Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation

Žižek prescribes for this confrontation may be useful and worth- while, as it allows us to respond to anti-Semitism, for example, by saying that ‘‘the anti-Semitic idea of Jew has nothing to do with Jews; the ideological figure of a Jew is a way to stitch up thein- consistency of our own ideological system’’; at the same time, it Anarchism and the Crisis of seems to preclude the efficacy of any reference to the way Jewsre- Representation ally are, or the way the economy really is, or the real state of the ecosystem.53 Hermeneutics, Aesthetics, Politics Perhaps it is possible to say that the second Bush administration’s serene will to increase arsenic levels in drinking water has nothing to do with the effect of this chemical on human bodies, Jesse Cohn but is merely a way of making laissez-faire ideology secure; how- ever, if there is no effective appeal to facts (the ‘‘real’’ with a lower- case ‘‘r’’), then it is useless for me to point to objective studies of the toxic hazards posed by arsenic, or even to point to the com- plicity of the administration with corporate polluters. Thus, Žižek castigates as naïve Noam Chomsky’s supposed belief ‘‘that all we need to know are the facts’’: ‘‘I don’t think that merely ‘knowing the facts’ can really change people’s perceptions.’’54 A scientific ac- count of the effects of arsenic on human bodies, for Žižek, could not constitute an effective counter to Bush’s ideological narrative, for ideologies can incorporate any mere facts. In so arguing, Žižek seems to privilege his own theoretically in- formed analyses over ‘‘undertheorized’’ references to matters of fact. This leaves Žižekian ideology-critique open to a question: how can we know when the analyst has reached the kernel of the Real within the ideological dream? In other words, how is it possible to differentiate clearly between the sort of analysis that really does point to the ideological function of some discourse and the kind 53 Ibid., 48-49. 54 Žižek, ‘‘I Am a Fighting Atheist: Inteview With Slavoj Žižek,’’ Bad Sub- jects, no. 59 (February 2002), http://eserver.org/bs/59/zizek.html (accessed 14 July 2006 2003). 76 to deconstruction, and generously acknowledging literature’s transformative ‘‘Utopian functions’’ as well as its recuperative ‘‘ideological’’ content, Jameson nevertheless returns to what Craig Owens refers to as ‘‘the Marxist master narrative’’—in Jameson’s words, ‘‘the collective struggle to wrest a realm of Freedom from a realm of Necessity’’—which Owens regards as ‘‘only one version among many of the modern narrative of mastery,’’ culminating in ‘‘mankind’s progressive exploitation of the Earth.’’ For antirep- resentationalists like Owens, Jameson’s calls for a ‘‘reconquest of certain forms of representation’’ signify nothing less than an attempt at ‘‘the rehabilitation of the entire social project of modernity itself,’’ a cowardly retreat from postmodern critique.51 Even more boldly, Slavoj Žižek has sought to defend and renew the notion of ‘‘ideology’’ as false consciousness, this time by reference to Lacan’s antirealist conception of ‘‘the Real’’ as ‘‘a hard kernel, a leftover which persists and cannot be reduced to auni- versal play of illusory meaning’’: ‘‘The difference between Lacan and ‘naïve realism’ is that for Lacan, the only point at which we approach this hard kernel of the Real is indeed the dream.’’52 In effect, Žižek tries to have it both ways: to be an antirepresentation- alist (i.e., antirealist, antiessentialist) and a representationalist at the same time. This does not seem a happy proposition. Excised from Žižek’s system is any possibility of an appeal to ‘‘reality as it is’’ or the ‘‘objective’’ for an alternative to ideological subjectivity: no objective experience can offer any ‘‘irreducible resistance to the ideological construction.’’ Instead, ‘‘the only way to break the power of our ideological dream is to confront the Real of our desire which announces itself in this dream.’’ The sort of ideology critique that 51 Jameson, Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 10-11, 17, 19, 299; Craig Owens, ‘‘The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism,’’ in The Anti-Aesthetic: Es- says on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 1983), 66. 52 Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, 47. 75 becoming indistinguishable from the movies’’), paving the way for the postmodern assertion that ‘‘real life’’ is itself a movie.48 After a certain point, Marxism found itself with only twoop- tions left. It could embrace its own dissolution in the Baudrillar- dian ‘‘liquidation of all referentials,’’ the death of any notion of Contents a material reality apart from ideology, and therefore also of the notion of a ‘‘false consciousness’’ that it could edify;49 otherwise, Marxism would have to somehow insist on its right to correct the Acknowledgments 7 false consciousness, re-erecting the old representationalist distinc- tions between true and false that now elicit incredulity. The first Introduction: The General Form of the Crisis of Repre- route, of course, is the one taken by Jean Baudrillard, for whom sentation 8 depth simply is surface and the representationalist pretense of a Gramsci merely the same old pedantry. Here, as Steven Best writes, Part I: Hermeneutics 20 the ‘‘inversion of illusion and reality’’ theorized by the classic con- cept of ideology is ‘‘radicalized, finalized, pushed to its highest de- 1. False solutions 21 gree’’ as ‘‘simulation devours the real—the representational structure and the space it depends on—and, like a grinning Cheshire cat, 2. The Necessity of a Critique of Representation 53 leaves behind nothing but commutating signs, self-referring simu- LABELING REPRESENTATION . 55 lacra which feign a relation to an obsolete real.’’50 PATRONIZING REPRESENTATION . 58 Taking the other fork in the road, Frederic Jameson attempts to IDENTIFYING REPRESENTATION . 59 get away from the ‘‘representational narrative’’ of conventional FOCALIZING REPRESENTATION . 60 historiography while privileging his own preferred brand of ONTOLOGICAL JUSTIFICATIONS FOR REPRESENTA- historicism, for which ‘‘interpretation . consists in rewriting TIONAL PRACTICES . 62 a given text in terms of a particular interpretive master code’’ Representationalism as Naturalism . 62 that demands to be recognized ‘‘as the absolute horizon of all Representationalism as Naïve Realism . 63 reading and all interpretation.’’ For all his exaggerated attempts Representationalism as Reductivism . 64 at flexibility and all-inclusiveness, incorporating and assimilating Representationalism as Transcendentalism . 66 seemingly every methodological trend from archetypal criticism ANTIESSENTIALIST CRITIQUES OF REPRESENTA- TIONALISM ...................... 67 48 Ibid., 126; Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, trans. Sheila Faria THE ETHICAL CONTENT OF ANTIREPRESENTA- Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 1. TIONALISM ...................... 70 49 Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 2. 50 Steven Best, ‘‘The Commodification of Reality and the Reality of Commod- MARXISM AND ANTIREPRESENTATIONALISM . 73 ification: Jean Baudrillard and Postmodernism,’’ in Baudrillard: A Critical Reader, ed. Douglas Kellner (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 53. 74 3 3. Anarchism as a Critique of Representation 79 wise, they are simply confirmed by the everyday experience that ANARCHISM AS SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORY . 81 they structure in advance. ANARCHISM BEYOND NAÏVE REALISM . 87 To summarize: ANARCHIST ANTI-REDUCTIVISM . 96 1. Representational practices impose an appearance of sameness ANARCHISM AND POWER . 99 on the infinity of differences, giving rise to ANARCHIST IMMANENCE . 110 2. the processes whereby diffuse social power is consolidated ANARCHISM BEYOND RELATIVISM . 116 into its macroscopic institutional forms, producing 3. the phenomena of authority and hierarchy, which 4. Anarchism Beyond Representationalism and An- 4. blanket the visible universe with representations of sameness, tirepresentationalism 121 which BEYOND REPRESENTATIONALISM AND ANTIREPRE- 5. underwrite the hypostasization of this representable sameness SENTATIONALISM . 121 into the nature of things in themselves, which ANARCHIST THEORIES OF MEANING: MULTIPLIC- 6. reinforces the representationalist assumptions which ITY AND CREATIVITY . 123 7. justify the dominant representational practices. ANARCHIST INTERPRETATION AS NON-VANGUARDIST This is the self-confirming cycle through which the social order PRACTICE . 146 is reproduced. 5. Anarchist Hermeneutics as Ethics and Ecology 152 ONTOLOGY AND METHODOLOGY . 152 MARXISM AND RHETORICAL METHODOLOGIES . 154 ANTIREPRESENTATIONALISM STRUCTURAL METHODOLOGIES . 157 CONTEXTUAL METHODOLOGIES . 161 Contemporary post-structuralism thus comes to conclusions FUNCTIONAL METHODOLOGIES . 164 that look rather similar on a practical level to those reached by METHODOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS . 166 the Frankfurt School, which ultimately inverted the Hegelian TOWARD ECOLOGICAL READING . 166 dialectic in favor of nonidentity, extending a negation of the CONCLUSION: FROM ANARCHIST READING TO AN- principle of exchange-value—‘‘the levelling principle of abstrac- ARCHIST WRITING . 174 tion’’ for which ‘‘what was different is equalized’’—into a nearly total abandonment of the universalism on which Marxism once depended, now seen as ‘‘totalitarian.’’47 At the same time, their Part II: Aesthetics 176 history of the triumph of exchange-value

Load more