Howl and Alice

Just a brief note on Howl no ugoku shiro (Howl's Moving Castle), which I saw for the first time yesterday as we happened to turn on the TV. There's power in many of the images - the staggering steam-punk castle, the briskly walking palanquin bearers of the Witch of the Waste with their pink costumes...

I may be unfair here, but the story was not as powerful as the images. For a story to work, the images must combine into a credible "world". By credible I don't mean realistic, but something that - as Coleredge put it - invites the willing suspension of disbelief. A credible "world" is one you can dream about after having seen the movie. But I felt this never happened in this film, perhaps because of the many sudden magical transformations.

But transformations in themselves cannot really be the reason. Alice in Wonderland, for examples, is a story full of the weirdest transformations, yet which I still think is enormously successful in creating a "world" which it is possible to dream about, expand in your imagination and use as the setting of your own imagined adventures.
   
What then is the reason for my dissatisfaction with Howl? Perhaps looking closer at the transformations will provide a clue. The deepest impression is created by the film's play with the theme of age - as seen in Sophie's unstable shifts between youth and old age, in the Witch's regression to a harmless old woman, or in Howl to whose childhood world Sophie suddenly gains access through a mysterious door. A double message is delivered up by this play, which seems to say that youth is both important and unimportant. One the one hand, people's age is not important - an old woman can be as charming and lovable as a child or a young girl. But on the other hand, the pure and untainted heart of childhood is the most valuable thing we have, the truly essential thing, a treasure we never ought abandon and which will one day save us.

I can imagine that many viewers of this film associate to Alice in Wonderland. The similarity almost becomes glaring in a scene when the protagonist in her blue dress falls slowly through the air. But the magical transformations the protagonist undergoes in the latter are in body size, not in age, and there is no thematics of salvation in Alice. Howl attempts to build suspension through a thematics of salvation - not in a Christian sense, but in the sense of saving people and the the world from war and magical curses. This salvation comes about through purity of heart. All this is alien to Alice.

Why does the latter work so well as a story despite the many chaotic transformations? Because in Alice chaos is integral to what its main storyline is about. Its main theme is the contest between reason and chaos. Alice's bodily transformations underline the impotence of reason, since she is unable to control even her own body. Reason finds itself constantly frustrated, but the contest is rather friendly. Chaos, reason's "other", is not really terrifying and even reveals itself to be rather delightful. In any case, the transformations are integral to the story's main source of attraction and are not felt to distract from them. The are part of the "world" Alice enters.

In Howl, by contrast, the confrontation is between purity and the curse. There can be no tolerance of the latter, which implies a fearful loss of self. Only purity - the ability to keep one's childhood heart despite all transformations - can conquer the curse. Hence the contest is much more mercyless. The "self" simply must win.

Why do I feel that Alice is so much more free from ideology than Howl?

Kasumigaseki as a movement space

Having left Tokyo behind, I want to write a few words about the space that impressed me most there. Believe it or not, but it’s Kasumigaseki. Usually this is a dull area dominated by grayish government buildings, but every Friday evening, when the anti-nuclear power movement holds its weekly demonstrations in front of the prime minister’s residence, the entire area turns into a lively and heterogeneous movement space.

These demonstrations started in March this year and reached a climax in June and July, fuelled by public anger at the announced restart of the Ōi nuclear reactors. On one occasion, the 29th of June, the crowd reached 200,000 in number according to the organizers, flooded the pavement and spilled out onto the street, creating a liberated zone right in front of the prime minister’s residence.

Although the number of participants have dwindled since then, thousands of people still gather here every Friday. Importantly, the area still functions as a vibrant movement space, with lots of groups engaging in various activities and lots of people strolling around, talking, playing music, distributing or reading pamphlets or signing petitions. Although popularly known as kantei-mae demonstrations – demonstrations in front of the prime minister’s residence – the activities are spread out over much of the Kasumigaseki area. Not all who come to protest chant protest slogans close to the residence. Many mix with the activists of the “tent plaza” outside the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry, hold a one-minute speech in the Speaker’s Area, or enjoy the performances of the “Drums of fury” (Ikari no doramu) as the group noisily and merrily parades from Ministry to Ministry with their drums, trombones and saxophones, followed by an enthusiastic crowd.

This is the tent plaza, a remnant of what was once also known as Occupy Kasumigaseki. The reception is a small square-shaped hole in the tent wall, but the tent is surprisingly large inside. Climbing inside I felt like entering a hidden cave. The tent has been maintained since September last year. When the government issued an order to clear the area in January, demonstrators flocked to protest and protect the tents. Today the remaining tent is squeezed it by a row of small metal fences saying “State property Entrance forbidden”. No one seems to care about them, so perhaps one should rather say that the fences are squeezed out by the tent?

The Speaker’s Area was established in the summer this year and is located at a corner opposite to the National Diet. Anyone can speak freely for a minute, provided it’s about nuclear power. The first time I visited it a man was holding a speech, saying it was absurd to chant “Protect the children” when it was his own generation that had caused the mess. The children don’t need us to take care of them, he said. They know better than us. My impression was that this is really a place where ordinary people speak who wouldn't ordinarily hold speeches (although sometimes, like on the day before the general election to the house of representatives, bigwigs and celebrities like Ozawa Ichirô, Utsunomiya Kenji and Yamamoto Tarô also came to hold speeches here).

The road in front of the Diet is a relatively quiet place where individuals and small groups find the space and peace do their own thing. Here I met a man whose sole activity seemed to consist in blowing in a vuvuzela. It was a surprisingly good sound, creating an almost serene feeling. “Konbanwa”, he smiled and looked happy.

Seeing him, I realized that I had experienced this kind of space before, or at least something similar. Often, when I lived in Kyoto, I used to walk along the Kamo river bank, which is truly wonderful place - a "no-man's-land" which is open to all, yet quiet and out of the way. This is a place where people often go to practice music or recitals, probably just for the fun of it since they are not necessarily skilled. The river bank is also a favorite spot for young lovers, and many homeless people live there. It is a tolerant space where people are free to engage in many activities that would be subject to negative sanctions in ordinary public spaces. Seeing the vuvuzela guy, I couldn't help thinking that a similar no-man's-land had reappeared here in the midst of Kasumigaseki, as a by-product of the anti-nuclear power movement.

Next to the vuvuzela guy was a space where two rows of candles had been laid out on the edge of the pavement, close to the park. People were sitting down there, taking it easy, playing guitars and listening to music. A girl explained to me that it was a gathering called "Beautiful Energy". They started gathering there a little over a month ago.

Near the crossing where one turns from this road up the Gumizaka street leading up to the prime minister's residence is an exhibition of satirical placards, drawn by a former manga artist. The picture I like best shows two pro-nuclear politicians blowing in pipes like the rat-catcher of Hamelin. Terrified parents try to stop their children: "Don't follow them!".

Following Gumizaka towards the prime minister's residence, one arrives at the kantei-mae demonstration. People leave part of the pavement open for ordinary passers-by (this is apparently a condition for the police to tolerate the demonstrations). Activists of the Metropolitan Coalition against Nukes lead the participants in chanting rhythmical slogans. Usually there are also monks beating their drums, and a lot of activists from various groups distributing leaflets. Often I've seen people of the newly formed Japanese Green Party (Midori no tô, or Greens Japan) holding their flag.

Looking at the signs, flags and placards can be interesting. Once I saw a guy with a Blues Brothers-look who came walking with a sign hanging over his stomach in which the familiar datsu-genpatsu (quit nuclear power) slogan had been replaced by the words datsu-bôkoku (exit the dead [or doomed] country).

This is a big flag I saw when I followed the "Drums of fury" on their tour around the area. It depicts Takakura Ken, and the words say: "Where are you going, Ark Sakura without honour or humanity? Thanks for dying, nuclear Japan" (Jingi naki hakobune Sakura-maru, doko e iku? Shinde moraimasu, Genpatsu Nippon). The words allude both to the famous old yakuza movie Jingi naki tatakai and Abe Kôbô's novel Hakobune Sakura-maru.

Since the demonstrations are held in the evening it has become popular to bring your own e-book reader and use it as a luminous placard (some with downloaded readymade images such as the Che Guevara picture above). Other solve the problem of how to make placards visible in the darkness by attaching flashlights to them. Some make pretty lanterns by placing lamps inside pet bottles.

I also saw placards indicating affinity or continuity with the anti-poverty movement of recent years, e.g. placards saying "Anti-nuclear power, anti-poverty" (Han-genpatsu, han-hinkon).

Often one sees a group of "no nukes" bicyclists passing by here, with glittering and colorfully decorated bikes. One of them is Santa:

An element of the demonstrations that can't be missed are the performances of the "Drums of fury", which usually parades down from the prime minister's residence to perform outside places like the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry and end up with a splendid final performance in the park entrance in front of the Diet.

This is a space for strolling, rather than for standing in one place. To walk around here, talking to people, and enjoying people doing all kinds of odd things is a pleasure. That a space for all these various activities has come into being is very important - or at least so I believe. Although chanting protest slogans is certainly necessary, I'm sure these other activities are just as important in attracting attention to and sympathy for the movement.

They are also important as outlets for people's creativity. Things like the Speaker's Area or Beautiful Energy had to be invented, or re-invented, by activists in the course of the movement. Part of the reason that activism is empowering is that it liberates people from routine. I'm glad when I see these activities, because I think that only activities or situations in which you have participated as a creator or co-creator can feel really and fuly satisfying and I also think that they are the ones that are most likely to remain with you afterwards as a dear and beautiful memory.

Still being an outsider to the movement, I don't know how it will be affected by the new Abe government. But I can guess. On the one hand, Abe's pro-nuclear stance will fuel new protests. On the other hand, his generally right-extremist and nationalist political views will mean that new issues will arise, diverting the energy of many activists away from the issue of nuclear power.

The emergence of the Abe government will almost certainly mean different things to different parts of the anti-nuclear power movement, which is far from unitary. The movement contains environmentalists concerned with promoting renewable energy, "zero-becquerel" activists driven above all by the fear of radiation, and farmers and other local Fukushima residents concerned with how to recreate their devastated communities. To most of these groups, the emergence of the Abe government will represent a setback. Nuclear power risks being be overshadowed by other issues, and increased repression against the movement is also probable.

However, what is very evident here in Kasumigaseki is that the movement against nuclear power also contains a democracy movement, with many activists who are enraged in particular by the power of the "nuclear village" (the elite of politicians, bureaucrats, corporations and researchers supporting the Japanese nuclear industry) and more generally by the way power is exercised in Japan. Here I find many of the young freeters who took the initiative to early rallies in the wake of the 3.11 disaster, such as the actions in front of the TEPCO headquarters or the "Stop the nukes" (Genpatsu yamero!) demonstrations, and also many intellectuals, writers and academics. To many of these activists it is the high-handed state - the same state that governed Japan during the war and whose system of governing remained after the war - that is the prime enemy, rather than the threat to the environment per se. 

To the "democracy movement" part of the anti-nuclear movement, this high-handed state is personified in Abe, a nationalist who deeply identifies with his grandfather, prime minister Kishi Nobusuke, who was the primary antagonist of the demonstrators in the AMPO-struggle 1960 and who was himself a politician and elite bureaucrat engaged in building up Japan's wartime empire. The emergence of the Abe government could well strengthen this part of the movement. If this prediction comes true, then the anti-nuclear power movement will not necessarily be weakened. Instead Abe will have catalyzed its transformation in the direction of a democracy movement.

When the night comes falling from the sky...

Then the galaxy falls to the ground:

(Just a way to say farewell to Tokyo)

Occupy Göteborg

Having seen a presentation of Occupy Göteborg on You Tube today I decide to visit them in their tent village in Vasaparken. Wonderful walk, despite the rain. Arriving in the park I'm greeted by a cluster of tents around the open round space behind the university. People are really friendly and seem to enjoy talking. Everywhere there are signs and posters and everything is nicely decorated, even the place for washing the dishes.

They've been living there for a little more than a month. The aim is not only to set up a space for public discussion, but also to use the space for creative activities. Concerts, workshops and lectures are frequently held. They've turned their village into a non-commercial zone. Everything, including food and coffee, is for free. The food is gathered through dumpster-diving during the night. In one of the tents they have a free shop, with books and clothes free for anyone who wants to take. Some tents have been put up for the homeless. They take care to keep the park clean, and life in the village is drug-free. Being interested in gift economies, I ask if things really are for free. Don't visitors bring things to the village which they offer in exchange they receive? One activist answers that visitors tend to do so naturally. Another says that they're actually grateful that visitors receive the things they have in surplus. 

A kindly middle-aged couple arrives and asks the activists who they are - do they have homes? One of the activists reply that they are mostly middle-class and have other places to live in. "So you're just like anyone else", the woman says with a smile. The man asks them if they are allowed any peace during the night. Mostly, they answer. The park administration wants to evict them, since they are not allowed to camp in the park. But the police thinks it's good that they are there, since they make the park safe at night. Young girls who've been partying are overjoyed when they discover them and think it's like Narnia.

A memorable episode was when an elderly, frail-looking lady sat down among us and showed us some sheets of paper where she had sketched a detailed plan for building a better society - everything neatly drawn with arrows and in black and red letters.

I follow the activists as they go to put up a sign saying "What is real democracy for you? To vote every four years?". A woman appears who seems to be living in the neighborhood arrives and delivers her opinion: "To me, democracy is parliamentary democracy". She turns her back on us and leaves.

Before leaving myself I ask if there's anything they need. Aluminium foil, they answer. And if possible firewood, a whiteboard and dairy products (which can't be dumpster-dived). But most of all they need help with the work that needs to be done in the village.

Visiting this village is a good way to spend one or a few hours. A strong impression I get is that many of the activists love being here, despite the work required to maintain the village. No matter what one might think of the contents of their protest activities (and I still know so little about them) or the fact that there are so many people who are worse off in this society than the "middle class", I think that one needs to be respectfull of whatever it is that has awoken such enthusiasm. Rather than being a routine activity, I feel that the space they're constructing is something out of the ordinary even to them, and such activities are always interesting to study and to participate in. Good things can come out of them.

I wish them good luck. I'll definately be back here, next time, perhaps, with my family. I look forward to tasting their coffee.

Retreat

Something's changed with me lately. Warm weather last week made me feel as in a foreign country. A longing for air drove me out of my office and I headed across the parking lot towards a nearby hill. Climbing up through the lush vegetation I found a bench where I sat down and read a paper I had brought. Far below me was the parking-lot I had passed through, my work place, and across the street, behind a row of houses, the apartment complex where I live.

How curious it felt, looking at the tourists or the people on the terrassess below me. Just as so often happens when I'm travelling I was struck by everything around me - as if my idle thoughts, for lack of anything better to do, would just grasp at anything on which my senses happened to rest and start busying themselves with producing not-yet-conscious thoughts. Whatever happened to reach the level of consciousness I was happy to let slip back into forgetfulness. That's the best thing to do with ideas. Wherever I'm going, I can only enter empty-handed anyway...

If you're tired, allow yourself to forget. Valuable ideas are like friends, they return. 

Retreats are good. Cafés sometimes work, if they're not too noisy. But if the weather's nice, I recommend walking and finding a bench thirty meters above ground.

Michaux in Ecuador

Just a few lines here about Henri Michaux, a writer who really seems a genius - but, oh, what a quaint and peculiar genius! Some years ago I read his A Barbarian in Asia, and there was a sentence in there - "It would disgust me to own a house" - which serves as the perfect point of entry into the travelogue Ecuador, a thin and fragmentary book based on a journey made in 1927, to which I'd like to turn here.

There is so much I like in this work! His exasperation at Europe, his longing to talk to animals, to love something else than friends and women. And not least, his dread of cities, of vaults:

A mind of a certain size can only feel exasperation towards a city. Nothing can drive it more fully to despair. The walls first of all, and even then all the rest is only so many horrid images of selfishness, mistrust, stupidity, and narrow-mindedness.
    No need to memorize the Napoleonic code. Just look at a city and you have it.
    Each time I come back from the country, just as I am starting to congratulate myself on my calmness, there breaks out a furor, a rage…
    And I come upon my mark, homo sapiens, the acquisitive wolf.
    Cities, architectures, how I loathe you!
    Great surfaces of vaults, vaults cemented into the earth, vaults set out in compartments, forming vaults to eat in, vaults for sex, vaults on the watch, ready to open fire. How sad, sad… (p.60)

Openness.... and claustrophobia. A theme, it seems to me, that is central to Michaux, or at least to the Michaux that speaks throughout these pages.

And money, there's another theme:

Money, money, one of these days I will say something about you. There is not in this century one poet who will not attribute his actions to the pressure of money. As far back as you want, my life has been in this straitjacket. (p. 63)

No, he doesn’t want to accept any gifts, not of things too heavy to carry. He wants to escape. Wish you success, Henri. I hope you still live there somewhere, outside the vaults.


References:

Michaux, Henri (2001) Ecuador: A Travel Journal, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Mauss and the gift

I feel I need to make some notes here on Marcel Mauss' classic work The Gift, in preparation of another entry in which I want to discuss gift economies in a book by Karatani Kôjin. I will start, simply, with what I see as the basic idea - the idea of the gift as a way of creating and maintaining social bonds and hierarchies - before moving on to indicating some points of interest and some of the differences between Mauss and other theorists of the gift-economy.

Like most antropologists, Mauss criticizes the utilitarian or rational-choice assumption of "economic man" in primitive societies. Looking at Melanesia, Polynesia and the American North-West (as well as the ancient Roman, Germanic, and Hindu legal systems), he argues that nowhere was there any so-called primitive barter between rational individuals. Instead, what he discovers are whole economies and systems of circulation of wealth built up around the gift in which actors are collectivities.

That, however, is not to say that gift-economies are altruistic or that gifts are devoid of considerations of utility. Gifts are useful, not because of their material or economic value, but because of the social bonds they create. The effect of an exchange of gifts is a strengthening of the social bond, of solidarity, in contrast to the modern capitalist market in which buyer and seller remain strangers to each others.

Trobriand island

What governs these cycles of gift-giving is not economic gain, but honor and prestige. They are pervaded by self-interest and (often) by antagonism. There are no free gifts and returning the gift is always obligatory. For those who fail to repay it, the effect can be destructive, even slavery. Mauss thus rejects the idealization of the idea of the gift as a purely altruistic act – a notion that is still present in Malinowski’s The Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Whereas Malinowski concludes that no really "pure" gifts existed among the Trobrianders except the gifts husbands gave their wives, Mauss sees even this as an exchange governed by reciprocity – as a return gift for sex (Mauss 1990:3; cf. Malinowsky 1932:179f).

Here's the first point of interest: the ambivalent concept of the market in Mauss’ book. The market is the arena of the gift-economy and just as fiercely antagonistic as the modern capitalist market. But at the same time, Mauss seems to suggest that this "market" - in so far as it is indeed the area of all the gift exchanges which he describes - extends into families or small-scale communities. Here he seems to repeat one of the mistakes (in my view) of the economists and "rational choice" theorists who insist on subsuming all kinds of human behavior under the market. As Karatani points out (I will discuss this in a later entry), Mauss appears to be confusing the primitive “communism” characteristic of families or bands of hunters and gatherers where everthing is simply shared, with the gift exchanges based on reciprocity that only emerge in the contact between communities. This is an important disctinction that corresponds to the distinction between what Sahlins calls "pooling" and "reciprocity" or what Graeber calls "communism" and "exchange" (Sahlins 2004:188, Graeber 2011:94-108). In other words, one could argue that Mauss goes too far in in stressing reciprocity as the basis of all gift-giving. Malinowski may, after all, have been at least a little bit right in arguing that some forms of "pure" gift in which things are shared or given without regard for reciprocity do exist. For the sake of accuracy, however, we should note that Malinowsky rejects the notion of "primitive communism" outside the affectionate circle of the family - that notion, he claims, that is as illusionary as the notion of a "primitive economic man (Malinowsky 1932:97, 174; against that one might mention counter-examples that indicate pooling among people like the Iroquois, but that's a separate discussion).

A second point of interest concerns the mixture of different kinds of exchange within the markets of the gift-economy. There is a tendency among many today to envision gift-economies as a particularly primitive form of economy that precedes the creation of barter or modern economic market exchange. As Mauss points out, however, the gift-economies don’t precede barter. They coexist with it. The Trobrianders carefully distinguish the ritualized gift exchange called the kula from mere economic exchange of goods, the ginwali, which can be marked by hard bargaining (Mauss 1990:22; also see Malinowsky 1932:95). In addition, “all the kula provide the occasion for ginwali” (Mauss 1990:27). This at first sight curious mixture of types of exchange is also stressed by Malinowsky, who distinguishes several forms of exchange ranging from "pure gifts" to "pure barter" and who also stresses that much barter takes place as a form of secondary trade on kula expeditions (Malinowsky 1932:83, 100, 176-190). Karatani provides a reasonable explanation, namely that barter - being an impersonal and inherently unfriendly kind of exchange - can only take place on the basis of some pre-existing social bond or mutual feeling of trust and good will, which need to be created and reproduced through the gift.

A third question concerns the religious origin of economic value. I am thinking here, in particular, of the discussion of tonga, oloa and hau among the Maori, which Mauss uses to explain the power of the gift (Mauss 1990:9-13). To the Maori, Mauss claims, the gift always contains something of the giver. This something is hau, which is the spirit of the thing and which follows anyone possessing the thing. Furthermore, it wants to return to its birthplace, until the receivers gives back from their own property. This theory of hau is the object of an extended criticism by Marshall Sahlins in Stone-age Economics, where Sahlins argues that it is not hau but the need to avoid war that explains the power of the gift. I won't enter into this debate here, but Sahlins' criticism doesn't strike me as invalidating the idea of a religious connection to the gift. Neither, of course, does it invalidate the more fundamental idea that a gift will always contain some trace of the giver. After all, the gift's function is to strengthen a social bond.

Here I also recall Benjamin's remarks on the "aura". Auratic objects, Benjamin writes, are objects that retain the gaze that has rested on them, and this is manifested in what we perceive as their ability to look at us in return (Benjamin 1997:148). Speaking of the potlatch, Mauss describes copper objects used in the exchange - precious objects, each with its own name and individuality. An object of this kind was "covered with blankets to keep it warm", yet “demanding to be given away, to be destroyed” (Mauss 1990:45). Not only is there an interesting paradox here, which says a lot about the nature of gift giving. Exactly things that are treasured are things that are suited to be given away. In fact, the more they are an object of affection, the greater the gift. Like Benjamin and Simmel, Mauss draws up the contours of a theory of how “aura” is replaced by indifferent exchangeability, but unlike them he asks how exchange is possible in a society in which the aura still colors the way things appear to inhabitants. The exchange of objects that still retain their aura – that is the gift.

There's an idea of suggestive beauty here, which certainly is part of the moral fervor which quietly underpins the book. The "primitive" societies it discusses are far from closed. They are the very opposite of parochial: everthing circulates.

All these institutions express one fact alone, one social system, one precise state of mind: everything - food, women, children, property, talismans, land, labour services, priestly functions, and ranks - is there for passing on, and for balancing accounts. Everything passes to and fro... (Mauss 1990:14)

According to Mauss the gift economy corresponds to a fundamental human need and still subsists in submerged forms in the midst of our modern societies (ibid 70f).

Therefore let us adopt as the principle of our life what has always been a principle of action and will always be so: to emerge from self, to give, freely and obligatorily. We run no risk of disappointment. A fine Maori proverb runs: […] ‘Give as much as you take, all shall be very well.’ (Mauss 1990:71)

Speaking of the gifts exchanged in the kula, he writes: “it is only given you on condition that you make use of it for another or pass it on to a third person” (Mauss 1990:24). I agree. Yes, how liberating!


References

Benjamin, Walter (1997) Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, London: Verso.

Graeber, David (2011) Debt: The First 5000 Years, New York: Melville House.

Malinowsky, Bronislaw (1932) Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea, London: Georg Routledge & Sons.

Mauss, Marcel (1990) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, New York, London: W. W. Norton.

Sahlins, Marshall (2004) Stone Age Economics, London: Routledge.

A voyage to Hegel

I feel like a tourist, looking at quaint old ruins and being struck by the surrealism of the past. Yet, trotting about, careful not to stumble, I think: "This was once the capital of the empire from which Marx and Nietzsche sprung... and all those great thought-friends of mine in the Frankfurt School". 

Yes, I've been reading the Phenomenology (in the recent Swedish translation by Brian Manning and Sven-Olov Wallenstein). So many marvels. No matter how many times I read it, I'm struck with the beauty of famous passages like:

Frivolity as well as the boredom that open up in the establishment and the indeterminate apprehension of something unknown are harbingers of a forthcoming change. This gradual crumbling which did not alter the general physiognomy of the whole is interrupted by the break of day that, like lightning, all at once reveals the edifice of the new world. (§11; this translation is from W. Kaufman's Hegel: Texts and Commentary, University of Notre Dame Press 1977:20)

Like a tourist, I stop in front of the well-known theoretical landmarks. Here's one: the criticism of the semblance of immediacy – just one single little thought, but without it, there would have been no Lukács, no Adorno and no (worthwhile) ”criticism of ideology”.

I am predictably charmed by the parable of the master and the slave. So much like an unhappy love story. But one persistent doubt lingers: why would the master ever really want to be recognized by the slave? I remember that Charles Tilly in a text quotes Stinchcombe's "agreeably cynical" treatment of legitimacy, in which the assent of the governed plays a miniscule role: “The person over whom power is exercised is not usually as important as other power-holders” (Tilly 1985:171). I agree. Throughout history, masters have usually worried about recognition by peers or by important figures in their own ingroup, while caring little for the opinions of social inferiors or defeated opponents.

 

There's a tension at the core of the work, which I believe is the source of its magnetism. Hegel was the first to see philosophy both as a system and as the organic totality of its self-contradictory history. The latter is likened to the development of a plant in which the flower refutes the bud, only to be refuted in turn by the fruit, but in which the parts nevertheless forms an organic whole.

This tension is reproduced as the tension between the ideas of the phenomenology and the logic, or between the movement towards absolute knowledge and a philosophy that already presupposes its achievement. Can the phenomenology be written at all without presupposing the standpoint of the logic? Conversely, if history, the process of becoming, cannot be separated from the final truth, can the latter exist at all as a separate branch of knowledge?

This tension is both productive and inescapable, since it produces Hegel's central insight: that the true is history, the entire history of Spirit’s becoming, including all of its diverse shapes (”The true is the whole”).

Using this insight, Hegel historicizes earlier philosophies, showing them to be but moments or roadstations on the way of the Spirit's development. What distinguishes him from a mere historian of ideas is the fact that he, in a last movement, declares this history itself to be the true philosophy.

The final sublation that produces absolute knowledge is therefore not yet another stage following after the previous historical process, but this very history itself, including all its negations and contradictions. To realize this is also the key to solving the riddle of alienation. Alienation is not just a negative loss of self, but also something positive, a part of Spirit's self-constitution. Spirit not only alienates itself, but also recognizes itself as the agent of its own alienation, thus sublating and redeeming it. Conquering alienation is not a return into the putative immediacy of the self. To put it tersely, it consists in recognizing that truth is history, and history is me. Since truth consists of history in its entirety, it must include the negative moments too, including alienation. ”Absolute knowledge” consists in recognizing oneself in this history.

This is in line with the Zizekian interpretation of Hegel, which stresses that "the 'synthesis' is exactly the same as the anti-thesis; the only difference lies in a certain change of perspective, in a certain turn through which what was a moment ago experienced as an obstacle, as an impediment, proves itself to be a positive condition" (Zizek 176). The ”synthesis” is not attained by discarding the ”antithesis”, but by realizing that negativity as such has a positive function, as a ”determinate” moment in the progress of Spirit.

One might object that to affirm history – including the alienation brought about by state, capital or religion – can mean two very different things. Firstly, it might mean affirming it as something to be overcome and relegated to the past, a mere stepping stone to a wholly different or even Utopian society – this is the interpretation favored in most strands of Marxism, in which communism is pictured as a stage following capitalism and wholly different from it. But secondly, it may mean letting the things persist precisely as they are and instead merely change the "perspective", as Zizek puts it, so that one becomes able to recognize oneself in capital, state, religion and other alienated structures. Which interpretation is correct? My hunch is that Hegel would lean towards the latter, Zizekian interpretation, but with an important proviso: namely that even if capital, state and religion are allowed to continue to exist as they are, the very insight that they are created by us humans (i.e. Spirit) suffices to transform them beyond recognition. A capitalism  or a state with such ”self-knowledge” would no longer be able to exist as a separate, "natural" (Naturwüchsig) or autonomous realm above people. It would have to "come to its senses" and this very self-awareness would by necessity transform or modify it. 

Hegel's insistence that alienation too must ultimately be affirmed is the background of his famous portrayal of the subject as "the tremendous power of the negative” (p75, §32). The subject is the power to break out of what is given. To Hegel, this is essentially the power of thought, of the mind. That, to be sure, is a form of idealism. Surely, one might object that shocks, disasters and setbacks – all the things that hit us from outside the purview of consciousness and which Adorno and Jameson call ”history” – also liberate us from givenness, and usually with an even more ruthless and "tremendous" power than thought. Hegel pays no attention to such ruptures, probably because they often appear so meaningless, so purely destructive. To him, the negative always remains contained within what can retrospectively be appropriated in thought by Spirit. The negative is affirmed, but only to the extent that Spirit is able to discover itself in the negative (p76, §32). Hence, the negative is never really the rupture or catastrophe itself, but the voice which Spirit lends this rupture or catastrophe. Herein resides, I believe, the basic difference between Hegel's dialectics and Adorno's "negative dialectics".

This containment of the negative to the realm of thought has curious consequences. In the same passage as where Hegel describes the subject as the ”power of the negative”, he also likens it to death, but it is clear that this is death in thought alone - the death of a previous shape of Spirit, not physical death. Yet history, of course, consists also of real people who die real deaths. Such people only figure peripherically in Hegel’s account and only to the extent that their deaths can be redeemed and made meaningful (as in the discussion on the family, divine law and the bosom of the earth, §445-462). In the trajectory drawn by Hegel, nothing really dies in vain, since whatever is essential is gathered up in history and lives on in Spirit, as part of its truth. At this point, the reader may be forgiven for raising the objection: won't a single person who’s died in vain refute this philosophy?    

I fully agree with Adorno: Hegel is almost right, but in the end he opts for identity. This is notable above all in his insistence that Spirit, as its final stage of development, culminates in ”science” (e.g. pp 540f, §797-798), and in his relentless attacks on Romantic Schwärmerei. The end must be the concept, from which there is no legitimate exit. But isn’t this delimitation against the concept’s exterior also non-dialectical?   

In connection with this, one might ask: what is necessity to Hegel? To begin with, it is a necessity of thought (of the concept), so it’s not a matter of natural laws. But even as a necessity of thought, one can imagine two quite different types. Firstly, necessity might mean that history is predetermined (in the manner of a logical calculation). This notion of necessity tends to become important in certain forms of Marxism, especially those that rely on a deterministic or mechanistic view of history as leading inexorably towards a future communist society. But secondly it might mean something looser, something like a retrospective insight – by an imagined Spirit looking back on its own history, saying: ”In order to be the one I am today, all this was necessary”. This could be called a more ”voluntaristic” interpretation of necessity, since it tends to portray the Spirit’s final achievement – its recognition of itself in the entirety of history – as an active choice of affirming this history as its fate. Such an act of retrospective appropriation of the past might recall cetain strands of existentialism (e.g. the Heideggarian ”authentic” self).

Reactions against Hegelian necessity likewise tends to take two forms. On the one hand, there are those, like Popper, who concentrate their fire on the idea of history progressing through logical necessity, as in historical determinism. On the other, there are those who feel that today's condition is one of confusion. There are no owls flowing, or there are too many. History is not over and we are still stuck in doubt. Spirit looks back on its past, saying: "Truth is, perhaps, history. But history is not me". What is so claustrophobic in Hegel is that he thinks his job is done.      

That the latter camp is where I feel most at home goes without saying. Dialectics still remains in such a state - a dialectics of awakening, as Benjamin put it, and a negative dialectics too.

There is a fine anecdote according to which Hegel planned a revision of the Phenomenology in 1831, but broke off his corrections midway through the preface, noting: ”Eigenthümliche frühere Arbeit, nicht Umarbeiten” - peculiar early work, not to be reworked! Perhaps Hegel himself was unable to recognize himself wholly in his past? Was this decision to let the "peculiar" text remain as it was a recognition of the role it had played in the development of his own thought? Or was it, instead, more like the decision to preserve a ruin whose meaning can no longer be fully recalled?

Farewell, then, autobiography of the Spirit! Ruins, yes. Perhaps a little like these in the old painting by Herman Posthumus from 1536.

References

Hegel, G. W. F. (2008[1807]) Andens fenomenologi (tr. of Die Phänomenologie des Geistes by B. M. Delaney & S.-O. Wallenstein), Stockholm: Thales.

Tilly, Charles (1985) “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime”, pp 169-191, in P. B. Evans & D. Rueschmeyer & T. Skocpol (eds) Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zizek, Slavoj (1989) The Sublime Object of Ideology, London: Verso.

Graeber Debt Jubilee

Earlier this autumn I was reading Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years (Melville House, 2011). Seeing the euro crisis unfold in real time while reading was a awesome experience, giving me a weird feeling of experiencing the end of the world with a voice-over.

As an aside, let me confess that the news coverage of the euro crisis right now is giving me feelings of suffocation. Everywhere panic is stirred up, as if the big catastrophe that needed to be averted at all cost would be a break up of the euro-zone. But isn't the genuine catastrophe what is happening right now: whole populations sentenced to austerity without a trace of democratic process, and a power grap by the few, conveniently legitimated by the "crisis"?

Graeber's book is brilliant. It simply should be read. Like always with his works, it is never boring. He's always generous, letting the reader feel smart and come to startling new understandings on almost every page. He writes well, and explains well.

Here it won't be possible to summarize the book. So let me just gesture towards some of the things I liked: first, there are the wonderful first pages about the Garden Party in London, where Graeber gets the innocuous comment: ”Surely, one has to pay one’s debts” - a statement one might say that the entire book tries to problematize. From there the big arguments unfold: the idea that virtual money is the original kind of money (not cash or bullion), the criticism of the myth of barter, the distinction between communism, exchange and hierarchy as the three basic forms of economic morality, and the suggestion that history alternates between epochs of bullion and epochs of credit. Among the titbits are things like the claim that Europeans never "reverted to barter" after the collapse of the Roman Empire, the speculation that patriarchy originated in the horrified reaction against the Mesopotamian credit economy, the portrayal of the corporation-like Buddhist monasteries in China, or the startling account of the origin of the Bank of England.

Along the way, an anthropology of economic relations is built up which is used to show that barter, taken as the prototype of the "market" by classical economics has historically only been typical of relations between enemies or strangers, people who had no interest in building long-term relations with each other. Barter is a behavior close to war. Members of the same community have practically never used barter to exchange things; they share them or give them away, saying "I owe you one". In other words, they live in a credit economy.

Money existed in so-called "primitive" communities too, but was embedded in human relations, functioning as approximate credit units. Even when existing in material form, it was seldom used in daily transactions, tending to be reserved for special occasions – such as marriages, funerals or alliances – when there was some important rearrangement of relations between people. This kind of money Graeber calls ”social currencies” and the economies in which they are employed ”human economies”. What happens when such economies give way to commercial ones – when obligations turn into debts? The result can be debt peonage, as in Mesopotamia, or slavery, as in ancient Greece or Rome.

An important argument is about the role of the state and especially of military force. Money is credit money, i.e. IOUs or, basically, debt. It functions as money as long as it is redeemable. In principle, an IOU can be issued by anyone (such as the "tally sticks" used in medieval England or the scraps of signed paper that circulated as notes in China), but usually they only become recognized as money when they're backed by the state. Even when issued by the state, money remains debt. When states first issued coins it was to pay for their armies. But how could states ensure that this money would be redeemable, that there would be markets where the money would be accepted? By demanding the money back in taxes, ensuring that markets would grow up around the armies. The ability to raise taxes in turn rested on the ruler's means of coercion. Armies, then, were crucial to the creation of money and markets. Ultimately, it is the state's ability to back its IOUs with military force that underlies its ability to create money.

Graeber broadly divides history into three epochs of credit and two epochs of bullion. The most ancient economies were credit economies. In Sumer and the Mesopotamian empires, a typical pattern emerged whereby conflicts over debt were resolved or mitigated through periodic “Jubilees”. Credit led to debt peonage, which in turn provoked resistance in the form of indebted peasants joining the nomads – like in the Biblical “exodus”. Institutionalizing the “Jubilees” was a way for the empires to avoid losing their populations and to minimize their vulnerability to nomad attacks. This early credit age, however, were succeeded by the gruesome Axial age (the age of the Roman, Maurya and Han empires) when coins dominated. During the Middle Ages credit again became dominant in Europe, India and China. This was followed by the age of modern bullion-based capitalist empires, which lasted until 1971, when the Nixon shock inaugurated a new age dominated by credit. According to Graeber, it matters a great deal what kind of epoch it is. Bullion-dominated epochs have generally been warlike. Coin or cash is tailor-made for hostile relations, when you will never see each other again. Credit, by contrast, is more suited to peace and stability, since it presumes the possibility of reliable long-term relations.

A seemingly paradoxical fact, repeatedly stressed by Graeber, is that usually in the past, the ages of virtual credit money were accompanied by institutions designed to protect debtors (such as the Jubilee), but the most recent such age is different. Today institutions like the IMF instead function to protect the creditors. Graeber doesn’t really present a solution to this riddle, merely suggesting that the new age of credit is still rather new and that things are still up for grabs. With a little effort, we might still make this an epoch in which debtors rather than creditors will be protected. ”It seems to me that we are long overdue for some kind of Biblical-style Jubilee” (p390).

Here’s my one objection to the book. The fact that we live in a credit-based economy today is indisputable, but that is hardly ground for hope. Credit economies only need to be “humane” to debtors so long as the state or system of coercion is weak. Only then must they must presume some basic trust or faith in the debtor. Today, however, states have developed to such an extent that trust in debtors can be dispensed with. Credit cards are accepted and loans are granted, not because of any trust in the debtors, but because the system will guarantee repayment. Debtors can no longer escape to the desert, but will be tracked down electronically. Even if they can’t pay, banks are too big to fail. What matters is not whether one lives in an epoch of cash or credit, but the strength of the system, its general growth prospects and its apparatus of coercion. This suggests that the idea of epochs of credit and of bullion is just a surface phenomenon, hiding more crucial processes going on elsewhere.

Just look at Greece, which is caught in a cage. The recipe of slashing growth prospects to reduce debt is about as reasonable as robbing a worker of his tools and then tell him to work until he has repaid his debt. To me it seems this is neither an age of bullion nor credit, at least not if credit is supposed to mean trusting each other, being humane, and caring for the long-term relation. Credit today means trust in coercion. It means: I trust the jailors above all, and if I trust you, it's because I trust your fear of the jailors and the strength of the fetters in which you will be caught.

So we see: the catastrophe is not the potential default or a break-up of the euro zone. The catastrophe is that a system has already come into being which we think is so important that we are sacrificing whole populations to ensure its functioning.

But there is one weak spot in the system. Unlike mutual trust, trust in coercion is a one-sided trust that is found above all in the creditor. It needs to be complemented by fear and anxiety on the part of the debtor. Fear of the crisis and of failure, panic at the prospect of default and of a rebuke from the rating agencies. This anxiety and fear is part of the catastrophe.

Part of the cure could be that we ask ourselves: do we really need to feel so anxious and fearful? Humane societies don’t need growth. To be humane and civilized means to behave decently and kindly even in hard times. Often these qualities are most real and strongest among so-called losers and failures. True barbary is strongest among those who strive to be on top or who struggle to avoid losing. If you want proof, just look around the world, or even just at Europe.

Making things public (according to Latour)

I'm not well read in Bruno Latour, so I write this not to assert any standpoint, but more, really, to clarify my impressions to myself and to test them against any criticism they might invite. 

I've just read “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: or How to Make Things Public”, Latour's introduction to an exhibition catalogue edited by himself and Peter Weibel (Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, Karlsruhe: Center for Art and Media / Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2005). It's an intervention in political philosophy, written as an essay in the good old style - stimulating, well-written, erudite. He criticizes mainstream political philosophy – from Hobbes to Habermas – for neglecting "things" - and pleads instead for an "object-oriented democracy”, a Dingpolitik.

He points out that the old word ”Thing” originally designated a type of archaic assembly, as in Icelandic Althing (suitably located on a desolate site in the middle of a fault line). ”Thus, long before designating an object thrown out of the political sphere and standing there objectively and independently, the Ding or Thing has for many centuries meant the issue that brings people together because it divides them” (p13). The central idea is that what creates a public is not shared values or principles or any basic shared agreement, but the existence of a pressing concern that divides us: "we don’t assemble because we agree, look alike, feel good, are socially compatible or wish to fuse together but because we are brought by divisive matters of concern into some neutral, isolated place in order to come to some sort of provisional makeshift (dis)agreement” (p13).

So disagreement unites. As he points out, demos and demon share the same root, the Indo-European da-, to divide (p14).

At this point, one might ask if a public or a people are united only by disagreement, or if they also have something else in common. While the overall thrust of Latour's argument is certainly to stress the constitutive role of disagreement, he does add one more factor, which is crucial - the sharing of territory. ”Hence, the people, the demos, are made up of those who share the same space and are divided by the same contradictory worries” (p16).

Despite the concession to territory, Latour's conception of the public is thin, building on little but mutual disagreement. Rather than a unitary assembly, such politics would be an assembly of assemblies, by necessity constantly on the verge of dissolving into parts (an "assembly of disassembling"). As he points out, the difference between following the way of the "demon" - multiplying difference and disassembling - and that of the "demos" - multiplying occasions to agree, assemble and share - is thin as a knife (p30). One way to deal with the inconclusive nature of public deliberation is to be modest and acknowledge our insufficient cognitive capacities. ”The cognitive deficiency of participants has been hidden for a long time [...]. We were told that all of us – on entering this dome, this public sphere – had to leave aside in the cloakroom our own attachments, passions and weaknesses” (p20). Hence Latour's slogan: ”Disabled persons of all countries, unite!” (p19f).

A public tolerant of diversity needs to avoid the dream of unity and totality which he associates with "the phantasmagorical spheres, globes, common good and general will that the Leviathan was supposed to incarnate” (p24). Instead, he argues, it needs to be "phantom-like" (an expression derived from Lippman's "phantom public"). To illustrate what this might mean, he refers to an artwork, The Phantom, designed by Michel Jaffrennou and Thierry Coduys:

It’s activated by the movements of the visitors throughout the show so that each spectator is simultaneously an actor in the show and the only screen on which the whole spectacle is projected. By moving through the various exhibits, the visitors will trigger various captors that will be used as so many inputs to trigger outputs which will give a vague and uneasy feeling that “something happens” of which the bystanders are responsible but in a way that is not directly traceable. Politics will pass through you as a rather mysterious flow, just like a phantom. (p24)

If we compare to Jürgen Habermas, a striking trait of Latour's conception of the public is that it has no need for any underlying agreement, no shared language rules and no shared orienation to consensus. Apart from territory, it seems constituted by nothing by disagreement. This is at least formally a similarity to Jacques Rancière's conception of the public as a polemical place for the manifestation of disagreement. At the same time, the differences to Rancière are both striking and instructive.

Latour's demos or phantom public
would not be a "body politic" 

For instance, behind Latour's stress on disagreement one senses his concern with globalization, the global multitude of voices who no longer comprehend democracy ("Listen to the Japanese tradition... Listen to the Jivaros... Listen to the jihadists", p25). The global is what cannot be united under one roof. "Where would you assemble the global? Certainly not under golden domes and kitsch frescoes where heroic senators and half-naked Republics are crowned by laurels descending from clouds" (p20). Thus he discards the old metaphors for the public, the "spheres" or "domes". Yet, whether we like it or not, today the shared territory that brings people together is the global. Demonstrations against globalization show how a divisive issue brings people together, even if they wish to differ. The globe is where we all co-habitate: "we are all in the same boat" (p27).

To Rancière, by contrast, disagreement has nothing to do with global diversity. It springs from the injustice of the social order. This is why he, unlike Latour, presents the Ding, the cause of disagreement, as something that is visibilized only with the disruptive political act of those who have no part in the established order. Latour, by contrast, tends to present it as a pregiven and shared object of worry. This difference explains their radically different visions of politics. In Rancière the political event that constitutes the public is a rupture of the order. Latour, by contrast, presents dissent as constitutive of a new kind of phantom-like regular politics. Rancière's vantage-point is that of the excluded part, while Labour takes the perspective of the already, at least more or less, included, who only need to admit of their own weaknesses and insufficiences. Vantage-points are important. To theories too one should pose the question: cui bono?

Let me move to a theoretically more central point. Does Latour present a tenable, persuasive account of how publics work? To me, he vastly overestimates the role of disagreement. Whenever we see people assemble or gather together, it is usually on the basis of the existence of shared norms. To use his own example of the Althing, among Icelanders this shared basis was provided by custom; there was implicit agreement about where to go and how to deal with divisive issues, where to seek allies, how to present one's cause and what compensations were reasonable to claim for damages. Iceland, then, does not at all illustrate how the existence of a pressing divisive concern is enough to force people together. Would more contemporary examples - like the climate crisis - be more persuasive? Hardly. A climate summit too procedes along certain formal, agreed upon rules. Disagreement alone is not what constitutes the gathering.

Latour acknowledges that there are matters of global concern that inspire actions not based on shared rules - as when fundamentalists resort to violence out of resentment at the injustice of existing forms of representation (p25). But here the question arises: why does the Ding sometimes bring us together to fight and sometimes to talk? Why do some people talk, rather than resort to violence? Surely, there are many more factors than mere disagreement that play in here and that make people constitute publics.

A final point of disagreement with Latour concerns the role of norms needed to create egalitarian forms of interaction. In classical conceptions of the public - e.g. in Habermas or Arendt - publics are arenas where people are able to interact on the basis of an "egalitarian semblance". In old Iceland, this semblance was vouchsafed by custom and by the fact that it was already a relatively egalitarian society, lacking both king and state, in which the "thingmen" were independent, wealthy peasants. In today’s more stratified societies, the semblance of equality is instead created by a systematic bracketing of real inequalities in status, wealth and power. People are expected to behave "as if" equal when engaging in public discussions, regardless of actual inequality. Latour says nothing about how his phantom publics would deal with inequality. To the extent that these too depend on an egalitarian semblance, I would argue that they too need to rely on shared norms for bracketing - and, if so, they cannot be constituted solely by disagreement. There has to be some normative common ground.

Of course, it's quite possible to conceive of publics without egalitarianism. Nancy Fraser, for instance, argues that "subaltern counter-publics" shouldn't opt for maintaining the semblance of equality, which in fact conceals real exclusions and hierarchies, but for a strategy of "unbracketing". Only in the disruptive effect such "unbracketing" has on the mainstream public sphere - effect similar to those of "politics" in Rancière's sense - do real chances appear for the empowerment of excluded groups. Latour's slogan about the disabled persons of the world and his argument that we all ought to be more open with the weaknesses, attachments and passions that we for so long have hidden away as ”private” suggests that he too conceives of the public as something that ought to dispense with bracketing. Formally, in terms of a typology of publics, he would belong with Fraser and Rancière. Unlike them, however, he does not conceive of unbracketing as provocative or aggressive. To him, unbracketing is not needed to challenge social injustice, but in order to direct attention to our own weaknesses. He never touches on the issue of injustice, the very reason why Fraser and Rancière focus on unbracketing. So how would a Latour-inspired public deal with injustice? How would aggressive forms of unbracketing that challenge the privilege of the included be viewed and managed in such a public? Can such calls be managed by an ethics of mutually respecting our disabilities? Or by letting them pass through us as a  "rather mysterious flow, just like a phantom”? What appears to me to be left out - or am I misreading him? - is the question of how people not only react to an issue, to a "thing", but take it upon themselves to make it an issue, into a "thing" which the general public can no longer afford to ignore. This act of creating the divisive issue seems to be the core of politics.

Greece

My thoughts go to Greece. No referendum, the politicians say. Only stability, stability, stability. Seldom has it been so clear what suffering stability means

Nazim Hikmet's beautiful poem from 1930 - quoted at the beginning of a 2008 proclamation from the uprising in Greece.

If I do not burn
If you do not burn
If we do not burn
How will darkness come to light?
(Nazim Hikmet, “Like Kerem”)

(Thanks to Kaz Sagrada for passing this on)

What is the relation between the public sphere and public space?

Right now I'm trying to put together a theoretical piece for a presentation next week. It's going to be about the relation between the public sphere and public space.

Here's a brief summary of part of what I'm going to say.

Many have suggested that the relation between the two concepts is insufficiently researched. Here I would like to 1) suggest two reasons why this might be so, 2) propose a rather simple model that might clarify the relation, and 3) briefly discuss some conclusions that might be drawn. In particular, since some theorists seem to be suggesting that the idea of public space is more suited to a radical politics open to the excluded or disadvantaged than that of the public sphere, I will try to evaluate that claim and indicate in what ways it might hold true.


1. Why the confusion?

To begin with, the public sphere is not at all an un-spatial concept. Habermas cannot be accused of neglecting the physical places or mediums in which the public sphere has developed - private homes, for instance, or coffeehouses, salons, assemblies, street, theatres, or newspapers. What is true is that the public sphere is not necessarily linked to any particular place or medium. It is also true that the relation to space has become further blurred by so-called globalization (and the growth of "diasporic public spheres", "transnational public spheres", "global public sphere moments" etc). The indeterminate relation to space is, I suggest, one important reason for the confusion regarding the relation between the concepts of the public sphere and public space.

To at least begin to clarify the confusion, I will argue as follows. Although not necessarily linked to any particular physical space, the public sphere can surely be described as a social space - a particular kind of social space characterized by political deliberation about common affairs. Using a concept of space that is socially rather than physically defined should be fine. As I will show, concepts of public space are in fact also usually socially defined.

A second reason for confusion is that there are two kinds of theories of public space. Both use the term "public space" but they do so in opposite ways.

On the one hand, there are theorists of urban sociability like Erwin Goffman, Georg Simmel, Richard Sennett, Lynn Lofland, or Jane Jacobs. What they have in common is that they all link ”publicness” to concrete urban space. But there is no real link to the public sphere, to politics. What matters is that people are visible to each other, not that they talk or discuss. What they research is how strangers behave when they share a space where they are mutually visible to each other. What sustains "publicness" is the system of norms that regulates this interaction. Goffman's "civil inattention" is a well-known example of this norm-guided behavoir. Jane Jacob's Hudson Street "ballet" is another example. The formal etiquette between strangers which Sennett sees as so crucial to the publicness of the ancient régime is a third.

On the other hand, there are scholars like Jacques Rancière, Don Mitchell or Bruce d'Arcus, whose main interest is in "dissent public space" (this is d'Arcus' term). I've already discussed their idea of public space in a previous blog entry ("Public Space and Public Sphere: Notes on Reading Don Mitchell"). Common to them is that they see publicness as arising through acts that manifest or visibilize dissent. If the theorists of urban sociability see publicness are maintained by an intricate system of norms, the theorists of dissent see it as erupting when the norms are disrupted.

The former group of scholars associate public space with norms of bracketing - or systematically disregarding - differences in status among people. Where all are strangers, there is no high or low. We refrain for inquiring to deeply into the background of the strangers we meet. By doing so, we maintain the semblance that everyone is equal. The second group of scholars, by contrast, associate publicness with un-bracketing, with the "uncivil" taking or occupation of place where injustice is visibilized. Rather than bracketing marginalization, oppression or status differences, they are brought out into the open.


2. Contention and bracketing: a model

A solution requires that we start, not from the dichotomy of "sphere" and "space", but by investigating two dimensions of "publicness" which I believe are more fundamental.

As I argue in "Public Space in Recent Japanese Political Thought and Activism: From the Rivers and Lakes to Miyashita Park" (forthcoming in Japanese Studies 31:3, December 2011), two dimensions are constitutive of the public in classical theorists like Habermas and Arendt: verbal contestation and the bracketing of dependencies and inequalities in wealth and status. Typically, deliberations in the public sphere rest on the presence of both of these two dimensions. Deliberation can be seen as a form of communication in which contestation is moderated by the norms of bracketing, which are necessary in order to create a semblance of equality among the participants. Bracketing is thus ambivalent: it is thanks to bracketing that egalitarian arenas can be created, but it also prevents real inequalities in wealth, status and power from being openly thematized and challenged.

To summarise, the public is not only a realm of free and open communication or debate, but also an arena in which important parts of social life are systematically bracketed in order to create a semblance of equality among participants. This means that the public – against the commonsensical view – must be viewed not only as an arena of debate and communication. It is also constituted by a certain silence, a ‘bracketing’ that is needed to prevent it from dissolving back into the ‘real’ world.

Interestingly, challenges to the exclusivity of the mainstream public sphere have come from two directions, one emphasizing more thoroughgoing forms of bracketing (Karatani Kôjin's defence, in Transcritique, of bracketing as crucial to a Kantian public can be seen as one version of this) and another emphasizing more unrestrained forms of contestation (here a good example is Nancy Fraser's subaltern counterpublics and her advocacy of "unbracketing").

An important point here, which I feel it is necessary to stress in order to grasp the function of bracketing more fully, is that there are multiple public with alternative norms of bracketing. Bracketing thus openates also in the subaltern counterpublics. There's a sociological classic, The Hobo (by Nels Anderson), that provides a wonderful insight into the camps (or "jungles") of the homeless people in early 20th century America. Just as the Simmelian salons or Habermasian coffeehouses, these were egalitarian and "democratic" arenas. People exchanged information and told stories over the fire. But they never inquired too deeply into a person's name or previous life. Just as in the salons and coffee houses, they bracketed each other's background.

Let us now try relating the various theories of public space and public sphere to these two dimension.

The "classical" theories of the "public sphere" (or "public realm") are found in the upper right quadrant, i.e. they are theories that stress both bracketing and contention. Grasped from its spatial aspect, we might call it "space for deliberation".

We can also observe that the most influential theories stressing "public space" fall into two distinct groups, which have very little in common.

So we see: the classical theories are not radically divorced from the theories of public space. They share the stress on dimensions such as bracketing or contestation. Hence the first difficulty of separating and counterposing "public sphere" and "public space" in a clearcut fashion.

The second difficulty stems from the fact that theories of public space are not uniform. "Public space" is a catchword for very heterogeneous conceptions. These tend to fall into two camps, which are mutually more opposed to each other than either are to the theories of the "public sphere".

To summarize: the reason that the relation between public sphere and public space is so hard to clarify is that the public sphere arises in the convergence of bracketing and contestation, i.e. that it requires a mixture of both elements. Conceptions of public space arrange themselves in two compartments on either side of this.


3. Some consequences

Theories of public sphere have been criticized for being exclusive, hierarchical, and too restrictive. Some - most explicitly Don Mitchell - seem to propose "public space" as a more radical notion, more open to the excluded. What conclusions can we draw?

Well, public space theory exists in two forms which both "radicalize" certain aspects of the "public sphere". Some point to spaces that provide refuge from "real" social status, others to spaces for contesting and renegotiating the order.

At whichever of these two senses of public space one looks, one finds a political significance geared to those excluded from or disadvantaged in the politics of the public sphere. Are we then entitled to conclude that "public space" is more suited to be the focal point of a radical politics than the "public sphere"? The correct way to put it is surely that public space is not inherently radical in itself, but rather a crucial and irreducible element in all politics. What goes beyond the regular politics of the public sphere is not space in itself, but rather acts that use space to unbracket or visibilize inequalities or to construct arenas based on alternative forms of bracketing.