Article: Manifesto of Affirmationism

The leftist French philosopher Alain Badiou's "Manifesto of Affirmationism" (trans. Barbara P. Fulks) was published in the New York-based biannual journal of critical theory, art, and fiction "Lacanian Ink" (24/25, spring 2005: no page numbers given).

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.lacan.com/frameXXIV5.htm

Excerpts: "We cannot understand what is gripping us and causing us to despair if we do not return again and again to the fact that our world is not at all a democracy, but rather an imperial conservatism under the guise of democratic phraseology. What to say of today's world? A solitary power whose army is terrorizing the entire planet dictates its law of the circulation of capital and images and proclaims everywhere, with the most extreme violence, the Duties and Rights of everyone. [...] Under the imposed name of 'terrorism,' those most violently opposed to this hegemony of the brutal West, for which 'democracy' is spiritual ornament, are in reality part of it [...]: the fury of inspired barbarism against sated imperialism. [...] Romantic formalism has always been an artistic orientation of ensconced and terminal dominations. And it is thus in our time: that of a unique and multiform doctrine (economic liberalism and political electoralism), integrating for the first time the quasi-totality of human species in the distribution and constraint of its fortune.

"Yes, our time is that of the unique doctrine and of the consensus which is created around it under the strange name of 'democracy.' Any unique doctrine of this type is desperate, nihilist, because it only proposes to the human multiplicity the absurd perpetuation of its obscene order. And the artistic subjectivity that it leads to is that of this nihilism and of this obscenity. [...] The only maxim of contemporary art is to not be 'Western.' Which means also that it should not be democratic, if democratic means: conforming to the Western idea of political liberty. [...] Yes, the only problem is to know if the artistic imperative can be detached from the Western imperative, which is that of marketing and communication. Western democracy, in effect, is marketing and communication. Thus true art is that which interrupts marketing, that which communicates nothing. Immobile and incommunicable, this is the art we need, the only one that addresses everyone, not circulating according to any pre-established network and not communicating with anyone in particular. Art should augment in everyone the non-democratic strength of one's liberty. [...]

"A non-Western art is necessarily an abstract art, in the following sense: it abstracts from all particularity and formalizes this gesture of abstraction. In order to combat expressivity, to combat Romantic formalism, there is only the dynamic of abstraction. [...] The abstraction in art which is and which is to come does not consider any particular public [...]: it does what it says, without needing acceptance from anyone. We affirm that all sociological and institutional speculations about the audience for the arts must be abandoned. Sociology, and criticism itself, is only and always the auxiliary of Western democracy. [...] Convinced of controlling the entire extent of the visible and of the audible through commercial laws of marketing and the democratic laws of communication, contemporary power no longer needs censorship. It says: 'Everything is possible.' Which also might mean that nothing is. Abandoning itself to this authorization to jouir [enjoy, delight in] is the ruin of all art, as well as all thought. We should be our own pitiless censors. [...] It is better to do nothing than to work officially in the visibility of what the West declares to exist."

Alain Badiou was formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris.

Book: Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies

Jodi Dean, "Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics" (Duke University Press, July 2009):

www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-4505-3

From the publisher's description: "Through an assessment of the ideologies underlying contemporary political culture, Jodi Dean [...] argues that the left's ability to develop and defend a collective vision of equality and solidarity has been undermined [...]. As Dean explains, communicative capitalism is enabled and exacerbated by the Web and other networked communications media, which reduce political energies to the registration of opinion and the transmission of feelings. The result is a psychotic politics where certainty displaces credibility and the circulation of intense feeling trumps the exchange of reason. Dean's critique ranges from her argument that the term democracy has become a meaningless cipher invoked by the left and right alike to [...] confronting the marriage of neoliberalism and democracy".

Under the title "W(h)ither the State", she yesterday wrote on her blog: "In a discussion of Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies today some students pressed a point of weakness in my discussion: namely, the critique of democracy in all or nothing terms. Rather than considering the multiplicity of forms of local action and community engagement, I reject the democratic 'system,' its liberal-democratic justifications, and its materialization in communicative capitalism. The state is rotten and thus the only solution is revolution."

Reviews: "Her diagnosis of 'communicative capitalism' discloses how our 'really existing democracies' curtail prospects of radical emancipatory politics. Dean demonstrates this status of democracy as a political fantasy not through cheap, pseudo-Marxist denunciations but through a detailed examination of social, symbolic, and libidinal mechanisms and practices. To anyone who continues to dwell on illusions about liberal democracy, one should simply say: 'Hey, didn't you read Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies?'" (Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana/Birkbeck College, London)

"Jodi Dean provides an incredibly lucid explanation of what neoliberalism has been in terms of both policy and collective fantasies regarding the relation of markets to freedom." (Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago)

Dean is also the author of a number of articles apparently opposed to democracy. Among those I haven't been able to access (and that were published in journals that many university libraries may not be subscribed to) is "The Democratic Deadlock" ("Theory & Event", 10 [4], 2007: pp. not given):

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.4dean.html

Excerpt: "A commonplace of media punditry in the middle years of the first decade of the twenty-first century concerns the deep divide in American politics. Whether in terms of political parties, red states and blue states, support or opposition to US militarism in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the ongoing culture war between the religious right and the secular left, the United States is depicted as a nation split in its fundamental ethico-political self-understanding. This depiction is misleading. It occludes the way these seeming opponents continue to appeal to democracy. Thus, the administration of George W. Bush presents itself as actively engaged in bringing democracy to the Middle East, as encouraging countries throughout the world to strengthen their democratic institutions. The Left, although seemingly opposed to the Bush administration, also appeals to democracy as that which it wishes to restore, redeem, or reach. Why does the Left continue to appeal to democracy? Is democracy, as Slavoj Žižek asks, the ultimate horizon of political thought? For Žižek, to accept this horizon is to accept an impoverished political field, a diminishment of aspirations to something better. We accept the limitation of democracy, convinced that this is as good as it gets. Real existing constitutional democracies privilege the wealthy. They exclude, exploit, and oppress the poor. Crucial determinants of our lives and conditions remain outside the frame of political deliberation and response."

I also had no access to her article "Feminism, Communicative Capitalism, and the Inadequacies of Radical Democracy", published as a chapter in the contributed volume "Radical Democracy and the Internet: Interrogating Theory and Practice", eds. Lincoln Dahlberg and Eugenia Siapera (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2007).

Presumably the book covers most of the arguments she made in her earlier articles.

Jodi Dean is Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Seminar: After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy and the Politics of Disappointment in Postsocialist Serbia

Northwestern University, Department of Anthropology, Anthropology Building, Seminar Room 104, 1810 Hinman Avenue, Evanston, Illinois, USA, 22 February 2010, 3.00 pm

Jessica Greenberg: "After the Revolution: Youth, Democracy and the Politics of Disappointment in Postsocialist Serbia"

Abstract: "On October 5, 2000 the citizens of Serbia staged a mass democratic revolution on the streets of Belgrade. Hundreds of thousands of people poured into the capital demanding in signs, songs, whistles and chants that Slobodan Milošević accept electoral defeat and step down as the country's leader. Democratic activists, opposition leaders, and students had overcome ten long years of authoritarian control of government and media to bring democracy to Serbia. In the years leading up to the revolution, student democratic activists became a symbol of hope, courage and energy in Serbia and internationally. October 5th marked both the high point and the end of the love affair with these young revolutionaries.

"Two years later, when I began my research with student activists, their image had been tarnished. Former opposition members, government ministers, and media figures dismissed student groups as at best irritating and at worst corrupt. For many people, inside and outside the country, Serbia's revolutionary tale was one of hope turned to disappointment, promise to failure. In narrating their hopes for a democratic future, people had drawn on the images and discourses of youth protest. 'After the Revolution' traces the history and significance of revolutionary and post-revolutionary political expectations in order to demonstrate how disappointment shapes Serbia's emerging democracy.

"Democratic failure in Serbia was produced when both local and international actors judged post-revolutionary democracy in terms of expectations generated in the crucible of the student-led revolution. Democratic youth revolutionaries promised positive political transformation and a more hopeful future for Serbian citizens. But actual democracy delivered poverty, social unrest and factional struggle. I will demonstrate how youth and student activists have become metonymic for the movement from hope to disappointment in newly democratic Serbia."

Followed by a reception. All are welcome.

Jessica Greenberg is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University.

Article: Terrorism's Cause and Cure: The Rhetorical Regime of Democracy in the US and UK

Fahed Al-Sumait, Colin Lingle, and David Domke, "Terrorism's Cause and Cure: The Rhetorical Regime of Democracy in the US and UK" ("Critical Studies on Terrorism", 2 [1], April 2009: pp. 7-25).

Abstract: "Political actors and commentators in the global 'West' have often used two key rhetorical approaches to explain terrorism. On the one hand, they ascribe attacks to terrorists' violent hatred and resentment of democracy. On the other hand, they assert that democracy is the essential panacea for terrorism. These two approaches are linked through a process of discursive 'articulation' that inhibits public debate and disagreement. Specifically, the ideological power and unassailable goodness of 'democracy' become the simultaneous, self-evident cause of and cure for terrorism. Using five major terrorist events from 1993 to 2005, the article illustrates how political leaders and news outlets advanced a 'rhetorical regime' that suppressed oppositional discourse and rationalised innately anti-democratic policies. One result of this rhetorical regime is the hegemonic maintenance of power through new representations of global terrorism."

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a910842345&fulltext=713240928

Excerpts: "By establishing the unassailable goodness of democracy in associative ways, it became possible to pre-empt broader discussions about terrorists' motives. Any attack became an irrational objection to the cluster of incontrovertible blessings of freedom, peace, and health, instantly invalidating alternative explanations. That is, since we 'know' what the problem is (irrational hatred), we can simply acknowledge it and move on to 'fixing' it. [...]

"This seemingly mortal conflict compelled specific types of responses, such as the need to protect the sanctity of democracy by invoking international alliances and, later in the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, taking military action toward this end. [...] Manichean visions always demand action to defend the good – in this case the state and its values, particularly democracy – and to rid the world of danger and evil. [...]

"Over time, the terrorism versus democracy binary grew increasingly complex, eventually developing into four principal variations, distinguishable according to their emphasis on democracy as a cause of or a cure for terrorism. We identified two central 'cause' variations in the media and two 'cure' variations. The first of the 'cause' variations was the foundational idea we have presented so far: certain targets were attacked because they are democracy. The subsequent 'cure' would be solidarity among the world's democracies, an all-for-one ethic that would align the goals of many nations in the interest of safety.

"The second cause, related to the first, was that the absence of democracy also leads to terrorism. The obvious cure for such an absence is the establishment of democracy in 'trouble spots' in order to defeat terrorism. These variations were intricately cross-linked, inasmuch as causes and cures may reinforce or even generate one another (for example, if the 'cure' of establishing a democracy leads to new insurgent groups, it establishes a further cause for terrorism). [...]

"[I]f the terrorists hate democracy, democracies must band together. In much of the early discourse, this simple anti-democratic feeling was used as a relatively blunt instrument. But it also became the basis for further variations of the terrorism versus democracy articulation. [...]

"We lay out these cause/cure linkages to demonstrate how powerful this rhetorical regime can be. To state it plainly: in the context of a violent attack, by invoking either the presence or the absence of democracy, the rhetorical regime allows political actors to capitalise on a moment of democratic solidarity, even in pursuit of policies that strain traditional democratic values, both on a pragmatic level (e.g., deliberation, rational-critical debate, and fostering an informed public) and on an ideological level (e.g., the right to self-determination, privacy protections, and human rights). [...]

"One needs only to look at how such discourses have impacted the perceived legitimacy of democracy in the Middle East, even among
self-declared democrats in the region. Since 11 September and subsequent wars, the connotations and representations of 'democracy' have become complicit with perceived US imperialism and an inherent incompatibility with many of the forces in the region. Thus, 'democrats' in the Middle East now face an exceedingly difficult task of promoting participatory governance and deliberative institutions without associating too closely with the term 'democracy'."

The authors of this article unfortunately failed to take into account statements made by terrorists themselves that causally link democracy to "jihad" (something I studied for a paper in 2004).

Fahed Al-Sumait is a doctoral student, Colin Lingle is a doctoral student, and David S. Domke is Professor and Chair, all in the Department of Communication, University of Washington, Seattle.