Re: AUT: RE: antiwar movement

[chris wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thank you Peter, this is realy helpful and clear.  A few questions:

>
> Isn't rhizomatic power (the singularities/multitude) distinguishable from
> pluralism by the removal of the assumption of communicability?
>
> I mean, with pluralism, there is a call for "us all" to understand each
> other - so it basically is a called for us in all our different identity
> boxes to somehow "unite", with that unity being machined through some
> consensus based on reason.

Doesn't this idea of incommunicability risk reinforcing the identity
boxes, rather than helping to defetishize them?

Does unity in practice have to be a consensus based on reason?  Or
rather, is this a critique of a notion of an a priori unity which has
only to be realized (made into an object for Reason) in order to be
effected in a weirdly Kantian turn?

> Whereas, as I understand rhizomatic power, there are moments of exodus
> (singularities, or as the collectivo situaciones call them, situations,
> maybe the same thing as what Chris calls micro-rebellions) that are not
> necessarily mutually intelligible, but which may be linked (transverse
> links).

When you say 'may be linked', do you think that links exist or that we
create the links?  To put it less vaguely, would you understand the
capital-labor relation as providing underlying interconnection, but
appearing in and through social forms that are particularizations of
that relation?  Or would you say that there are the particular types of
oppression and exploitation and we make linkages based on, well, I am
not sure what... practical needs for assistance at a given moment?

Does incommunicability ultimately oppose the notion of mutually
recognitive practice by denying the possibility of recognition?

The subsumption of life within capital (i know, controversial
> turf) provides a level on which these struggles are connected, but that's
> pretty abstracted from people's everyday experience. I think this
> methodological description from Precarias a la Deriva is good:
>
> "We talk, therefore, of seeking common places and, simultaneously, of
> singularities to strengthen. This approximation has grown through the
> subsequent debates which have made us modify the initial utterance ?we
> are precarious workers? for others less prone to affirming identity as an
> original element and more attentive to the processes of
> (de)identification.[7]

This is interesting.  it is good to get away from affirming identities
and to focus on the process, but I must say that this really reminds me
of fetishization/defatishization and a dialectic of negativity, which is
fine with me:)  It is nice to agree rather more, even with different
languages, to find or make, not sure yet, linkages.

> Our situations are so diverse, so partial, that it is very difficult to
> find common denominators from which to elaborate alliances and
> irreducible differences with which to mutually enrich ourselves.  It is
> complicated for us to express ourselves, to define ourselves from the
> common place of precariousness; a precariousness capable of bypassing a
> clear collective identity through which to simplify and defend itself,
> but one which demands discussion.  We need to communicate the lacks and
> the excesses of our working and living situations in order to escape from
> the neoliberal fragmentation which separates and debilitates us, turning
> us into victims of fear, of exploitation or of the individualism of ?each
> one for herself.? But, above all, we want to make possible the collective
> construction of other lives through a shared creative struggle.  Our
> insistence upon singularity we owe to our desire to not produce, once
> again, false homogeneities, without permitting that this insistence
> prevents us from saying anything at all."
>
> To put it simply... we all try and escape. Sometimes our lines of flight
> link up, at least for a while. We try and strengthen each other in this
> process - that's through a process of enquiry and action. But other times
> words fail, bonds break, we separate, maybe to meet up again in another
> time, another place.

When you say we all try and escape... this feels a bit conceived as an
individual thing.  Or based on a small group.  But what makes a small
group of an individual more capable of coherence than a class, not in
general or always, but under specific conditions?

> Maybe that sounds too ephemeral for some, but my personal believe is that
> in the strengthen of every singularity, the valorisation of each exodus,
> is a better bet than to deny the particularity of each situation, and
> then subsequently subsume of agency within some overall "revolutionary
> strategy".

What constitutes a singularity?  An individual?  A small group?  A
class?  Maybe I should ask this and then ask you to come back to the
above paragraph.

Cheers,
Chris



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