Spontaneous Combustion

Description

From the events of May 1968 to the Arab Spring and Occupy, we have seen social movements develop spontaneously around the globe propelling thousands and, at times, millions of people into the streets to demand an end to oppression.

"In order to make sense of such events, the authors draw on George Katsiaficas's conception of the 'eros effect,' which picks up and takes off from concepts developed by Herbert Marcuse. This effect describes moments in which the instinctual human need for justice and freedom undergoes a massive spontaneous awakening. Drawing on Marcuse, the concept foregrounds the instinctual foundation of the desire for freedom, in which a biologically-based pleasure drive—eros—is given free play." — from the Foreword by Peter Marcuse

However, even as the eros effect provides a valuable framework for understanding spontaneous global uprisings, Katsiaficas has acknowledged that the concept has remained underdeveloped. Spontaneous Combustion provides an introduction to the eros effect along with a series of elaborations, applications, and critical rejoinders concerning its implications. A truly interdisciplinary venture, the book features contributions from cutting-edge scholars and activists on the frontlines of today's struggles.
Foreword
Peter Marcuse

Introduction
Jason Del Gandio and AK Thompson

Section I: The Eros Effect

1. Remembering May ’68: An Interview with George Katsiaficas
AK Thompson

2. Eros and Revolution
George Katsiaficas

3. From Marcuse’s “Political Eros” to the Eros Effect: A Current Statement
George Katsiaficas

Section II: Extensions and Elaborations

4. Eros in a One-Dimensional Society: Katsiaficas, Marcuse, and Me
Arnold L. Farr

5. Rethinking the Eros Effect: Sentience, Reality, and Emanation
Jason Del Gandio

6. Revolt as Reason, Reason as Revolt: On the Praxis of Philosophy from Below
Richard Gilman-Opalsky

7. The Eros Effect and the Embodied Mind
Jack Hipp

Section III: Case Studies

8. Kindling for the Spark: Eros and Emergent Consciousness in Occupy Oakland
Emily Brissette and Mike King

9. Eros Effect as Emergency Politics: Empathy, Agency, and Network in South Korea’s Sewol Ferry Disaster
Gooyong Kim and Anat Schwartz

10. Climatology of the Eros Effect: Notes from the Japanese Archipelago
Sabu Kohso

Section IV: Rejoinders

11. Feminism and the Eros Effect
Nina Power

12. Waves of Protest, the Eros Effect, and the Social Relations of Diffusion
Lesley Wood

13. Eros Effect or Biological Hatred?
AK Thompson

Afterword
Douglas Kellner

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la psychologie
• Activism
• Sociology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 28 août 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438467290
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION
SUNY series, Praxis: Theory in Action

Nancy A. Naples, editor
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION
The Eros Effect and Global Revolution
Edited by
JASON DEL GANDIO and AK THOMPSON
Foreword by
PETER MARCUSE
Cover image of Tompkins Square police riot by Eric Drooker. For more of Eric Drooker’s artwork, see www.Drooker.com
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2017 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Diane Ganeles
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Del Gandio, Jason, editor.
Title: Spontaneous combustion : the eros effect and global revolution / edited by Jason Del Gandio and AK Thompson.
Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York Press, [2017] | Series: SUNY series, praxis: Theory in action | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016056707 (print) | LCCN 2017023220 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438467290 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438467276 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Love. | Insurgency. | Revolutions. | Counterculture. | Social change. | Social movements.
Classification: LCC BF575.L8 (ebook) | LCC BF575.L8 S643 2017 (print) | DDC 306.7—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016056707
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Contents
Foreword
Peter Marcuse
Introduction
Jason Del Gandio and AK Thompson
SECTION ONE: THE EROS EFFECT
1. Remembering May ’68: An Interview with George Katsiaficas
AK Thompson
2. Eros and Revolution
George Katsiaficas
3. From Marcuse’s “Political Eros” to the Eros Effect: A Current Statement
George Katsiaficas
SECTION TWO: EXTENSIONS AND ELABORATIONS
4. Eros in a One-Dimensional Society: Katsiaficas, Marcuse, and Me
Arnold L. Farr
5. Rethinking the Eros Effect: Sentience, Reality, and Emanation
Jason Del Gandio
6. Revolt as Reason, Reason as Revolt: On the Praxis of Philosophy from Below
Richard Gilman-Opalsky
7. The Eros Effect and the Embodied Mind
Jack Hipp
SECTION THREE: CASE STUDIES
8. Kindling for the Spark: Eros and Emergent Consciousness in Occupy Oakland
Emily Brissette and Mike King
9. Eros Effect as Emergency Politics: Empathy, Agency, and Network in South Korea’s Sewol Ferry Disaster
Gooyong Kim and Anat Schwartz
10. Climatology of the Eros Effect: Notes from the Japanese Archipelago
Sabu Kohso
SECTION FOUR: REJOINDERS
11. Feminism and the Eros Effect
Nina Power
12. Waves of Protest, the Eros Effect, and the Social Relations of Diffusion
Lesley Wood
13. Eros Effect or Biological Hatred?
AK Thompson
Afterword
Douglas Kellner
Contributors
Index
Foreword
PETER MARCUSE
This is a brave book, and it tackles one of the most daunting political questions of our time: What induces people to act together in large numbers to influence the basic conditions of their life in society? And how should we understand the fact that sometimes these eruptions seem to happen spontaneously while at other times they only take place after long periods of organizing? Such eruptions are sometimes realistic and sometimes utopian. Sometimes, people act rationally in their own self-interest, and sometimes they proceed in apparently ignorant or stupid ways. Questions pertaining to the motivation underlying or impetus behind mass uprisings are not pursued by the editors and contributors to this volume out of sheer intellectual curiosity or in pursuit of a titillating topic—though it surely amounts to one: as I write, mass media in the United States express bewilderment as Donald Trump provokes massive enthusiasm for a program that shows little regard for the objective interests of constituents who seem destined to vote in a way they will surely regret.
It is in this context that Spontaneous Combustion asks a series of opposite but symmetrical questions: What produces massive support for social and political change, and how does that support explode at given moments, unpredicted by conventional explanations? How does this support become the foundation for historic revolutions, and why does it sometimes end as a flash in the pan?
Such questions remain difficult to answer. However, there seems to be general agreement that one historical fact—prominently elucidated by Herbert Marcuse—opens the door to such events in the present: the development of society’s productive and technical forces makes want, pain, and lack of basic necessities unnecessary. Consequently, the fact that these persist becomes intolerable. Today, it is not solely desperate poverty or forcible oppression that provokes protest and kicks off revolts suggesting the possibility of revolution. It is also the vision of other possibilities, the vision of a better society that is clearly feasible but not in the works, which drives the mass actions examined in this book.
To make sense of such events, the authors draw on George Katsiaficas’ conception of the “eros effect,” which picks up and takes off from concepts developed by Herbert Marcuse. This effect describes moments in which the instinctual human need for justice and freedom undergoes a massive spontaneous awakening. Drawing on Marcuse, the concept foregrounds the instinctual foundation of the desire for freedom, in which a biologically based pleasure drive—eros—is given free play. With Spontaneous Combustion , this seductive and provocative concept is explored through a sweeping historical overview of its elaboration followed by contributions to its theoretical development, case studies exploring its applications, and comments on some of the difficulties it may engender.
Refreshingly, the authors included in this volume make regular admissions that further work needs to be done. According to the central thesis, in which spontaneous social combustions denominated as eros effects arise from the realization that the world could be different, utopias are no longer utopian—and the logical unfolding of history is not yet complete. Accepting this premise, we must ask: Why do these spontaneous eruptions occur in some times and places and not others? Is it the nature of the material circumstances, the extent of deprivation and oppression? Is it leadership? Is it an accumulation of causes? The book does not pretend to provide all the answers; it is very welcome in its lack of dogmatism.
One hopes its provocations will lead to further research, and perhaps to action as well. The book promises to be productive for a long time to come.
July 15, 2016
Introduction
JASON DEL GANDIO AND AK THOMPSON
MAKING SENSE OF MASS REVOLT
Since at least the time of the First International, questions concerning the precise character of political spontaneity and the role of spontaneous action in revolutionary transformation have provoked heated debate. From the split between anarchist and communist factions in the First International to debates between Rosa Luxemburg and Vladimir Lenin during the lead-up to the first World War, the problem has returned with a frequency that has only underscored its importance. Although Luxemburg was convinced of the need for disciplined socialist organization, her analysis of the dynamics of mass strikes alerted her to the undeniable importance of spontaneity. Recalling the “general rising of the proletariat” that took place in Russia in January of 1905, Luxemburg summarized its outward manifestation as nothing short of a “declaration of war.” Still, it was the internal or psychological transformations that seemed most compelling to her, since the actions “for the first time awoke class feeling and class consciousness in millions upon millions as if by an electric shock.”
And this awakening of class feeling expressed itself forthwith in the circumstances that the proletarian mass, counted by millions, quite suddenly and sharply came to realize how intolerable was the social and economic existence which they had patiently endured for decades in the chains of capitalism. Thereupon there began a spontaneous general shaking of and tugging at these chains. All the innumerable sufferings of the modern proletariat reminded them of the old bleeding wounds. 1
Along with consciousness and organization, then, spontaneity seemed to play a key role in pushing struggle to new heights. Frantz Fanon noted a similar dynamic in the colonial context. By his account, although the nationalist parties that arose in the towns of the colonized countries were objectively better prepared to navigate the political terrain on which they found themselves, it was the peasantry that “spontaneously gives form to the general insecurity.” Objectively reactionary but with far less contact with or investment in the conqueror’s reality, Fanon felt that it was this force that gave the anticolonial struggle its vitality and élan. 2
The spontaneous shaking of chains that Luxemburg recounted more than a century ago continues today. In July 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin. In response, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi created the hashtag BlackLivesMatter. The following summer, the police murders of Black people including Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and John Crawford III captured national headlines. Similar incidents occurred over the next year—Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, Walter Scott, Sandra Bland, and many others. Following the November 2014 exoneration of Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, Ferguson became ground zero for a new Black fr