Introduction Desire for the Political in the Aft Ermath of the Cold War
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THEME S ECTION Introduction Desire for the political in the aft ermath of the Cold War Dace Dzenovska and Nicholas De Genova Abstract: In this introduction, we refl ect on the proliferation of an amorphous desire for the political in the post–Cold War era. Th e desire for the political, we argue, is shaped by two sets of tensions: the desire to criticize power via forms of action conventionally characterized as “politics,” but without a clear analysis of how power is organized or exercised; and the desire to overcome the present in the name of an alternative (better) future, but without a clear sense of the form that future might take. We start from the vantage points of critical scholarship that distinguishes itself from the mainstream, and people and places that are geopo- litically in Europe, but “not quite” European if viewed in relation to “Europe” as a normative trope. Keywords: anthropology, futurity, politics, postcolonialism, postsocialism, power Since the 2011 uprising in Tunisia, the world expressions of discontent with inequality, pre- has seen the repeated eruption of mass protests carity, corruption, and democratic defi cit. Ac- and social movements. Th ese include the vari- tivists and scholars have observed that these ety of confl icts that came to be labeled the “Arab protests were both locally specifi c and globally Spring,” the anti-austerity protests in Greece oriented, connected by diff use hopes for a global and the struggles of the Indignados Movement insurrection against neoliberal capitalism (e.g., in Spain, Occupy Wall Street and its numerous Graeber 2013; Juris and Rasza 2012; Lorey 2011). off shoots, and the Black Lives Matter movement Moreover, practical and political connections in the United States (with increasing evidence of among these struggles were not only hoped for reverberations in Europe), among many other but also actively pursued and elaborated. For examples, globally. Some of these protests ini- example, activists from Ljubljana traveled to Tu- tially had very specifi c objectives, such as pro- nis and Barcelona to learn from the organizing testing the gentrifi cation of Gezi Park in Istan- experiences of their counterparts, while aft er bul or the increase of bus fares in Brazil, while the overthrow of the Ben Ali dictatorship, nearly others, such as Occupy, were more generalized 30,000 Tunisians migrated to Europe, mainly to Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 80 (2018): 1–15 © Stichting Focaal and Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/fcl.2018.800101 2 | Dace Dzenovska and Nicholas De Genova France by way of Italy, and some squatted in and scholars who have been hopeful that these buildings in Paris with bold proclamations that struggles could off er openings for thinking they had come in a spirit of revolutionary gen- beyond—and potentially overcoming in prac- erosity to assist the anti-austerity struggles in tice—the oppressive present generated by the Europe (Garelli et al. 2013; NKC 2016). hegemony of speculative fi nance capitalism and Most of the participants in this global wave security state formations. Notably, similar sen- of protest were not interested in “politics,” con- timents—though articulated with profoundly ventionally understood, and did not orient their diff erent understandings of the world—seem to struggles primarily to electoral politics, if at all. be present on the right-wing end of the political Th ey rebelled against the institutions of exist- spectrum as well. Here, hope attaches to polit- ing political regimes without proposing clearly ical formations that promise to deliver people articulated alternatives. As Ivan Krastev (2014) from disaff ection and dispossession, but also has noted, the protests were oft en explosions of from the domination of so-called liberal, multi- moral indignation, ends in and of themselves. culturalist, and cosmopolitan elites (De Genova Th is, however, does not mean that the move- 2018). Th ese elites are charged with failing to ments associated with them did not have any recognize the grievances of “the people” regard- goals at all. Occupy, for example, aimed to pre- ing deteriorating living standards, the paucity of fi gure forms of organizing collective together- life prospects, technocracy, and the alienation ness that the movement’s participants wished to wrought by the oblique forces of “globalization.” see in the future, such as horizontal and con- In this regard, it is instructive to recall Wilhelm sensus-based models of decision making (e.g., Reich’s ([1933] 1970) incisive refl ections on the Graeber 2013; Juris and Rasza 2012; Mitchell mass psychology of fascism and the aff ective dy- et al. 2013). While celebrated by many, these namics of its populist appeal among those who forms of togetherness have also been subject to would have conventionally been expected to re- signifi cant critique, pointing to the problem of spond to the appeals of the left . Reich’s poignant multiplicity and diff erence at precisely the point critique of the left ’s failure in the face of fascism of imagined unity and equality (see also Juris turns on precisely his appreciation of “trivial, and Khasnabish 2013). For example, Emahunn banal, primitive, simple everyday life … the Raheem Ali Campbell (2011) has suggested that desires of the broadest masses,” which the left the lack of structure that characterized the Oc- failed to comprehend or take seriously ([1934] cupy movement risked disabling the participa- 1966: 291; emphasis in original; cf. [1933] 1970: tion of Black people with distinct histories of 6–7). struggle and divergent organizational orienta- Th e discontent and deepening misery that tions (see also Rasza and Kumik 2012). Th us, can be found to motivate those on both sides of it might be the very emphasis on unstructured the conventional political spectrum can also be equality, contingency, improvisation, and radi- mobilized by political forces that seem to exceed cal openness within the Occupy movement that or circumvent customary left -right distinctions. both refl ected and constituted cultural homoge- For example, in response to racist oppression neity rather than grappled with diff erence. Hor- and related class-based grievances, some disaf- izontal togetherness risked being complicit with fected second- and third-generation “Muslim” structural racism by way of overlooking the Europeans have turned to Islamism. Plainly, a deeply consequential ways in which it has pro- “radicalized” politics of Muslim identity ap- duced real divisions among the people assem- pears to aff ord one kind of ostensible retort to bled together in the public square as diff erently the hegemonic anti-Muslim racism and gener- racialized subjects. alized suspicion against them that have become However fraught, recent protest movements increasingly prominent fi xtures of European have inspired great enthusiasm among activists sociopolitical life, and that oft en can be as vocif- Desire for the political in the aft ermath of the Cold War | 3 erous on the traditional left as among far-right tionally characterized as “politics,” but without populists (see De Genova 2007a, 2010a). At the a clear analysis of how power is organized or ex- same time, the mere fact that the term “radi- ercised, and consequently without any defi nitive calization” has been so thoroughly repurposed sense of how to eff ectively intervene in the po- to refer virtually exclusively to the amorphous litical fi eld; and second, the desire to overcome spectral menace of “Muslim extremism” re- the present—understood as a condensation of minds us that the viability of radical social and historically specifi c sociopolitical and economic political imaginaries for alternative futures pres- conditions, experienced in expressly temporal ents itself as an urgent contemporary problem. terms—in the name of an alternative (better) Th e precise ways in which forms of neo- future, but without an ideology of future and liberal dispossession and mass discontent get consequently without a clear vision or imagina- articulated through heterogeneous and diver- tion of the form that such a future sociopolitical gent political ideologies across the globe is, and and economic condition might take. should be, of urgent interest to critical scholars. It is useful for the purposes of analysis to In this theme section, we contribute to further- recall one version of the distinction between ing understandings of these contradictory pro- “politics” and “the political” that has become cesses by refl ecting on the proliferation of what quite commonplace across much of contem- we are calling the desire for the political in the porary political theory, and that has been ad- extended post–Cold War era. We are interested opted by scholars and activists alike. In one in the wider social manifestations of this desire, instantiation, Chantal Mouff e, drawing on Carl whether in mass protest movements or every- Schmidt’s elaboration of the concept of the po- day life, as well as in the ways that critical schol- litical, writes: “by political I mean the dimension arship invests hope in these eff orts to negotiate of antagonism which I take to be constitutive of or struggle with questions of an alternative fu- human societies, while by politics I mean a set ture. We seek to refl ect on aff ective attachments of practices and institutions through which an to actors, actions, and imaginaries that seem to order is created, organizing human existence hold the promise of overcoming the oppressive in the context of confl ictuality provided by the present and the dystopian futures inherent in it. political” (2005: 9). In the current historical mo- Ours is a situated engagement from the vantage ment, if we take the political to be that wider point of, fi rst, scholarship that distinguishes it- fi eld of contingency and struggle that exceeds self as a critique of the hegemonic status quo, established regimes of “politics,” the political and second, Europe, or more specifi cally, peo- seems to be more tangible than ever.