A multitude of errors
"more numerous that mushrooms on a shit-pile after the rain..."
At work throughout multitudes is a confusion between the functioning of ideas, which can be expressed discretely, and objects, which must be described relationally. Unfortunately for the authors, this expresses itself not as a single error, which can just be flipped in each case without dismembering the whole, but as a persistent failure of sense -- more like being chauffered by a blind person than by a dyslexic.
Setting aside for a moment the dismal prospect they set out in the preface: to illuminate a way to "an open and inclusive democratic global society" with the dim-bulb concept of "the multitude," a term as lacking in style as it is in conceptual content, let's leap straight into the first chapter, "Simplicissimus."
This chapter is an excruciating excursion in the conceptual terrain of security and what they call the "state of exception." This is excruciating not with the white-knuckle excitement of driving at night with a blind person at the wheel (as their adoration of Nietche might suggest) but rather with the tedium of having to play along with a blind person, who long ago decided it was unsafe to apply the gas, and simply pantomimes driving, vigorously swerving the wheel and telling you about the wonderful places the two of you are driving through. It would take a lot more poetry than these two have to offer to make it interesting to follow along with the charade -- BUT, IN YOUR SERVICE, GENTLE READER, I SHALL PERSIST.
No, this is not poetry, just a dogged recount the imperialist ideology of "security," followed by the exhausted, wan promise to describe later what "real security" might look like. If we are writing politics, not poetry, we have to go at the problem the other way around, starting with real security and working towards the ideology. Instead of starting with the global concept, and trying to interpolate a resistance "in its shadow," it becomes clear we have to choose an example: I choose New York City. What security do we have?
The question immediately starts to open, to divide into two "clear and distinct" pieces: security relative to the environment, and security relative to other people. This simple distinction entirely eludes H&N -- they sloppily describ a misshapen unity of two lobes: "biopolitical production" and "the right of the police."
[a brief ad hominem rant: fuck it guys -- once you decide to look directly at the problem and stop swirling these words around in your mouth in emulation of a plugged toilet, once you roll up your sleeves and fucking engage with it, it starts to open up to you. Not all words taste like shit in the mouth, just onces you've been sucking on too long. These fuckwads wind themselves with spurious prologues and preliminary notes, vast promises they leave unfillde -- relative to one another? Or relative to our environment? these are two questions, and you have to deal with each of them separately!]
So now we need an even more specific instance: let me use the police presence on the corner of Stanton and Ludlow.
continued....
Posted by Sam at October 11, 2004 08:24 AM
