Re: AUT: Linebaugh and Rediker, _The Many-Headed Hydra_

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Good day to you too, Rob!

Thanks for the comments.  I agree with the bent of what you are saying, and
since I made brief comments, let me just add that we don't have any easy way
to separate the binary opposition of exploiter/exploited from the fragmented
relations that appear as race, gender, sexuality, etc..., either in analysis
or in practice.  As such, I don't think we can separate every struggle out
neatly and just say "Hey, everyone has their own struggle."  That would be
exactly the mistake of Foucault.  Rather, we have to see how all the
struggles interpenetrate.  Each racialized group has its own conflicts of
class, gender, sexuality, etc.  There is no way to discuss politics in the
African American without confronting the problem of the "Black bourgeoisie"
and the class fracturing of that community.  But that could be said for all
of these different oppressions.  rather, I suggest we try to engage them at
all levels at once, in way that recognizes the complexity of these problems
and does not add Leftist fetishism to all the rest.  Obviously, any specific
fetishized relation may weigh heavier at any given moment, but that is a
political problem we can only deal with if we start from the idea that this
world has both the binary opposition of class created by the separation of
doing from doer and a multiplicity of other power relationships which arise
from that polarity without being reducible to it.  That is the really
short-hand answer, btw.

As for pre-existing oppressions, I agree.  It is not like patriarchy, for
example, just magically appeared with capitalism.  Capital drew on the
already existing subordination of women, BUT it radically reconfigured that
oppression in response to its own mode of existence, its own historical
peculiarity.  That's why I am cautious about talking about certain forms of
oppression outside their historical context.  The form they take, their mode
of existence, makes them different, even when they have similar appearances.
The importance of history is to understand the specific ways they exist
differently.  Bourgeois history exactly moves to conceal the specificity of
certain types of relations because it needs them to be eternal
characteristics of 'human nature'.  The devil is in the details, or in this
case, the spectre.

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob Schaap" <rws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2001 1:02 PM
Subject: Re: AUT: Linebaugh and Rediker, _The Many-Headed Hydra_


> G'day Autonomists,
>
> Quoth Chris:
>
> >The idea that racism has an origin in the late 18th/early 19th century
does
> >not necessarily have any bearing on whether racism as we know it is
peculiar
> >to capitalism.  Then again, and i have not read the book so I am only
> >commenting on what I have read in this discussion, the idea of a starting
> >point in this sense, of an origin, has its own problems.  Part of the way
to
> >unravel the problem requires us to understand that the form of the
> >oppression, its mode of existence, is essential to understanding why it
is
> >different.  That mode of existence has to be connected to our history, as
> >well.  And racialization has to be understood as a process, an ongoing
> >process which did not "happen" in the 18th century but which continues to
> >happen today.
>
> Sounds right to me.  But it's always hard, I think, to draw neat lines
> between those components of a living prejudice which draw their
nourishment
> from current functionalities for capitalism (eg undermining the
> 'class-for-itself' moment so central to, say, Lukacss theory) and those
> which are spawned or sustained by capitalist relations, because they
excite
> that initial search for alternative meanings, for filling the empty holes
> the alienation excavator gouges into us.
>
> Then you get to having to distinguish between (often pre-modern) residual
> cultural components (eg Christianity per se) and the tendentious
inventions
> of the past (and the demagoguery often at the root of it - eg. the
> bible-based economics and bible-based public responsibility stuff that's
> sweeping the US apre-coup).
>
> I do think that not every component of our being, and not every moment in
> our lives, is written by capitalism - some of it is residual, some of it
is
> stuff not commodified yet, some of it simply coz capitalism can't do the
> job, and some of it is, dare I say it, human essence.  But I'm blabbering
> off-topic now ...
>
> Anyway, I only mentioned my reservations because it's often well to remind
> ourselves, obvious though it probably is, that shit happens in all
worlds -
> and that we cannot ensure the absence of 'isms', needless cleavages and
> lingering exploitations, in a post-prol-revo.  Isms are material realities
> - they're structures - and their existence and potential to hang on need
> expressly to be factored into our sensibilities, publicity, strategies and
> hopes.
>
> I kinda like the sort of approach Albert and Hahnel were talking about in
> their *Unorthodox Marxism* way back in '79 - I' seem to have lost it for
> the moment - not quite autonomism, perhaps, but a way of signalling to the
> many and varied seekers-of-a-better-world and rejecters-of-shit a sense
> that stuff's connected and that we are all therefore connected, too.  I'm
> no All-Power-To-The-Party man, but neither am I committed to some
> fetishised autonomy whereby, for instance, the racially oppressed think
> race is all, the sexually oppressed that gender is all, and the pinkoes
> among us  mouth sympathies at 'em without actually factoring their
concerns
> right at the front end of our efforts.
>
> No sign of that here just now - but we've all seen examples of this kinda
> stuff on other lefty channels, eh?
>
> Anyway, I'm just avoiding work ...
>
> Cheers,
> Rob.
>
>
>
>
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>



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