Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell

Capitalist Sorcery Breaking the Spell Philippe Pignarre Paris, France and Isabelle Stengers Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Translated and edited by Andrew Goffey -W “%“"" /~q‘.` fr." $]“"**\ 'JL _f .’?"":\ " IQ ;-’°°*w.' 3 E, 3 Li f"°~*-7; ‘cs 55 gwusff' ., ,~-. if - .2 5 \._*w4{ 4 '» . 65; a'q,_,,»r' !~ *_/‘ \./ ¢w».;m ‘ 9 man? I _r l' I AN ?fu\’/WN,zmv; f iz ,._\,'\,,,-al; { E © Editions LA DECOUVERTE, Paris, France, 2005, 2007 Translation and Introduction © Andrew Goffey 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N BTS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. English translation first published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-23762-9 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 2019181716151413121110987654321 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction: On the Witch’s Broomstick viii Andrew Goffey Part1 I InheritingWhat Happened? from Seattle 3 2 What Are We Dealing With? 10 435 DaringInfernal Minions to Alternativesbe Pragmatic 31 2316 Part II Learning to Protect Oneself 6 Do You Believe in Sorcery? 39 87 LeavingMarx Safe Again Ground 51 46 109 To LearningBelieve in Progress Fright no Longer? 62 56 Part11 III HowThanks to Get a Hold? to Seattle? 71 12 The Trajectory of an Apprenticeship 78 13 Fostering New Connections 84 14 Sorry, but We have to 89 15 Reactivating History 95 Part IV Needing People to Think 161 7 IntersticesA Cry 105 1 10 1918 Political Ecosophy Creation 116 122 V vi Contents Z0 Empowerment 21 Reclaim Above all, not to Conclude Notes Index Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank those people who read and criticised the manuscript, especially Didier Gille, Didier Demorcy, Alexandra Minvielle, Daniel de Beer, but also Groupe Culture et Paix, which shot down a first attempt in flames and thus forced us to reflect better on the position that We were intervening from. Thanks also to everyone who participated in a day of critical reading as part of the activities of GECo (Groupe d’études constructivistes) at the Université de Bruxelles and more specifically to Didier Debaise, Jonathan Philippe, Nathalie Trussart and Benedikte Zitouni, who introduced the different parts of the book. During the Writing of this book, we met militants from Attac, the CGT, the CFDT, from Sud, from Act Up and from the organisers of the inter mittents and the précaires, all of whom encouraged us in our effort. Thanks to them. V11 Introduction: Un the Witch’s Broomstick Andrew Gojfey Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell was written by Philippe Pignarre and Isabelle Stengers in 2004, five years after the enormous protests that shook Seattle at the end of November 1999. Since the events of 1999 there have been a series of more or less visible, more or less violently repressed anti-capitalist protests across the world. And since Pignarre and Stengers wrote their book, the collapse of the global financial markets and the increasingly high media profile of climate change have given added piquancy to any reflections about the problem of ’inheriting from Seattle’. Pignarre, a writer, publisher and activist with nearly two decades’ experi ence worl<ing in the pharmaceutical industry, and Stengers, a philosopher and historian of science, writer and activist most well-known, perhaps, for her collaborative work with Ilya Prigogine, might not strike the average political activist as the most likely pair to be Writing about the problem of 'inheriting from Seattle’. However, on closer inspection, the bulk of Pignarre's writing, on psychotherapy and the pharmaceutical industry, the publishing house he set up (Les Empécheurs de penser en rond), and the majority of Stengers’s work display a concern (announced explicitly at the end of her The Invention of Modern Science) for exploring differ ent aspects of the politics of knowledge(s), for generating new ways of bringing 'into politics’ a range of issues that would not normally be considered in these terms. In fact, one of the first publications for Pignarre’s house was a book by Stengers and Olivier Ralet about drugs and drugs policy in Holland that not only challenged prevailing 'psy' dogmas but also became a tool for ‘users’ wanting to meddle with what didn’t concern them! Even the recent essay by Stengers on Alfred North Whitehead (a figure whose philosophy most had probably consigned to the dustbin of intellectual history) displays a concern for ‘the possible' that challenges the modern ’sett1ement', with its putting out of play of the domain of nature as an object of political concern. But if one can thus discern a constant concern with political issues in their work, the reader might nonetheless experience a little perplexity at the authors’ admission that not only were they not present in Seattle, but that the book they have written doesn’t propose a historical account or any other kind of explanation of the event. In fact, it doesn’t even viii Introduction: On the Witch 's Broomstick ix try to offer a theory of anti-capitalist protest, which is what one might generally expect (even demand) from authors of scholarly historical and philosophical texts - especially if they write in French. How Stengers and Pignarre came to be writing about the ‘cry from Seattle’, what they want to say about it and why they happen to be doing so together in terms of the notion of 'capitalist sorcery' are ques tions that are clearly answered in the course of the book, so it would be inappropriate to anticipate that discussion here. However, for the reader who is not familiar with their work - as well as the reader who is only familiar with their work in less obviously political areas - the claim that they make for the existence of a properly capitalist sorcery is one that can be usefully introduced and complemented by a discussion that draws on some of the other issues that this claim touches on. The spe cific problem of capitalist sorcery relates to issues that they tackle in their other writings. This introductory chapter thus seeks to gesture towards some of the crucial debates and discussions out of which the ideas that Capitalist Sorcery develops emerge. How do you continue an event? Capitalist Sorcery is neither an explanatory nor a theoretical text. What it tries to do is to think with the practices of some of the anti-capitalist protesters whose actions at Seattle gave a broader resonance to the cry ‘another world is possible’. Events, whether they are assented to or disparaged from a distance (to say nothing of what happens to the immediate participants), raise the question of the difference that they make. This entails a decision - not necessarily a heroic decision, or one posed in the stark terms of an ultimatum (as when George W. Bush says 'you’re either with us, or against us’) - although there may be times when an event demands this kind of response. Rather, an event poses the question of how it might be linked to and continued:2 is it in the mode of a sneering denunciation, as is seen so frequently in the media after demonstrations against globalisation? ls it in the mode of an activist question of how best to put to work energies that have been mobilised during a demonstration? Less direct ways of situating oneself in relation to it, generating other kinds of connection, are equally possible. One can imagine Seattle generating a psycho-social inquest, for example (why do all these people want to get out on the street and complain about the fruits of global capitalism?), or - more likely - high level boardroom re-visiting of investment strategies. Most frequently, though, one just expects a resigned shrugging of the shoulders: so what! x Introduction: On the Witch 's Broomstick The authors do not have a general solution to this problem, partly because every event, when treated as such, poses a problem. It is the way that it does this, creating the potential for hesitation, that makes it an event. The approach that Pignarre and Stengers adopt here - affirming that, as Europeans with historical connections to a different kind of militancy, there is something to be learned with regard to Seattle demands a curious mixture of very concrete, practical and highly specu lative considerations.

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