We are now weeks and weeks into a growing protest called Occupy Wall Street. This protest has spread well beyond the streets of New York. It started as a protest that had to fight for publicity - the media, primarily controlled by the institutions the protestors criticized, gave them little to no attention. Still, it grew, largely on the back of facebook and other social media outlets. People had the means to provide the story themselves, and they did with still images, blogs, and video. When the police started spraying pepper into the air, the major networks could no longer ignore it. It’s now a part of America’s story as unemployment remains dreadfully high and the facts we already knew are being distributed: corporations and millionaires avoid taxes through loopholes and pay a FAR less percentage of their earnings than, say, a family bringing in $50,000 a year. Millions of people have a bigger mortgage to pay than their homes are worth and still more have no medical insurance. The economy is a mess, and people are demonstrating their frustration at Wall Street - that institution, through their effective lobbying, guaranteed their bailout even as their irresponsibility wrecked our economy.
I want to think through some important features of this demonstration.
First of all, this demonstration is a repetition. As we’ll see, that doesn’t make it any less unique and important, and not therefore impotent in effecting change. One substantial protest that comes to mind is the protest of the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Washington in 1999. As they are now, the big banking policies and the social consequences of such policies were passionately criticized on the streets. This protest is a repetition, signifying that when the streets of Seattle were brought back under State control, the critique was not, however, brought under State control. The call for justice and reform remained, emboldened even. I also see the protests and consciousness-raising with regard to Hurricane Katrina and the pathetic government response as an important repetition here. It further revealed the fragility of the State and helped solidify a critique in the minds of political actors (the people, not necessarily their representatives in government).
Philosopher Gilles Deleuze talks a lot about repetition. Drawing from Lacanian psychoanalysis, he argues that profound change comes about through repetition.
This is because, #1, repetitions do not indicate static sameness. Repetitions rather indicate the bringing forth of creative differences. That is, repetition, strictly speaking, is impossible. While we may use the same words to describe two repetitive occurrences (this being the Symbolic architecture), the repetition occurs under different circumstances that make it a more or less effective instantiation. The Seattle protests importantly focused on the World Trade Organization as it enslaved the people of poor nations through the means of debt and maxims of globalized economic policies, through the exploitation of their corrupted governments. It destroyed valuable habitats and it violently spread Capitalistic ideals against the will of the people. Today, the protest occurs as the local US economy is in shambles. The focus importantly rests on Wall Street and its exploitation of citizens of the United States. While a repetition, it engenders difference, and these differences become incredibly important.
This brings me to #2: As a repetition, we should be hopeful that our critique is not lost. People criticize the Occupy Wall Street movement for not having a specific goal. It serves more as a demonstration than a protest. This should not concern us. Often times, when lobbying for profound institutional change, the exact goals are never known, and that’s because, until the aftermath (until the State’s power is revealed as weak and vulnerable and open to a realignment), the old institutions reign. How can the goals of a radical movement be understood according to the old axis points? How can we explain the change we need according to the old lexicon? First, we need to deconstruct the Big Other (the State, the institution). The repetition serves to remind people that the State is not as powerful as it would have us think. When we see police act out, when we see arrests, when we imagine clandestine actions undertaken by the State, and when we see a strong counter-reaction from the self-declared “realists”, we will then recognize that the institution of Wall Street and two-party, lobbied, “democracy” exist only insofar as the people imagine it. The demonstration does not need an expressed goal yet - at this point it needs to reveal the State and Wall Street as a Paper-Tiger. The Wall Street bailout was not necessary (as we were encouraged to believe) insofar as we could have enacted profound institutional change. We could even rethink Capitalism. The real “goal” of the Occupy Wall Street movement will appropriately be defined in a literally New World. In Badiouian language, it will be a post-evental project. The “Event” will be the unprecedented shift in the political axis - an amazing change in the way we think economics and politics. Upon naming the Event and recognizing a profound change, subjects of that Event will go to work and define and work out the real project of the revolution. For now, as more and more dissatisfied citizens gather across the country, it suffices to say that this demonstration serves the sole function of revealing the points of vulnerability in the Big Other.
Does this demonstration constitute an Event? I don’t think so. But as a repetition, it effectively opens the space for an Event. We are in an age of Late-Capitalism. We know this because we are taught to despise revolution. Those people who would die for an ideal are simply insane. Why? - Because in Late-Capitalism, life is all that matters. Life is the highest ideal. And in Late-Capitalism, “life” means biological existence. We are asked to be satisfied with the fact that we are alive. As the discrepancy between the rich and poor widens and as people find their prospects for a good life diminishing, this call to be satisfied with biological existence is all that’s left to sustain The State. The conservative reaction to “We Are the 99%” beautifully embodies the ideal of life. In the “We Are the 53%”, poor people hold up signs which talk about how they work several jobs, 80 hour workweeks, they have no health insurance, they lost their homes, they are veterans and, after risking their lives, are thankful to have their low-paying job, even as it denies them benefits. They don’t blame Wall Street, they don’t want to re-think our political institutions. That is, they are happy to exist. This is the highest ideal. Those who are not satisfied with mere existence are labeled “Whiners” and are told to shut up. This is the truth of Late-Capitalism. When I read signs from “We Are the 53%”, I want to cry. Where is the critique of their situation? Where is their revolutionary zeal?
The fact that such a counter-protest exists indicates the effectiveness of the Occupy Wall Street campaign. The conservative response will of course be considered the “Realist response”, but it is a Utopian dream - an Idealist response that, upon seeing the State in its feebleness, clings to a nonexistent, unattainable stability. The State is ok. Wall Street is ok. The State will persevere. What they fail to recognize is that The State is never stable. As a repetition, the Occupy Wall Street is always brought out under different conditions, but always poking holes in The State’s machinery. We are reminded with this protest that profound change is imminent if we continue the fight.
No comments:
Post a Comment