Gramsci is Dead

Richard J. F. Day

Description

"Inspired to contribute to the symbiotic relationship between the academic and activist worlds, Day has decided to pick up the pen instead of the Molotov cocktail. The result is this brilliant book."

Ann Hansen

Ann was sentenced to life imprisonment for blowing up a cruise-missile component factory, and is the author of Direct Action: The Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla



"If revolutionary politics are to be reconstituted for the twenty-first century, all previously existing radical traditions must not only be remade but placed in new relationships with one another. The anarchism of Richard Day’s brilliant Gramsci is Dead is not only an explosive break-out from the demoralizing horizons of contemporary social democracy, but also an exuberant intellectual dance-invitation extended to all mutant Marxists, autonomists and species-being activists eager to catch the strains of a new tune: Red Emma would be proud."

Nick Dyer-Witheford, Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario and author of Cyber-Marx (1999)



Gramsci and the concept of hegemony cast a long shadow over radical political theory. Yet how far has this theory got us? Is it still central to feminism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anarchism, and other radical social movements today?



Unlike previous revolutionary movements, Day argues, most contemporary radical social movements do not strive to take control of the state. Instead, they attempt to develop new forms of self-organisation that can run in parallel with -- or as alternatives to -- existing forms of social, political, and economic organization. This is to say that they follow a logic of affinity rather than one of hegemony.



This book draws together a variety of different strands in political theory to weave together an

innovative new approach to politics today. Rigorous and wide-ranging, Day introduces and interrogates key concepts. From Hegel's concept of recognition, through theories of hegemony and affinity to Hardt and Negri's reflections on Empire, Day maps academia's theoretical and philosophical concerns onto today's politics of the street.



Ideal for all students of political theory, Day's fresh approach combines Marxist, Anarchist and

Post-structuralist theory to shed new light on the politics and practice of contemporary social

movements.
List Of Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Doing It Yourself: Direct Action Currents In Contemporary Radical Activism

2. Tracking The Hegemony Of Hegemony: Classical Marxism And Liberalism

3. Tracking The Hegemony Of Hegemony: Postmarxism And The New Social Movements

4. Utopian Socialism Then …

5. … And Now

6. Ethics, Affinity, And The Coming Communities

7. Conclusion: Utopian Socialism Again And Again

Notes

References

Sujets

• Anarchism
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 septembre 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783716531
• Langue: English

Extrait

Gramsci is Dead
Gramsci is Dead
Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements
Richard J.F. Day

and
Between the Lines
TORONTO
First published 2005 by Pluto Press
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and
Between the Lines
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Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
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Copyright © Richard J.F. Day 2005
The right of Richard J.F. Day to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN    0 7453 2113 5 hardback
ISBN    0 7453 2112 7 paperback (Pluto Press)
ISBN    1 897071 03 5 paperback (Between the Lines)
ISBN    9 7817 8371 6531 ePub
ISBN    9 7817 8371 6548 Mobi
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Day, Richard J. F.
Gramsci is dead : anarchist currents in the newest social movements / Richard J.F. Day.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–7453–2113–5 –– ISBN 0–7453–2112–7 (pbk.)
1. Radicalism. 2. Socialism. 3. Communism. 4. Anarchism. 5. Poststructuralism. I. Title.
HN49.R33D39 2005
322.4––dc22
2005001486
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Day, Richard J.F.
Gramsci is dead / by Richard Day.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1–897071–03–5
1. Anti-globalization movement. 2. Philosophy, Marxist. 3. Anarchism. 4. Poststructuralism. 5. Social movements––Political aspects. I. Title.
HN49.R33D395 2005    322.4
C2005–902450–X
Between the Lines gratefully acknowledges support for our publishing programme from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and through the Ontario Book Initiative, and the Government of Canada.
10   9   8   7   6   5   4
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Seattle, anarchism and the corporate mass media
Naming ‘the movement’ … and other key terms
Who is speaking?
The argument
1.
Doing it Yourself: Direct-action Currents in Contemporary Radical Activism
Zero-participation: crusty punks and lifestyle anarchists
The incredible lightness of cultural subversion
Getting heavy: impeding the flows of state and corporate power
Direct-action casework: a hybrid form
Prefiguring/creating alternatives
Beyond reform, this side of Revolution
2.
Tracking the Hegemony of Hegemony: Classical Marxism and Liberalism
We can’t hear you! Liberals and Marxists on the newest social movements
Classical liberalism and the bourgeois revolutionaries
Hegemony = dictatorship + democracy
Gramsci, Lenin and the hegemony of hegemony
3.
Tracking the Hegemony of Hegemony: Postmarxism and the New Social Movements
The long middle of the twentieth century
What was new about the ‘new social movements’?
Hegemony goes poststructuralist: Laclau and Mouffe
Liberal multiculturalism and the recognition/integration paradigm
Politics of demand/ethics of desire
‘We’ are not ‘you’: Anti-integration themes in postcolonial, feminist and queer theory
Towards a politics of the act
4.
Utopian Socialism Then …
Guiding threads
William Godwin: the rationalist who would make no promises
The Utopian Socialists proper: Owen, Fourier and Saint-Simon
Anarchist Theory after Utopian Socialism: Proudhon
Bakunin and the social revolution
Kropotkin: expropriation and social (r)evolution
Early twentieth-century anarchism and the concept of structural renewal
Conclusion: taking the tally
5.
… and Now
Elements of poststructuralist critique: becoming minor
Autonomist marxism and the constituent power of the multitude
Postanarchism: a bridgeable chasm
Citizen, Nomad, Smith
6.
Ethics, Affinity and the Coming Communities
What are the coming communities?
The coming ethics: groundless solidarity and infinite responsibility
The problems of white middle-class movements
7.
Conclusion: Utopian Socialism Again and Again
Signs of failure/signs of hope
What of the coming economies?
A Utopian future: the end of ‘civil society’
Notes
References
Index
Acknowledgements
I could not have written this book without drawing upon the labours of student/activist researchers who have been associated with the Affinity Project, which operates out of Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario and maintains a website at < www.affinityproject.org >. These in include Hilton Bertalan, Naila Bhanji, Jake Burkowicz, Enda Brophy, Christopher Canning, Ryan Mitchell, Rick Palidwor, Nadia Knircha, Brianne Selman, Andrew Stevens, and Lori Waller. I have also benefited from conversations with Taiaiake Alfred, Allan Antliff, Mark Coté, Glen Coulthard, Greig dePeuter, David Firman, Dina Khorasanee, Jennifer Pybus, and Scott Uzelman, and from interactions with undergraduate and graduate students in my seminars at Queen’s University. I am particularly indebted to Sean Haberle, who traveled extensively to conduct interviews with activists at various sites around central Canada and the northeastern United States. Sarita Srivastava also deserves special mention for suggesting a major revision that got me past a particularly daunting writing obstacle, and for being an inspiring colleague and friend. Finally, and most importantly, I want to acknowledge the contributions of my partner Alison Gowan, who has for many years been a crucial source of intellectual and emotional support for my work, and much more importantly, for my life as a whole.
Introduction
Seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
SEATTLE, ANARCHISM AND THE CORPORATE MASS MEDIA
For most people in the G8 countries, the Seattle anti-World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in late 1999 mark the point at which a new militancy erupted onto the surface of an otherwise serene liberal-democratic polity. I was living in Vancouver, British Columbia at the time, and decided at the last moment not to go to Seattle because I had a huge pile of papers to grade. Just another protest I thought, and I’d have to sit on a bus for five hours to get there and back. At one point in the day, though, I turned on the television just to see what was happening. I was fascinated and surprised by the now famous images of huge marches, lockdowns, roving bands of riot police, with endless clouds of tear gas shrouding the scene. Over this scene from another (part of the) world, came the voice of a local reporter out in the streets:
Reporter : ‘There are some people here, roaming about … well not exactly roaming, they seem organized. I don’t know who they are, they’re all dressed in black, they have black hoods on, and black flags … a flag with nothing on it.’
Anchor : ‘A flag with nothing on it?’
Reporter : ‘That’s right, it’s totally black.’
Thus did the Black Bloc make its first appearance on the North American mass-media stage. After a while, the TV stations in Seattle thought they had it figured out: these were ‘anarchists’, whatever that might mean. No one tried to confirm this with the masked protesters themselves, however—they looked far too dangerous, and despite the fact that they were at a mass protest, it seemed they did not want anyone to know who they were.
As more reporters—as well as political commentators, police chiefs and academics—began to weigh in on what happened in Seattle, the empty expanse of that black flag was filled in with the help of stereotypes, prejudices and fragments of knowledge from the previous century. A Time magazine story of December 13, 1999 contained a section on ‘The Violence’, with the subhead ‘How Organized Anarchists Led Seattle into Chaos’. After dismissing the protesters as ‘a sprawling welter of thousands of mostly young activists populating hundreds of mostly tiny splinter groups espousing dozens of mostly socialist critiques of the capitalist machine’, the article tantalized and appalled its readers with images of circle-A placards, store looting and an unidentified person, with no insignia of any kind, climbing through a broken window. The caption read ‘Coffee to go: An anarchist patronizes a Seattle Starbucks’.
Since the Battle of Seattle, this one-sided, ill-informed caricature of anarchist activism has become almost obligatory in the corporate mass media. The Vancouver Sun , a right-wing daily, ran a full-page article on the protests against the Organization of American States in Windsor, Ontario in its issue of June 3, 2000 (p. A14). It appeared under the title ‘For the New Anarchists, the Message is the Mayhem’ and included the subheads ‘Organized Radicals’ and ‘One Man’s Philosophy’. It describes anarchism as a ‘long-dormant philosophy’ that has returned with ‘destructive force’ and ‘disruptive power’; words like ‘threat’, ‘mayhem’ and ‘rampage’ pepper the article. It also attempts to belittle the well-known Canadian activist Jaggi Singh by noting that, before he sits down to talk with reporters, he orders a coffee from a Canadian doughnut-shop chain: ‘It turns out that even anti-corporate anarchists appreciate their Tim Horton’s’. A similar line was taken by the Vancouver Province (the only other daily newspaper in Vancouver, which is owned by the same corporation as the Sun) in an article after about the inquiry into police brutality at the 1997 APEC Sum