The Organisation of Excess

The Organisation of Excess Movement, Analysis and Alter-globalisation Keir Milburn Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Politics and International Studies August, 2010 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. \ This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. » 11 - Acknowledgements I should like to thank my supervisors Ricardo Blaug and Nick Robinson. I also want to thank Alice and Mae for their patience and support. I should really thank all the many friends and comrades who have helped to develop and sharpen my ideas over the years, but they are to numerous to mention individually. They know who they are. I do, however, have to thank David Harvie and Brian Layng, not just for their unflagging and utterly invaluable help during the writing of this thesis but also for the half a lifetime of friendship in which they have helped the world make sense and made my life that much more of an adventure. - Ill - Abstract This thesis involves a reading of the political problematics of the alter- globalisation movement. The thesis suggests that some of the fundamental problems faced by the alter-globalisation movement can be traced to its emergence in the crucible of intensive moments of political activity, at, for example, anti-summit protests. The expansion of political possibilities experienced during such moments, stands in contrast to the constricted sense of political possibility experienced during more quotidian times. To analyse the relationship between the two sets of political experiences we examine Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of antiproduction, the Body without Organs, and the socius; which we will argue carries the inheritance of Bataille’s concept of nonproductive expenditure. In the light of this theory we conceptualise intensive moments of political activity as moments of excess. We then examine the concept of an analytical war machine as a mode of organisation that can operate across the ruptures and discontinuities produced by moments of excess. The aim is, in part, to provide a mode of analysis that can operate across periods of transformation, even when the very presuppositions of the analysis are themselves subject to change. To do so we develop the concept of an analytical territory and examine the practices of the alter-globalisation movement through Deleuze and Guattari’s territorial concept of the refrain. This thesis, then, provides a novel and innovative reading of the political problematics of the alter-globalisation movement, and fundamentally reconceptualises some familiar repertoires and practices. At the same time, however, the thesis can be read as a novel and innovative interpretation of the political problematics contained in Deleuze and Guattari’s work. - IV Contents Acknowledgements.......................................................................................ii Abstract............................................................. iii Contents........................................................................................................ iv Figures.......................................................................................................... vi Chapter One Introduction.............................................................................1 The Chapters........................................................................................... 6 Chapter Two The Politics of Movement................................................... 10 Introduction............................................................................................ 10 The Model of Political Science.............................................................. 12 The Model of Social Movement Theory................................................22 The Neoliberal Steersman.................................................................... 37 Chapter Three Symptoms of Excess........................................................ 43 Introduction............................................................................................44 Reading Symptomatically......................................................................50 The Non-sense of Social Movement Theory.........................................54 A Clinical Approach...............................................................................59 The Affects of Excess............................................................................64 The Reprise........................................................................................... 76 Chapter Four Moments of Excess............................................................ 88 Introduction............................................................................................ 88 The Judgement of the Solar Anus........................................................ 95 The Body Without Organs...................................................................110 The Moment of Excess........................................................................126 What is to be Done With Moments of Excess?...................................133 Chapter Five A Processual Passion........................................................146 Introduction.......................................................................................... 146 Procedures or Process........................................................................148 The Time of Jefferson’s Liberation..................................................... 155 - V - Kant’s Compromised Event................................................................ 166 The Excess of Value and the Value of Excess.................................. 175 The Passion of the Christ of Philosophers.......................................... 184 Chapter Six How Do You Make Yourself an Analytical War Machine?............................................................................................ 196 Introduction.......................................................................................... 198 A Group Star........................................................................................202 From Transference to Transversality..................................................204 The Theory of Groups in Freud and Sartre.........................................211 From Subjugated Groups to Subject Groups......................................217 Light out for the Territory.................................................................... 225 Territory of the Movement and Movement of the Territory................. 231 Chapter Seven Conclusion.......................................................................245 Bibliography............................................................................................... 249 - VI - Figures Figure 1. Diagram of Easton’s political system......................................19 Figure 2. Diagram of first and second order cybernetics..................... 36 -1 - Chapter One Introduction Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare upon the brains of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionising themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously borrow from them names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in their time-honoured disguise and in this borrowed language (Marx 1968a: 97). This thesis is born, in part, from my own experiences within the alter- globalisation movement.1 In particular, it is born from the episodic 1 This movement has been known by many different names. The name used to refer to it might variously reflect the specific context in which particular areas of the movement developed, or the specific framing that the namer wants to place upon the movement. Perhaps the most widely used name outside the movement, and the least used inside it, is the anti-globalisation movement. This name arose in the context of the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organisation summit in Seattle. As this is commonly seen as the point of emergence of the movement into the public eye it has had widespread and persistent usage. It is unpopular within the movement, however, because it tends to frame the movement as localist, and against increased global ties. Indeed Graeber (2002:63) has called the term “anti-globalisation", “a coinage of the US media". In the UK it has been common to use the term anti-capitalist movement, primarily because the perceived point of emergence of the movement was the Carnival against Capitalism protests in London on 18 June 1999. Within movement circles perhaps the most popular names are: the movement of movements, or the global justice movement. In French speaking countries, however, it is common known as the altermondialiste movement. This has given rise in English to the name, the alter-globalisation movement. We will adopt this name in this thesis because it - 2 - experience of intense moments of collective political activity at, for instance, anti-summit protests. These moments have stood in

Load more