Dear Patrick ,
On 31/07/2018 17:27, Patrick Lichty wrote:
The question that I have regarding the models that emerging
organizations are building stems from the idea that an organization
proposes solving a hegemony with a hegemony of their own. Although
Fuller wrote that the answer to issues of social justice can revolve
around creating better solutions, younger independent institutions
appear to be solving hegemonies and patriarchies with their own
mirrors of these models, or even matriarchies, which does not solve
the issue of hegemony.
Hegemony is often taken to refer to the leadership or dominance of one
group or class over another. But when it comes to the issue of how to
respond to proprietorial systems for artistic production, I wonder if we
wouldn’t be better off placing more emphasis on hegemony as a
generalised political logic?
The latter understanding of hegemony is perhaps most forcefully
articulated in the work of Chantal Mouffe - a political philosopher who
has also been integrated into the media/festival art circuit, in part
because of the influence of her writing on Syriza and Podemos. Just to
quickly rehearse her argument here: from Mouffe’s perspective, a society
or culture can institute itself only by virtue of its relation to that
which exists on its margins, outside and in excess of it. (Marc’s essay
contains numerous different examples of the latter: from First Nation
cultures, Third World workers, and witches, to those from working class
backgrounds, women, and people who identify as disabled or black and
minority ethnic. But grass roots communities and organisations whose
radical activist practices are independent of the conventional cultural
production models and their systems of monetization might also be
included in this category.) As a result, the identity of a given society
or culture is constitutively marked by non-closure: the organization of
the social can never achieve absolute harmony and stability – or what
Ernesto Laclau refers to as ‘fullness’.
It’s here that the theory of hegemony, in which it’s understood as a
generalised political logic (rather than the dominance of one group over
another), comes into play. Operating in a context where such instability
can never be overcome entirely, hegemony in this sense consists of the
attempt to provide social relations with a temporary degree of closure
and meaning nonetheless, by way of an act of articulation of the excess
of the social. This is why every social order is hegemonic in nature,
according to Mouffe; why there’s no solving or going beyond hegemony:
because ‘power relations are constitutive of the social’.1 Even a
socialist or communist society would not be free of hegemony in this
respect.
For me, this theory of hegemony has two aspects that are particularly
interesting in the context of a discussion of proprietorial systems for
artistic production. The first is that, because social relations are the
product of continual, precarious, hegemonic politico-economic
articulations (i.e. of pragmatic yet temporary decisions involving
power, conflict and violence), there is the potential for these
articulations to be disarticulated and transformed as a result of
struggle and a new form of hegemony indeed established. In fact it’s the
latter part of this disarticulation/re-articulation process - that of
re-articulation - that is vital as far as counter-hegemonic struggle is
concerned. ‘Otherwise, we will be’, as Mouffe says, ‘leaving the door
open for attempts at re-articulation by non-progressive forces.’2 Yet
it’s this latter part of the process – which would work to organise the
different kinds of resistances Marc, Rachel and others have pointed us
toward into a ‘chain of equivalence’ with a view to constructing a new
hegemony - that is nevertheless missed by those who want to try to
resolve the issue of hegemony by sidestepping it altogether and refusing
to construct a counter-hegemony.
The second interesting aspect of all this for me is that, because a
given hegemony is not necessary but the result of contingent
articulations, it means the process of struggle, of disarticulation and
re-articulation,is never finished. A society or culture could quite
possibly have taken very different forms in the past, and could quite
possibly take very different forms in the future.In fact, the idea that
we could ever reach a political agreement once and for all over the
nature of society ‘is potentially totalitarian, because it would mean
that such an agreement could not be questioned’.3
Of course, there are a number of questions we might want to raise for
Mouffe’s political philosophy in turn. For instance, she emphasises that
‘the drawing of the frontier between the legitimate and the illegitimate
is always a political decision, and that it should therefore always
remain open to contestation’.4 Yet some things are more open to
contestation in her thinking than others, with a number of Mouffe’s own
political decisions /not/ remaining open to challenge at all.
One is the /political decision/ she makes in favour of democracy because
she regards the latter, for all its problems, as preferable to other
forms of social organisation, due to the fact it recognises and permits
a degree of antagonism. Yet while it may be true that democracy /does/
allow for conflict, and certain other forms of sociality, including
those associated with specific forms of totalitarianism and fascism do
not, is that to say /all/ other possible forms of sociality do not?
Likewise, there can be conflict /within/ democracy over the way the
institutions constitutive of the democratic political association are to
be interpreted. But there cannot be conflict over the continuing
existence of those democratic institutions in some shape or form. The
aim of Mouffe’s agonistic approach to democracy may be ‘a profound
transformation of the existing power relations and the establishment of
a new hegemony. This is why it can properly be called “radical”’.5 Yet
she is careful to stress that it’s not so profound a transformation as
to be able to call democracy itself fundamentally into question.
Finally, for now, another political decision she makes that doesn’t
remain open to challenge concerns the very idea of hegemony as a
generalised political logic itself. We might agree that political
antagonism is /ineradicable/ - to the extent we shouldn’t be searching
for complete reconciliation between the various conflicting parties in a
given culture in order to produce a society of people who “‘live
together in unity’”.6 The question is, does that mean politics /always/
takes a hegemonic form? Are there not other ways of being political that
do not require hegemonic articulation?
Indeed, if the political for Mouffe really is a decision taken in an
undecidable terrain – which it is - how is it that the decision she
takes is always more or less the same? No matter what the /contingent
context/, the political for her invariably has to do with the
structuring of hegemonic relations and the process of
disarticulation-transformation-re-articulation. There is no other
political decision to be made, it seems.
Best, Gary
-----
Notes
1) Chantal Mouffe, /On The Political/ (London: Routledge, 2005) p.106.
2)Chantal Mouffe, /Agonistics: Thinking The World Politically/ (London:
Verso, 2013) pp.73-74.
3) Chantal Mouffe, in Íñnigo Errejón and Chantal Mouffe, /Podemos: In
the Name of the People/ (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2016) p.37.
4) Mouffe, /On The Political/, p.121.
5) Mouffe, /On The Political/, p.52.
6) The Bible, Psalm 133:1; quoted by President Donald Trump, 'The
Inaugural Address', January 20, 2017;
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/.
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