On the urban myth of the necessity of specific demands for the sustaining of OWS…
January 22, 2012
being a refutation of same via the Bakhtinian concept of the Carnivalesque…
A current vogue in OWS ‘scholarship’ has it that it the arc of the OWS cause is sorely needing a specific litany of core demands, i.e., or it risks deconstruction. The agent of such observations is, typically, a well-intentioned Liberal observer—not participant—who is seemingly intent upon conflating Left activism as all of a piece. All too often such observer/adviser figures employ an activist benchmark akin to late sixties/early seventies’ “special interest” politicking, e.g., as seen in opposition to war, Black liberation, feminism, Green activism, etc.
What is ignored in the academic assessment of the current regime—i.e., the era of Late finance capital—is the utterly diffuse havoc being played upon all cadres, all organizational fronts, etc., via the class war waged by rentiers, the Fortune 500 CEOs, the banks, etc., against a mutually dissociated collective, i.e., the working class. Further, this oppressive state of financial massacre has as its concomitant effect a dispiriting malaise of anomie, helplessness, depression, etc., all serving to keep any would-be activism by those being preyed upon in abeyance, with actors fragmented, and uninvolved. And this, a reality in Empire for time out of memory.
The unique nature of the current manifestation of investor-class hegemony, however, is seen in the highly accelerated and aggressive nature of the opponents of We, the People. That is, the financial gain for the 1% is so impossibly high that a seduction exists to destroy the 99%, which seduction running rampant and sustained by the state as well as the corporate-owned media.
That is, there exists an abiding moral social pathology which is sustained by denial, distraction (e.g., “entertainment”, consumerism, etc.), etc., in tandem to a prevalent suffering: suffering at the individual, familial and community levels—all occurring simultaneously!
To argue, then, as non-participant observers have been doing, that what is needed is a “structuring” and specific schedule of demands by OWS—in order to sustain the activism—is to engage in the sort of armchair activism (albeit well-intentioned, of course) that does more harm than is first apparent when reading seemingly innocuous commentary. And, this is so because, in the context of the period of Late (finance) capital, the OWS cause is a sui generis event, unique for the latter part of the last century, and probably as far back as the activism of Eugene Debs, Joe Hill, and the Wobblies after WWI. We are often feeling our way forward, creating paths where a moment ago no path existed. It elicits a highly creative spontaneity, an effort borne of humanist genius—borne of a genuine caring for the other. That this essential idea is lost on many may be a telling feature of their own impossibly anxious lives.
That is to say, the OWS cause resembles nothing less than the Bakhtinian notion of the Carnivalesque, as seen in the medieval subverting of the rule of order and control.
This notion of the Carnivalesque is seasonal—it may be lain down but freely reestablished—it has elements of the grotesque, the ludic (i.e., play) and the obviating of the spectator/player dyad: i.e., everyone was freely invited to play—i.e., at a time, place and manner of their choosing—anyone and everyone participated, all might be healed while engaged in a catharsis of sorts, etc. And, in the case of OWS, the Power elite are purposefully made ridiculous by any/all OWS players, in any/all fora and any/all social milieu. And this would occur in, e.g., the confrontation at residences of the hegemonic class (q.v., at Bloomberg’s pied-à-terre) right up to the Internet viral ridiculing of adversaries of the community of We, the People.
To correlate the event of the Carnivalesque to OWS—or, healing via an activist catharsis—this initially playful subverting of the authoritarian regime is a means of overcoming the imposed—and enforced—stasis placed upon the rank and file. It is in this joyous liberation from the conforming regime—the conforming regime of wage slavery, of a lack of affordable housing, of fear of employee collective bargaining, of fear of a police state, of fear of the suppressing of habeas corpus, etc.—that a space of social possibility comes to the fore. The ‘serious play’ of the Carnivalesque is the break with socio-politico-economic inertia and the setting into motion a dynamic of collectivized agency for the good of the Commons. This dynamic of serious play occurs at the site of the purloined Commons by the 99% as they, neighbors, meet on the now-level playing field, often for the first time. It is an event at once joyous, heartening and revelatory.
Again, it is a space of moral opportunity manifest where a moment ago no space existed. The invitation for serious play was set forth, the invitation heeded, and the ludic games began. To argue, then (as non-participant observers have done) that what is needful is “more structure”, and “more clarification”, etc., is to miss the efficacy of the Left activist moment: what is truly needful now is the serious play of the subverting Carnival to create a space of possibility, to create a healing of those whose rightful legacy is the Commons—long since appropriated from them—and even to invite the oppressor to join in the Carnival, since the social pathology at large has its provenance in their behavior, their state, and their media control.
In lieu of the calling for more specifically delineated agendas and the discrete naming of enemies of We, the People, what is needful is the Menippean satire of the ruling ‘code’. From Wiki:
“Bakhtin treats Menippean satire as one of the classical ‘serio-comic’ genres, alongside Socratic dialogue and other forms that Bakhtin claims are united by a ‘carnival sense of the world’, wherein ‘carnival is the past millennia’s way of sensing the world as one great communal performance’ and is ‘opposed to that one-sided and gloomy official seriousness which is dogmatic and hostile to evolution and change’.”
The oppressor is convinced of the salutary nature of his/her behavior (q.v., Goldman-Sachs’ CEO Blankfein’s claim to be “doing God’s work”). The oppressor perpetuates this behavior via an abiding, radical faith in control, i.e., control in the world at large, the control of those, e.g., not in his social strata. By the ludic games of the Carnivalesque, OWS participants make manifest a new, healed order via a relinquishing of control—e.g., living in tents at Zuccotti, the free sharing of food, clothing, funds, etc., with all, the use of masks, body paint, communal drumming and chanting, the revealing of the ridiculous of the current order, etc. It is this essential inversion of the hegemon’s order (i.e., an “order” in the service of pandemic disorder) that strikes at the heart of the socio-politico-economic malaise.
This all-inclusive, yet seemingly ill-defined, ephemeral subverting of the hegemonic order panicks the academic as it makes anxious the careerist masquerading as fellow traveler. That they would then suggest an orthodox, ‘politically correct’ agency of opposition (in the interest of the movement “gaining strength”) is to miss completely the genius of the satirical moment, of the lack of subservience to “control”, and the all-inclusive nature of OWS. Those whose lives traffic in control crave control—those who crave control traffic in same. Both perpetuate the dis-ease.
OWS has managed to effect an eclectic synthesis of the rank and file to make common cause for change, in toto. To argue that OWS “at this point, really needs to be clearer in just what it is that they are about”—i.e., they need to make specific demands “in order to succeed as a cause”—is at best, misguided conjecture, and at worst, presumption from non-participant mainstays of the status quo—i.e., presumption from just who/what it is that we are opposing.
There are discrete activist organizations in the US, with their coterie attending this or that action. They have, in fact, announced for all the world their specific demands. And, by the way, this ‘clarification’ on their part has not necessarily manifest itself as a catalyst for activism on a broad scale—not to the degree that OWS has accomplished in a brief four months.
The very first, overwhelmingly needful step is to get the disassociated rank and file involved. And this, OWS is accomplishing, as an ongoing necessity. Many participants view OWS as being a forum for making manifest their suffering—no mean attribute of OWS, as the state/MSM/Wall Street “trifecta of evil” has made eminently clear that individual suffering is utterly meaningless. The maintenance of the investor-class-configured status quo has underwritten every salient narrative here at Empire, all serving to keep any incipient collective action at bay. And the effect has been accomplished to a distressful degree, with the undeniable, yet vital call for healing being paramount. Again, the ongoing necessity of healing-with-activism will occur as the participants are invited to engage the enemy in their own way. That is, OWS has created a space of action for everyone—i.e., not solely “activists”—quote-unquote.
Which is to say, the healing of We, the People, is an open, all-inclusive invitation—an invitation to the dance, as it were. The obsessive-compulsive behavior of the investor class demonstrates a profound need of the healing moment and by the overt, open nature of the Carnivalesque the possibility exists for their participation as well. And this, in contradistinction to the radically exclusive, occult, obscurantist nature of the ruling Power complex here at Empire.
