°Populism redux
To Kenneth Rufo’s roundup of recent debates on populism over at Long Sunday, I’ll add the fragment on Jean-Luc Nancy on ‘the people’, which comes from the recent essay on democracy, more of which is here, updated with an additional para on ‘the people’, apropos the comments.
Needless to say, I share Jon’s criticisms of populism, but perhaps mine were formed less as a posthegemonic inclination (though, this is implicit) than because of populism’s persistent recourse to a biopolitical, racialising frame. To be sure, ‘the people’ might be venerated or derided. But, this very figure is nevertheless worked up into a figure through the functionings of a transcendental gaze - the state, or state-in-waiting - without which people would not be bound together as the people. It’s this representational gesture that populism denies - the naturalisation of politics and the depoliticisation of that which is deemed to be natural.
In that sense, Le Colonel’s criticism of antipopulism in the name of a defense of, as she puts it (I’m paraphasing) the majesty and size of the antiwar protests is, I think, a little unreflective. Not least because the populist character of those protests was the condition of their being far less a campaign against the war, than a forum through which various ‘elites’ competed for ‘elite’ status on the basis of who best represented ‘the people’. And, from that point on, the campaigns became campaigns for the configuration of nationalist ‘exit strategies’ - since ‘the people’ always seem to be inscribed along nationalist lines - and not oppositions to war. Some account of those dynamics here and here.
And, in an aside, BitchLab recalls some older cyberdisputes over ‘the people’, which I think likely occured around the time of writing this or maybe this, I can’t recall.
“Not least because the populist character of those protests was the condition of their being far less a campaign against the war, than a forum through which various ‘elites’ competed for ‘elite’ status on the basis of who best represented ‘the people’.”
You’ve just entirely erased all Iraqis from the antiwar movement. One of the things ‘populism’ as a fairy helps accomplish.
alphonsevanworden [December 10, 2005 @ 1:37 am]
though I agree there were elements of course as always working to package, construct, exclude, take control, elements professionally trained to do this, with tecnology for it at their disposal.
alphonsevanworden [December 10, 2005 @ 1:40 am]
“a forum through which various ‘elites’ competed for ‘elite’ status on the basis of who best represented ‘the people’.”
Machinating elites…yes, they are there, contrary to the antiPopulist contention. But they are less in control than the spectacle hints. A friend in NY at the protests there was standing in this group; there was someone there carrying a placard with the idiotic, and then popular among the ‘elite’ sector, recommendation for Inspections to continue rather than Bombs. Everyone around this person was just shrugging, laughing; there was an effort to explain what was wrong with this formula, but you can’t explain this to a well to do dentist from Great Neck. You just can’t. The prominence of this character and this character’s conception of the situation in the spectacle does not reflect the actual consciousness of the participants at the protest or in the movement generally. There is a social sector that is the dupe of this, but its size is overestimated, though it is influential. who are the elites representing ‘the people’ to? Only the members of their own elite or competitors. This ‘populism’ is a drama by the elites for the elites.
alphonsevanworden [December 10, 2005 @ 1:59 am]
Heya Alphonse. I don’t think I did any such thing as erase “all Iraqis from the antiwar movement”. You don’t think groups in Iraq which resort to talk of “the Iraqi people” so as to manipulate and control various movements, opposition, etc?
See, I come neither to deride nor exalt ‘the people’. I’m interested in questioning how this figure works, since no one has yet to persuade me that it’s anything but mystical and antipolitical.
In this sense, I really don’t think you can so easily resort to the populist locution of “all Iraqis”, as if this suggests a unitary politics or perspective. Clearly, it does not. In doing so, you erase those differences, history, and (more specifically) any explanation for the character and conduct of the war there. Iraq is not some natural entity, it’s a political one - established by colonial powers.
But, seriously, the history of the war is characterised by calculations as to how best to maintain the ‘integrity’ of Iraq’s borders, against those for whom the formation and maintenance of such an entity marks their liquidation and suppression. In the early 1990s, the US pulled back from ousting Saddam because they calculated that only he could best maintain the territorial ‘integrity’ of Iraq and hence oil supply. They went all the way more recently because it was clear that the Baathists no longer could do so, up against the pressures of the Shia and the Kurdish oppositions, to mention the most obvious.
As for the antiwar campaigns, this is my experience of them.
And, the reason the character of these protests is a particular problem should be obvious. ‘Exit strategy’ means, literally, the re-articulation of war as civil war, the organisation of some people in Iraq so they can kill other people in Iraq, while maintaining the borders of, well, Iraq.
It’s not an end to war, just the geopolitical containment of it - something which populist figures such as ‘the Iraqi people’ obscures and, at worst, is in the service of.
s0metim3s [December 10, 2005 @ 12:08 pm]
Oh, and why can’t you have an argument with the dentist from Great Neck, exactly?
You might end up continuing to disagree, as I’m sure you do with, say, a lecturer from Yale. But you seem to assume this is a failure of intelligence on the part of the dentist. Failures of agreement are, for populism, always rendered as a failure to communicate to people who are assumed to be stupid, so this somehow obliges a cynical recourse to superstitious concepts, like ‘the people’ in order to ‘get the message across’. You don’t see this as manipulative, the assumption of a transcendental gaze, etc?
This is what I mean by populism includes both derision and veneration in equal measure. [ * ]
s0metim3s [December 10, 2005 @ 12:46 pm]
One aspect of this is the idea that all racism/nationalism/failure to get along comes from a lack of understanding. If only people understood each other a little more, kaboom, it would all be done.
Hey, the ambiguity is perfect just like that, whaddyaknow!
Ghost of the Machine [December 10, 2005 @ 3:59 pm]
“But you seem to assume this is a failure of intelligence on the part of the dentist. ”
Not at all. I think everyone is intelligent to about the same degree, don’t you? I think its too much in his interest to believe that the system which upholds his prestige and guarantees his material security is legitimate. Anyway, I can’t explain why this is so hard with any confidence: but my experience is it was impossible to wrest the idea of ‘Sadam’ as a ‘problem’ which ‘we’ had to solve from antiwar millionaires in the US. Impossible for me anyway: others might have had more success.
“You don’t think groups in Iraq which resort to talk of “the Iraqi people” so as to manipulate and control various movements, opposition, etc?”
I do, its everywhere evidenced: but for whom are they putting on this show? this conversation, these rhetorical acts, seem to go on in confined areas, in certain small but very influential spheres - with media workers, academics, among politicians and ‘leaders’ . The effect it has I think is, because this involves the sector in control of mass media, as well as that which those in control are interested in, alienating people from one another, giving the impression this kind of bewilderment is more widespread than it is, throwing obstacles in the path of people organizing, people who are not in generally duped by this, who see the ’state’ as a finite, demystified material thing - institutions plus their income stream and personnel - and really don’t fetishize ‘the people.’ I think one of the things that is really happening in the US and France at least is a gulf widening between the spectacle where these discourses take place and the ideological and material environment of its intended consumers. And I think it is this latter that is the target of the new ideology develping around the term ‘populism.’ There is a difference between ‘faith’ in the mystification ‘the people’ and ‘democracy’ and the expropriative instrumentalization of those terms, etc..
alphonsevanworden [December 11, 2005 @ 3:39 am]
by ‘influential’ I mean on corporate and state policy
alphonsevanworden [December 11, 2005 @ 3:43 am]
Likes this:
“REP. CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Because were it left up to—I’ll get in trouble now—but were it left up to the Democratic leadership, we would not have had this day, because we wouldn’t be here. The Democratic leadership has instructed us to boycott this panel, because we can’t trust the results or the report of this panel. But if we participate as our constituents voted us to do up here, we can at least insure that there’s more integrity than by boycotting it.
And so I would like to thank my chairman for giving us the opportunity to invite people who don’t have the opportunity to come and testify before Congress, except for Barbara, of course, she comes up here a lot. But, we’ve heard from people for whom getting here has been a struggle, whether it’s just because they are Katrina survivors at the armory, and it was a struggle for them to get to the armory, or if they are Katrina survivors living in New Orleans still, determined to stay there and maybe every once in a while get a glimpse of their member of Congress.
We are here to serve all of the people of this country, and too rarely do we hear from all of the people. But thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Shays, for staying here throughout the entirety of this hearing to hear what my people—my people—have to say. Because the road that we walk is not paved. Or as some great poet said, life for us ain’t been no crystal stair. ”
She knows what she’s doing; but she knows also that her varied audiences will read this differently.
alphonsevanworden [December 11, 2005 @ 3:52 am]
my experience is it was impossible to wrest the idea of ‘Sadam’ as a ‘problem’ which ‘we’ had to solve from antiwar millionaires in the US
But this ‘we’ — that effaces any number of divisions (such as class) in favour of constructing other divisions (such as nationalist ones) through the utterance of this magical phrase of We, the people — is not, methinks, challenged by restating it.
I get that McKinney’s speech conveys something quite specific - and her use of the phrase “all of the people” is that specificity.
But the seemingly interminable contests over who does and does not belong to ‘the people’ that populism elicits will always be premised on creating a space or class of persons who are deemed to be ‘not of the people’, such as those in New Orleans, Haiti and so on. To put it bluntly, they have been deemed to be animals, not quite human, barbarians, etc. Populism requires this moment.
s0metim3s [December 11, 2005 @ 9:04 am]