Dan S. Wang on Thu, 26 Aug 2004 17:11:45 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> influences |
> I am interested in how people on this list have their > activism influenced by intellectuals such as Michael > Hardt, Antonio Negri and Slavoj Zizek? I read Empire in a rush about a year ago in preparation for a paper I was writing. I found myself not wanting it to end. I can't really say it changed my approach to activism. Rather, the ideas and analysis contained in that book mostly reinforced my existing outlook on activism: ie that concerning oneself with a number of different issues (but often times addressing them through the medium of a very specific and particular campaign), being comfortable with a variety of tactics, and taking both long and short term perspectives into account, is not a bad thing at all. That's the way most activists I know work anyway, at least the ones who don't burn out. Some of them seem to fight the tendency, so I've been recommending the book to activists because it articulates so well the strengths of multi-centric democratic movements. People influenced by contemporary anarchism, especially it seems, find this book affirming. Not that there is a lot of prescriptive theory; sometimes it just feels good to be told in an intellectually authoritative language that we are much more powerful and effective than we think. You could say I'm a believer. I think the book actually lived up to the hype. BUT...I also promised myself that the next time Hardt and Negri were mentioned on this list I would voice this little joint that's been bugging me... On p 207 in the Counter-empire intermezzo where they're talking about the International Workers of the World as a model of a continually moving, immanent political force, they drop this labor history factoid about the IWW's "Wobblies" nickname: 'The two accepted stories of the derivation of the name "Wobbly" illustrate these two central characteristics of the movement, its organizational mobility and its ethnic-linguistic hybridity: first, Wobbly is supposed to refer to the lack of a center, the flexible and unpredictable pilgrimage of IWW militancy; and second, the name is said to derive from the mispronunciation of a Chinese cook in Seattle, "I Wobbly Wobbly."' What??? A Chinese cook in Seattle doing some chinglish massacre on "IWW" gave the union members their nickname? Web investigation turns up this IWW site, which runs through the stories and has the good sense to admit the possibility of stereotyped speech patterns. The L sound is singled out as the problem, as unpronounceable by the Chinese guy. While it might be true that the Fukienese or Cantonese chinglish is weak on the L's, I must point out that "wobbly" also has an L in it. So....? http://www.iww.org/culture/myths/wobbly.shtml The Chinese cook theory may make for a good story, but I also think Hardt and Negri could have elaborated a bit on how bits of contaminated speech are often the entry point of an actor marginal in relation to powerful protagonists. And that this entry does not always present itself contestationally. Maybe the authors felt that the tensions and pitfalls of hybrid language are communicated in the quoted passage, but still, being a Chinese restaurant brat myself, I'd love for it to be spelled out. Now all that by itself wouldn't be worth mentioning, except later I encountered another peculiar and slightly more annoying offhand remark, this time about "posse." When on p 408, as they're getting into the Renaissance notion of the posse as the social formation most suited to the kind of resistance they hope for, they must mention but then completely dismiss the African-American hiphop appropriation of the concept and formation: 'Contemporary US rap groups have rediscovered the term "posse" as a noun to mark the force that musically and literarily defines the group, the singular difference of the postmodern multitude. Of course, the proximate reference for the rappers is probably the posse comitatus of Wild West lore, the rough group of armed men who were constantly prepared to be authorized by the sheriff to hunt down outlaws. This American fantasy of vigilantes and outlaws, however, does not interest us very much. It is more interesting to trace back a deeper, hidden etymology of the term....' Again...what??? Of course, the key word in the dis above is "probably," as in, Hardt and Negri probably don't what they are talking about here. I've never heard rappers talk about posses in "Wild West" terms. Not even the wild west-ers Crucial Conflict! My theory is that the hiphop appropriation of "posse" grows pretty naturally out of the crew/squad formations that gather around group music creation, and that in the ultra competitive world of the emerging rap artist, a measure of group self-valorization is a pretty handy thing. Given the long history of African-American creativity in social formation (beginning with highly plastic and incredibly resilient family structures that survived and adapted under the near-holocaust conditions of slavery) in response to sociopolitical conditions, I fail to see how the hiphop posse is less rich in meaning than what Hardt and Negri outline as their concept of the multitudinous posse. At the very least, I think they need to admit that American rappers aren't simply play-acting their cowboy fantasies. Jesus! So, even as I recommend the book to friends and fellow activists, I am also anxious to find out what they think of the book, and particularly if they notice these two missteps. Thus far, I haven't found anybody bothered to the degree that I am. But nonetheless I now harbor the slightest of suspicions: that when it comes to details of popular culture, and particularly of minority origin, these guys just might be clueless--to the degree that they will write commentary without knowing that their credibility may suffer. (At least in my book.) Dan w. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net