How to translate one’s own activist-intellectual experience into a global imaginery of political action and resistance? How to desist from the populist temptation in fighting neoliberalism?

At first glance the choice of these two questions and tasks  appears arbitrary, but what follows will be a brief historico-political explanation why I  think that exactly these two topics pose a major urgency for our self-understanding.

My  intention, ie. to define and articulate some specific intellectual experience emerging from the fights against neoliberalism in Eastern Europe, is at its basic level traversed by the intuition that such an undertaking is difficult and maybe even impropable. The task to translate and to make our own struggles comprehensible to others at the realm beyond our respective local societies and nation-states consists therefore at first in a step aside.

To step aside, both from Eastern Europe and neoliberalism, means something other than an academic excercise where we would be in need of a conceptual clarification. As if  a basic set of globally valid attributes would guarentee that we understand each other, and that from the moment on such a set has been established, it would be  without  hesitation possible to go on with delineating particular geographical set-ups.

The step-aside  in question is literally a retreating from the immediate present, taken not in order to escape the present and its demands but to open up our understanding how this present has been constituted. It is namely my premise that to understand the specifics of current societal development in Eastern Europe we have to look after  broader historical patterns, notwithstanding all the grave differences, shifts and breaks encountered that usually would not allow to sketch a larger historical account .

Talking about today’s neoliberalism in Eastern Europe for me therefore means to go back to late socialist period of the 1970ies and 1980ies – not to contrast two different sociopolitical models [socialism vs. capitalism] but to join them, making a proper montage. A montage of heterogenous elements, paradoxically making visible that what lacks and goes beyond visibility.

Again, this step-aside does not mean that we have to excavate some deeper layer of reality, some more basic truth from the socialist legacy that from now on would serve as a new, more just or human imperative. Neither is the task to supplant the already established and familiar depiction of neoliberalism with some socialist flavours, where speaking of neoliberalism in Eastern Europe would amount to the formula or truism that neoliberalism there is just a neoliberalism in post-socialist societies.

No. My  impossible montage – guided by the insight that there is a major structural similarity between late-socialist period and neoliberalism –  shall touch upon a political realm I  think is the proper novelty of both late socialism and neoliberalism.

A direct consequence of such an analogy would amount to say that neoliberalism’s entering into former socialist Europe has been far more complicated than the unilinear account would like to have it. Much more than being the colonization-effect of globalization, I will argue that neoliberalism in Eastern Europe was already nested by late socialism. Another important result would be to perceive the overtly socio-political dimension of neoliberalism, not being content with taking neoliberalism just as an economic paradigm.

To support my  argument I  will look closer at the alleged structural necessity of late socialism and neoliberalism, asking myself what in both regimes is or was the paradigmatic social product and how the antagonistic dynamics within the constitution of such a social product has given way to a new kind of politics.

… A SOCIALIST DOUBLE-STATE

In search of the proper socialist social product in case of Yugoslavia we have to go back to late 1960ies. Following a major economic reform from mid-sixties, the then inititated debate on the constitutional restructuring of the state and the students protest of 1968 a dominant antagonism has become evident: it was the dichotomy of the self-managed democracy versus the (real) socialist state.

It could be argued that this antagonism was a major Yugoslav innovative  restatement of the double-state structure that according to German-Jewish legal scholar Ernst Fraenkel is characteristic of the 20th century totalitarian state. Fraenkel’s notion of the double-state has been recently prominently used in Agamben’s theorization  of the state of emergency, where its validity has been universalized, meaning that not just 20th century totalitarianisms but also all today’s liberal-democratic regimes are being doubled. In brief, theory of the double-state will say as much that the sovereign state has been split in two antagonistic states or modes: the first one is the so called normalized state  where legal and other socio-political orders are pretty much functioning according to their  modernist institutionalist paradigm. But, simultaneously,  there is also another  state – the state of decree where regulatory measures taken contradict the normalized paradigm in a voluntarist or almost anarchic manner.

Yugoslav double-state complicates heavily such a theory, in as much it could be argued that the socialist doubling of the state was not even realized in the realm of the state since the proposed goal of the self-managed democracy was to abolish the state altogether. So that in the end we have an antagonism which runs along the lines state vs. non-state or state vs. other-than-state democracy. Even if conceeded that at first such a paradoxical antagonism was merely a methodical abstraction or an idealizatation within the Yugoslav (intellectual) elites, the discursive treatment of that antagonism has become socially relevant and popular throughout the 1970ies in Yugoslavia so that already during the following decade immediate effects of such an antagonistic paradigm could be observed and taken as granted. To put it otherwise: my case it is not so much to argue that socialist Yugoslavia has resembled the state of emergency as theorized by Agamben, but to investigate how such a theory is being productive,  creative if put into the socio-political loop of an entire regim ie. if the theory itself generates a new set of relevant social practices. Of utmost importance regarding my starting point – the question how struggles against neoliberalism are shaped – is the shift where the socialist social product wasn’t anymore defined as  (the state of) fear or terror (as done by great number of Eastern European dissidents) but as the social gross-product emerging out of the essential antagonism of state and non-state. A consequence for  my considerations would be that already in the 1970ies, at least in the Yugoslav case, dissidency has lost its role as the privileged site for confronting societal pathologies.

In early 1980ies the matter of the productivity of such an antagonism has been adressed by Zoran Đinđić in his influential volume “Yugoslavia – An Unfinished State”. For Đinđić the antagonism regulating the overall social dynamics is defined by the the voluntarist diffusion or dispersal of the state-sovereignty, but this should not come as a surprise as the proclaimed Yugoslav goal was the transition to a self-managed democracy that at the very end would abolish the state and henceforth all forms of conventionally conceived sovereignty. If this diffusive transitionality is the Yugoslav social product per se, Đinđić tries to answer the question that is relevant for me  - what is the form or possibility of the critique and protest granted that such an antagonistic transitional state has come to the fore.

To quote Đinđić: “Since the permanency of the state of exception has been systematically stabilized, the difference between a “normal” and an “exceptional state” has lost its evidence. Instead to legitimize the political action in a situation where some of the members of the community are in danger, that evidence itself becomes the object of a political non-action. [...] Because the normality as an unambiguous criterion is lacking, everything becomes a matter of interpretation – everything becomes arbitrary.”

That which once was dissidency in Đinđić is nothing else than a blunt decadency, idle chatter. Taken the author’s intellectual framework it could easily be argued that in late, transitional socialism sociality has reached its pathological apex, impotent to get rid of the parasitical nature of its (communicative) self-understanding.

This is exactly the point where Đinđić’s statements meet Foucault’s and Balibar’s conceptualization of a new kind of polity emerging during the decline of sovereign nation-state. Balibar, for example, will call this new political reality “racism”, being constituted in the  ”conflictual relationship towards the state, which is being experienced in a perverted guise, projected as a relation towards the Other.”

If this new politics – Foucault’s and Balibar’s paradoxical racism without a race, racism whose subject/object is foremost the state and not some specific population –  appears to apply to all modern nation-states in the period of their decline,  how much more that insight is valid for a state whose explicit imperative was to wither away as it was the case with socialist Yugoslavia?

Altogether a politics whose violent potential is communicative, whose norms are arbitrary and subjected to permanent interpretative reevaluation and differentiation – finally, a politics paralyzing and endlessly postponing any proper political action.

Socialist double-state has created a novel social product: a politics without a proper name or racism, if put in Foucauldian and Balibarian terms. A social product of total communicative force and no political power, unleashing in full the rhetorical economy while making political action impossible.

Socialist states in Eastern Europe have disappeared and many of the socialist ideals have been compromised. But has the social product of socialism disappeared, too?

… NEOLIBERALISM SINGULAR PLURAL

How many neoliberalisms there are today? This question doesn’t concern only the definition and taxonomy of neoliberal types, but it addresses the very foundation of what we call neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, on the one hand, seams a well-established technical term and  a universally valid nom-de-guerre of a new kind of capitalism. On the other hand, neoliberalism is essentially being characterized through (geographical) unevenness and it is more to be understood as a differential set-up lacking any stable description beside its praying upon and producing stratificatory differences among various geographical areas and functional domains.

Neoliberalism is doubled. Taken in singular, it incites total liberation of the market, privatization of the public goods, and exclusively limited state-intervention into domain of economy and trade. It is the mechanism of producing excessive surplus-profits for the ruling classes, making social injusticies even more accute  accumulating wealth by sheer dispossesion, as Harvey will say.

As plural, neoliberalism confronts us with infinite number of accounts about neoliberalism world-wide, that seem almost untranslatable and incomprehensible outside the context of their own emergence.

For the societies of former Yugoslavia, for example, the narrative will tell that they  experienced the effects of neoliberal policies just recently, with a delay, mainly because of the war, and partially because of the economical transition (transformation and privatization) that is somewhat similar to certain neoliberal premises, but is isolated from wider, global courses.

In this other, pluraistl narrative, neoliberalism is more an exception than the rule or uniform paradigm and it happens in strictly defined spatial pockets. Neoliberal practices parasite there on already existent infrastructures, and extra/surplus profit is created by taking into account the differential between multiplicity of areas and domains.

My  case in discerning sharply two modes of neoliberalism, the one as a system and the other as a geographical variable, is to outline the doubled, antagonistic nature of neoliberalism itself.

Briefly – what happens in those societies where neoliberalism in singular is not the dominant mode of production, and where it would seem that it can be contained within alloted spaces, as an exception as Aihwa Ong has described? In Ong’s outline neoliberalism meets non-neoliberal practices, as if those strips and pockets, those temporary zones neoliberal capital has conquered are just a confined colonization of space.

But, what if neoliberalism in singular here exactly meets its plural double? What if  neoliberalism here meets its differential double which emerges out of  unevenness? What if neoliberalism alien meets neoliberalism nested?

This means that antagonism between the singular and the plural of neoliberalism is an internal clash within neoliberalism itself. Just to remind you of countless examples where interventions by institutions like the IMF or the World Bank are fought in the name of some limited nation-state concern or interest, while that same interest has been shaped in the first place by the (neoliberalist taking advantage of) geographical unevenness.

Another example of the same neoliberal antagonistic structure is valid for former Yugoslav territories, ie. the so-called delay. Many will say that the delay in introducing neoliberalism proper (meaning neoliberalism in singular as a set of specific policies) into those countries allows for at least a cognitive advantage that in its turn would make possible to bypass the errors of neoliberalism experienced elsewhere. Again, this kind of reasoning which is incredibly attractive to local elites and populations obliterates the fact that its own position is constituted by unevenness and that this stance itself is inherently neoliberal. A direct lesson for critical intellectuals would be to distrust the populist or ethno-nationalist discouses and respective mobilizations against neoliberalism since that is no more than an internal struggle within neoliberalism, and only in a very deterministic framework that struggle could bring neoliberalism to fall.

What would then be the neoliberal analogon to interpretation as the dominant mean of late socialist production? I  shall claim that this is (the procedure of) counting. Counting and  computing.

It is almost commonsensical knowledge that neoliberalism as singular is obsessed with counting, with calculation and parametrization. Stock-markets being just the most prominent example. But its uneven geographical double no less revolves around the issue of counting and comparing, of  taking advantage thanks to different geographical conditions.

And like socialism has replaced fear as its social product with (arbitrary) interpretation, so neoliberalism succeeded in replacing its doctrine of shock with abstract procedures of counting and computing.  Socialism’s strategy to make itself immune or stable was to feed back the theory of double-state into the loop, while neoliberalism’s strategy to make itself permament consists in applying the procedure of discerning, counting and computing onto itself. One type of neoliberalism against the other, ad infinitum.

In socialism intellectual engagement has passed the way from dissidency to decadency, thanks to the social product itself that has become intellectual and less to some subjective reasons regarding those in need to question the existing state of affairs. Social critique seems obsolete in times of communication-overload and political in-action.

The double of neoliberalism has come the same way, by other means. It constantly produces something, a new unheard-of political reality that stalls any political action and leaves no room for dissent.

A lesson drawn from late socialism would be to desist from counting and identifying neoliberalism(s) since that will just feed back into the existing loop of stalled politics.

To fight neoliberalism means to fight its singular plural, at once. It means to fight for a reality that cannot be computed and cannot be accounted for.

[written on occasion of Tirana Biennale 2009]

Konferencijom koja se bavi neoliberalizmom i Istočnom Evropom preuzeli smo određeni rizik, već na retoričkoj razini. Metodološki rizik utoliko što spajamo dva imena koja označavaju najviše i najmanje. Naime, s jedne strane imamo označitelj sa skoro nepreglednim opsegom: neoliberalizam tako danas označava sve od mjera popravaka razbijenih prozora u gradskim četvrtima ili svakodnevnog stresa na poslu pa do mešetarenja globalnih visokih financija i političkog intervencionizma. S druge pak strane Istočna Evropa – regija čija poslovično pretpostavljena manjkavost i deficijentnost pozitivno, pa možda čak i bilo kakvo, određenje čine naizgled nedostižnim.

Najviše i najmanje, sve i ništa. Nije li to retoričko-logička konvergencija koja Istočnu Evropu i neoliberalizam dovodi u vezu, kako prenapregnutost značenjskih određenja pojma “neoliberalizam” u jednom trenutku rezultira da taj skup svim mogućih značenja ne objašnjava ama baš ništa?

Čini nam se da je upravo to slučaj i da takva konvergencija neoliberalizma i Istočne Evrope u značenjsku neodredljivost i analitičku neupotrebljivost tjera da se dislociraju prihvaćeni modeli tumačenja i djelovanja.

Za ogledni primjer uzeli smo gradski prostor kao paradigmatski slučaj neoliberalnih strategija i otpora istima. To nije jedini mogući način da se praksa neoliberalizma dovede u pitanje, no – nama se barem čini – to je vjerojatno najbrži put da se u cjelini sagledaju divergentne strategije neoliberalizma.

Dok je u procesu društvene modernizacije u gradskim tkivima bila postignuta krhka, ali ipak nekakva ravnoteža između javnih i privatnih interesa – koja se shodno tome reflektirala i na prostorno uređenje grada stvaranjem tzv. javnog prostora – neoliberalna je doktrina za svoj proklamirani cilj odabrala upravo izvlašćenje javnog gradskog prostora i njegovu posvemašnju privatizaciju.

No, za razliku od uobičajenog tumačenja neoliberalnih globalizacijskih procesa koji će faktički utjecaj globalizacije na konkretna lokalna društva tumačiti ‘odozgo’, tj. kao proces u kojem dominiraju transnacionalni, globalni akteri (bilo da je riječ o kompanijama ili o internacionalnim organizacijama), privatizacija se javnog gradskog prostora može tumačiti i rječnikom Saskije Sassen koja o globalizaciji govori kao denacionalizaciji. Naime, denacionalizacija u ovom slučaju označava onu vrstu fenomena u kojima su upravo sama lokalna društva ta koja svojim vlastitim mjerama i načinima društvene regulacije rastaču klasični okvir nacionalne države – rezultirajući u nekoj vrsti globalizacije ‘odozdo’.

Ukoliko je dakle globalizacija složena i difuzna rezultanta procesa ‘odozgo’ i ‘odozdo’, u sličnoj je mjeri kompleksan i difuzan pojam javnog prostora.

Javni gradski prostor koji je bio zamašnjak društvenog razvoja i modernizacije danas je dakle stješnjen prosesima globalizacije ‘odozgo’ i denacionalizacije ‘odozdo’, te je određen još nedovoljno shvaćenim odnosom fizičkog i digitalnog. Jasni neoliberalni odgovor na takvo hibridno i difuzno stanje je totalna privatizacija javnog prostora.

– komprimirajmo neoliberalizam

Parametar brzine i urgentnosti kojeg smo naveli u vezi sa opisom neoliberalizma i sam je u upisan u neoliberalnu retoriku ekonomičnosti, što samo dodatno pokazuje u kojoj su mjeri linije otpora postale propusne i kako otpadnička praksa itekako može biti instrument postizanja prinudnog društvenog konsenzusa.

Operacija:grad, kako glasi naslov događanja čiji je ova konferencija dio, ističe razlikovanje koje nam se čini bitnim: operacija-grad naspram intervencija u grad. Operativnost i operacionalizacija kao otvoreni, kolektivni procesi osmišljavanja, odlučivanja i djelovanja nasuprot stihijskog intervencionizma ekspertsko-ekskluzivističkih politika. Problem, i to ne samo metodski, kojeg smo svjesni i kojeg naglašavamo jest da operativnost o kojoj govorimo nije jednoobrazno i jednim isključivim ciljem određeno postavljanje na-djelo raznorodnih nastojanja i želja, već da se radi o artikulaciji čitavog kolopleta zahtjeva koji isprva niti ne moraju obećavati (da će se iscrpiti tj. realizirati tokom vlastite operacionalizacije).

Operativnost uzeta kao norma potražuje odgovornost i dosljednost, pravovremenost i odmjerenost, no jednako tako i ludizam pa čak i ignoranciju ili tvrdoglavost. Uzeta kao norma ili djelatni stav ona transverzalno presjeca struke, životne stilove i društvene grupe – kreirajući solidarnost jednog zaista političkog djelovanja suprotstavljenog privatizaciji i refeudalizaciji.

– neoliberalizam, neoliberalizmi?

Koliko zapravo postoji neoliberalizama?  Pitanje je to koje se ne tiče samo definicije ili taksonomije oblika neoliberalne stvarnosti, već se radi o pitanju same srži onoga što nazivamo neoliberalizmom.  Neoliberalizam kao pojam, s jedne strane, čini se uvriježenim tehničkim terminom no on je u osnovi pežorativan pa time i polemičan. Govor o neoliberalizmu stoga, htjeli mi to ili ne, već unaprijed svrstava. Ali drugi aspekt tog samog pojma čini se karakterističnijim i važnijim: neoliberalizam je tu oznaka za mjesto ili procese gdje se sistemičke kategorije transferiraju i prevode u geografsko-prostorne kategorije. Može se reći da neoliberalizam shodno tome nije isključivo niti odjeliti skup praksi i koncepata, ni nekakav opis novog globalnog poretka već je riječ o fenomenu u čije pojmovno određenje bitno spada njegova prostorna ekstenzija, kao što u geografskom smislu neoliberalizam ne predstavlja jednu novu geopolitičku intuiciju već se radi o opisu novih prostornih konstelacija koje su određene posve konkretnim mjerama.

Navedeno neoliberalizam čini nečim zaista novim: to da je neoliberalizam sistem-prostor ili pojam-prostor i da ga se stoga ne može odbaciti pozivajući se na klasične matrice ideologije ili svjetskog poretka.

Na pitanje koliko neoliberalizama postoji, tj. na pitanje njegove jednoobraznosti i/ili mnoštvenosti,  možemo odgovoriti  analizirajući mjeru u kojoj su preklopljeni sistem i prostor.

Ako neoliberalizam uzmemo kao uniformni globalni narativ gdje se sistem i prostor skoro u cjelosti preklapaju, radi se o skupu različitih mjera koje su u konačnici doveli do rastakanja modela moderne socijalne države.  Neoliberalizam tako, na primjer, podstiče potpunu slobodu tržišta, privatizaciju javnih dobara te isključivo ograničenu državnu intervenciju u gospodarstvo.

Takav neoliberalni model svoju punu afirmaciju postiže početkom 90ih godina, novim valom globalizacije. Od tog se momenta neoliberalne gospodarske mjere oslanjaju na već postojeći neujednačen nivo razvoja svjetskih regija i društava, te se time ionako već velika razlika u bogatstvu naroda samo još više produbljava. Faktička sloboda prometa roba i kapitala – za što se zalažu zagovornici neoliberalizma – ne dovodi i do slobode kretanja ljudi. Dapače, deklarativna sloboda izbora za mnoge je ljude svedena na izrabljivački rad koji nije dostatan ni za zadovoljenje elementarnih potreba, čak niti u zemljama bogatog Sjevera (tzv. working-poor fenomen). Za elite pak nov način upravljanja ekonomijom donosi ekstra-profite, koji su nemalim dijelom utemeljeni i na golemom razvoju informacijskih tehnologija koje su premrežile i spojile čitav globus – ili barem onaj njegov dio koji je u posjedu i koji upravlja tim informacijskim tokovima.

Neoliberalizam, opisan tako, dovodi do stanja u kojem samo malobrojni uživaju blagodati sve zahuktalijeg tehnološkog razvoja, dok je velika većina svjetske populacije osuđena na život u trajnom siromaštvu na rubovima megalopolisa, u slamovima. David Harvey to izjednačava sa procesom prvobitne akumulacije nazvavši neoliberalno društveno uređenje “akumulacijom putem otimačine”.

No, ako se preklapanje sistema i prostora sagleda manje totalno, dobijamo priču, bolje rečeno, nebrojene priče o neoliberalizmu koje su skoro pa neprevodive i nerazumljive izvan konteksta vlastita nastajanja. Hrvatsko  je društvo, primjerice, učinke neoliberalne ekonomske politike u pravom smislu te riječi iskusilo sa zakašnjenjem tek posljednjih godina – dijelom zbog rata, a dijelom i zbog istovremenog procesa ekonomske tranzicije (tzv. pretvorba i privatizacija) koji se, iako sličan nekim neoliberalnim postavkama, ipak razlikovao od širih, globalnih procesa. U hrvatskom slučaju također i značaj turističke industrije istočno-jadranski prostor specifično smješta u nove globalne geografije.

U ovakvom, labavom narativu neoliberalizam je prije iznimka no pravilo i događa se u strogo definiranim prostornim džepovima. Neoliberalne prakse ovdje parazitiraju na već postojećim infrastrukturama, i ekstra-profit stvaraju računajući sa diferencijalom različitih regija i prostora.

Neoliberalizam: to je istodobno ime za novu historijsku fazu kapitalizma, no to je i jedna teško odredljiva praksa koja parazitira između već postojećih modela, iskorištavajući i produbljujući postojeće razlike.

I kao što je na globalnoj razini mnoštvo alter-globalističkih inicijativa i glasova prije desetak godina počelo glasno artikulirati svoje neprihvaćanje neoliberalističkog društvenog razvoja koji sve mjeri uskim ekonomskim parametrima, tako su i u Hrvatskoj sve zamjetnije građanske inicijative koje se suprotstavljaju nepravdama i kršenjima prava koje takav ekonomski razvoj donosi.

Ali u uvjetima kada je osnovna društvena solidarnost skoro pa nestala, kada je državni aparat izgubio svoje nekadašnju ulogu glavnog medijatora društvenih konflikata i kada je tehnološki razvoj doveo do fragmentacije javnog (medijskog) prostora i dosadašnji oblici građanstva te građanskog angažmana postali su sami upitni.

Stoga kritičko propitivanje neoliberalizma ujedno znači i bitnu redefiniciju pojma građanstva. Zagovaranje socijalne solidarnosti zbog složenog i fragmentiranog institucionalnog okvira ne može tako više biti jednoznačno, niti se može oslanjati na uniformirane obrasce društvenog angažmana.

Novo, kritičko građanstvo koji se želi suprotstaviti praksi sveopće privatizacije javnih dobara i razvlašćivanja u interesu nekolicine tako mora iznaći nove načine samo-organiziranja i artikulacije interesa od općeg značaja.

1. Kod značajnih, velikih autora njihove vam najbolje knjige mijenjaju život dok vas njihove samo dobre ostavljaju hladnima.

2. Za razliku od osrednjih pa čak i dobrih knjiga koje su podložne mijenama i različitim interpretacijama koje od tih istih djela doista svaki put iznova stvaraju nova djela, bitna djela – dakle ona koja vam mijenjaju život – uvijek su identična samima sebi, jedincata. Bitne knjige su uvijek iste i nepromjenljive a mijenjate se isključivo vi, čitatelji. Vaša pak preobrazba ne znači da se tim činom promjenilo i samo djelo koje vas je izazvalo da se promjenite – ono ostaje isto i kriterij njegove bitnosti jest u tome da se ono obraća zaista svakome u nakani da vam promjeni život. Slijedom toga se može reći da su jedino one ne-bitne knjige one o kojima možemo nešto znati i o kojima se može nešto uopće i reći dok su bitna djela ne-znatljiva i an-interpretabilna i ako ih se nekako uopće i može razaznati to je onda u uvijek heterogenim učincima, preobrazbama života, koje su izazvali.

Čitateljska poetika slijedom izloženog uvijek je transformativna praksa, nepodložna interpretaciji.

.. i can imagine him, my friend, misbehaving pretty badly in front of an audience. Insulting them. You want his, philosopher’s, secrets, his tips & tricks unveiled? And you’re also eager to know his particular idiosyncrasies, his singular style?  - .. here you have with, would he, my friend, answer to himself not waiting anybody’s reply, delivering deconstruction onto them. Here you have with, Betriebsgeheimnis plus Eigentümlichkeiten of a Philosopher. Here you have it, yes – a Something, but definitively not philosophy, would he go further on. Then philosophy is not something about know-how, is not about a particular opinion – philosophy is only about just life. His friend, the genius, has taught him that much, says he, my friend, the bad-boy.

To do justice to a friend, a teacher passed away cannot mean paying tribute to his, teacher’s greatness, cannot mean denouncing his doxa post-mortem. If there is a way for justice to outlast this act of amical reminiscence, it has – as justice – to become a problem. A palpable one. This justice-problem will make a proper doing-justice impropable, but will in turn do justice to a problem itself. And, he, my friend, thinks that there is a problem of deconstruction. He even gets to put in a formula. If I would be you.. If I am you…

I cannot go here into the philosophical details, into all the intricacies of Garcia-Düttmann’s philosophizing of Derrida’s philosophy. But for a second, that does not matter. What does matter, however, is this dumb, necesseraly dumb idea of just life if we are to philosophize.

 ***

 Somewhere Nietzsche says that in contrast to ordinary professions you can’t make philology and philosophy a family-business. You have to think them stripped-off of a kinship, of a proper genealogy. And constructing a virtual community of peers, some Republik der Geister, will ultimately not offer any consolation. If you’re to think, to make and to do, to live philosophy you have to make this alone, without a safety net. You cannot be socialized, and if you could – the nearest thing resembling familial bringing-up would be, or actually is, the gigantomachia.

 ***

Doing justice to a philosopher-friend… An act of violence, out of love & friendship?  The masquerade set-up by Alex (starting already with the title, or the first motto), a mock-up of laudatory identification easily could deceive you in regards of his proper aim. And this aim – to be frank – insists on the problematic, polemic doing-justice to a friend, who once was a teacher. A teacher, whose insights were short-cuts to the outside, the more-of-life.

 ***

To think “the only”, to think “the best”. A proper task in deconstruction. He, my friend the bad-boy, has spent some considerable time in renegotiating the terms in which to think those two particular words – only, best. For those fairly acquainted with deconstruction there is a simple truth: only = best. Deconstruction is the best method and therefore the only one. Even if deconstruction in its insistence upon the heterodox, those fairly acquainted will say, should not subscribe to something unitary, this equation, if examined closely, will actually betray deconstruction, making it possible-impossible. And there you have this version of deconstruction for the petty-people: conditions of a possibility are at the very same time the conditions of impossibility.  Everything is, and is not.

But to think “the best” disentagled from “the only” and vice versa – this is nothing rewarding. Not even humiliating. This is the unlikely way of acknowledging that something best, something most valuable, has nothing necessary about itself – that this best is not the one-and-only option. And that the only, by necessity only, way or path chosen is not and will never become the best one – not now or ever. 

Yes, deconstruction as philosophy may be the best one, but is it really the only one? Yes, deconstruction as philosophy may the only effective way of thinking, but is it really the best possible?

 ***

He, my friend, has philosophized those quadrants: only, best, actualization, potentiality. He has not allowed to take those sectors apart, or to confuse them for each other. A task conferred by Heidegger upon his succesors  to think life based upon potentiality he, my friend the bad-boy, has not taken up light-hearted or disavowing. He realized that a category discredited, that of a actualization, has to be thought otherwise if to make any sense of its more prominent counter-part.

And, by chance, by a mere chance, his friend, who once was his teacher, has discovered domains to unearth those at value-face abstract philosophical notions. Friendship, literature. And maybe, but just maybe, love.

To think potentiality fully intensified where “nothing becomes impossible”  is to think of friendship and of literature and, maybe, of love. But again, not as something possibly best turning into something that only, necesserally, could be actualized – but as something (as friendship, love, literature) always reminiscent of just life. Which is never the best, neither the only-one.

 ***

No, madams and sirs, no, you should not mistake friendship and literature for the question whether the one, teacher, has taken up some of the names thrown in by the other, his former disciple (Benjamin, yes. Adorno, no). In those matters names don’t count much. 

 ***

To be reminiscent of gigantomachia, of life without kins and peers, this is a solitary life in provocation. A life in-flight. A life as literature, as friendship, and even maybe love. A life never best, never the only-one. Just life. Mere.

If this new volume by Virno, published in Italian in 2005, is to be put into a wider context I would suggest four authors and their books which could set-up a perspective from where on Virno is to approached. First and in regards of Virno’s own method in Jokes and Innovative Action probably the closest reference will be Jonathan Lear’s brilliant Happiness, Death and the Remainder of Life. Lear’s concise deconstruction of Aristotle and Freud and of their respective usage of the notion of happiness and death(-drive) as those instances which stabilize the otherwise volatile psychic apparatus equals in great parts Virno’s attempt to reconstruct a nature, structure and logic of jokes as [equilibrium-disturbing] transformative action through Freud and Aristotle.

Another reference, sadly less-known in English-speaking world, is Barbara Cassin and her numerous volumes on Greek sophistry. It is Cassin’s great merit to have reconstructed in minute details not just the effect of sophistic heritage but also the tiresome philosophical refutation of the same. Virno’s readers expecting something similar in style to his Grammar of the Multitude will, I guess, be repulsed by his own (in length rather modest) dealing with the same topic of sophistry and Aristotle – but those dry and in some sense technical passages are crucial to Virno’s own intellectual enterprise, significant of his own broader systematic approach.

Third major reference and by chance also a volume published in English in 2008 is Alenka Zupancic’s The Odd One In: On Comedy. This volume which in ints Slovene original bears an endlessly more prominent and more witty title Poetics: Second Volume [Poetika, druga knjiga] is a volume – notwithstanding its theoretico-methodical distance to Virno – which not only shares a great deal of references with Virno but also some of the most important results regarding the innovative potential of the comic. To this volume I will come back later.

And, finally, if there is a Italian reference to be aligned to Virno’s recent reflection that would be two volumes by Giorgio Agamben. The one dealing with the experimentum linguae [Infancy and History] and the other – by far the most hermetic Agamben-volume – The End of the Poem where Agamben up to the most specific detail outlines the specific importance of poetics for the very human condition.

Those authors and books enumerated shall not be the exclusive horizon to discuss Virno; if one, for example, takes Virno’s understanding of Wittgenstein Laclau and Mouffe come very soon to mind and then there are some other Italian authors with whom Virno shares a great deal of interest [most prominently, Franco Lo Piparo]. My own intention in refering to this specific authors was somehow to drag Virno out of a niche where he was put after the publication of Grammar of the Multitude. Not to say that Virno is not (highly) relevant for activist or artistic circles but some of the more systematic strains of his enterprise get too easily overlooked if he has to be taken just from those perspectives.

***

If there is something which concisely characterizes Virno’s Jokes and Innovative Action then that are two prefixes: sub- and semi-. Prefixes which itself diagrammatize [metaphorize] Virno’s own proceeding – putting the very topic of the book to square since jokes itself are for Virno already diagrams of an innovative and transformative action. And it is exactly the oscillation between those two prefixes which makes up the decisive point of the book.

Sub- is there already at the beginning: Far from being situated above or outside of norms, human creativity is even sub-normative: it manifests itself uniquely in the lateral and improper paths that we happen to inaugurate when trying to keep to a determined norm. Paradoxical as it may seem, the state of exception originally resides in the only apparently obvious activity that Wittgenstein names ‘rule-following’. This entails that every humble application of a rule always contains in itself a fragment of a ‘state of exception’. Wit brings this fragment to light. 

Human creative action exemplified in jokes is sub-normative in Virno’s argument because jokes show best the fallacious nature of every particular application of a rule. In the sense that jokes are exactly those proper language-tools representing the incommunserable gap which divides the rule or the norm from its application or case, ie. a unbridgeable void which separates the grammar from its usage. Prefix sub- tells so much that the actual instantiation of a norm, if it has to follow the norm, has to betray the very norm – not in the name of some extra-normal domain – but of an application devoid of any normative prescription. Such a defect or fallacious normativity is fundamental for Virno’s
understanding of human praxis, but one aspect in that regard is essential. Namely, this paradoxical sub-normative applying of a norm is for Virno absolute. Which means that there is no remainder left (e.g. some unfulfilled normative content) after the norm has be actually applied. It is just through this sub- or fallacious form that a norm can be applied, in the sense of a paradoxical and absolute division of the norm and its non- or barely related instantiations.

(to be continued)

Dieses angesprochene Mehr, das bündig nur auf etwas mehr als hundert Seiten verhandelt wird, ist die Geschichte einer intellektuellen Rekupperation, einer widerständigen Wiederaneignung eines Begriffs und mit ihm zusammenhängender Praktiken. 

Maschine, soll sie heute, hier und jetzt, etwas bedeuten, muss mindenstens zwei Kriterien genügen. Erstens gilt es die Maschine jenseits der technizistischen Verengung (wieder-) zu denken, denn – wie Raunig zeigt – ist das Verstehen des Maschinischen als eines nur Werkzeughaften, dem eine bestimmte Teleologie beiligt, neueren Datums, und als solches ist dieses Verstehen eine Engführung der wesentlich breiter und anderweitig konzipierter antiker mechane und machina. Mit Marxens Maschinenfragment aus den Grundrissen, aber eigentlich erst mit dem Denken und künstlerischen Praxen des 20. Jahrhunderts wird das Maschinische dieser Einschliessung entrissen, um dann als ein heterodoxes Maschinische in dem Jahrzenten seit den 1960ern aufzutauchen. In Sinne dieser ganz bestimmten Aufgabe ist Raunigs Band auch eine Rekapitulation der besagten intellektuellen Bewegung, ein kreatives und transversales Zusammenführen verschiedenartiger Motive.

Und, zweitens, und in unserem Kontext, werde ich behaupten, die wichtigere Aufgabe, die sich und uns Raunig stellt, ist es, die so neu, heterodox gedachte Maschine als eine soziale zu fassen. Denn, obwohl bei Raunig so nirgends gesagt, ist gerade das Soziale jene glatte Oberfläche, jene Ebene der Verkettungen und Einschnitte der Ströme. Im Sinne der phänomenologischen Denktradition, der sie sich verweigert, ist das Soziale als Maschinisches weder die Welt, noch die Umwelt, und noch weniger deren Kombination  [Welt : Schaffung aus dem Nichts, Umwelt : infinite Anschliessbarkeit]. Das Maschinische  muss, soll es nicht als ein Stop-and-Go Verkehrsfluss der Menschen, Tiere und der noch dazugerechneten technischen Apparaturen gedacht werden, also als ein permanentes Oszillieren zwischen zwei Extremen, dieses Maschinische muss als disjunktive, anarchische [chaotische] und gesellschaftliche Bewegung verstanden werden. Das heisst, als eine Maschinerie, die nicht auf die zwei Stellungen reduzierbar ist [Pause : Arbeit, Subjekt : Objekt, Innen : Aussen, Welt : Umwelt, Bewusstsein : Kommunikation]. Schwierig zu denken, möglich aber zu erzählen und zu zeigen und zu spielen.

***

… wenn es darauf ankommt, wenn es auf die Fahrräder und Geschichten bei Raunig ankommt, wenn die Fahrräder-Geschichten [das ist wohl die korrekte Übersetzung für general intellect, oder?] matters-of-fact sind: ja, dann kenn ich nur zwei Sachen zu Odysseus. Aus zweiter Hand, zugegeben, aber tut nichts zur Sache. Kenne sein Paradoxon, kenne seine Antwort. Zu Fahrrädern kenn ich sogar weniger, möge der Autor mir verzeihen, wenn ich also – aus zweiter Hand, wohlbemerkt – von Geschichten erzähle. 

Denn Odysseus, der Vielbeschlagene, ist gerade jene Figur, die das (Proto-) Maschinische in seiner irreduziblen Zweiheit verköpert, die Kriegs- und die Theatermaschine zusammenführend. Listig und vereinnahmend, umtriebig. 

Antwort: Keiner. Dem Zyklopen gegenüber tarnt er sich in Worten, das Wer mit dem Was vertauschend. Somit den Eigennamen streichend, und damit vielleicht, im selben Zuge, alle Namen aller Geschichten verunmöglichend. Was so viel heissen soll, dass Geschichten keine Namen tragen können, oder dies wenigstens nicht von Bedeutung ist, dass sie aber als Geschichten wohl etwas sind. Maschinen, nämlich.

Paradoxon: Am Hof des Phaiakenkönigs hört Odysseus, unerkannt, die Geschichte seiner Heldentaten. Bricht zusammen, weinend. Für Adriana Cavarero Anlass genug, um die, ihrer Meinung nach, Gegenbenheit  herauszustreichen, dass wir überhaupt erst werden, wenn die anderen uns erzählen. Dass wir, sozusagen, erst werden, indem die anderen von uns betrogen, vereinnahmend betrogen werden, um dann uns so etwas wie unsere eigene Lebensgeschichte vor-zu-erzählen.  Die Machination dieses Durch-die-Anderen-erzählt-werden wäre in diesem Zusammenhang als die intensivste Maschine zu bezeichnen. Lektion darüber, dass obwohl in den Geschichten Namen nichts zur Sache tun, es wohl nicht-vereinnahmbare Überreste gibt, die die ganzen Differenzen ausmachen.  

(to be continued)

I will argue that this singular obsession is much more a result of the unresolved relationship biopolitical thought has entertained towards the so-called classical philosophical canon. This argument shall be specified, insofar it is the domain of the (classical) political philosophy which stand as the paradigmatical placeholder for biopolitical philosophy’s relating towards the philosophical tradition.

Again, even this specific and troublesome relationship with political philosophy could not be said to belong only to biopolitical philosophy. Take for example Badiou’s or Ranciere’s political writings and some very similar attitude props up. And if to extend the argument to the most extreme, it could be said that since Marx has made the discipline of political economy prominent political philosophy proper has become a kind of philosopher’s stone. A reference and institution whose refusal has in some sense become necessary if to think and act politically anew.

It is Roberto Esposito’s work which has shed most light into those intricacies of biopolitical theory and (classical) political philosophy. And I shall here discuss most often his argumentation, then I hold his perspective to be the most elucidating on that particular issue which – not exactly by the same, but a very similar – token has been put asside by Foucault, Negri, Agamben or Virno. And it is, perhaps, Esposito’s own enterprise which outlines best the basic problem of biopolitical philosophy. Namely, if – as Esposito argues – the proper biopolitical epoch (and for Esposito, this is modernity) has been broadly defined by classical corpus of political thought and if this very same modern epoch has come to an end, at least two important questions and consequences emerge. First, if modernity is over subsequently a new mode of political thinking is on the agenda. This, as is well known, has been a step taken by almost all philosophical schools and directions. But it is the second consequence which puts a call for an alternative or innovative political thinking on test. 

I will formulate it rather bluntly: if (modern/modernist) biopolitics was the background of (classical) political philosophy, and if that very (biopolitical) background or frame has been exhausted – there arises a fundamental difficulty for biopolitical reflection itself. How is it that biopolitical theory emerges in a period non-biopolitical? Or, what is the historical fundamentum (a history’s name) biopolitical philosophy exacly evokes – if biopolitical period proper is over?

A way out of this problem could be in stating that while political philosophy has evoked life in negative manner (by stressing the conservationist and immunizing aspect) biopolitical philosophy proposes, or at least tries so, a kind of affirmative, positive biopolitics. There are textual references that support this strategy in all of the abovementioned authors, and with some right it could be said that it is precisely this dichotomic way of arguing they in the final instance pursue. 

BUT … but, there is at least one caesura which stalls this easy-way-out. And this is the event of Nazism. To invoke “life” after it has been invoked and mobilized and misused absolutely becomes a sort of impossible. Agamben or Esposito are both rather clear on this issue, and only a rather one-sided reading could declare biopolitical philosophy triumphalist in its vitalistic naivite. 

SO … what, then, could be that name, that unique denominator, biopolitical philosophers are striving for? What is, better to say, the historical fundamentum on which this kind of philosophy has emerged? Answers or names authors in question offer are few. Be it multitude, love, a non-relational community-to-come, munus… And they are, for sure, some more technical names to be accounted for. But, again – those names seem to me rather vague and not less ambivalent than those political philosophy has famously cited.

The historical fundamentum I will like to set-up as the prime experience for biopolitical philosophy itself and its political consequences shall be something I will call the encounter of the those (people/persons or otherwise) landless with those stateless. I will discuss one such examplary encounter, taken from Aleksandar Petrović’s movie Biće skoro propast sveta, nek propadne nije šteta [Yugoslavia, 1968].  Revolting Yugoslav socialist peasants, land-workers meeting the stateless Czechoslovak tourists, stranded somewhere deep in Panonia after the Soviet intervention.

This will be a kick-off for a broader theoretical considerations mentioned above. In months to come, I hope to keep this posting going – in constant touch with some people or texts I consider crucial for the so briefly outlined research. Eyal Weizman, Gil Anidjar, Tom Keenan, Reza Negarestani and Ugo Vlaisavljević. And not to forget the people who actually have put pressure on me to write this down: Mislav, Marko, Stipe, Leonardo.