As a political
philosophy, anarchism is concerned with the transformation of
society; however, anarchism is often neglected by major
political and philosophical trends. In an attempt to situate
anarchism within contemporary philosophical thought as well as
think critically about anarchism, Todd May has created what he
calls postructuralist anarchism. By grafting French
postructuralist thought onto anarchism, May offers a new
political philosophy with which to analyze our world. I
conducted an interview with Todd May via email in October
2000.
~ Rebecca DeWitt
Postructuralist
Anarchism is the combination of anarchism and poststructuralist
philosophy (the work of Foucault, Lyotard and Deleuze). What is
essential to both these political philosophies that makes it
possible to combine them?
What I see as the essential link between anarchism and the
poststructuralism of Lyotard, Deleuze, and especially Foucault, is
the denial that there is some central hinge about which political
change could or should revolve. For Marx, political change was a
matter of seizing the means of production; for liberals, it lies
in regulating the state. What anarchists deny (at least in parts
of their writings, the parts which I'm trying to draw out) is that
there is a single Archimedean point for change. Inasmuch as power
is everywhere, the need for political reflection and critique is
also everywhere. Not only at the level of the state or the
economy, but also at the level of sexuality, race, psychology,
teaching, etc. etc.
Is there
anything left of anarchism?
I believe there is. If I'm right in my approach, what anarchism
provides to poststructuralism is a larger framework within which
to situate its specific analyses. The framework is a different
one, to be sure, from the traditional anarchist framework. It is
not unchanged by poststructuralism. But the new framework I have
tried to articulate would be news to most poststructuralists, who
resist the idea of a larger framework altogether.
How do we reconcile anarchism, which often relies on
politically unifying principles (such as anti-capitalist/statist
stances), with postructuralist thought, which sees power as an
interconnected network rather than a system to be opposed?
Regarding the idea of totalizing systems, it is surely the case
that much of anarchism, both in practice and in theory, targets
capitalism and the state. My book is a suggestion that we not look
in those two places so as to blind ourselves about the ubiquity of
power's operation. If capitalism and the state were the sole
culprits, then eliminating them would by itself open us up to a
utopian society. But we ought to be leery of such simple
solutions. One of the lessons of the struggles against racism,
misogyny, prejudice against gays and lesbians, etc. is that power
and oppression are not reducible to a single site or a single
operation. We need to understand power as it operates not only at
the level of the state and capitalism, but in the practices
through which we conduct our lives.
In your book, political philosophy is cast in terms of the
articulation of "the discordance between the world as it
exists and the world as it is envisioned." When the
discordance is no longer present, that particular political
philosophy became obsolete, whether it occurs because the world
has changed or because the goals have been realized. You give the
example of the communist revolution where, once the goals of the
revolution were reached, the political philosophy that described
such a change becomes obsolete and therefore a new political
philosophy was needed in order to advance. Is political philosophy
a process where we are constantly remaking our view of the world
and what we want?
The idea I'm trying to press early in the book is that political
philosophy is motivated by a discordance between how people think
the world should be and how they find it. Why think about
political philosophy unless there is a problem that needs to be
addressed? And that problem, for political philosophy, is that the
world is distant from how one thinks it should be. Whether
political philosophy is a constant process is something I'm not
sure how to answer. I don't see any reason in principle why it
should be, although it may turn out to be. The question of whether
political philosophy is a process of constantly remaking ourselves
is tied to the question of what kinds of nature human beings have
and what kinds of environments they find themselves in. Since
elsewhere in the book I deny that there is anything interesting to
say about human nature, it all comes down to environment. But who
knows how environments will change, and what kinds of questions
they will raise for us?
For postructuralist anarchism, power is both creative and
destructive. In contrast, anarchism natural justification of its
own existence - that humans are essentially good and it is the
institutions of power that are bad therefore we need to get rid of
them - characterizes all power as bad. How does the
anarchist concept of power change with the addition of
postructuralism?
While [anarchists] have a two-part distinction: power
(bad) vs. human nature (good), I have a four-part one: power
as creative/power as repressive and good/bad. I do not take
creative power as necessarily good, nor repressive power as
necessarily bad. It all depends on what is being created or
repressed. The ethical evaluation is independent of which
kind of power it is. That's why it's so important for there
to be clarity on one's ethical vision - a point which too many
poststructuralist thinkers neglect. But one does not solve
the ethical problem by positing a good human nature and then
saying that it should be allowed to flourish. There is too
much evidence against the idea of an essentially good (or
essentially bad) human nature for that claim to be made. One
cannot rest one's ethical judgments on human nature, but instead
must develop the socially given ethical networks within which our
lives unfold.
You state that we "must abandon [for the most part] the
idea of a clear demarcation to be made between political
philosophy and political programs.as one moves away from analysis
and toward suggestions for intervention, one passes from
philosophy to programmatics." Most political philosophies
seem incapable of passing into programmatics and then back again.
The tension between the world as it exists and what we envision is
most often destroyed by consolidation of power by one idea or
political party. Anarchism advocates a direct democracy or
federalism to ensure that this doesn't happen but is the life of a
political philosophy capable surviving programmatics?
Bear in mind that the anarchism I'm trying to draw out of the
tradition would not see direct democracy as the answer to all
political problems (otherwise, anarchism would be another
strategic political philosophy). That said, your question still
remains, since one can wonder what happens to political philosophy
when a programmatics is carried out. Certainly, one thing would
remain of the view I tried to develop: the idea that we need
always to be investigating the power relationships that arise in
various practices and to give them proper ethical evaluation; that
is to say, to ask whether they are acceptable or not. On the view
I'm defending, since we never know in advance how power works, we
need always to keep investigating its operation, in order to see
where it's leading and what it's creating; and we need always to
ask the ethical question of whether we find that acceptable.
Whose job is it to construct the programmatic?
As far as who is to construct the program, it is certainly not to
be philosophers. (Goodness gracious, banish the thought.) This
idea is, I hope, no longer taken seriously, even by philosophers.
The only response as to who IS to construct the program, or at
least have input into its construction, is that it is those who
are affected by the current situation and the proposed changes.
Now that may be another way of saying "the people," but
it does limit things somewhat. For instance, I will have little to
say about ho w gays and lesbians should be treated in society
(e.g. should they be admitted into the category of the
marriageable or should they challenge marriage itself?) That, it
seems to me, is up to them. My role is to support them in their
choices.
The anarchist concept of power is characterized as one which
"conglomerates at certain points and is reinforced by [power]
along certain lines", and therefore can be amenable to the
idea of reform because certain reforms at certain points could
result in revolution. Is there a place for revolution in
postructuralist anarchism?
The term "revolution" strikes me as a loaded one.
Sometimes it seems to mean that there is an overturning of the key
point of power in a society. When used in that way, the term
"revolution" seems to imply a strategic political
philosophy, so I think it is better avoided. When things change
enough as a result of political intervention, then we have a
revolution. Thus, the distinction between reform and revolution
should not be the tired one of "mere reform" vs.
"real revolution." It should instead be an issue of how
much and how deep of a change is going on. In fact, I think the
term is often used as a banner, a mark of one's radicalism, and an
unconsidered way of marking out one's distinction from liberalism.
As such, it hides the question, which we should be asking: what
needs to be changed and how does it need to be changed? When we
ask that more concrete question (yes, a philosopher suggesting
that a certain jargon is hiding our ability to see the concrete),
then we're on the right track. The question of is it revolution or
just reform drops away.
What is the World Trade Organization to poststructuralist
anarchism? The WTO seems to be one of those organizations where
power conglomerates, where a variety of practices collude to
create an oppressive power arrangement. I think we mistake many
supporters of the WTO if we describe them in terms of a conspiracy
theory. My suspicion is that most of them sincerely believe they
are doing good things, even though they're not. How to explain
this? It seems to me that we need to look at the practices they're
engaged in and the effects of those practices on others, and to
recognize that there are a whole series of deleterious effects
that supporters of the WTO have failed to recognize. That, it
seems to me, would be a poststructuralist anarchist take on the
WTO.As an activist, I find myself in accordance with the recent
demonstrations intended to eliminate the WTO and related
oppressive institutions and to abolish loan paybacks from Third
World countries. Of course, there's a lot more, but philosophy,
while it interacts with the programmatic, does not, it seems to
me, have as a role the construction of the programmatic
As far as action is concerned, you offer suggestions of how
postructuralist anarchism can be acted upon. These include:
experimentation, situated freedom, valorization of subjugated
discourses, and the intellectual as a participant in theoretical
practice rather than a leader. Can you tell me how you and other
politically active people can practice these guidelines? It is
difficult to practice much of any politics in South Carolina. Just
to point in the general direction of how I live this stuff, it
concerns my attitude toward gays and lesbians (I was faculty
advisor for the gay/lesbian group for six or seven years); my
teaching (I try to reject the idea of a given human nature in my
courses, I experiment with course ideas, I include neglected
works, often with a political spin, in my syllabi, I often situate
the problems we face in the context I've developed in the book);
and my parenting (trying to see the effects of power relative to
my children's lives and attitudes, and offering alternatives to
them). If I were to approach the question from the standpoint,
say, of someone living in an urban area in the U.S. I would point
to the necessity of understanding and participating in struggles
against racism, sexism, the WTO, etc., and in doing so to see the
interactions among those struggles and the oppressions those
struggles seek to overturn, without trying to reduce them all to a
simple formula.
Many anarchists feel it is imperative to create a public
intellectual culture and that, increasingly, the university is not
a place that encourages intellectual freedom, not to mention
political thought. What is your experience?
I agree that the university is a questionable source of
intellectual culture.I believe that the reality of an intellectual
culture is difficult to achieve now, because with the "mall-ization"
of the U.S the whole idea of public space is being marginalized.
Some say that the internet is a new place for a public culture,
but I have my doubts. First, the sheer size of the internet makes
the intimacy of an intellectual culture difficult to achieve.
Second, there is something about sharing the same space and time
in conversation that is denied by the internet, something without
which interchange remains too anonymous in character. I don't
think the internet is useless; but it's ability to substitute for
what we have lost is more limited than some folks think.
Can you respond to critics who charge that poststructuralist
theory (postmodernism in general) is an example of a highly
specialized, abstract and obscure language that is alienating to
most people and doesn't encourage thought outside of a graduate
department?
Guilty as charged. But that doesn't apply only to
poststructuralists and postmodernists. It is a general problem
across the humanities and across academics generally. We talk to
one another rather than to those outside our immediate circle.
There are a number of reasons for this: pressure to publish, the
history of anti-intellectualism in the U.S., etc. But we also
contribute by adopting the jargon we do. I have tried to stay away
from jargon as much as possible, and I hope that my anarchism
book, although difficult, is at least not laden with jargon. But
what you're pointing to is a problem for all academics, and only
serves to marginalize us further.
Given that
"knowledge, like other subjects, is a matter of struggle and
domination" and recent publish or perish/cost-analysis
tendencies of universities, how does postructuralism escape being
just another commodity? Much of poststructuralist discourse is, of
course, just like other academic discourse in that it replicates
the current academic system of ideas in the cost-benefit
consumerist model currently dominating academia. I think that
change comes not only through the ideas themselves but, especially
in academics, who's spouting them. The real question, it seems to
me, is whether people are living these ideas out or whether they
are just holding them as ideas. ~
