Changes

The anxious expectation that [[nothing ]] will happen, that [[capitalism]] will go on indefinitely, the desperate [[demand]] to do something, to revolutionize capitalism, is a fake. The will to revolutionary [[change]] emerges as an urge, as an "[[I cannot do it otherwise]]," or it is worthless. With [[regard ]] to [[Bernard Williams]]'s [[distinction ]] between Ought and Must, an authentic [[revolution]] is by definition performed as a Must - it is not something we "ought to do" as an [[ideal ]] we are striving for, but something we cannot but to, since we cannot do it otherwise. Which is why today's worry of the [[Left]]ists that revolution will not occur, that [[global ]] capitalism will just go on indefinitely, is [[false ]] insofar as it turns revolution into a [[moral obligation]], into something we ought to do while we fight the inertia of the [[capitalist ]] [[present]].

However, the ultimate argument against "big" [[political ]] [[intervention]]s which aim at a global transformation is, of course, the terrifying [[experience ]] of the catastrophes of the XXth century, catastrophes which unleashed unheard-of modes of [[violence]]. There are [[three ]] main versions of theorizing these catastrophes: (1) the one epitomized by the name of [[Habermas]]: [[Enlightenment]] is in itself a positive emancipatory [[process ]] with no inherent "[[totalitarian]]" potentials, these catastrophies are merely an indicator that it remained an unfinished [[project]], so our task should be to bring this project to completion; (2) the one associated with [[Adorno]]'s and [[Horkheimer]]'s "[[dialectic of Enlightenment]]," as well as, today, with [[Agamben]]: the "[[totalitarianism|totalitarian]]" potentials of the [[Enlightenment]] are inherent and crucial, the "[[administered world]]" is the [[truth ]] of Enlightenment, the XXth century [[concentration camp]]s and [[genocide]]s are a kind of [[negation|negative]]-[[teleology|teleological]] endpoint of the entire [[history]] of the West; (3) the [[third ]] one, developed, among [[others]], in the works of [[Etienne Balibar]]: [[modernity]] opens up a field of new [[freedom]]s, but at the same [[time ]] of new dangers, and there is no ultimate [[teleology|teleological]] [[guarantee]] of the outcome, the battle is open, undecided.

The starting point of Balibar's remarkable entry on "[[Violence]]"<ref>Etienne Balibar, "Gewalt," in <i>Historisch-Kritisches Wüsrterbuch des Marxismus</i>, forthcoming </ref> is the insufficiency of the standard [[Hegel]]ian-[[Marx]]ist [[notion ]] of "converting" violence into an [[instrument]] of [[historical Reason]], a force which begets a new [[social ]] [[formation]]: the "[[irrationality|irrational]]" brutality of violence is thus <i>[[aufgehoben]]</i>, "[[sublimation|sublated]]" in the strict [[Hegelian ]] [[sense]], reduced to a particular stain that contributes to the overall [[harmony]] of the historical [[progress]]. The XXth century confronted us with catastrophies, some of [[them ]] directed against [[:Category:Marxist theory|Marxist]] political forces and some of them generated by the [[Marxist ]] political engagement itself, which cannot be "rationalized" in this way: their instrumentalization into the tools of the [[Cunning of Reason]] is not only ethically inacceptable, but also theoretically wrong, [[ideological ]] in the strongest sense of the term. In his close [[reading ]] of Marx, Balibar nonetheless discerns in his [[texts ]] an oscillation between this teleological "conversion"-[[theory ]] of violence and a much more interesting <b>notion of history as an open-undecided process of antagonistic struggles whose final "positive" outcome is not guaranteed by any encompassing [[historical Necessity]]</b> (the [[future ]] society will be [[communism]] or barbarism, etc.).

Balibar thinks that, for necessary [[structural ]] reasons, [[Marxism]] is unable to [[think ]] the [[excess ]] of violence that cannot be integrated into the [[narrative]] of [[historical Progress]] - more specifically, that it cannot provide an adequate theory of [[Fascism]] and [[Stalinism]] and their "extreme" outcomes, [[shoah]] and [[gulag]]. Our task is therefore [[double]]: to deploy a theory of historical violence as something which cannot be mastered/instrumentalized by any [[political agent]], which threatens to engulf this [[agent]] itself into a [[self]]-destructive [[vicious cycle]], and - the [[other ]] side of the same task - to pose the question "civilizing" [[revolution]], of how to make the revolutionary process itself a "civilizing" force. [[Recall ]] the infamous [[St Bartholomew's Day Massacre]] - what went wrong there? [[Catherine de Medici]]'s [[goal ]] was limited and precise: hers was a [[Macchiavelli]]an plot to have [[Admiral de Coligny]], a powerful [[Protestantism|Protestism]] pushing for [[war]] with [[Spain]] in the [[Netherlands]], assassinated, and let the blame fall on the Guise family, the over-mighty [[Catholicism|Catholic]] [[family]]. In this way, Catherine hoped that the final outcome will be the fall of both houses that posed a menace to the [[unity ]] of the [[French ]] [[state]]. But this ingenious plan to play off her enemies against each other degenerated into an uncontrolled [[frenzy ]] of blood: in her ruthless [[pragmatism]], Catherine was blind for the [[passion ]] with which men clung to their beliefs.

[[Hannah Arendt]]'s insights are also crucial here: she emphasized the distinction between political [[power]] and the mere exercise of (social) violence: organizations run by direct non-political [[authority]] - by an [[order ]] of command that is not politically grounded authority ([[Army]], [[Church]], [[school]]) - [[represent ]] examples of [[violence]] ([[Gewalt]]), not of political Power in the strict sense of the term. Here, however, it would be productive to introduce the distinction between the [[public]] [[symbolic]] [[Law]] and its [[obscene supplement]]: the notion of the [[obscene]] [[superego]] double-[[supplement ]] of [[Power]] implies that there is no Power without violence. Power always has to rely on an obscene [[stain]] of violence, political [[space ]] is never "pure" but always involves some kind of reliance on "[[pre-political]]" violence. Of course, the [[relationship ]] between political power and pre-political violence is one of mutual implication: not only is violence the necessary supplement of power, (political) power itself is always-already at the roots of every apparently "non-political" relationship of violence. The accepted violence and direct relationship of subordination in the Army, Church, family and other "non-political" social forms is in itself the "[[reification]]" of a certain ethico-political [[struggle ]] and decision - what a [[critical analysis]] should do is to discern the hidden political process that sustains all these "non-" or "pre-political" relationships. In [[human]] [[society]], the political is the encompassing [[structuring ]] [[principle]], so that every neutralization of some [[partial ]] [[content ]] as "non-political" is a political gesture par excellence.

This acceptance of violence, this "[[political suspension of the ethical]]," is the [[limit ]] of that which even the most "tolerant" [[liberal ]] stance is unable to trespass - [[witness ]] the uneasiness of "radical" [[post-colonialism|post-colonialist]] Afro-American studies apropos of [[Frantz Fanon]]'s fundamental insight into the unavoidability of violence in the process of effective [[decolonization]]. One should recall here [[Fredric Jameson]]'s [[idea ]] that violence plays in a revolutionary process the same [[role ]] as worldly wealth in the [[Calvinism|Calvinist]] [[logic ]] of [[predestination]]: although it has no intrinsic [[value]], it is a [[sign ]] of the authenticity of the revolutionary process, of the fact that this process is effectively disturbing the existing power relations. In other [[words]], the [[dream ]] of the revolution without violence is precisely the dream of a "[[revolution without revolution]]"([[Robespierre]]). On the other hand, the role of the [[Fascism|Fascist]] [[spectacle]] of violence is exactly opposite: it is a violence whose aim is to PREVENT the [[true ]] change - something spectacular should happen all the time so that, precisely, nothing would really happen.

But, again, the ultimate argument against this perspective is the simple [[encounter ]] of excessive [[suffering ]] generated by political violence. Sometimes, one cannot but be shocked by the excessive indifference towards suffering, even and especially when this suffering is widely reported in the [[media ]] and condemned, as if it is the very outrage at suffering which turns us into its immobilized fascinated spectators. Recall, in the early 1990s, the three-years-long siege of Sarajevo, with the population starving, exposed to permanent shelling and snipers' fire. The big enigma here is: although all the media were [[full ]] of pictures and reports, why did not the UN forces, [[NATO]] or the US accomplish just a small act of breaking the siege of Sarajevo, of imposing a corridor through which [[people ]] and provisions could circulate freely? It would have cost nothing: with a little bit of serious pressure on the Serb forces, the prolonged spectacle of encircled Sarajevo exposed to ridiculous [[terror ]] would have been over. There is only one answer to this enigma, the one proposed by Rony Brauman himself who, on behalf of the Red Cross, coordinated the [[help ]] to Sarajevo: the very presentation of the crisis of Sarajevo as "[[humanitarianism|humanitarian]]," the very recasting of the political-military [[conflict ]] into the humanitarian [[terms]], was sustained by an eminently political [[choice]], that of, basically, taking the Serb side in the conflict. Especially ominous and manipulative was here the role of [[Mitterand]].

The celebration of '[[humanitarian intervention]]' in [[Yugoslavia]] took the [[place ]] of a political [[discourse]], disqualifying in advance all conflicting debate. /.../ It was apparently not possible, for [[Francois Mitterand]], to express his [[analysis ]] of the war in Yugoslavia. With the strictly humanitarian response, he discovered an unexpected source of [[communication ]] or, more precisely, of cosmetics, which is a little bit the same [[thing]]. /.../ Mitterand remained in favor of the maintenance of Yugoslavia within its borders and was persuaded that only a strong Serbian power was in the [[position ]] to guarantee a certain [[stability ]] in this explosive region. This position rapidly became unacceptable in the eyes of the French people. All the bustling activity and the humanitarian discourse permitted him to reaffirm the unfailing commitment of [[France ]] to the [[Rights of Man]] in the end, and to mimic an opposition to Greater Serbian fascism, all in giving it free rein. <ref> Rony Bauman, "From Philantropy to Humanitarianism," in <i>South Atlantic Quaterly</i> 2/3, Spring 2004</ref>

From this specific insight, one should make the move to the general level and render problematic the very depoliticized humanitarian [[politics ]] of "[[Human Rights]]" as the [[ideology]] of military interventionism serving specific economico-political purposes. As [[Wendy Brown]] develops apropos [[Michael Ignatieff]], such [[humanitarianism]] "presents itself as something of an antipolitics - a pure [[defense ]] of the innocent and the powerless against power, a pure defense of the [[individual ]] against immense and potentially cruel or despotic machineries of [[culture]], state, war, ethnic conflict, tribalism, [[patriarchy]], and other mobilizations or instantiations of collective power against individuals."<ref>Wendy Brown, "Human Rights as the Politics Of. Fatalism," in <i>South Atlantic Quaterly</i> 2/3, Spring 2004.</ref> However, the question is: "what kind of [[politicization ]] /those who intervene on behalf of human rights/ set in motion against the powers they oppose. Do they stand for a different formulation of justice or do they stand in opposition to collective justice projects?" <ref>Ibid</ref> Say, it is clear that the US overthrowing of [[Saddam Hussein]], legitimized in the terms of ending the suffering of the Iraqi people, not only was motivated by other politico-[[economic ]] interests (oil), but also relied on a determinate idea of the political and economic [[conditions ]] that should open up the perspective of freedom to the Iraqi people ([[Western liberal democracy]], guarantee of [[private property]], the inclusion into the [[global market economy]], etc.). The purely humanitarian anti-political politics of merely preventing suffering thus effectively amounts to the implicit [[prohibition ]] of elaborating a positive collective project of socio-political transformation.

And, at an even more general level, one should problematize the very opposition between the universal (pre-political) [[Human Rights]] which belong to every human [[being ]] "as such," and specific political rights of a [[citizen]], member of a particular political [[community]]; in this sense, [[Balibar]] argues for the "[[reversal ]] of the historical and [[theoretical ]] relationship between 'man' and 'citizen'" which proceeds by "explaining how man is made by citizenship and not citizenship by man."<ref>Etienne Balibar, "Is a [[Philosophy ]] Of. Human Rights Possible," in <i>South Atlantic Quaterly</i> 2/3, Spring 2004</ref> Balibar refers here to [[Hannah Arendt]]'s insight apropos he XXth century phenomenon of refugees:

<blockquote>The conception of human rights based upon the assumed [[existence ]] of a human being as such, broke down at the very [[moment ]] when those who professed to believe in it were for the [[first time ]] confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships - except that they were still human.<ref>Hannah [[Arendt]], <i>i.e. Origins Of. Totalitarianism</i>, New York: Meridian, 1958.</ref></blockquote>

This line, of course, leads straight to [[Agamben]]'s notion of [[homo sacer]] as a human being reduced to "[[bare life]]": in a properly Hegelian paradoxical [[dialectic]]s of [[universal]] and [[particular]], it is precisely when a human being is deprived of his particular socio-political [[identity]] which accounts for his determinate citizenship, that he, in one and the same move, is no longer recognized and/or treated as human. In short, the [[paradox ]] is that one is deprived of [[human rights]] precisely when one is effectively, in one's social [[reality]], reduced to a human being "in general," without [[citizenship]], profession, etc., that is to say, precisely when one effectively becomes the ideal BEARER of "universal human rights" (which belong to me "independently of" my [[profession]], [[sex]], [[citizenship]], [[religion]], [[ethnic identity]]...).

We thus arrived at a standard "[[postmodern]]," "[[anti-essentialist]]" position, a kind of political version of [[Foucault]]'s notion of sex as generated by a [[multitude ]] of the practices of [[sexuality]]: "man," the bearer of Human Rights, is generated by a set of political practices which materialize [[citizenship]] - is, however, this enough? [[Jacques Ranciere]]<ref> Jacques Rancière, "Who is the [[Subject ]] of Human Rights," in <i>South Atlantic Quaterly</i> 2/3, Spring 2004</ref> proposed a very elegant and precise solution of the [[antinomy ]] between Human Rights (belonging to "man as such") and the politicization of citizens: while Human Rights cannot be posited as an unhistorical "essentialist" Beyond with regard to the [[contingent ]] sphere of political struggles, as universal "[[natural ]] rights of man" exempted from history, they also should not be dismissed as a reified [[fetish ]] which is a product of [[concrete ]] historical [[processes ]] of the politicization of citizens. The gap between the [[universality ]] of Human Rights and the political rights of citizens is thus not a gap between the universality of man and a specific political sphere; it, rather, "separates the [[whole ]] of the community from itself," as [[Ranciere ]] put it in a precise Hegelian way.<ref>Ibid.</ref> Far from being pre-political, "universal Human Rights" designate the precise space of politicization proper: what they amount to is the [[right ]] to universality as such, the right of a political agent to assert its radical non-coincidence with itself (in its particular identity), i.e., to posit itself - precisely insofar as it is the "[[surnumerary]]" one, the "[[part with no part]]," the one without a [[proper place ]] in the [[social edifice ]] - as an agent of universality of the Social as such. The paradox is thus a very precise one, and symmetrical to the paradox of universal human rights as the rights of those reduced to inhumanity: at the very moment when we try to conceive political rights of citizens without the reference to universal "[[meta-politics|meta-political]]" Human Rights, we lose politics itself, i.e., we reduce politics to a "post-political" play of negotiation of particular interests. - What, then, happens to Human Rights when they are reduced to the rights of homo sacer, of those excluded from the political community, reduced to "bare [[life]]" - i.e., when they become of no use, since they are the rights of those who, precisely, have no rights, are treated as inhuman? Ranciere proposes here an extremely salient [[dialectical ]] reversal /.../ when they are of no use, you do the same as charitable persons do with their old clothes. You give them to the poor. Those rights that appear to be useless in their place are sent abroad, along with [[medicine ]] and clothes, to people deprived of medicine, clothes, and rights. It is in this way, as the result of this process, that the Rights of Man become the rights of those who have no rights, the rights of bare human beings subjected to inhuman [[repression ]] and inhuman conditions of existence. They become humanitarian rights, the rights of those who cannot enact them, the victims of the absolute [[denial ]] of right. For all this, they are not [[void]]. Political names and political places never become merely void. The void is filled by somebody or something else. /.../ if those who suffer inhuman repression are unable to enact Human Rights that are their last recourse, then somebody else has to inherit their rights in order to enact them in their place. This is what is called the "right to humanitarian interference" - a right that some nations assume to the supposed benefit of victimized populations, and very often against the advice of the humanitarian organizations themselves. The "right to humanitarian interference" might be described as a sort of "[[return ]] to sender": the disused rights that had been send to the rightless are sent back to the senders. <ref>Ibid.</ref>

So, to put it in the [[Lenin]]ist way: what today, in the predominant Western discourse, the "Human Rights of the Third [[World ]] suffering victims" effectively mean is the right of the Western powers themselves to intervene - politically, economically, culturally, militarily - in the Third World countries of their choice on behalf of the defense of Human Rights. The reference to [[Lacan]]'s [[formula ]] of communication (in which the sender gets back from the receiver-addressee his own [[message ]] in its inverted, i.e. true, [[form]]) is here up to the point: in the reigning discourse of humanitarian interventionism, the developed West is effectively getting back from the victimized Third World its own message in its true form. And the moment Human Rights are thus depoliticized, the discourse dealing with them has to change to [[ethics]]: reference to the pre-political opposition of [[Good ]] and [[Evil ]] has to be mobilized. Today's "new reign of Ethics," <ref>Ibid.</ref> clearly discernible in, say, Michael Ignatieff's [[work]], thus relies on a violent gesture of depoliticization, of denying to the victimized other political [[subjectivization]]. And, as Ranciere pointed out, liberal humanitarianism a la Ignatieff unexpectedly meets the "radical" position of Foucault or Agamben with regard to this depoliticization: the [[Foucault|Foucauldian]]-[[Agamben]]ian notion of "[[biopolitics]]" as the culmination of the entire Western [[thought ]] ends up getting caught in a kind of "[[ontological ]] trap" in which concentration camps appear as a kind of "ontological destiny: each of us would be in the [[situation ]] of the refugee in a camp. Any [[difference ]] grows faint between [[democracy]] and [[totalitarianism]] and any political [[practice ]] proves to be already ensnared in the biopolitical trap."<ref>Ibid.</ref>

When, in a shift from Foucault, Agamben [[identifies ]] [[sovereignty|sovereign]] [[power]] and [[biopolitics]] (in today's generalized state of exception, the two overlap), he thus precludes the very possibility of the emergence of [[political subjectivity]]. - However, the rise of political [[subjectivity ]] takes place against the background of a certain limit of the "inhuman," so that one should continue to endorse the paradox of the inhumanity of human being deprived of [[citizenship]], and posit the "inhuman" pure man as a necessary excess of humanity over itself, its "indivisible [[remainder]]," a kind of Kantian limit-[[concept ]] of the phenomenal notion of humanity? So that, in exactly the same way in [[Kant]]'s philosophy the [[sublime]] [[Noumenal]], when we come too close to it, appears as pure [[horror]], man "as such," deprived of all phenomenal qualifications, appears as an inhuman monster, something like [[Kafka]]'s odradek. The problem with human rights [[humanism]] is that it covers up this monstrosity of the "[[human as such]]," presenting it as a sublime human [[essence]].

What, then, is the way out of this deadlock? [[Balibar]] ends with an ambiguous reference to [[Mahatma Gandhi]]. It is true that Gandhi's formula "[[Be yourself the change you would like to see in the world]]" encapsulates perfectly the basic attitude of emancipatory change: do not wait for the "[[objective process]]" to generate the expected/desired change, since if you just wait for it, it will never come; instead, throw YOURSELF into it, BE this change, take upon yourself the risk of enacting it directly. However, is not the ultimate limitation of Gandhi's strategy that it only works against a [[liberal-democracy|liberal-democratic regime]] which refers to certain minimal ethico-political standards, i.e., in which, to put it in pathetic terms, those in power still "have [[conscience]]." Recall Gandhi's reply, in the late 1930s, to the question of what should the [[Jews]] in [[Germany]] do against [[Hitler]]: they should commit a collective [[suicide]] and thus arouse the conscience of the world... One can easily imagine what the [[Nazi]] reaction to it would have been: OK, we will help you, where do you [[want ]] the poison to be delivered to you?

There is, however, [[another ]] way in which Balibar's plea for renouncing violence can be given a specific twist - that of what one is tempted to call the [[Bartleby]]-politics. Recall the two symmetrically opposed modes of the "[[living dead]]," of finding oneself in the [[uncanny]] place "[[between the two deaths]]": one is either [[biologically ]] [[dead ]] while [[symbolically ]] alive (surviving one's [[biology|biological]] [[death]] as a [[spectral]] apparition or [[symbolic]] [[authority]] of the [[Name]]), or symbolically dead while biologically alive (those excluded from the [[socio-symbolic order]], from [[Antigone]] to today's ''[[homo sacer]]''). And what if we apply the same logic to the opposition of violence and [[non-violence]], [[identifying ]] two modes of their intersection? We all [[know ]] the pop-[[psychological ]] notion of the "[[passive aggressivity|passive-aggressive behavior]]," usually applied to a housewife who, instead of actively opposing her husband, passively sabotages him. And this brings us back to our beginning: perhaps, one should assert this attitude of [[passive aggressivity]] as a proper radical political gesture, in contrast to [[aggressive ]] passivity, the standard "[[interpassivity|interpassive]]" mode of our [[participation ]] in socio-ideological life in which we are [[active ]] all the time in order to make it sure that nothing will happen, that nothing will really change . In such a constellation, the first truly critical ("aggressive," violent) step is to WITHDRAW into [[passivity]], to refuse to participate - [[Bartleby]]'s "[[I would prefer not to]]" is the necessary first step which as it were clears the ground for a true [[activity]], for an act that will effectively change the coordinates of the constellation.<ref>Rony Bauman, "From Philantropy to Humanitarianism," in <i>South Atlantic Quaterly</i> 2/3, Spring 2004.</ref>

* [[The Obscenity of Human Rights: Violence as Symptom]]. ''[[Lacan.com]]''. November 25, 2005. <http://www.lacan.com/zizviol.htm>.