Without Content: Rhetoric, American Anarchism, and the End(S) of Radical Politics

Wayne State University Wayne State University Dissertations 1-1-2013 Without Content: Rhetoric, American Anarchism, And The nd(E s) Of Radical Politics Michael John Ristich Wayne State University, Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations Part of the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation Ristich, Michael John, "Without Content: Rhetoric, American Anarchism, And The nd(E s) Of Radical Politics" (2013). Wayne State University Dissertations. Paper 691. This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Wayne State University Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. WITHOUT CONTENT: RHETORIC, AMERICAN ANARCHISM, AND THE END(S) OF RADICAL POLITICS by MICHAEL JOHN RISTICH DISSERTATION Submitted to the Graduate School of Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2013 MAJOR: ENGLISH (Rhetoric and Composition) Approved By: _________________________________________ Advisor Date _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ COPYRIGHT BY MICHAEL JOHN RISTICH 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my best friend, the late Michael Gaddes, who reminds me still today that wit, intelligence, and curiosity are nothing if not tools for increasing joy, fraternity, and optimism. This work is also dedicated to the late Dr. Kathryne V. Lindberg, a radical (pedagogue) whose words have shaped and will continue to shape my work and teaching: “Be well. Do not hesitate to write to me about this right away, and we will hammer something more definitive out. Don't be shy; don't be put off by my direct criticism-- of which more later. Yours, K” ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Although I may be listed as the author of the following pages, I owe many thanks to the many people who contributed to completing this work. Certainly, this dissertation would not have been possible without the advice and guidance of my director, Jeff Pruchnic. His expansive knowledge and sense of humor made writing this project an utterly enjoyable experience from start to finish. Undoubtedly, I am lucky to have had as my committee members Richard Marback, Michael Scrivener, and Stephen Schneider. Their timely, thoughtful, and often provocative commentaries taught me much about politics, rhetoric, and the function of scholarship in general. Whether it was advice on writing, teaching, or the profession as a whole, Ellen Barton, Gwen Gorzelsky, and Ken Jackson all provided useful advice and guidance. To my fellow “Wayne-iacs,” who are too many to mention here, I say “thank you” for the conversations, conference panels, and coffees. I would also like to thank my friend Nolan Bennett, whose seemingly endless knowledge of the American Revolution and American politics informed much of my thinking about chapter one. My family also served an integral role in the completion of the dissertation. My Father provided, as he always has, endless encouragement and support. Likewise, my Mother never ceased reminding me that one’s work should always contribute to making the world more tolerant, prudent, and joyful. Danny and David ensured I never took myself too seriously as I studied, wrote, and revised—just as brothers should. Another family member, my Uncle Al, deserves thanks as well. Lastly, I owe Jessica more than I can describe here. From the endless proofreading, attentive listening, and thoughtful questioning, she kept me focused, grounded, and productive throughout the writing of this dissertation. It turns out that apart from being an all-around iii wonderful human being with whom I am lucky to share my life, she is a top-notch editor. Lastly, since their arrival, our little anarchists Oliver and Damian continually reminded me of the importance of deadlines (whether or not those deadlines were met, however, is another story). iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication __________________________________________________________________ ii Acknowledgements ___________________________________________________________ iii Introduction __________________________________________________________________1 Chapter 1: Thomas Jefferson, Rhetoric, and the (anti-)Foundations of Anarchy ___________ 30 Chapter 2: Imagining Collectivity: Taste, Sympathy, and the “Ends” of Anarchic Rhetoric __ 57 Chapter 3: “Bring[ing] the Universal into Play in a Polemical Way”: Ethos, Aesthetics, and Anarchism in C.L.R. James’ “Fireside Chat” ______________________________________ 89 Chapter 4: What’s Left of the Right and Right with the Left?: Finding the Future of Critical Theory in the End(s) of Radical Politics _______________________________ 114 References _________________________________________________________________151 Abstract ___________________________________________________________________166 Autobiographical Statement ____________________________________________________167 v 1 INTRODUCTION It is often remarked that Anarchism is an impractical theory imported into the United States by a lot of ignorant foreigners. Of course, those who make this statement are as much mistaken as though they made it while conscious of its falsity. The doctrine of personal freedom is an American doctrine, in so far as the attempt to put it into practice is concerned, as Paine, Franklin, Jefferson and others understood it quite well (Joseph Labadie, Anarchism: What It Is and What It Is Not). Anarchy does not mean simply opposed to the archos, or political leader. It means opposed to archē. Now, archē, in the first instance, means beginning, origin. From this it comes to mean a first principle, an element; then first place, supreme power, sovereignty, dominion, command, authority; and finally a sovereignty, an empire, a realm, a magistracy, a governmental office (Benjamin Tucker, “Anarchism and the State” 34). We have no illusions that there are any shortcuts to anarchy. We don’t seek to lead “the” people, but to establish a nation of sovereigns; we don’t seek to be a vanguard of theorists, but to empower a readership of authors; we don’t seek to be the artists of a new avant garde, but to enable an audience of performers—we don’t so much seek to destroy power as to make it freely available in abundance: we want to be masters without slaves. (CrimethInc, Fighting for our Lives: An Anarchist Primer 7). A casual reader of humanities and social sciences scholarship could be forgiven for thinking that critical theory has been either dead or dying for nearly three decades. Concomitant with the budding “big theory” era in American universities, Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels questioned its very foundations in their infamous 1982 article, “Against Theory.” In 1996, Alan Sokal’s famous “hoax” on the venerable critical theory organ Social Text left many opponents of critical theory as a method (and certainly of its popularity in academic research and mass media coverage of the same) gleefully celebrating the “vindication” of their beliefs that the endeavor was intentionally obtuse and, in any case, one conducted with little or no stakes in the “real world” of contemporary political economy. The year 2004 marked the beginning of another pang in the supposed “death of theory,” one seen everywhere from the publication of Terry Eagleton’s After Theory, to the linking of Jacques Derrida’s death to the death of critical theory 2 as a whole in his obituary in the New York Times, to what Jeffrey Nealon calls the “high profile wake” for the enterprise that inadvertently resulted from Critical Inquiry’s roundtable on its future.1 Yet, unlike any of its previous “deaths,” the 2004 postmortem of critical theory did not present the enterprise as corrupt from the start, or one that had been recently outdated, but rather as a victim of its own success. Critical theory, long taken to be, in the works of Max Horkheimer, the “intellectual side of the historical process of proletarian emancipation,” the resistant counterpoint to the dominant forces of oppression, had proven itself to be so effective that its methods had been co-opted by the very institutions of social power that it was once leveraged against (Horkheimer 215). The post-Marxist writers Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, perhaps the most vocal proponents of this conclusion, suggest that from the 1980s onward “the postmodernist and postcolonial theorists who advocate a politics of difference, fluidity, and hybridity in order to challenge the binaries and essentialism of modern sovereignty have been outflanked by the strategies of power” (138). As Negri writes elsewhere, critical theory’s critique of capital and power relations has in many important ways become the very logic of capitalism, thereby crippling critique as a political tool of dominant social and economic systems and concomitantly shifting “any possible critical space towards the outside, to its margins” (“The Italian Difference” 13). Similarly, Bruno Latour has drawn our attention to how critical theory’s focus on the power of discourse and social constructivist epistemology is now being used by those with retrograde political objectives, such as the “dangerous extremists” who oppose the science of climate change and who leverage theories of textual indeterminacy and accusations of ideological bias in order to destroy hard-won evidence that could save our

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