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June 26, 2004
After dismissing the narrative of the tragic philosophers Hardt & Negri start their narrative by saying what their position is not. They say:
"This is when the ontological drama begins, when the curtain goes up on a scene in which the development of Empire becomes its own critique and its process of construction becomes the process of its overturning. This drama is ontological in the sense that here, in these processes, being is produced and reproduced...but we should insist right from the outset that this is not simply another variant of dialectical Enlightenment. We are not proposing the umpteenth version of the inevitable passage through purgatory (here in the guise of the new imperial machine) in order to offer a glimmer of hope for radiant futures. We are not repeating the schema of an ideal teleology that justifies any passage in the name of a promised end."
Currently it is neo-liberalism that justifies its structural reforms (purgatory) in the name of the promised end of a global market. So did crude forms of Marxism. But that crude teleology is not necessarily the case with a dialectic of Enlightenment, which highlights the hegemony of instrumental reason.
What then is Hardt and Negri's position?
"On the contrary, our reasoning here is based on two methodological approaches that are intended to be nondialectical and absolutely immanent: the first is critical and deconstructive, aiming to subvert the hegemonic languages and social structures and thereby reveal an alternative ontological basis that resides in the creative and productive practices of the multitude; the second is constructive and ethico-political, seeking to lead the processes of the production of subjectivity toward the constitution of an effective social, political alternative, a new constituent power... Our critical approach addresses the need for a real ideological and material deconstruction of the imperial order. "
So Hardt & Negri dump dialectics. Fair enough. They are doing deconstruction.
Can put dialectics to one side then? Not really. Generally those continental philosophers who say they are dumping dialectics are only dumping a particular version of dialectics (eg., the 1930's French understanding of Hegel's dialectics) but they continue to think dialectically not analytically. Derrida is a good example. Deconstruction is a critical reworking of Hegel dialectics that emphasises the middle term (difference).
Hardt & Negri are doing something similar here with their deconstruction of hegemonic languages and social structures, resistance and new forms of subjectivity and political alternatives. Note that they even are willing to talk in terms of contradiction:
"The critical approach is thus intended to bring to light the contradictions, cycles, and crises of the process because in each of these moments the imagined necessity of the historical development can open toward alternative possibilities. In other words, the deconstruction of the historia rerum gestarum, of the spectral reign of globalized capitalism, reveals the possibility of alternative social organizations. This is perhaps as far as we can go with the methodological scaffolding of a critical and materialist deconstructionism-but this is already an enormous contribution."
That is enough for me to interpret it in terms of some dialectical thinking going on in the Empire text.
Let us say there is a dialectical tradition in philosophy with lots of family disagreement about what dialectics is and does. There is no need to go into this since we can stay with deconstruction.
What do Hardt and Negri understand by deconstruction?
From what I can make we have is a mode of thinking that recognizes that the historian is not so much a collector of facts as a collector and relater of signifiers; that is to say, he organizes them with the purpose of establishing positive meaning in the form of a narrative. The background to this is indicated by the gesture to the literary criticism of Auerbach in this post.
This text by Edward Said is helpful, as it spells out the methodological background of this form of literary criticism:
"That is the main methodological point for Vico as well as for Auerbach. In order to be able to understand a humanistic text, one must try to do so as if one is the author of that text, living the author's reality, undergoing the kind of life experiences intrinsic to his or her life, and so forth, all by that combination of erudition and sympathy that is the hallmark of philological hermeneutics. Thus the line between actual events and the modifications of one's own reflective mind is blurred in Vico,.... But this perhaps tragic shortcoming of human knowledge and history is one of the unresolved contradictions pertaining to humanism itself, in which the role of thought in reconstructing the past can neither be excluded nor squared with what is "real."
Said then says:
" The "representation" of reality is taken by Auerbach to mean an active dramatic presentation of how each author actually realizes, brings characters to life, and clarifies his or her own world..... the second half of Mimesis painstakingly traces the growth of historicism, a multiperspectival, dynamic, and holistic way of representing history and reality."
Deconstruction is a multiperspectival, dynamic, and holistic way of representing history and its various interpretations that moves away from Auerbach's emphasis on the author to the interplay of historical meanings within interrelated texts.
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They have two methodological approaches, the first "critical and deconstructive", the second "constructive and ethico-political". Metaphorically, they are proposing to take "Empire" apart, show it "works" and then reassemble a superior alternative. Of course, it is the multitude that will do the reassembling.
Concerning the first, deconstructive, approach:
Its aim is to "subvert the hegemonic languages and social structures". This is pretty straightforward derridean (or received derridean) language. But they quickly leave post-structuralism behind. Their deconstruction is going to "reveal an alternative ontological basis that resides in the creative and productive practices of the multitude".
By deconstructing the myth-making of the capitalist Empire, they will reveal the way in which forms of being are produced and reproduced by the social imagination whose substrate, ultimately, is the multitude. Contemplation of the mechanisms of the production of Empire-being will reveal how the multitude can seize control of the means of imaginative production and thus embark on their own project of ethico-political self-invention.
When they speak of a "real ideological and material deconstruction of the imperial order" they are alluding to such acts as the famed "deconstruction" of a McDonald's restaurant in France by José Bové and company.
Since "all the world's a text", deconstruction becomes a form of political action. This is very much in the tradition of Roland Barthes "Mythologies" (in which he deconstructs cultural icons and institutions like Professional Wrestling and the Abby Pierre). Also, I think in the tradition of the "Imaginary Institution of Society" of Cornelius Castoriadis, the "social imaginaries" of Baczsko, the "spectacle" of Debord, the "Imagined Communities" of Anderson and "production" in Appadurai: all of which are concerned with the imagination production and reproduction of social reality, that is to say, of society itself.
(Hardt and Negri allude specifically to Lenin, Horkheimer and Adorno, and Debord as exponents of such a perspective. H&N say that what these particular thinkers have in common is the analysis of this process of self-legitimating fabrication as being symptomatic of "triumphant capitalism". Not all theorists in this tradition, however, cut the cake quite as neatly as that.)
When they speak of the "deconstruction of the historia rerum gestarum, of the spectral reign of globalized capitalism", it seems that they are not just talking about deconstructing the works of historians, but the deconstruction of the representations that society makes to itself about what is going on and which happens in society, and not just in history books. It isn't just that the historian "organizes signifiers with the purpose of establishing positive meaning in the form of a narrative", but that organizational activity is the primary activity of all members of society and that the signifiers are at once the material and symbolic components of our subjective existence. Thus the act of "deconstructing" a McDonalds is simultaneously material and symbolic because the material is the nexus of the symbolic.
The drama is ontological in the sense that deconstruction (and construction) of symbologies actually unveils the real process of production of social reality. Once having seen into the heart of darkness of this process, we realize that we are free to throw ourselves into the maelstrom of the production and reproduction of being: that is to say enter into our revolutionary consciousness and begin to invent our own itineraries. It is perhaps a kind of Hegelian final post-dialectical moment of utter comprehension of our self-creation and hence radical liberty.
Am I just projecting an "epiphanological" passion play onto Hardt and Negri's "two methodological approaches"? Gary - your failing to "get" what I assumed was obviously going on gives me pause. Looking back on the text, I see scant evidence of any necessity of an Aha! moment on the part of either the reader or the multitude. Why did I assume that some semi-mystical "consciousness raising" was required? Was I tripped up by my own peculiar religious resonances with the term "immanent"? Did I run afoul of my own - again peculiar - brand of zen deconstruction? Is this a Paul de Man moment? Was it really all blindness and no insight? I'm not saying it wasn't.
But consider the following:
"the first [approach] is critical and deconstructive, aiming to subvert the hegemonic languages and social structures and thereby reveal an alternative ontological basis that resides in the creative and productive practices of the multitude;"
It this isn't "just words" then this is a very big deal indeed. I assume that the nature of this "alternate ontological basis isn't trivially obvious or they wouldn't be making such a big stink about it. This suggests that it is not just an alternate one in the sense that it is an "ontological basis" that we are familiar with in other contexts - or they would simply name it and end the mystification. How many different "alternate ontological bases" are there anyway? It seemed to me they were discussing the discovery of a whole new mode of being. Wouldn't encountering a new mode of being take your breath away? This is presumably not the sort of realization that gradually creeps over you unremarked. Surely there must be a moment in which the alternity of the onotological basis presents itself phenomonologically in all its stunning alternitude?
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific - and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Or is this something I am just not getting on account of not being a philosopher?