David,
Thanks for your post on William Davies’s recent contributions to the
London Review of Books. Enjoyed it.
The mention of Carl Schmitt brings to mind another critic of liberalism,
Chantal Mouffe, and her philosophy of hegemony and antagonism, itself
greatly influenced by Schmitt’s account of the friend/enemy relation.
For Mouffe, the political is a decision that is always ‘taken in an
undecidable terrain’. This is because social relations are not fixed or
natural, but rather the product of hegemonic articulations: that is, of
contingent yet temporary decisions involving power and conflict. (Which
has the advantage that these hegemonic articulations can be
disarticulated, transformed and rearticulated as a result of struggle
between opponents.)
Now, I realize this may seem a rather counter-intuitive question to ask
- particularly for readers of the London Review of Books! But I do
worry, is there a risk that using terms and concepts like ‘argument’,
‘careful judgement’, ‘knowledge’, ‘democracy’, ‘public’ as datum points
in this way is itself a form of affective politics that ‘“precedes
debate, precedes argument, precedes speech”’? Might it, too, be a
‘decisionism’, “an acting out or performance of some prior act of
identification”’ - one in which the question of what it is to be
political, especially in relation to ‘cancel culture’, is not taken in
an undecidable terrain, but is rather decided in advance of intellectual
questioning?
Here’s a less subtle (and less philosophical) version of the concern
that’s troubling me and that I'm not expressing as well as I'd like: How
do we as ‘net critics’ avoid coming across - especially to certain of
those progressive or marginalized voices who may have found themselves
associated with cancel culture - as merely activist/artist/geek versions
of the liberal signatories to the Letter on Justice and Open Debate that
appeared in Harper’s Magazine at the beginning of July and that Geert
also refers to in his piece on cancel culture?
Cheers, Gary
On 14/08/2020 13:24, David Garcia wrote:
The whole world Cancel culture gets an even more sinister twist than
usual when put through the filter
of the title of a recent article by William Davies entitled “Who am I
Prepared to Kill? In which he explores aspects
of Nazi Jurist and philosopher Carl Schmitt influential reduction of
politics down to the base distinction between
friend and enemy and ultimately realised in the grim question "who am
I prepared to kill and who am i prepared to
die for?”. Some see this distinction as the foundation of populism.
In a podcast (link below) Davies further develops this theme
describing a politics that is worse than simple
‘factionalism’ which he characterises in terms of extreme forms of
cultural identification where existential identification becomes
the very foundation of political difference. "And this political
difference is expressed through an acting out or performance
of some prior act of identification”.
An affective politics of this kind that "precedes debate, precedes
argument, precedes speech” In this extreme Schmittian landscape
cancel culture is the only logical outcome. In this world in which
politics has no space left for the epistemic, in place of argument we are
reduced to the decisionism of picking a side. Not much space left for
the careful judgement between rival truth claims.
Given this reality I am puzzled that the extensive knowledge and work
and examples of successful forms of experimental
inclusive deliberative democracy such as citizens assemblies and
sortition has gained such little interest or traction. Why is
that?
Without such formations there is no possibility of a knowledge
democracy in which citizens, stake holders and experts deliberate
on the issues of public concern..And all we are left with is a slide
towards a Hobbsian war of all against all. Maybe politics like journalism
now finds itself unable to shake off the old adage ‘if it bleeds it
leads’. Is there democratic life beyond the fog of war?
I am imagining some kind of curatorial landing zone in which
Evidential Realists join forces with Dialogical artists of the "social
turn” to forge some kind of transitional bridge to a less toxic public
sphere. Any thoughts?
David Garcia
https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/lrb-conversations/press-the-red-button?utm_source=LRB+icymi&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20200802+icymi&utm_content=ukrw_subs_icymi
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