalho “escravo”, exceto tortura, humilhação e a manutenção da maior mentira de todas. Desta mentira, o movimento procura obter o “domínio total” do homem e de todos os seus pensamentos, ou seja, não apenas o domínio daqueles escravizados nos Campos, mas de toda uma sociedade, como ela pensa e como ela deve pensar. Controlar a todos, fazer todos se policiarem, trabalharem para o Estado, formatar visões de mundo, definir os limites entre “certo” e “errado”…

A manutenção desta realidade fictícia e da constante paranóia também deve ser entendida a partir do momento em que temos a definição de um inimigo já declarado, ou seja, os inimigos do movimento são definidos antes mesmo deste obter o poder. Após a entrada no poder, estes inimigos “objetivos” são constantemente classificados e re-classificados conforme a conveniência, o que nos ajuda a entender a relação entre movimento e os inimigos do movimento. Sabe-se que na URSS os inimigos políticos foram eliminados logo nos primeiros anos de governo socialista, no entanto, passado este período e após praticamente todos terem sido mortos, o movimento precisava continuar a caminhar, definindo novos inimigos objetivos, mesmo que aleatoriamente, assim como a constante busca pela supremacia da raça ariana na Alemanha nazista que inventariava, classificava e re-classificava os judeus enquanto seus inimigos, depois os aleijados, os doentes, etc.

Como palavras finais, Hanna Arendt nos mostrou alguns dos pontos centrais que permitem o surgimento de um movimento como o descrito acima, marcado pela miséria e pela perda da “condição” de dignidade do homem. A partir do momento em que um povo já não possui mais as mínimas condições de viver dignamente, tais movimentos podem reaparecer, todavia, com novas roupagens, dizendo sempre atender às reivindicações das massas, ao combate contra a pobreza, contra a fome, etc. Este artigo, apesar de possuir um conteúdo bastante denso, nos mostra como ficções como 1984, V de Vingança e Distrito 9 são realidades possíveis, ficções que retratam a maior das ficções, a maior mentira de todas. Fica esperto.

Victor Hugo, Envergonhado

Imagens: Propaganda Soviética contra o Nazismo, Formação de Soldados Alemães da Segunda Guerra Mundial, Guernica (Pablo Picasso)

Leia mais:

ARENDT, Hanna. As origens do totalitarismo, 6ª Edição, 562 páginas. Companhia das Letras: São Paulo, 2006

[1] Como a “revolução mundial comunista” na URSS ou simplesmente exterminar grupos étnicos inteiros na Alemanha.

[2] Ou “clique”, no Nazismo. Sempre que uma “clique” estava prestes a se formar em algum ponto do regime nazista, Hitler logo remanejava todo pessoal, geralmente concedendo cargos com renome público visível para todos da sociedade, evitando assim um sentimento de solidariedade e diminuindo o seu poder.

[3] Independentemente dos discursos ideológicos de Hitler para o povo alemão que eram repletos de cunho nacionalista, o que vimos foi a utilização da Alemanha como um “trampolim” para a expansão do movimento, os alemães no fim de tudo acabaram sendo tratados como se estivessem sendo “usados” por um “conquistador estrangeiro”, como observado em inúmeras leis criadas pelo movimento. A respeito da raça ariana, sempre se soube que tal raça ainda não existia, não era portanto o povo alemão.

Que a fé obscurece a realidade é inegável. Também é fato que a realidade objetiva é matéria de discussão – o Gregory Gaboardi e o Eduardo Nunes estão habilitados para tratar a questão com o devido zelo -, mas devemos rechaçar de pronto qualquer insinuação de que a razão não é a ferramenta mais habilitada para fazer a ponte entre sujeito e realidade. Ao contrário de nos enveredarmos por debates labirínticos, recorro à ideia bastante simples, inclusive expressa por Obama em discurso recente, de que o bem-estar na sociedade massificada se torna impraticável se a fé é o elemento norteador das condutas – ou pior, das políticas, como se verá adiante. Fique claro: o exercício particular – ou de grupos que não interferem na liberdade alheia – da espiritualidade em nada atenta contra a boa vida. A questão, aqui, é dissertar sobre a fé como o vértice dominante das relações entre sujeitos e, em consequência, como motor de uma irracionalidade que, como qualquer ideologia, se presta a legitimar processos de dominação psicológica e econômica. Dito isso, podemos seguir.

São muitas as discrepâncias entre um regime teocrático e um regime baseado em uma ideologia totalitária, tanto em termos de motivação como no que se refere aos meios de coerção de que se lançam mão. O perigo, entretanto, em teoria, é o mesmo. Ao oprimido – maior interessado – não é mais que uma sutileza se a opressão vem de Stálin ou do Tribunal de Inquisição. Qualquer ismo a que se consagre uma política de totalidade será igualmente perigoso. Quando a religião esteve à frente do Estado - como ainda está em alguns lugares, embora sem tanta força -, o resultado foi um obscurantismo político que parece um inexplicável e nefasto hiato entre o direito romano e o iluminismo.

O que se propõe, enfim, é traçar, de forma embrionária, pontos de aproximação entre o discurso totalitário tal como apresentado por Hannah Arendt em sua “As origens do totalitarismo” (todas as citações sem referência de autor remetem a essa obra) e o palavrório religioso com que se busca a dominação dos fiéis. Também foi consultada a obra de Terry Eagleton (EAGLETON, Terry. A Idéia de Cultura. São Paulo: UNESP, 2003).

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É de se ponderar que o mais autêntico retrato de um líder totalitário deva ser buscado em algum ponto entre a sua interdependência em relação à massa e a disciplinada adoração que esta lhe endereça. Se, por um lado, o líder é mero “funcionário das massas que dirige” (p. 375), por outro, ele as dirige com o peso da inquestionabilidade e sob o preço da lealdade total.

O fascínio direcionado aos líderes era efeito da disposição das massas em dar crédito a explicações definitivas e universalistas e do talento magnético de Hitler e Stálin para suprir essa demanda através da ideologia e do discurso demagógico (o que foi, justamente, a fraqueza de Lênin, imperdoavelmente afeito a reconhecer os próprios erros). Pouco importava que eles soassem loucos. O próprio fanatismo, as repetições incessantes, a retórica infalível e inquestionável, enfim, o caráter convicto da loucura a legitimava como a bem-vinda verdade que vinha preencher um mundo contraditório.

O poder de infiltração psicológica da ideologia totalitária é tal que, mesmo diante de crimes contra os próprios filhos ou contra si mesmo, o adepto do regime não deixa abalar sua convicção no partido e, “dentro da estrutura organizacional do movimento, enquanto ele permanece inteiro, os membros fanatizados são inatingíveis pela experiência e pelo argumento” (p. 358).

O que une Hitler a Stálin e os faz nutrir admiração recíproca é o fato de ambos professarem ideologias de abrangência mundial, ao contrário de Mussolini, que, preso ao nacionalismo, contentou-se com a ditadura unipartidária e esteve longe do totalitarismo, perto do qual o fascismo italiano pareceria um regime de tibetana paz. Essa aproximação entre o Führer e o líder soviético bem demonstra a intenção de traçar leis históricas imutáveis, que explicariam o passado e determinariam o futuro. Mais que uma maneira de legitimar crimes políticos e demais absurdos e sadismos, essa prática permitiu aos líderes totalitários injetar nas massas o veneno próprio das doutrinas inabaláveis. Postando-se como verdadeiros profetas e forçando a realidade a provar suas previsões, a voz dos líderes parecia às massas como a ordem definitiva a ser seguida. Líderes totalitários são fabricantes e agentes de uma utopia do pesadelo. De modo oposto ao que Eagleton chama de “boa utopia”, aquela que “descobre uma ponte entre o presente e o futuro naquelas forças no presente que são potencialmente capazes de transformá-lo” (EAGLETON, 2003, p. 37), os líderes totalitários forjam uma ponte no presente, constroem-na com formato e destino arbitrários, rumo a um futuro inalcançável e reeditado a cada nova e violenta guinada do seu delírio de poder.

De parte da elite e da ralé, os absurdos do terrorismo de Estado são aceitos por ocuparem o espaço de antigas ideias banais e hipócritas a respeito da vida e da sociedade. Sintoma disso é a rejeição à historiografia tradicional, cujo vácuo foi preenchido com fantasiosas teorias conspiratórias, previsões messiânicas e triunfalismo revolucionário. Já o homem da massa, não tão propenso ao ímpeto do totalitarismo quanto a elite e a ralé, deve ser conquistado através da propaganda.

Das muitas características da propaganda totalitária, pode-se depreender certos aspectos inerentes às massas. É inevitável que sejam encontrados elementos análogos no discurso totalitário e na retórica do contemporâneo protestantismo cristão inflamado. Isso deve-se às similaridades psicológicas, ressalvadas as devidas proporções e particularidades históricas, entre as massas que se entregaram ao totalitarismo e aquelas que se entregam à mentira organizada das religiões caça-níqueis. A receptividade pode ser explicada pela atração que as massas sentem pelos “sistemas absolutistas que pretendem ver todos os eventos da história dependentes das grandes causas originais ligadas pela corrente da fatalidade, como que eliminando os homens da história da raça humana” (Tocqueville apud ARENDT, 2006, p. 395). Não é diferente do que fazem os pastores ao delegar a Deus os sentidos dos acontecimentos passados e as decisões em relação ao futuro.

A vantagem da propaganda totalitária é a referida capacidade de fazer suas profecias incidirem sobre a realidade, mediante a criação artificial das condições necessárias para que tal empreendimento se concretize. Por ser talvez a característica mais importante do líder de massas, a infalibilidade deve se fazer acompanhar pela capacidade de realizar predições verdadeiras. Como não estamos falando de videntes no poder, falamos de evidentes fabricações, no presente, das verdades proferidas no passado.

Não há, entretanto, na obra de Hannah Arendt, apontamento mais hábil em relação à psicologia das massas modernas do que aquele que escancara a sua incapacidade de entender o acaso, o que, mais uma vez, as coloca ao lado dos crentes fervorosos, que se agarram ao sobrenatural mesmo diante das mais flagrantes evidências naturalísticas em contrário:

“Não acreditam em nada visível, nem na realidade da sua própria experiência; não confiam em seus olhos e ouvidos, mas apenas em sua imaginação, que pode ser seduzida por qualquer coisa ao mesmo tempo universal e congruente em si. O que convence as massas não são os fatos, mesmo que sejam todos inventados, mas apenas a coerência com o sistema do qual esses fatos fazem parte.” (p. 401)

E continua:

“O que as massas se recusam a compreender é a fortuidade de que a realidade é feita. Predispõem-se a todas as ideologias porque estas explicam os fatos como simples exemplos de leis e ignoram as coincidências, inventando uma onipotência que a tudo atinge e que supostamente está na origem de todo acaso. A propaganda totalitária prospera nesse clima de fuga da realidade para a ficção, da coincidência para a coerência” (p. 401)

Está atestada, portanto, a abertura dada às mentiras totalitárias, que encontram solo fértil na “vontade de coerência” das massas, que, inconformadas com o acaso, entregam-se a qualquer conjunto de ideias, com a única condição de que elas façam sentido em relação a si mesmas.

Estivesse viva para observar o fenômeno da propaganda religiosa de massa, especialmente através dos meios de comunicação massivos, como a televisão, a autora de Origens do Totalitarismo talvez se espantasse com a similaridade entre seus apontamentos sobre os discursos dos líderes e a conduta dos seguidores nos regimes totalitários e o fanatismo religioso do século XXI, ainda que as semelhanças estejam restritas aos âmbitos da comunicação e da psicologia. Os trechos que a autora dedica à dissecação psicológica das massas modernas soam como um convite para estudos mais criteriosos que possam mapear com maior precisão essas semelhanças.

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Este texto participa da atividade idealizada por Rafael Gloria e formalizada através do blog Sintonizados. O tema desta edição foi “fé”.