It’s That Plugging Thing!
The saddest tale in all of political philosophy is the one first told by Spinoza. It was he, living in the turmoil of seventeenth century Holland, who realized that humans are far more likely to fight for the right to be oppressed, than they are ever likely to fight for their true freedom. In the context of seventeenth century Holland, this meant that the population agitated and rioted in the name of an oppressive monarchy, overthrowing a relatively free and easy republic in the process. The Romance of the Monarchy, and the personal struggle of kings, trumped the desire for individual liberty and freedom. Indeed people, when agitated aright, are more likely to shout ‘Less Bread more Taxes’, than the other way around, all the more so, as the very effect of starving will make the ferociousness of those desires so very much greater… But the problem of why this is the case, is a problem to make heart and mind bleed.
Perhaps the best of all modern solutions is found in the later work of great modern French thinker Foucault. Foucault suggested a very deep resolution to this problem. On the one hand it is impossible to ever simply separate out a human’s understanding of themselves and their own humanity, from the social interactions which both informs that knowledge, and are informed by it. Human’s self knowledge is never floating in a vacuum, but is rather always caught up in elaborate exchanges between lived and known worlds, where each moulds the other. On the other hand, and even more importantly, humans will never simply ‘fit themselves’ into this schema; but rather define their own humanity as a counterpoint to the way that they simply understand others. It is perhaps this counterpoint, that forms the central nub, of the fight for oppression, and against freedom. But all of this is no doubt very obscure, and somewhat abstract, and I will in the rest of this Rant, show not only how this argument works, but also why politically it is so vital to understanding our current way of living.
With regard to the understanding of power in Foucault, he famously attempts to move away from the understanding of power in terms of large scale states (modelled on the power of individuals and monarchs); and instead towards the fluid exchanging relations by which humans use a potent blend of acute observation and moral blackmail to persuade one another to act. The correct model for understanding how and why a society is as it is, is then not the grand politics of the state, and the pomp of parliament, or even the ritual violence of the picket line, but rather the odd and very subtle exchanges by which humans persuade one another to go for a drink, or telephone, or that they ‘need help’. This move then changes and challenges the problem of political government. Politics is not (and never has been) about wielding power, so much as riding it. All politicians might be tiger riders, but the problem is not that the tiger might devour them, so much as it might simply ignore them. If after all, real power rests upon the individuals and with their endless interactions, then there is little or no immediate reason why the state should be able to weld these powers together to form anything resembling a population, which can be thence be regulated and governed. But at this point one needs caution. I have set up this argument as if it involved cynical politicians, and an innocent, if potentially revolutionary, population. This is not really the case, as the urgency for politicians to be able cast a people as a state, is reflected by a desire amongst those same people to have a relatively straight forward (and universal) axis by which they can understand each other’s interactions. Here of course, a cynic might well say that one of those beautiful hypocrisies which animate thinking is present: Each human is complex in themselves, but craves, in thinking about others, such simple solutions that they will allow each such thinker to move on and live their own life.
Both state and people then come together to create languages, or a bodies of sciences in which their very complex social interactions might be explored, and articulated.
Here perhaps there are four key elements, in the creation of forms of knowledge. Firstly the ultimate origin of this knowledge does not lie in everyday life but rather the banal exchanges of the every day are thought to point to some other point or plane, where a truth about them can be discovered. It is then in this ‘other’ place, that the very basic principles for the language are first produced. In our age we are replete with such organizations.
For example, what is the modern genetic laboratory, but a node in which hidden links between apparently disparate elements of humanity (lengths of chemicals and behaviour or physical traits) are hooked together, in the context of an elaborate set of procedures, which are specially designed for this process. A no doubt more sinister example is found within the security services. It is their role to concoct not only elaborate (and covert) monitoring techniques, but also then to formalise the ‘individual profiles’ which these techniques produce (and woe betide any innocent who is accidentally caught up in these techniques). Nor do all the examples need to be quite as solemn as the two just cited. They are often down right silly. Take the example of citizen juries or focus groups. Here ‘truth’ is meant to be manufactured within the context of a highly limited and stage managed event; The comedy being that these truths, be it the word ‘choice’ or the problem of ‘migration’ are treated as absolutes, and allowed to poison our entire political debate.
The initial production of truth is therefore related to the existence of a very special apparatus, to microcosms (rather than microscopes) within which raw and stinking ‘facts’ can be initiated. However once created, these truths become universally applicable (even at the cost of their meanings shifting somewhat). They then become a veritable index for understanding where we all are. We all in turn, become then, the product of our genes as we attempt to understand what we are through their prism. Hence we look to genes to elucidate homosexuality, or aggression, and so in spite of the fact that every reputable geneticist actually denies such easy claims are possible, ‘Genes are us’, becomes our very modern mantra. Moreover we adapt the techniques of genetics to attempt to ’inform’ existing debates about history and identity. One traces one’s family history (Genes Reunited), as if that could tell one anything about what one was (or could be).
On a far darker level, it is through the prism of terrorism that that other debate about identity and surveillance (and also Genetics) is configured. The state demands that we all tag our identities, and become known, and do so in the name of terror, and in spite of the fact that there is no actual link between terror and terror (ID) cards. Cards, which surely serve as an index of terror. Or again, the word ‘choice’ is torn from the very artificial conditions within which the term has been distilled, and made to haunt debates about what ‘people’ want.
The third dimension of the production of such languages, lies essentially within the contradiction that is inherent between the last two points. It is never simply the point of such systems to generate a ‘normal’ individual, so much as to define what such a norm is, and therefore to allow all other individuals to define themselves off against this norm. The ‘true’ fundamentalist, the ‘absolute terrorist’, with their mad, bad eyes, is no doubt as big an illusion as ‘the perfect citizen’, or the ‘simple gene’. And yet each of these ‘norms’ form the standard reference point (akin to zero) from which all other difference is defined, and thereby trapped.
Finally, it is a paradigm of such systems that they must appear to render either actual or desired social phenomena absolutely natural, and so irrevocable. To question them must be made as hazardous, and ludicrous as possible. And yet this process is clearly a two way one. On the one hand, if a layman questions the efficacy of genetics, they are ignored, while if a research scientist questions their value, then their funding is cut. But conversely if one attempts to move from the reality of genetic difference to social reality (and so infer that genders or peoples are integrally more or less able), one is absolutely pilloried. In the Genes are Us scenario, the ‘Us’ that we aspire to be, is at least as important as the genes, and disaster befalls anyone who forgets it.
Or to take another example, on the one hand, anyone who questions those purveyors of truth, the media, is lampooned. The Media always defends itself ferociously. Heather Mill’s clear persecution is apparently justified because once (when no doubt absolutely desperate) she attempted to control what was said or seen about her. Moreover any attempt on her part to argue that the media itself is rotten, is simply (and very stupidly) dismissed, with the remark that she cannot really mind that much, because she has never complained to the press complaints body! That is in the eyes of such ‘commentators’, all criticism of the press can only be legitimate if it is made within the context of an organization staffed by the press itself (and therefore rendered absolutely ineffective): One can only criticise ‘legitimately’ if one first castrates oneself! And yet there are clear limits about what the society tolerates in its press. To photograph a famous dying woman is to go too far, and to be pilloried by both public and even more by the press (who are anxious to establish their ’humanity’.
The axes by which one understand modern society are therefore highly complex, and nuanced. Debate is simultaneously allowed, and yet controlled, by elaborate rituals by which what can be said is forged. It is then within these rituals that individuals define their own individuality. Here the game is surely one of ‘quirk’. That is, the very attempt to take up a language by which one’s relations to others is articulated and to simply apply it to all the scattered schemes and flowing ideas that one discovers within one’s own head, is itself a highly problematic enterprise. Indeed surely the aim of this process is not so much to create an identity which conforms to simple rules, so such as to delight the mind in its own singularity, which at once conforms to the rules, and yet does so in a manner which appears so very individual and different. Each mind therefore feels itself to be a special case, and have individuality, an identity of its own, even as it applies rules to itself. Thence humanity founds individuality not on anything creative, so much as being the integral enigma within an application of rules. Each individual no doubt moves out from this point, and thereby establishes nice little singularities, little eddies of being, by which their own difference is expressed: To be me, is nothing more than having my own quirky sense - of humour, art or hygiene habits: While to claim to be an individual is to claim to be ‘ little bit crazy’.
Far more problematically, this difference (so neatly defined within rules) becomes the powerhouse to understand subsequent creativity. To be creative, to think new ideas, is not in itself to break out of the box, but is rather often merely, to develop an elaborate new sense to understand how each individual is already caught up within rules and their norms. Hence, for Foucault the Genius of Freud lay not in breaking out of the trap of nineteenth century repressions, so much as developing a wholly new way to articulate that oppression. Or again, the very modern genius behind the search engine Google, certainly revolutionises the world, and yet does so, only by developing new ways to articulate, and orchestrate existing concerns.
I started with that very deep problem in philosophy. ‘Why, oh why’ do humans fight for their oppression just as hard, if not harder than for their freedom? Foucault answers, it is because knowledge itself is far from innocent. On the contrary it is always caught up in the games of both of persuasion and articulation, by which a society becomes able, not only to understand itself, but also to use that understanding, to re-create itself. Individuals then fit themselves within this framework: To be an individual is to find a delightful new identity within the framework of these rules, which can only be applied to a subject, as that subject (ironically enough) feels themselves as something apart from the rules themselves. One’s freedom therefore lies in one’s very self oppression. Creativity likewise simply becomes a matter of finding new means to extend (within a socially acceptable framework) these languages of regularization. And yet, one must be so very careful here. Foucault’s answer only appears pessimistic because the question itself assumed a negative. His answer, that identity and oppression are caught up in each other, is then only constricting as long as one simply insists that only a certain sort of identity is possible. For Foucault himself, the key to power lay always in resistance (for all power is always resisted at source). His gambit was then that to articulate this resistance is also to question the nature of identity (and its link to what we think we know). A task by no means impossible, so long as one frees up what one understands oneself to be, and thence let other creative energies than one’s all too simple self, oscillate through one’s existence.
