On Self-Critique and the Enterprising Subject

On 09/23/93 Mr. Tumino made a political intervention, in the form of a proposal, against an increasingly commonplace practice which had, for the most part, gone untheorized and uncontested within the socio-political space of the Alternative Orange. Mr. Tumino’s proposal initiated the work of suturing a theoretical “fissure” which enabled not only this common practice but the conservative ideological discourses and political interests this practice serves and protects from being subjected to critique-al investigation and interrogation. In order to understand fully the existing and potential import of Mr. Tumino’s proposal it is, I would argue, necessary to situate it within the context of the development of the Alternative Orange over the last two years.

Until recently, the A.O. had proceeded, mostly uncritically, according to a pluralist mode of representation and organization. The A.O. described its political project as one of advancing a “ruthless criticism of all that exists,” and yet, at the same time, and in contradiction to this oppositional project, maintained a commitment to the non-oppositional project of merely “represent[ing] the broad political left.” The existence of this contradiction, the contradiction between advancing, on the one hand, a “ruthless criticism of all that exists,” including, and most importantly, a ruthless criticism of the “broad political left,” and yet remaining, on the other, within the conservative framework of a pluralist—”bourgeois democratic”—politics of simply re-presenting the potentially innumerable positions which might conceivably be included within the amorphous parameters of “the left,” the existence of this political contradiction was not merely the product of a theoretical “oversight.” Rather, this contradiction, manifest, for example, in processes related to the production of the paper, in the “Statement of Policy,” and in the theoretically eclectic and politically pluralist essays, graphics and layout of the paper itself, was rooted in the contradictory interests and ends represented by the A.O. staff members involved in the reorganization and subsequent production of the paper over the past two years. In short, the contradictory formulation of the project of the paper was, in large part, a consequence of the contradictory political interests represented by staff members. Members of the Marxist Collective at Syracuse University (MCSU) forged a provisional alliance with other, non-Marxist, parties also interested in preserving the resources accumulated by the previous Alternative Orange staff (e.g. its finances, equipment, information, reputation, etc.). MCSU members entered into this alliance with a theorized commitment to creating and actualizing the possibility of transforming, at some point, the A.O. into an oppositional (i.e., critique-al) mode of public intervention and engagement—“toward a ruthless criticism of all that exists.”

The result of this alliance was a “contractual” agreement stipulating that members of both “camps” would work cooperatively to produce the paper on the condition, a condition articulated by the non-Marxist camp and accepted by the MCSU: that the primary project of the paper remain fundamentally one of “represent[ing] the broad political left”—a left which remained and, given the paper’s liberal pluralist framework, had to remain indeterminate. This did not mean that “ruthless criticism” was excluded from the pages of the paper; in fact, the majority of articles published in the A.O. over the next two years were theoretically grounded, oppositional modes of political critique. However, this alliance did mean that the Alternative Orange was organized and operated according to a liberal pluralist politics, and, as a result, tended to represent, when taken as a totality, in its articles, graphics, a theoretical and political eclecticism. Consequently, the paper could be situated by the liberal pluralist ideology of the multicultural academy as one more “voice” or set of “voices” within what bourgeois apologist Richard Rorty calls the “great [dominant] conversation [ideology] of mankind [the bourgeoisie].”

This alliance made it possible to preserve A.O. resources, to deepen and develop our forces of production, and to continue to accumulate financial, institutional, and political resources. However, the effort to operate and produce the Alternative Orange on the basis of contradictory interests proved to be disabling to the project of producing a politically effective critique-al or oppositional discourse. Contestations over matters regarding the production and actual content of the paper often degenerated into personalizing attacks. The preservation of a pluralist framework meant that significant, often pivotal, production decisions could always be, and in fact quite often were, “legitimately” deferred by staff members representing pluralist politics who argued that, for example, “not all voices had been heard,” or that making this or that decision meant “privileging” one voice/text/position over another and hence contradicted the A.O.’s commitment to represent a plurality of “voices/texts/positions.” Staff members turned non-contradictory differences into fundamental contradictions and, in so doing, impeded and/or obstructed the possibility of making a decision and/or determining how that decision would be implemented. Discussions often turned inward to matters related to producing the paper, group dynamics, communication problems, etc., discussions which were, by liberal definition, potentially interminable. This, in turn, had the effect of blocking adequate theorization and effective realization of the paper’s political potential. The liberal pluralist framework not only provided no adequate means for resolving problems related to production and the product of production, but also actually obstructed the implementation of mechanisms which might qualitatively increase the total power of the A.O.’s oppositional political effectivity.

Eventually the “peaceful co-existence” of irreconcilable political positions, a co- existence sanctioned and codified in the original contract negotiated by A.O. staff members, could no longer be maintained. Discussions were held regarding how best to address the opposing political positions represented by A.O. staff members in a manner responsible to the public project of the paper. It was decided to place these positions, represented by different staff members, into “contestation” with each other in the actual pages of the paper. The Alternative Orange would “stage,” in a sense, contemporary debates within the left over issues and concerns of vital social and political significance.

Yet this proposal did not so much resolve the fundamental contradiction, the contradiction between ruthless criticism and non-critical representation, which had determined the production and product of the A.O., as it did make this contradiction more visible. As it became more visible it also became more evident that there would be no easy way to “manage” this contradiction. Indeed, it was increasingly evident to members of the MCSU that the pluralist politics which had determined the project of the paper had to be superseded in order for the paper to produce an oppositional political discourse and make an effective political intervention against, perhaps above all else, the “peaceful co-existence” of antagonistic political positions sanctioned by the liberal pluralist (multicultural) ideology of the late capitalist academy. The supersession of this project is, I would suggest, advanced in Mr. Tumino’s proposal on “self-critique” and in Mr. Katz’s proposal for a new “Statement of Principles” for the A.O.

Of course, the subjective composition of the A.O. staff does not exhaust the social conditions which necessitated the initial, contradictory, formulation of the paper’s project. Nor do the practices deployed by specific staff members fully account for the conditions which created the possibility and even necessity for superseding the liberal pluralist politics which had, until recently, structured the organization, production, and political project of the Alternative Orange over the last couple of years. However, there are, I believe, important theoretical, political and organizational lessons to be drawn from the strategies and tactics mobilized to create the possibility for articulating and advancing a politically effective oppositional public discourse: above all else, of course, the need to theorize strategies and tactics in relationship to a principled political project such that it is possible to make, for example, provisional alliances, sometimes even with “conservative forces,” in order to create the possibility of radicalizing a particular practice in the future.

What is equally important to bear in mind and to contest actively in practice are the subtle (sometimes not so subtle) discourses and practices which operate in order to contain and co-opt the production and dissemination of oppositional political discourse; that is, which “invade” the Alternative Orange from “within” and “without” in order to prevent its realization as an oppositional mode of critique-al practice, a mode of practice that produces—above all else—a public discourse which critiques the “broad political left” in order to contribute to the collective struggle against private possession of the socialized means of production.

I would argue that it is in relationship to the work which must still be done, including the work of exposing and contesting these discourses and practices, that Mr. Tumino’s recent proposal assumes part of its political importance. This proposal creates a space for contesting those discourses and practices which have the effect of disrupting and disabling the oppositional political effectivity of the paper. In the remainder of this essay I will advance a critique of one such disruptive and disabling practice; a practice which seeks, directly and indirectly, to resubordinate the A.O. to the liberal pluralist, progressive populist politics it must in fact, at this historical juncture, work to supersede.

The practice I refer to is the increasingly commonplace petty-bourgeois practice of engaging in different socio-political spaces “as if” they were determined by their own, autonomous laws of development. Assuming the explanatory incommensurability of different socio-political spaces (e.g., “I don’t think class, as a category, holds in this context”) enables this subject to argue, for example, against psychoanalysis in a course on postmodernism, in which the professor advances a Marxist critique of the same, and then, perhaps later that same day, in a course on feminism in which the professor identifies herself as a Lacanian, to argue for psychoanalysis in order “to ‘supplement’ Marxism’s aporias.” Or, to take another example, in the socio-political context of a “casual conversation” this subject might concur with a fellow graduate student that some of the critiques advanced in the A.O. are “a little too harsh,” adding that she “certainly wouldn’t write the same way,” and yet support, in the context of an A.O. meeting, the need for “ruthless criticism of all that exists.”

This mode of practice effectively conceals socio-economic contradictions through a carefully calculated logic of spatial segregation in which irreconcilable subjectivities, discourses and knowledges are strategically displaced and opportunistically deployed across a plurality of socio-political spaces/contexts (e.g., classrooms, departments, essays, conversations, meetings, etc.). The displacement and consequent mystification of these contradictions is officially institutionalized by the ideology of pluralism (more recently the ideology of multiculturalism) which makes it possible for these contradictions to co-exist within a single social totality—e.g., within the university under the auspices of “celebrating diversity” and within the classroom as the democratic pedagogy of “differe/a/nce”—by representing irreconcilable political positions as simply different (personal) interpretations, opinions, or “ways of looking at the world.”

This pragmatic mode of engagement, sanctioned by the dominant ideology, conveniently contains, conceals and hence supports the actually existing trans-spatial logic of capitalist exploitation which structures all subjectivities, institutions, and practices across all socio-political spaces (from the A.O. meeting, essay, classroom and administration, to the work place, shopping mall and movie theater). This pragmatic practice makes it possible for subjects to engage in a performative praxis of “self-fashioning” or “self-modeling” in which the main aim is to exchange whatever discourse/commodity appears to be yielding the greatest academic market value at the moment—typically what is “new” and/or “most radical.” This has the potentially beneficial effect, from the point of view of this industrious, enterprising, busy-bee, subject, of raising his or her own market value. This cynical subject, a subject thoroughly permeated by “enlightened false consciousness,” remains, like capitalist production itself, sublimely indifferent with regard to the global social effects of his or her exchanges. This subject lives, like a parasite, on the mental and manual labor of others with the (false) belief that their particular exchanges do not bear any relationship to the trans-spatial logic of capitalist exploitation.

Of course, the pressure to bring attractive merchandise/textwares to market increases during “hard times” when the academy is glutted with merchants seeking to sell their “goods” and the purchasing power of the university/consumer is severely reduced by a crisis of over-(intellectual)- production. Ruthless competition, insecurity and uncertainty characterize this market: bricoleur becomes the “model of success,” pastiche the “law of survival,” and petty alliances based on short-term personal gain, rather than long-term political effectivity, becomes the prevailing “market ethic” in this “dog-eat- dog” academic world. There are, in other words, tremendous ideological, social and economic structures pressuring subjects, subjects who must negotiate their position as students-faculty-laborers within the academy, to subordinate, in theory and practice, principled politics to purely personal interests and ends. The enormous power of capitalist institutions vis-à-vis individuals working within these institutions explains, in large measure, the existence of opportunism as a product of something much deeper than “personal weakness” or “moral ineptitude.” At the same time, the power of these institutions indicates why individuals committed to and engaged in the project of advancing oppositional political practice must also, and as importantly, engage in a mode of self-critique which makes it possible both to contest and resist “incorporation and containment” and to negotiate their position in relationship to these institutions in such a manner as to still advance a principled oppositional politics.

The petty-bourgeois merchant/laborer who has abandoned the work of advancing oppositional practices, works continuously to refine his instincts in order to discern—“sniff out”—what’s hot and what’s not, what’s up-to-date and out-of-date (“ perhaps I should see what’s up with the Alternative Orange…”). At such moments, this pragmatic, cynical subject may employ one of two popular merchandising strategies: either intensify their area or field of intellectual/commodity specialization/expertise (e.g. “I’ve read everything by Derrida in French and my own, ‘original’ argument is that his work has been completely misread within the American milieu”) or diversify their textware/portfolio in order to protect themselves against the possibility that, for example, post-structuralism becomes passé. The latter strategy compels, per force of the threat of becoming a wage-laborer, this petty- bourgeois merchant-laborer to ally himself, albeit with perfectly measured “hesitations” in accordance with the old time postmodern gospel of discursive uncertainty, with politically contradictory pedagogical, theoretical, and organizational positions in order to maximize his access to resources from which to “accumulate” a rich reserve of intellectual capital (“textwares/commodities”). Access to such a reserve provides the diversity of “textwares,” and, in particular, whatever is “newest” and the “most radical,” necessary to be succe$$ful. This industrious pragmatic subject might ally herself, again provisionally, with the theoretically based, revolutionary politics of the A.O. on Thursday evenings, and with the experientially based, reprivatizing pedagogy of “mutual support” the rest of the week. This subject argues for consistency and accountability to a set of principled political beliefs in one context (e.g., an A.O. meeting) and yet engages in a highly inconsistent and contradictory manner across a variety of socio-political spaces by supporting, for example, experience in one class and theory in another; Marxism here, psychoanalysis there. Here, “consistency” does not mean a formal repetition of the same practice or set of practices (e.g., we privilege one text over another and are therefore being inconsistent; we decide on the basis of majority vote to publish an essay but demand that the entire staff endorse what we publish and are therefore being inconsistent). Rather, consistency means mobilizing practices, strategies, tactics, etc., which are consistent or, perhaps more accurately, coherent, with a specific set of political principles.

This subject poses an exhausting series of “portentous” questions which, while having the appearance of vitality, remain sufficiently abstract to be void of significant political import. This subject proclaims, usually with great urgency, that “we must theorize our practices in order to operate consistently” and yet, at the same time, this subject does not consistently participate in the labor of theorization or provide theoretical explanations. This subject suspects there are many “hidden” political interests at work “behind the scenes” and yet remains strangely silent when asked to explain what or whose interests these are because that “part of the analysis has not yet been completed.” This subject consistently transforms contestations over political principles, strategies and tactics into debates over the means and manner—“the etiquette”—by which these contestations are conducted. The trivial becomes pivotal, the significant becomes superficial. The political question “why” becomes the formal question “how.”

The problematic consequences of this mode of practice bear directly on the collective production and political effectivity of the paper. Production “complications,” “failures” to complete tasks, theoretical and political “oversights,” etc., reveal more than merely the existence of underdeveloped technical skills and reality of insufficient resources. The conditions which make it possible for these problems to recur also include the uncontested existence of politically contradictory theoretical, pedagogical and organizational positions which inform our practices in regard to every aspect of the production of the Alternative Orange. The transformation of graphics, change in typeset, careful planning of the total political effect of each issue, and the introduction of “‘self’-critique” represent and are dependent upon a decisive recognition of the necessity to produce an oppositional political discourse which challenges the theoretico-political common sense. This is why the practice of “‘self’-critique” bears not only on theoretical questions—as if theoretical questions were merely “theoretical”—but rather on the overall efficiency with which we organize the space of the A.O. and the degree to which the A.O. produces effective counter-hegemonic, critique-al discourses.

I understand “‘self’-critique,” undertaken at the beginning of every A.O. meeting, to be, in some part, directed against the pragmatic politics critiqued above and against the peaceful, i.e., uncontested, co-existence of opposing political positions within the paper which, without being contested, will continue to impede the production of a politically effective oppositional discourse. One of the effects of “self critique” is precisely to contest the conceptual fissuring of socio-political spaces, especially the “inside” and the “outside” of the A.O. and, in so doing, critique the commonplace tendency to engage in these spaces as radically distinct. This mode of engagement effectively defers critique-al intervention against contradictory theoretical, pedagogical, and organizational positions (positions which represent, within the discursive and institutional spheres, the contradiction between the socialized forces of production and the continued existence of private determination of these forces). The practice of self critique, which draws the contradictory content of the “outside” into the space of A.O. meetings, contests the spatial segregation of opposing ideological (i.e., class) positions by “suturing” this separation and, thereby, subjecting these positions to critique.

The institution of “self-critique” facilitates the project of producing a theoretically rigorous and politically efficacious oppositional space by bringing the contradictory theoretical, pedagogical and organizational positions presently deployed in distinct socio-political spaces or contexts “together.” Forcing these contradictory positions “together” enables the Alternative Orange to move beyond the liberal pluralist framework of simply re-presenting, rather than critiquing, the broad political left not by “leaping over” these contradictions in order to establish a false unity but rather by subjecting them to critique in order to negate and supersede their limitations and produce knowledges which correspond with the existing conditions of social struggle.

Furthermore, the institution of such a critique-al practice has the pedagogical effect of producing subjects who are capable of contesting the segregation of opposed political positions, for example, in the classroom, by contesting the representation of these positions as merely “different ways of looking at society” or as merely “different voices in the multi-vocal conversation.” Such a practice will facilitate the development of subjects who are able to question and contest the ideology of pluralism as it operates in various (dis)guises across different socio-political spaces (e.g., in the classroom, university publications, the work place) to contain oppositional political positions by contesting the arrangement of these positions as simply different and through the systematic exclusion of political positions which contest this arrangement as “fundamentalist,” “salvationist,” “terroristic.” The practice of self critique aims to facilitate the development of subjects who are able to argue, to the contrary, that these positions in fact represent irreconcilable ways of organizing command and control of the social production, distribution and consumption of resources, capacities and powers; that is, they represent opposing ideologies corresponding to and supportive of determinate class interests—ultimately always either for or against capitalism, ultimately always for or against socialism.

This critique, I would add, should not be “applied” only to “new comers to the A.O.” but rather to all members, new and old, who are, as subjects, continuously (re)constituted/positioned by contradictory (and mostly bourgeois) subjectivities, discourses, and knowledges. The aim of instituting such a mode of critique, as I see it, is to create conditions propitious to the collective development of our capacities to engage in the A.O. and all other socio-political spaces/contexts with a higher degree of critique-al awareness and sharper mode of engagement. The practice of “self” and “auto” critique will facilitate a more politically disciplined and principled mode of operation which “yields” not the greatest (local) market value but rather the most politically effective interventions against the global capitalist market. It is in relationship to this political goal that our collective practices and the product of these practices is to be measured.

Mark Wood