May 2009
Towards the end of the twentieth century a sickness struck the world. Not everyone died, but all suffered from it. The virus which caused the epidemic was called the “liberal virus.” This virus made its appearance around the sixteenth century within the triangle described by Paris-London-Amsterdam. The symptoms that the disease then manifested appeared harmless…But the virus traveled across the Atlantic and found a favorable place among those who, deprived of antibodies, spread it. As a result, the malady took on extreme forms.
The virus reappeared in Europe towards the end of the twentieth century, returning from America where it had mutated. Now strengthened, it came to destroy a great number of the antibodies that the Europeans had developed over the course of the three preceding centuries…
The virus caused among its victims a curious schizophrenia. Humans no longer lived as whole beings, organizing themselves to produce what is necessary to satisfy their needs (what the learned have called “economic life”) and simultaneously developing the institutions, rules, and customs that enable them to develop (what the same learned people have called “political life”), conscious that the two aspects of social life are inseparable. Henceforth, they lived sometimes as homo oeconomicus, abandoning to “the market” the responsibility to regulate their “economic life” automatically, and sometimes as “citizens,” depositing in ballot boxes their choices for those who would have responsibility to establish the rules of the game for their “political life.”
-Samir Amin. P.8 “The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World.”
What is clearer but that those living in the center, especially Americans, have difficulty imagining others as human? What then does it mean to be an American? Elaine Scarry states in her essay, “The Difficulty of Imagining Other People,” that the way we act toward “others” is shaped by the way we imagine them. If the states that belong to the center, following a world-systems analysis, enjoy a status that is only possible by the subordination of the periphery, which is in part an inability to see the humanity of other peoples, then what other solution is there but a global re-distribution of wealth, a global triumph of really-existing socialism? In order to resist, we must understand the system that subordinates us. How do we educate ourselves out of our condition? Wallerstein writes that from education we must not only learn that we are citizens of the world, but that we are locatable in specific “niches” in an unequal world.
"Being disinterested and global on one hand and defending one’s narrow interests on the other are not opposites but positions combined in complicated ways. Some combinations are desirable, others are not. Some are desirable, but not there, now but not then. Once we have learned this, we can begin to cope intellectually with our social reality." Wallerstein 124 (1)
What should be obvious is that education cannot be divorced from the economic or social question. In a global community, the pedagogy of education is an especially contested terrain. Educational spaces and practices in the core, in the public and private spheres, are more than ever dominated by the forces neo-liberalism. The capitalist system is blind at its center, and the methodologies and content of the classroom remain at the core of an oppressive, systemic reality. This is the problem that American youth are faced with today but are unable to see. This situation is not inevitable.
The White liberal student, such as the typical Bard student, is aloof as to precisely how and why he occupies his “niche.” The forces of capital have arranged it this way. This student enjoys an especially dominant position, politically, economically, and has the option of aggression toward the weak. He will enjoy the profit of capital made by his network, whether he realizes it or not. He might graduate with a major in “human rights” and have the capacity, according to the philosophy behind his education, to think critically about the forces that shape his present circumstances. What does this mean? If the promise is fulfilled, he can only gain a stained conscience. How could an awakening of consciousness be followed by anything but guilt for his privilege? His education, he finds, is only an additional layer of security to this promise. The exertion required to ensure his place near or among the bourgeoisie is minimal. Post an entry to the blog. One may feel sorry for his situation, but do not feel sorry for him. His ignorance, like his guilt, is built on the suffering of others. He perceives the suffering of others and assigns them either to forces beyond his agency, or he feels sorry for them and engages in “humanitarian” projects that are not only unwilling to seriously undermine the status quo, but perpetuate it by “managing the crisis.” The supremacy of the capitalist over the proletariat today is only noticed by those paying attention; built into this system are increasingly sublime and sophisticated disguises, justifications, and methods of dehumanization.
Those who do not have the forces of capital at their side may be no more or less submerged in the ideologies that envelop them but find themselves at the mercy of a corporate elite ever ready to attack and subjugate. Their education does not fail to be critical; it does not purport to be critical. “Instead of offering poor and disenfranchised youth decent schools and potential employment, the militarized state offers them the promise of incarceration” (Giroux 159). (2)
What becomes overwhelmingly necessary is a pedagogy that is impenetrable, that has yet to be penetrated by the virus of liberalism. Such a space for this certainly does not yet exist. And if it did, who could be trusted to ensure its success? Where would these new schools be located, who would be among their ranks, and what would they teach? These questions are central to the task of regaining humanity from a system that has stolen mortal life energy and with it human dignity.
"The struggle for humanization… is possible only because dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny, but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed… Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both." Freire 21. (3)
The charity of a liberal institution like Bard College, in its multi-various humanitarian schemes or in the cloning and implantation of itself in spaces that are not yet thoroughly intellectually colonized, constitute the “false charity” through which “the strong” or “the oppressors” seek to perpetuate an unjust social order nourished by death, despair and poverty. Freire advises us that self-reliance, on the part of the oppressed, is needed for the oppressed themselves to realize the shackles that bind them to their oppressors, that this is an ongoing process.
The teachers, we now know, must be the oppressed themselves, or at least leaders among them who have perceived and articulated their subjective reality and are courageous enough to be self-critical in terms of their own social identity. Every oppressed man must be willing to confront the fact that, in this status quo, his sex is dominant. “Men (whom the virus struck in preference to women) not only became accustomed to it and developed the necessary antibodies, but were able to benefit from the increased energy that it elicited” (Amin 7). (4). The dominance of the White race over others, of men over women, of straightness over queerness, of the wealthy over the poor, manifests itself in explicit and not-so-explicit ways, and must be dissected and destroyed by those who seek to claim a new social order.
In his short essay “Neither Patriotism Nor Cosmopolitanism,” Wallerstein refers to the oppressed as “the weak.” (5). He insists that they will only overcome “disadvantage” if they insist on the principles of group equality. (6). To do this effectively, they may have to “stimulate group consciousness – nationalism, ethnic assertiveness, etc” (Wallerstein 122). Oppressed individuals must understand their commonality and seek to rupture the power that divides them from one another and from themselves (in a Foucauldian analysis). (7) But where to begin?
Wallerstein gives us “the concrete situation in the United States today.” The discourse turns to hegemony, which was the status it achieved by 1945 when its ideological line became supremely nationalist: America is the world’s greatest country and leader of the free world and defender of values of individual liberty (which are in fact the world’s values, i.e. Kantian categorical imperatives). The anti-systemic movements that shook the world began in the 1960/70s, and were undertaken by the oppressed. Did they succeed?
"Those who were excluded sought to be included, and those who were already included were most often inclined to keep eligibility for citizens’ rights defined narrowly, maintaining the exclusions. This meant that those who were seeking inclusion had to organize outside the parliamentary channels in order for their cause to be heard. That is, quite simply, they had to engage in demonstrative, rebellious, sometimes revolutionary activity." Wallerstein 52. (8).
(wallerstein)Wallerstein stops short of elaborating what an “integrating patriotism” even means. We can only infer that it seeks the same ends as the anti-systemic failures, that is, integration of the oppressed and oppressor alike, their submergence in false consciousness. The difference is that this “integration patriotism” is, according to Wallerstein, a gesture that emanates from the camp of the oppressor. We might expect that the oppressed, given that the system is presenting a somewhat more visible fracture, will gradually begin to grasp the reality of their predicament.
"To attract the attention on the financial collapse is not enough. Behind it, a crisis of real economy is standing out, since the financial drift was continuously asphyxiating the growth of the production basis. Solutions brought to the financial crisis can just lead to a crisis of the real economy, i.e. a relative stagnation of the production with its side effects: regression of wages, growth of unemployment, growing precariousness and aggravation of poverty in the Southern countries. We must speak now about depression and no more about recession" (Amin). (9)
How long must the unemployed wait until they realize that the system does not need to be restored but disposed of? Wallerstein’s observation of a “more ethnocentric style of oppressed groups” may already be indicative of some opening of consciousness, but it is far from evident whether the decline of American empire is the root cause.
The question is whether cosmopolitanism or patriotism may serve to bring the human population to harmony, to a socio-economic equilibrium that engenders a high-intensity global democracy. He outright rejects both. “The stance of ‘world citizen’ is deeply ambiguous. It can be used just as easily to sustain privilege as to undermine it” (124). This is a lame reduction of the possibilities of cosmopolitanism. Wallerstein speaks of the need for “a far more complex stance, constantly moving toward and away from defensive assertion of the group rights of the weak as the political arena changes the parameters of the battle” (124). The fact that capitalism cannot be sustained, that its management is temporary, means that the political will be free from the clutches of the economic at some point, the effective undoing of the always-already fragile anti-systemic movements. But how are we to suppose patriotism or cosmopolitanism as separate from this unfolding phenomenon, or that they will only be able to play simple roles in the process? Surely they are integral, the complexity of their operations manifold.
The question is whether cosmopolitanism or patriotism may serve to bring the human population to harmony, to a socio-economic equilibrium that engenders a high-intensity global democracy. He outright rejects both. “The stance of ‘world citizen’ is deeply ambiguous. It can be used just as easily to sustain privilege as to undermine it” (124). This is a lame reduction of the possibilities of cosmopolitanism. Wallerstein speaks of the need for “a far more complex stance, constantly moving toward and away from defensive assertion of the group rights of the weak as the political arena changes the parameters of the battle” (124). The fact that capitalism cannot be sustained, that its management is temporary, means that the political will be free from the clutches of the economic at some point, the effective undoing of the always-already fragile anti-systemic movements. But how are we to suppose patriotism or cosmopolitanism as separate from this unfolding phenomenon, or that they will only be able to play simple roles in the process? Surely they are integral, the complexity of their operations manifold.
"Right now, for example, the United States has a nuclear policy that permits a president, acting almost alone, to authorize the firing of nuclear weapons. How should people in the United States protect other populations from the sudden use of this monarchic weapons system? Should we hope that at the moment of firing, the president will suddenly have the imaginative powers to picture other people in their full density of concerns, picture not one caricatured leader but the men of women and young people of that country?" (Scarry 108). (10).
An epihenomenon: sacred life and the imagination of man were nearly extinguished by the machismo of a new hegemony.
America needs a new imagination. The only alternative is TINA, which translates to self-destruction. The theorists at least can discern this. But neither Americans nor the theorists have an imagination that will restore humanity to either the nation or the globe.
Bibliography
[1] Nussbaum, Martha C. “For Love Of Country?” Beacon Press. Boston, MA. 2002.
[2] Giroux, Henry A. “Against the Terror of Neo-liberalism.” Paradigm, Inc. Boulder, CO. 2008
[3] Freire, Paulo. “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” Penguin Books. London, England. 1972.
[4] Amin, Samir. “The Liberal Virus.” Monthly Review Press. New York, NY. 2004.
[5] I doubt that Wallerstein means that the oppressed are totally incapacitated to bring about social change; therefore, I would suggest “weak” is a misleading description of a potentially powerful force.[6] Likewise, the term “disadvantage” is equally misleading because surely the periphery is not “disadvantaged” but “dominated” by the most violent means.
[7] Foucault discusses this ‘new economy’ in regards to ‘the state’ as an individualizing, totalizing power-relation that divides men from men and man from himself, a power that constitutes subjects through ‘governmentality.’ See his essay “The Subject and Power.” Critical Inquiry 8 (Summer 1982). The University of Chicago.
[8] Wallerstein, Immanuel. “World-Systems Analysis.” Duke University Press. Durham, NC. 2004.
[9]. Amin, Samir. "Financial Collapse, Systemic Crisis? Illusory Answers and Necessary Answers." Political Affairs.net<http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/7768/>
Accessed: June 01, 2009. (This paper introduced the World Forum of Alternatives, in Caracas, October 2008. Translated from French by Daniel Paquet for Investig'Action. Revised by Samir Amin).
[10]. Scarry, Elaine. "The Difficulty of Imagining Other people" in Nussbaum's "For Love of Country." Beacon Press. Boston, MA. 2002.
No comments:
Post a Comment