Re: discussing neo-liberalism & utopia

["FRANCO BARCHIESI" <029FRB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 8 April Steve Wright wrote:

> >
> >The problem is, and that is what I would also like to ask to the
> >list: can we intervene on these moments of disarticulation, givig
> >them a coherence through the circulation of struggles of autonomous
> >subjects? What are the methodological tools? How can we conceptualize
> >the importance of the *event* in a non-evolutionistic understanding
> >of subjectivity, but which nonetheless maintains subjectivity as a
> >solid tool of analysis against the ideological articulation
> >globalization/fragmentation? I agree on Massimo's emphasis on the
> >circulation of struggles as a way to recognize the "otherness", and
> >the only way I think the idea of "Globalization" can be fruitfully
> >utilized, and not only moralistically rejected, from a class
> >strategy point of view is in the sense of *globalization (and
> >differentiation) of the battlefields*.
>
> OK, so what is the 'we' here? Self-defined revolutionaries? I'm not being
> sarcastic, just genuinely curious.

Definitely not self-defined revolutionaries. By "we" I simply meant
all the comrades interested in this kind of questions, regardless
the prioritary attached on being affiliated to a particular
organizational strand. I did not mean that there must be some
external "consciousness bearer" acting upon the magmatic chaos of
subjectivity potential in order to articulate it. Quite on the
contrary, I think that the most attractive aspect of research,
inquiry, debate, even of this list, is not to act on grassroots
struggles in an organizational capacity, but to put them in
communication, trying to evidence how a multiplicity of everyday
formal and informal strategies of resistance, apart from raising the
plight for survival and adaptation in sectional struggles, present
common threads in the context of restructuring, neo-liberalism, world-
bankism, flexibilization of capital and technology flows. The fact
that a language to express a new general synthesis from the adoption
of this methodology is mainly a consequence of traditional forms of
labour organization and of their "codes" to raise to the challenge of
globalization, but that does not mean it is not worth trying. My use
of that "we" in
such an all-inclusive way is all the more possible now, in a context
whereby no one can claim the identification of the working class with
its self-defined representatives and their orthodoxies. "We" can mean
inclusion, not separation, only by being part of the same
subjectivity one wants to analyze and circulate,
without any pretension to represent it in a separate political
sphere.

>
> [snip]
>
> >capital). Only by rooting the analysis at the level of subjectivity
> >construction we can liberate the subversive element in thinking about
> >utopia.
>
> This sounds interesting - can you elaborate?
>

Well, the argument was about the subversive nature of utopian
thinking. I was trying to explain how it is satisfactory to simply
reassert the value of utopia as a potential made possible by "what it
is here and now", and for that I was giving some examples to show
how, in a context of progressive closure of the universe of
political discourse under the aegis of neo-liberalism, even the old
Social Democracy can assume an utopian dimension in the above
mentioned sense. What is required is a step further: to locate utopia
not only at the level of general aspirations for a more just and
humane society, but to define it as a *process* rooted in practices
and forms of sociality which make transparent the existence of social
antagonism, regardless to their translation into political programmes
and aspirations. In this sense I think it is worthwhile studying
subjectivity construction. That same subjectivity that the ruling
class needs to harness as never before, which can manifest episodical
and discountinuous trends of resistance, but which, nonetheless,
lacking a general language to express their aspirations, decline all
that in the form of adaptation and survival. The problem is that
we cannot come to that language by simply presupposing the existence
of a "general class", like the mass factory working class. But we
cannot even ignore that the multiplicity of languages spoken in
production and reproduction of society are only expressing consent
for capital, or adaptation to what is compatible for it.

Franco
Franco Barchiesi
Sociology of Work Programme
Dept of Sociology
Private Bag 3
University of the Witwatersrand
PO Wits 2050
Johannesburg
South Africa
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