Sketch: On Occupy Wall Street
Harcourt’s article [1] describes Occupy Wall Street as a new and deconstructive movement in the form of political, rather than civil, disobedience. Drawing his conceptual framework from Foucault’s analyses of critique, Harcourt states that by refusing to identify anything ordinarily associated with resistance (i.e., unified reform agenda or demand; political position or party; ideology [34], an enemy [47], and even a leader [39]), Occupy becomes an embodiment of a new paradigm (in terms of worldview and grammar) that purely resists, in Giddens’s framework, the entire structure (in terms of rules and resources, i.e., the “rationality, discourse and strategies” [34]) of the political itself. This rejection “not only [of] our civil structure of laws and political institutions but [of] politics writ large” (34) is achieved in multiple ways and levels. One, it achieved a leaderless stance that allows for the unified plurality of political persuasions (41) against the dominating rationality of hierarchies (34). In this respect, Occupy resembles Castells’s networks (albeit a reactive and non-prescriptive one in this case), in that its decentralization became its structural identity (or what Harcourt calls its “committee structure” [43]). Two, its shared purpose and respect for the rules of discourse reveals its pessimism of and departure from American democracy, which is inextricably embroiled in the colossal automaton that is its capitalist economy, such that “there is neither anything to overthrow nor any way out” (48). In this respect Occupy can be described in terms of Touraine’s total social movements, in that Occupy is “an experiment in real time – exploring new forms of social organization and trying out new ways of governing itself” (44). [2]
In paradigmatic terms, in its raw and pure rejection of the structure of the political, Occupy is structured by and generates a structure that is on the one hand an offspring of what it rejects and on the other hand expatriates itself from the forms of rejection readily assimilable by the system. This leaves it with a dizzying effect on our political worldview, as seen in its “challenge... [to] our very grammar” (44). That is, on the one hand, against the rationality of domination and power, it has (like a network) decentralized, “rhizomic, nonhierarchical governing structures” (34) and instead operates by communal rules manifested in “general assemblies, human microphones and hand signals” (39) and in its “orderliness, process, and rules” (42) without a unified message. On the other hand, by refusing even to be categorized within the polemics of traditional politics, [3] Occupy cannot even be identified using conventional political language, except as a movement of indefinable elements itself focused on movement. This is seen in its deliberate refusal of political ideology, identity and choice, to the exasperation (and continued misconstrual) of scholars, commentators, media persons, the militant Left and mainstream liberals (36, 40, 54). In the language of Derrida, this is deconstruction against logocentric situatedness that is fuelled by the desire to assign designations of simple, selfsame presence. Even the term “occupation” is a deconstructive tropism, as noted by Mitchell and Davis: “the true goal of... Occupy... is to (Un)Occupy” (42), i.e., that which it occupies is already preoccupied and it is against the structuring structures themselves of this preoccupation that it moves against.
As such, Occupy’s structure is fundamentally antistructure in the political sense of the word. Where politics necessitates a language (either of proposing for or resisting against, or what Foucault calls a “vocabulary” [39]), Occupy’s language is neither/nor: it neither proposes an agenda for nor rally against using one battlecry (46). Where politics necessitates a more or less stable site for power play, Occupy deliberately ambiguates spatiality and its implications: one cannot normatively theorize Occupy as a movement without self-reflexively situating himself within the polemic structure of domination (and hence by default be outside the movement as movement), while Occupy physically occupies Wall Street (37). Where political discourse necessitates authority, Occupy has none, since it has no authorial structure stemming from mainstream academic discourse enmeshed within postmodern, postindustrial and postidealogical politics (46). In its negative, reactive structuring, Occupy, following Foucault, allows for no propositions, proposals, nor positions, but a change that is rooted in existence fundamentally other than the political. It is thus, as Foucault stated, “in the struggle itself and through it that positive conditions emerge” (39) – i.e., it is about the movement as a movement rather than a position (which, after all, would engender a set of defining claims).
As such, it is problematic to call it “political disobedience,” for Occupy does not occupy the political sphere at all. Extricating yourself from a system does not make you disobedient: it makes you other. In calling for the unoccupation of the globe by the democratic state, it does not disobey capitalist democracy unto communism: it refuses to play into the massive mechanism of governance, resulting to possibilities in the widest sense (52). In terms of social change, Occupy is perhaps closest to what Touraine in Buechler (444) sees as the capacity for historicity of social agents, in that Occupy, true to deconstructive logic, occupies both the space of technical and existential functioning within the larger sphere that is culture.
[1] Bernard E. Harcourt, “Political Disobedience,” Critical Inquiry 39 no. 1 (Autumn 2012): 33-55.
[2] It can be argued, however, that while Touraine sees protest in new social movements move from the economic to the cultural accompanied by increasing individualism by the privatization of social ills, Occupy, while eschewing the myth of “we the people” (or of us versus them) (48), is a productively tense bricolage of integrated notions of identity simultaneously having a keen awareness of individual sociality within a multiplicity of persuasions (46, 51, 53). See Steven M. Buechler, “New Social Movement Theories,” Sociological Quarterly 36, no. 3 (Summer 1995), 441-464.
[3] Harcourt claims that Occupy is evidence for an emerging new Left (51), though I would disagree with his formulation (even with his description of Occupy as “political disobedience”).
In paradigmatic terms, in its raw and pure rejection of the structure of the political, Occupy is structured by and generates a structure that is on the one hand an offspring of what it rejects and on the other hand expatriates itself from the forms of rejection readily assimilable by the system. This leaves it with a dizzying effect on our political worldview, as seen in its “challenge... [to] our very grammar” (44). That is, on the one hand, against the rationality of domination and power, it has (like a network) decentralized, “rhizomic, nonhierarchical governing structures” (34) and instead operates by communal rules manifested in “general assemblies, human microphones and hand signals” (39) and in its “orderliness, process, and rules” (42) without a unified message. On the other hand, by refusing even to be categorized within the polemics of traditional politics, [3] Occupy cannot even be identified using conventional political language, except as a movement of indefinable elements itself focused on movement. This is seen in its deliberate refusal of political ideology, identity and choice, to the exasperation (and continued misconstrual) of scholars, commentators, media persons, the militant Left and mainstream liberals (36, 40, 54). In the language of Derrida, this is deconstruction against logocentric situatedness that is fuelled by the desire to assign designations of simple, selfsame presence. Even the term “occupation” is a deconstructive tropism, as noted by Mitchell and Davis: “the true goal of... Occupy... is to (Un)Occupy” (42), i.e., that which it occupies is already preoccupied and it is against the structuring structures themselves of this preoccupation that it moves against.
As such, Occupy’s structure is fundamentally antistructure in the political sense of the word. Where politics necessitates a language (either of proposing for or resisting against, or what Foucault calls a “vocabulary” [39]), Occupy’s language is neither/nor: it neither proposes an agenda for nor rally against using one battlecry (46). Where politics necessitates a more or less stable site for power play, Occupy deliberately ambiguates spatiality and its implications: one cannot normatively theorize Occupy as a movement without self-reflexively situating himself within the polemic structure of domination (and hence by default be outside the movement as movement), while Occupy physically occupies Wall Street (37). Where political discourse necessitates authority, Occupy has none, since it has no authorial structure stemming from mainstream academic discourse enmeshed within postmodern, postindustrial and postidealogical politics (46). In its negative, reactive structuring, Occupy, following Foucault, allows for no propositions, proposals, nor positions, but a change that is rooted in existence fundamentally other than the political. It is thus, as Foucault stated, “in the struggle itself and through it that positive conditions emerge” (39) – i.e., it is about the movement as a movement rather than a position (which, after all, would engender a set of defining claims).
As such, it is problematic to call it “political disobedience,” for Occupy does not occupy the political sphere at all. Extricating yourself from a system does not make you disobedient: it makes you other. In calling for the unoccupation of the globe by the democratic state, it does not disobey capitalist democracy unto communism: it refuses to play into the massive mechanism of governance, resulting to possibilities in the widest sense (52). In terms of social change, Occupy is perhaps closest to what Touraine in Buechler (444) sees as the capacity for historicity of social agents, in that Occupy, true to deconstructive logic, occupies both the space of technical and existential functioning within the larger sphere that is culture.
[1] Bernard E. Harcourt, “Political Disobedience,” Critical Inquiry 39 no. 1 (Autumn 2012): 33-55.
[2] It can be argued, however, that while Touraine sees protest in new social movements move from the economic to the cultural accompanied by increasing individualism by the privatization of social ills, Occupy, while eschewing the myth of “we the people” (or of us versus them) (48), is a productively tense bricolage of integrated notions of identity simultaneously having a keen awareness of individual sociality within a multiplicity of persuasions (46, 51, 53). See Steven M. Buechler, “New Social Movement Theories,” Sociological Quarterly 36, no. 3 (Summer 1995), 441-464.
[3] Harcourt claims that Occupy is evidence for an emerging new Left (51), though I would disagree with his formulation (even with his description of Occupy as “political disobedience”).
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