[G_O] The Strange Rebirth of Liberal England and the Fourth Estate

[Nate Holdren]

I quite like this 'Liberal England' piece.
Who wrote it? Erik? I must have representation...!



I have a few comments to place alongside bits I've excerpted, excerpts are 
in quote marks, it should be clear...

"In current times it seems it is only here that mass oppositional movements 
can rise, in the context of a dissatisfaction with a state, because only 
here can other bodies that think in terms of states move in to fill the 
representational deficit."

I assume the "it seems it is only here" is a lamentation and a rhetorical 
flourish, not a statement that mass oppositional movements simply can not 
arise elsewhere/otherwise. Is this right?

This reminds me of something happening here in Chicago USA. In our 
healthcare system a major trend is the rise of big corporate systems, 
whether for-profit or non-profit matters little. They buy up what were 
community hospitals and place them into the functioning of the network of 
hospitals. In doing so, changes are made so as to reduce the likelihood of 
hospitals 'competing' with each other (ie, drawing from the same patient 
population due to vicinity) by consolidating specialty functions (say, 
making one hospital handle all the mental health services that were handled 
by other surrounding hospitals). Another change that occurs is the general 
administration of the hopsital - how they do paper work, "customer 
relations", billing, etc. What were multiple independent hospitals are 
slowly brought into line with each other so as to make the administration of 
the whole system feasible. These and other workplace changes of course cause 
anger among nurses and other workers, particularly the adminisrative 
changes, as it's not as if the new method is better than the old, it's just 
what the hospital administrators want done, and so the decisions appears 
very arbitrary and management appears very clearly as a force of command 
rather than a legitimate administrative body.

The reason I thought of this in response to this essay was the idea of 
representative voids. Given that Empire will/does involve a representative 
framework (a grid overlayed atop the multitude, if you will), it seems to me 
worth considering that in some cases the administrative changes of/within 
Empire, both as Empire is constituted and as it rearranges things within its 
boundaries, can be a source of crisis. It could be that in some cases the 
failure to represent the multitude results in a more obviously imposed (ie, 
illegitmate) representation, thus potentially undermining Empire.


"The left and the media are competing to be the space of mediation between 
ordinary aspirations and the reconciliation of political authority. But the 
multitude responds with mutual distrust. The
multitude is seen as an apolitical mass that needs to be involved and
organised in the 'political', but the multitude exists as subject precisely 
by refusing to be subject, it makes a show of strength and withdraws."

This was I think exactly what drove so many vanguardists and others so crazy 
when dealing with the 'anti-globalization' movement pre-9/11, the lack of 
representation and the refusal to be a subject - in the sense of a 
legitimate subject represented to and by Empire.
On this point of 'subject', I would contend that this piece has a danger of 
evacuating the concept of subjectivity of all content beyond that of legal 
or legitimate subjectivity. Couldn't our project - I hope people will pardon 
such a unitary term - ;) of resistance be in part conceptualized as one of 
forming a new subject or subjects, not only new in the sense of 'not 
previously existing' but new also in the sense of 'innovative' ie, multiple, 
horizontal, etc? I would also contend that the piece evidences a similarly 
unitary sense of 'representation'. I think what happens on email lists or in 
face to face conversations and other forms of communication and resistance 
could also be conceptualized under the heading of representations, though 
the important point is that this is a self-representation of the multitude 
or parts there of to itself or other parts.

This is muddled. Maybe what I'm driving at is this: I'm not clear that 
there's such a total incompatibility between 'subjectivity' and 
'representation' on the one hand and 'affectivty' and 'communication' on the 
other. Sorry I can't be clearer here.

Post 9/11 I think that the pro-representation (in the sense of 
'representation to and by Empire', ie, recuperative) forces got a huge leg 
up and filled a vacuum of action. I think that time period is still one 
worth discussing, to get clear on what direction events took. Reading 
remarks by Thomas and others I'm increasinly convinced these forces don't 
have the hegemony they used to, being instead largely bus organizers and so 
on. Not that they're gone or not still a threat.


"This withdrawl is crucial to understanding the enigmatic processes of
transition from imperialist control regimes to the bio-political
topographies of Empire. To all of those that seek to act under the
appearance of the representational guise, this withdrawal is the worst
possible thing... a step outside of the control paradigm, it is a step 
outside the liberal politics of consent - whilst consituted political 
agencies rush to fill out the exposed but now vacated spaces- the multitude, 
whose activity far outreaches the boundaries of political terrain, continues 
to evolve its own multifarious dimensions of
affective activity. No doubt the organs of detached power will continue 
tohurry after it and recuperate a language of consent. Let them. So long as 
they fear anti-political and a- political behaviour they will fail to be 
part of its enormous creative potential and socially manifest expressions of 
and desires for non-separated social being."

I mostly excerpted this because I like it, but I do have a quibble with the 
last line about 'non-separate social being'. What's meant here? 
Alienation/reification/spectacle, all of which can at times be characterized 
as 'separation'?
I feel like I'm making too much of matters of vocabulary, something I always 
(and always hate to) do, but I wonder how this idea of 'non-separated' fits 
with the idea of the multitude as co-existent difference or as I like to 
think of it as a non-unitary collective subjectivity.
One of the tensions within the idea of alienation, which has made me 
increasingly unease about making much out of the concept, is that it can 
become a move that flattens or seeks to flattens difference by positing 
(explicitly or implicitly) a genuine or authentic social being that is 
spoken of as if it were pre-existent. Given that exodus (or 
communism/revolution/whatever we call the social being we want) will be 
built and not found, I'm more and more unhappy with this aspect of what I 
think is marx(ism)'s hegelian heritage. I'm more excited about the zapatista 
slogans of 'one no and many yeses' and of 'a world where many worlds exist', 
which is the same sentiment I find attractive in Negri and the idea of 
multitude.

I think I'm making too much of this so I'll stop. Thanks for this piece, 
it's thought provoking stuff.

Nate

No more weekdays, they hanged Monday, shot Thursday, sliced up Friday! Every 
day is Sunday.

-Franca Rame and Dario Fo, "Waking Up"




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