Global Uprising Radical Politics Since 1

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Global Uprising:

Radical Politics since 1968

Level 3 module

M13074

Autumn Semester 2007-8

Prof. Simon Tormey

Room C104/6 Law and Social Sciences

simon.tormey@nottingham.ac.uk

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Summary of Content:

This module surveys some of the key developments in radical political thought and practice since 1968 through the study of exemplary texts and contemporary analyses of new political forms. The main aim is to understand how theorists have responded to the crisis of

‘modernist’ ideological approaches such as anarchism, socialism and particularly Marxism. The latter has in theoretical terms been the dominant paradigm in radical theory since the end of the nineteenth century and forms the theoretical and conceptual frame of the module. If Marxism - and other ‘isms’ - are dead or irrelevant what replaces them in radical politics? How is dissatisfaction, alienation, anomie to be expressed in political terms? What happens after the (Communist) Party is over’?

With one semester to examine these issues a highly selective approach has to be taken which involves taking snapshots of a complex and demanding body of work concerning the theory and practice of contemporary radicalism. Nevertheless I have attempted to select items that seem exemplary and give an indication of the directions radical thought and practice have gone. Also, it should be borne that the relationship with Marxism is itself complex – indeed a number of these theorists would describe themselves as ‘Marxist’ even as they tear up what others regard to be the fundaments of Marxism.

The module follows the following sequence:

1. All Power to the Comrades! Marx, Lenin and the modernist paradigm in radical thought and practice - The legacy of Marx’s thought on radical politics, and in particular the nature of Leninism and the Bolshevik Revolution.

Consideration of the work of a contemporary Leninist – Slavoj Zizek.

2. “Take your Dreams for Reality!” 1968, The Situationist International and the revolution in everyday life focusing on the work of Raoul Vaneigem and Guy Debord. The Situationists were a key inspiration for ‘culture jamming’ and the view the first task of revolutionary praxis is to puncture the otherwise all consuming culture of capitalism and the commodity form.

3. From Vertical to Horizontal: Deleuze and Guattari and the rise of the network form. One of the more challenging works of radical theory A Thousand Plateaus

presents a depth critique of modernist thought and offers a model of thinking through organisational interaction, the rhizome that has become enormously influential in contemporary activist circles.

4. Post-Marxism, post-class, post-party politics: Laclau and Mouffe and radical populism. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is a key work building on the Gramscian legacy in radical thought. Their work makes much of the proliferation of New Social movements, identity politics and the necessity for alliances between otherwise disparate groups and movements. Their paradigm valorises ‘populism’ as a

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5. ‘Change the world without taking power’. Really?: Holloway, Marcos, Zapatismo - we look at a very recent work, John Holloway’s Change the World Without taking Power. His work reflects important shifts in terms of the role of vanguards and radical groups and was inspired by the examples of the Zapatistas and the writings of their spokesperson Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.

Aims:

Deepen understanding of contemporary politics; compare new and traditional forms of radical thought and action; understand contemporary political processes from the point of view of subaltern groups and movements.

Learning Outcomes:

a) Knowledge and understanding • knowledge of various radical tendencies, positions, theoretical positions • knowledge of the development of oppositional politics since 1968 • understanding the reasons why representative politics is in crisis and the modalities and forms of post-representation in theory and practice.

b) Intellectual skills • ability to move between a variety of approaches and methods for the study of contemporary politics • ability to evaluate competing accounts of the emergence of complex political phenomena • ability to use a variety of data and evidence and primary and secondary material to sustain hypotheses • ability to engage in detailed textual analysis

c) Professional and practical skills • evidence gathering and evaluation • advanced writing skills under exam conditions • independent learning • ability to contribute to discussions and debates in groups • effective time and resource management • ability to organise large scale insurrection on the basis of horizontal political exchanges.

Module Organisation

If you have any questions relating to the reading list please e-mail

simon.tormey@nottingham.ac.uk. It is not viable for me to hold office hours as they would have to be cancelled most weeks due to meetings etc. However I am always very pleased to meet with students to discuss anything related to the module. Please email

maria.wade@nottingham.ac.uk for an appointment offering some times that are

convenient for you. I live in C106 of the West Wing of Law & Social Sciences (accessed via C104).

Teaching

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If interest permits we will also convene a voluntary reading group which will meet weekly between 12-1pm. The reading group will focus on the core or examinable readings. Some weeks I will attend and on other occasions the group will be facilitated by Dr Andy

Robinson, a Post-Doctoral researcher in the school who specialises in the issues looked at here.

Lecture programme

1. Marx I - The rationalist-modernist paradigm in political thought – with particular reference to Marx

2. Marxism II - Leninism and the rise of the Party – to be followed by The People’s Century: 1917 and the Bolshevik Revolution

3. Situationism I: Vaneigem and Debord on the Spectacle and the revolution in everyday life

4. Situationism II: the Inheritance – Punk, Detournement, Culture Jamming, Banksy and aesthetic revolt –to be followed by some strange short films (lab of the insurrectionary imagination, the Clown Army etc.)

5. Post-Anarchism I – Trees and Rhizomes – introduction to Deleuze and Guattari.

6. Post-Anarchism II – the rise of the network form, hacktivism, horizontalism and ‘smooth space’ with more strange films

7. Laclau and Mouffe I – post-Lacanian thought and the problem of ‘lack’

8. Laclau and Mouffe II – populism as hegemonic politics, the case of Chavez – to be followed by Venezuela Rising

9. Zapatismo I – introduction to Holloway

10. Zapatismo II – Holloway, Marcos, Zapatismo - to be followed by Zapatista!

Written Work Assignments

This module is offered at 20 credits. It is assessed via a 3 hour unseen written examination worth 100% of the final mark for the module.

Whilst there is no requirement to submit summatively assessed essays, formative assessment is important to evaluating one’s progress. You are thus very welcome to submit essays in the course of the module to gauge how well you are doing and receive some feedback in

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should be submitted in lecture or via email on or before these dates. To be clear such essays will not count towards the final mark of the module – though of course they will help in other ways (e.g. when it comes to me writing a reference for you).

Coursework Support

Please contact me if you have any difficulties with the module or the assessed work. I will be available to see students without appointment during my office hours. Appointments to meet at other times can be made via email.

Module Evaluation

Feedback and evaluation are crucial to the success of any module. We want students to have their say on politics modules. Evaluation is by way of a module questionnaire to be

completed by students at the end of each semester. The questionnaires are analysed and a full report prepared. Each report is reviewed by the Teaching Committee on an annual basis.

Guide to Sources and Reading:

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Reading

General Introductory Reading:

The following texts are the best guides to the general issues discussed in the module.

Tormey, Simon (2004) Anti-Capitalism: A Beginner's Guide (Oxford: Oneworld) This is usually £9.99, but can be found via Amazon for much less – as low as £3.

Tormey, Simon (2006) Key Thinkers from Critical Theory to Post-Marxism (London: Sage) Has chapters on some of the thinkers we are concerned with: Laclau and Mouffe; Deleuze and Guattari etc. but it is quite expensive (no, I don’t make huge sums out of these books).

Day, Richard (2005) Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements (London: Pluto) – more demanding than my anti-capitalism book, but covers similar ground and would be an excellent alternative – good bibliography too.

Starr, Amory (2005) Global Revolt: A guide to the Movements Against Globalisation (London: Zed Books).

Notes From Nowhere (2004) We are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism

(London: Verso) – short on ‘theory’; but excellent in all other respects.

Topic 1: Marx, Lenin and the modernist paradigm in radical thought and practice

Orienting Questions

• In what sense is Marx typical of ‘modernist’ theorizing? In what ways is he ayptical?

• What are the principal elements of a Marxian theory of revolutionary change? Are they ‘vertical’, totalitarian, irrelevant?

• Was Lenin faithful to Marx’s work? If not, so what?

• Is the ‘return’ to Lenin (as manifest in the work of Zizek) to be celebrated?

Essential reading

Note – all the Marx and Lenin texts (and many of the anarchist texts) are available on line from Marxists.org or the anarchist archive.

Marx, K. and Engels F. (1848) The Communist Manifesto

Lenin, V I (1903) What it is to be Done?

Zizek, Slavoj (2001) ‘Repeating Lenin’ from www.lacan.com - examinable

Secondary Reading

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Marx, Karl (1852) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Marx, Karl (1843) The German Ideology

Marx, Karl (1859) Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy

Marx, Karl (1864) Class Struggles in France

Marx, K. (1871) The Critique of the Gotha Programme

Bakunin, Mikhail (1867-72). Marxism, Freedom and the State.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/mf-state/ Stirner, Max (1843) The Ego and its Own London: Rebel Press

Thomas, Paul (1975) Marx and the Anarchists, London: Routledge Lenin, V I (1917) The State and Revolution

Further Reading

Aronson, Ronald (1995) After Marxism, New York: Guilford Press. S Avineri (1975) The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx

Callinicos, Alex (1989) Marxist Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cleaver, Harry (1989) Reading Marx’s Capital Politically, London: AK Press L Coletti (1967) ‘Marx, Engels and the Concept of the Party’, Socialist Register

Derrida, Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International P. Kamuf, London: Routledge.

Draper, Hal (1984) Marx’s Theory of Revolution, 3 vols.

Farber, Samuel (1984) Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy

Femia, Joseph V. (1993) Marxism and Democracy, Oxford: Clarendon Press,.

Gottlieb, Roger S. (1992) Marxism, 1844-1990 : Origins, Betrayal, Rebirth, New York: Routledge.

Harding, Neil (1977) Lenin's Political Thought, London: Macmillan,. Harding, Neil (1996) Leninism, Basingstoke: Macmillan,.

Hunt, Richard N. (1975) The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels, London: Macmillan,. Johnstone, Monty (1967) ‘Marx, Engels and the Concept of the Party’, Socialist Register

Kolakowski, Leszek (1978) Main Currents of Marxism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lenin, Vladimir Iliych (1995) Lenin's Final Fight, New York: Pathfinder.

Lewin, Moshe (1969) Lenin's Last Struggle, London: Faber. Liebman, Marcel (1975) Leninism under Lenin, London: Merlin.

Lichtheim, George (1964) Marxism : An Historical and Critical Study, London: Routledge and K. Paul,.

Loewenstein, Julius I. (1980) Marx against Marxism, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,. Mclellan, David (1975) Marx, Glasgow: Fontana.

(1979) The Thought of Karl Marx

Mclellan, David (1979) Marxism after Marx : An Introduction, London: Macmillan,. Lukács, György (1970) Lenin : A Study on the Unity of His Thought, London: NLB,. Milliband, Ralph (1980) Marx and Politics, London.

Polan, A. J. (1984) Lenin and the End of Politics, London: Methuen. Sartre J-P (1967) ‘Masses, Spontaneity, Party’, Socialist Register

Service, Robert (1991) Lenin : A Political Life, London: Macmillan,. Singer, Peter (1980) Marx, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Robinson, Andrew and Simon Tormey (2006) 'Zizek's Marx: 'Sublime Object or 'Plague of Fantasies'?' Historical Materialism 14:3, 145-74. – on my web site

Robinson, Andrew and Simon Tormey (forthcoming) – ‘Did somebody say Leninism? – on my website.

Thoburn, N. (2002) 'Difference in Marx: The Lumpenproletariat and the Proletarian Unnamable' Economy and Society 31:3, 434-60.

Tucker, Robert C. (1970) The Marxian Revolutionary Idea, London: Allen & Unwin,. Ulam, Adam B. (1969) Lenin and the Bolsheviks, London: Fontana.

Wood, Allen (1980) Karl Marx

Zizek, S. (2001) 'What Can Lenin Tell Us About Freedom Today?' Rethinking Marxism 13:2, 1-9.

Zizek, Slavoj (2001). Repeating Lenin. http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm Zizek, S. (2002) 'A Plea for Leninist Intolerance' Critical Inquiry 28:2, 542-66.

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Topic 2. 1968, The Situationist International, culture jamming and the revolution in everyday life

Orienting questions:

• Who were the Situationists and what was their contribution to understanding contemporary consumer society?

• What is ‘detournement’, ‘culture jamming’, ‘guerrilla advertising’, ‘subvertising’?

• Is Situationism a contradiction in terms?

• Is there life beyond The Matrix?

Essential Reading

Debord, Guy (1967) The Society of the Spectacle (1967)

Vaneigem, Raoul (1968) The Revolution in Everyday Life (1968) – chapters 15, 18-20 are examinable

Debord, Guy, Gianfranco Sanguinetti, et al. (1990) Theses on the Situationist International and Its Time, London: B.M. Chronos.

Debord, Guy (2004) Panegyric. Volumes 1 & 2, London ; New York: Verso.

Home, Stewart (1996) What Is Situationism? : A Reader, Edinburgh, Scotland ; San Francisco, CA: AK Press.

Knabb, Ken (1981) Situationist International Anthology, Berkeley, Calif.: Bureau of Public Secrets.

Further Reading

Andreotti, L. (2000) 'Play-Tactics of the Internationale Situationniste (Ludic Philosophy and the Situationist Movement in Arts, Politics and Urbanism)' October 91, 37-58.

Ball, E. (1987) 'The Great Sideshow of the Situationist International' Yale French Studies 73, 21-37.

Blazwick, Iwona (1989) An Endless Adventure-- an Endless Passion-- an Endless Banquet : A Situationist Scrapbook : The Situationist International Selected Documents from 1957 to 1962 : Documents Tracing the Impact on British Culture from the 1960s to the 1980s London ; New York: ICA Verso.

Bonnett, A. (2006) 'The Nostalgias of Situationist Subversion' Theory Culture & Society 23:5, 23-+.

Clark, T. J. and D. Nicholson-smith (1997) 'Why Art Can't Kill the 'Situationist International'' October 79, 15-31.

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Gardiner, Michael (2000) Critiques of Everyday Life, London: Routledge.

Gray, Christopher (1998) Leaving the 20th_{Century: The Incomplete Work of the Situationist}

International London: Rebel Press.

Heath Joseph and Andrew Potter (2004) The Rebel Sell: How the Counter Culture Became Consumer Culture London: Capstone

Houissa, A. (2003) 'Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents'

Library Journal 128:1, 111-11.

Kaufmann, V. (2006) 'The Lessons of Guy Debord' October 115, 31-38. Klein, Naomi (2000) No Logo London: Fontana

Mcdonough, T. (2006) 'Guy Debord, or the Revolutionary without a Halo' October 115, 39-45.

Plant, Sadie (1992) The Most Radical Gesture : The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age, London ; New York, NY: Routledge.

O'Sullivan, S. (2005) 'From Possible Worlds to Future Folds (Following Deleuze): Richter's Abstracts, Situationist Cities, and the Baroque in Art' Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 36:3, 311-29.

Rasmussen, M. B. (2004) 'The Situationist International, Surrealism, and the Difficult Fusion of Art and Politics' Oxford Art Journal 27:3, 367-+.

Stracey, F. (2003) 'Surviving History: A Situationist Archive' Art History 26:1, 56-77 Sussman, Elisabeth, Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston Mass.), et al. (1989) On the

Passage of a Few People through a Rather Brief Moment in Time : The Situationist International, 1957-1972, Cambridge, Mass. Boston

Watson, B. (2003) 'A Declaration of the Rights of Human Beings: On the Sovereignty of Life as Surpassing the Rights of Man' Radical Philosophy 122, 40-42.

Wollen, P. (1989) 'The Situationist International' New Left Review 174, 67-96.

Web sites

Note: there is a good entry with links on the wikipedia entry ‘situationist’. www.notbored.org

www.adbusters.org

www.labofii.net/home/ (lab of the insurrectionary imagination) www.clownarmy.org/

www.bopsecrets.org/ (bureau of public secrets) www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/welcome.html www.billboardliberation.com/

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Topic 3. Post-Anarchism - Deleuze and Guattari and the rise of the network form

• How does the approach favoured by Deleuze and Guattari break with modernist approaches?

• What is ‘post-anarchism’ and how does it differ from ‘anarchism’?

• What is ‘network’/’horizontal’ politics and how does it differ from traditional politics?

• Does effective political action require representation?

Deleuze and Guattari, Plateaux 1 ‘The Rhizome’ from A Thousand Plateaus (1980) – ( Plateau 1 is examinable)

Guattari, Felix and Antonio Negri (1990) Communists Like Us: New Spaces of Liberty, New Lines of Alliance M. Ryan, New York: Semiotext(e).

Deleuze, Gilles. (1983) Nietzsche and Philosophy, London: Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles. (1983) On the Line, New York City, N.Y.: Semiotext(e).

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1984) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: Athlone Press.

Deleuze, Gilles. (1987) Dialogues, New York: Columbia University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. (1994) Difference and Repetition, London: Athlone Press.

Deleuze, G. (1980) ‘Many Politics’ in Dialogues II edited by Claire Parnet, London, Athlone.

Further Reading

Bey, Hakim (1996). Immediatism.

http://www.as220.org/as220/weblog/articles/immediatism.html?seemore=y 12 April 2005

Bey, Hakim (2002) The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, New York: Semiotext(e).

Call, Lewis (2002) Postmodern Anarchism, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Duttmann, A. G. (2002) '... And... And...: Deleuze Politics' Angelaki 7:3, 171-76.

Goodchild, P. (1996) Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire, London: Sage. Lecercle, J. J. (1995) 'Michael Hardt, Gilles Deleuze' Radical Philosophy, 48.

Marks, John (1998) Gilles Deleuze: Vitalism and Multiplicity, London: Pluto.

May, Todd (1995) The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism, University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press.

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Newman, Saul (2001) From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, Oxford: Lexington Books

Newman, Saul (2005) Power and Politics in Poststructuralist Thought: New Theories of the Political

London: Routledge

Patton, Paul (2000) Deleuze and the Political, London: Routledge. Pearson, K. A. (2004) 'Demanding Deleuze' Radical Philosophy, 33-38. Protevi, John (2004) Political Physics London: Continuum.

Robinson, Andrew and Simon Tormey (2005). 'Horizontals, Verticals and the Conflicting Logics of Transformative Politics' in Confronting Globalization. C. el-Ojeili and P. Hayden. London, Palgrave.

Schrift, A. D. (2000) 'Nietzsche, Foucault, Deleuze, and the Subject of Radical Democracy'

Angelaki 5:2, 151-62.

Smith, D. W. (2003) 'Deleuze and the Liberal Tradition: Normativity, Freedom and Judgement' Economy and Society 32:2, 299-324.

Thoburn, Nicholas (2003) Deleuze, Marx and Politics, London: Routledge.

Zizek, Slavoj (2004) Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences, London: Routledge. Tormey, Simon (2006) 'Not in My "Name": Deleuze, Zapatismo and the Critique of

Representation' Parliamentary Affairs 59:1, 138-54. [ A reply from a Laclau and Mouffe-ist, Lasse Thomassen, was published in the same journal in 60:1 2007 - with a rejoinder by myself and Andy R]

Tormey and Townshend (2006), Key Thinkers, Chapter on Deleuze and Guattari.

Tormey, Simon (2005) ‘A Creative Power? The Uses of Deleuze’ Contemporary Political Theory

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And the internet/cyberpolitics

Anderson, B: (1991) Imagined Communities, 2nd edn, Verso: London.

B, Nixon, P, Rucht, D: Cyberprotest: New Media, Citizens and Social Movements, Routledge: London and New York.

Bell, D and Kennedy, B (eds.): (2000) The Cybercultures Reader, Routlege: London and New York.

Castells, M: (2000) The Rise of the Network Society, vol.1 of The Information age: Economy, Society and Culture, 2nd_{edn, Blackwell: Oxford.}

Everard, J: (2000) Virtual States, Routledge: London and New York. Guisnel, J: (1997) Cyberwars, Plenum Trade: New York and London.

Jordan, T: (1999) Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet, Routledge: London and New York.

Kahn, R and Kellner, D: ‘New media and internet activism: from the “Battle of Seattle” to blogging’, New Media and Society, 6 (1), Sage: London and Thousand Oaks.

Kidd, D: ‘Indymedia.org.’ in McCaughey, M and Ayers, M (eds.) (2003) Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice, Routledge: New York and London

McCaughey, M and Ayers, M: (2003) Cyberactvism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice, Routledge: New York and London.

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Topic 4. Laclau and Mouffe – ‘Post-Marxism’ and the project of hegemony

• What is the ‘post’ in ‘post-Marxism’?

• What is a ‘hegemonic’ politics and how does it differ from non-hegemonic forms?

• What is the relationship between hegemony and populism?

• Is Chavez the quintessential hegemonic figure in contemporary politics?

Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, London: Verso. (chapter 4 is examinable).

Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe (1987) 'Post-Marxism without Apologies' New Left Review 166, 79-106.

Laclau, E. (1989). 'The Signifiers of Democracy'. Democracy and possessive individualism: the Intellectual legacy of C B Macpherson, Toronto; Canada, Albany.

Laclau, E. (1993). 'Universalism, Particularism, and the Question of Identity'. Ethnicity, identity and nationalism in South Africa: past, present, future, Grahamstown; South Africa, Chicago. Laclau, E. (1995) '"the Time Is out of Joint"' Diacritics 25:2, 86.

Laclau, Ernesto (1996) Emancipation(S), London: Verso.

Laclau, E. (1997) 'Converging on an Open Quest' Diacritics 27:1, 17-19.

Laclau, E. (2001) 'Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles?' Diacritics 31:4, 3-10.

Laclau, E. (2001) 'Carver, Terrell. The Postmodern Marx' American Political Science Review 95:4, 976.

Laclau, E. (2001) 'Democracy and the Question of Power' Constellations 8, 3-14. Laclau, E. (2005) On Populist Reason London: Verso

Further Reading

Berns, E. E. (1996) 'Decision, Hegemony and Law: Derrida and Laclau' Philosophy and Social Criticism 22:4, 71-80.

Bertram, B. (1995) 'New Reflections on the "Revolutionary" Politics of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe' Boundary 2 22:3, 81-110.

Best, B. (1999) 'Strangers in the Night: The Unlikely Conjunction of Fredric Jameson and Ernesto Laclau' Rethinking Marxism 11:3, 1-19.

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Butler, J., E. Laclau, et al. (1997) 'The Uses of Equality' Diacritics 27:1, 3-12.

Butler, Judith, Ernesto Laclau, et al. (2000) Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, London: Verso.

Critchley, S. (1998) 'Metaphysics in the Dark - a Response to Richard Rorty and Ernesto Laclau' Political Theory 26:6, 803-17.

Critchley, Simon and Oliver Merchart (2004) Laclau: A Critical Reader

Daly, G. (1994) 'Post-Metaphysical Culture and Politics: Richard Rorty and Laclau and Mouffe' Economy and Society 23:2, 173.

El-Ojeili, C. (2001) 'Mouffe, C. The Democratic Paradox; Butler, J, Laclau, E, Zizek, S. Contingency, Universality, Hegemony: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left' New Zealand Sociology 16:2, 146-49.

Gilbert, J. (2001) 'A Question of Sport? Butler Contra Laclau Contra Zizek' New Formations

44, 151-56.

Hadfield, A. (1995) 'Narratives of Home and Displacement Ernesto Laclau, Ed., the Making of Political Identities' Radical Philosophy, 44.

Haver, W. (2002) 'Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek: Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Contemporary Dialogues on the Left' Parallax 8:3, 103.

Hetzel, A. (2002) 'Butler, Judith, Ernesto Laclau Und Slavoj Zizek: Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Contemporary Dialogues on the Left' Argument 44:5/6, 857-59.

Holub, Renate (1992) Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and Postmodernism, London Routledge Nash, Kate (2002) 'Thinking Political Sociology: Beyond the Limits of Post-Marxism' History

of the Human Sciences 15:4, 97-114.

Shantz, J. (2000) 'A Post-Sorelian Theory of Social Movement Unity: Social Myth

Reconfigured in the Work of Laclau and Mouffe' Dialectical Anthropology 25:1, 89-108. Sim, Stuart. (2000) Post-Marxism: An Intellectual History, London: Routledge.

Smith, Anne-Marie (2000) Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary London; Routledge

Thomassen, Lasse and Lars Tonder (eds) (2006) Radical Democracy: Politics Between Abundance and Lack Manchester: MUP

Torfing, Jacob (1999) New Theories of Discourse Oxford: Blackwell

Tormey, Simon and Jules Townshend (2006) Key Thinkers chapter on Laclau and Mouffe Townshend, J. (2004) 'Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemonic Project: The Story So Far' Political

Studies 52:2, 269-88.

Veltmeyer, H. (2000) 'Post-Marxist Project: An Assessment and Critique of Ernesto Laclau'

Sociological Inquiry 70:4, 499-519.

Wenman, M. A. (2003) 'Laclau or Mouffe? Splitting the Difference' Philosophy and Social Criticism 29:5, 581-606.

Wood, Ellen Meiksins (1986) The Retreat from Class London: Verso

Zerilli, L. (2002) 'Butler, Laclau, and Zizek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left' Political Theory 30:1, 167-70.

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Topic 5. Holloway, Marcos, Zapatismo

• How according to Holloway can we ‘change the world without taking power?’

• What is the matter with power? What is the matter with the state?

• How if at all does Zapatismo illustrate Holloway’s thoughts on radical change?

• What is the relevance of the Zapatista insurgency for political actors in advanced industrial society?

Holloway, John (2002) Change the World Without Taking Power London: Pluto (pp. 1-42 are examinable)

Marcos, Subcomandante Insurgente (2000) Our Word is our Weapon London: Serpents Tail

Alam, M. Junaid (2005). Taking Power Seriously: A Response to John Holloway. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7610

Bensaid, Daniel (2006) On a Recent Book by John Holloway. International Viewpoint. Bensaid, Daniel (2006) Twelve Comments, Plus One More, to Continue the Debate with

John Holloway. International Viewpoint. On line

Holloway, John and Elena Pelaez, eds. (1998). Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico. London, Pluto.

Holloway, John (2003) 'Is the Zapatista Struggle an Anti-Capitalist Struggle?' The Commoner 6. on line

Holloway, John (2006). Drive Your Cart and Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead. http://www.herramienta.com.ar

Various (2006-). Debate on John Holloway. http://www.herramienta.com.ar/

Further Reading

Beverley, John, Michael Aronna, et al. (1995) The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America, Durham: Duke University Press.

Burbach, Roger (2001) Globalization and Postmodern Politics : From Zapatistas to High-Tech Robber Barons, London Pluto Press

Clarke, Ben and Clif Ross (1994) Voice of Fire : Communiqués and Interviews from the Zapatista National Liberation Army, Berkeley, CA: New Earth Publications.

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Ejército Zapatista De Liberación Nacional (Mexico) (1994) Zapatistas! : Documents of the New Mexican Revolution (December 31,1993-June 12, 1994), Brooklyn, N.Y., USA:

Autonomedia.

Eschle, Catherine and Bice Maiguashca (2005) Critical Theories, International Relations, and "the Anti-Globalisation Movement" : The Politics of Global Resistance, London: Routledge,. Foley, Michael W. and United States Institute of Peace. (1999). Southern Mexico

Counterinsurgency and Electoral Politics. http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS36205 Higgins, Nicholas P. (2004) Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion : Modernist Visions and the

Invisible Indian, Austin, Tx.: University of Texas Press.

Katzenberger, Elaine (1995) First World, Ha Ha Ha! : The Zapatista Challenge, San Francisco: City Lights Books.

Marcos, Simon J. Ortiz, et al. (2001) Questions & Swords : Folktales of the Zapatista Revolution, El Paso, Tex.: Cinco Puntos Press.

Marcos and Dinah Livingstone (2001) Zapatista Stories, London: KATABASIS. Olesen, Thomas (2004) International Zapatismo: The Construction of Solidarity in the Age of

Globalization, London: Zed Books.

Olesen, Thomas (2004) 'The Transnational Zapatista Solidarity Network: An Infrastructure Analysis' Global Networks 4:1, 89-107.

Pollack, Aaron (1999) Epistemological Struggle and International Organizing : Aplying the Experience of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation / C Aaron Pollack, The Hague: Institute of Social Studies.

Ronfeldt, David F. and Arroyo Center. (1998) The Zapatista "Social Netwar" in Mexico, Santa Monica, CA: Rand.

Ross, John (2000) The War against Oblivion : Zapatista Chronicles, 1994-2000, Monroe, Me.: Common Courage Press.

Rus, Jan, Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, et al. (2003) Mayan Lives, Mayan Utopias : The Indigenous Peoples of Chiapas and the Zapatista Rebellion, Lanham, Md. ; Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.

Russell, Philip L. (1995) The Chiapas Rebellion, Austin, Tex.: Mexico Resource Center. Robinson, Andrew and Simon Tormey (2005). 'Horizontals, Verticals and the Conflicting

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Additional general reading on aspects of contemporary radical politics

‘Critical theory’ (aka The Frankfurt School) – not covered directly but a key neo-Marxian current which could easily have been a topic had time allowed

Bokina, John and Timothy J. Lukes (1994) Marcuse: From the New Left to the Next Left, Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas.

Habermas, Jurgen (1981) 'Modernity Versus Postmodernity' New German Critique 22, 3-14. Habermas, J. (1984) [1981] The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and Rationalization of

Society. Volume One. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Habermas, J. (1986) ‘Life Forms, Morality and the Task of the Philosopher’ in P. Dews (ed.)

Habermas: Autonomy and Solidarity. London: Verso.

Habermas, J. (1987) [1985] The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas, J. (1989) [1962] The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity

Press.

Held, David (1980) Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Marcuse, Herbert (1964) One Dimensional Man, London: Sphere Books. Marcuse, Herbert (1969) Essay on Liberation,London: Allen Lane Press.

Passerin d'Entrèves, Maurizio and Seyla Benhabib (1997) Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity: Critical Essays on the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Peters, Michael, Mark Olssen, et al. (2003) Futures of Critical Theory: Dreams of Difference, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

World Social Forum

-Amoore, Louise (2005) The Global Resistance Reader, London: Routledge.

Bircham, Emma and John Charlton (2001) Anticapitalism: A Guide to the Movement, London: Bookmarks.

Callinicos, Alex (2003) An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers; Cambridge Polity Press; distributed in the USA by Blackwell publishing Inc.

Fisher, William F. and Thomas Ponniah (2003) Another World Is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum, London; New York: Zed Books.

Leite, José Corrêa and Carolina Gil (2005) World Social Forum: Strategies of Resistance, Chicago, Ill.: Haymarket Books.

McLeish, Phil (2004) 'The Promise of the European Social Forum' The Commoner 8. Mertes, Tom and Walden F. Bello (2004) A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really

Possible?, London ; New York: Verso.

Notes From Nowhere. (2003) We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism, London; New York: Verso.

Sen, Jai, ed. (2004). World Social Forum: Challenging Empires. New Delhi, Viveka. Starr, Amory (2000) Naming the Corporate Enemy: Anti-Corporate Movements Confront

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Tormey, Simon (2004b) 'The 2003 European Social Forum: Where Next for the Anti-Capitalist Movement?' Capital & Class 84, 151-60.

Additional Reading that doesn’t quite fit in any category, yet which is nonetheless potentially useful:

Adams, Ian and R. W. Dyson (2003) Fifty Major Political Thinkers, London; New York: Routledge.

Bandy, Joe and Jackie Smith (2005) Coalitions across Borders: Transnational Protest and the Neoliberal Order, Lanham, Md. ; Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.

Bello, Walden F. and Anuradha Mittal (2001) The Future in the Balance: Essays on Globalization and Resistance, Oakland, Calif.: Food First Books: Co-published with Focus on the Global South: Distributed by LPC Group.

Bhabha, Homi (1994) The Location of Culture, London: Routledge.

Callinicos, Alex (1989) Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique, Cambridge: Polity Press. Chandler, David (2004) Constructing Global Civil Society: Morality and Power in International

Relations, Houndmills [England] ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Cohen, Stanley and Laurie Taylor (1992) Escape Attempts: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Everyday Life, London: Routledge.

Danaher, Kevin and Jason Dove Mark (2003) Insurrection: Citizen Challenges to Corporate Power, New York; London: Routledge.

Day, RJF (2004) 'From Hegemony to Affinity: The Political Logic of the Newest Social Movements' Cultural Studies 18:5, 716-48.

Derrida, Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International P. Kamuf, London: Routledge.

Dews, Peter (1987) Logics of Disintegration: Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory, London: Verso.

Diani, Mario and Doug McAdam (2003) Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Diani, Mario and Ron Eyerman (1992) Studying Collective Action, London: Sage.

Doyle, Timothy (2005) Environmental Movements in Minority and Majority Worlds: A Global Perspective, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Drainville, Andre C. (2004) Contesting Globalization: Space and Place in the World Economy,

London: Routledge.

Dryzek, John S. (1997) The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Freire, Paolo (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, London: Penguin.

Gardiner, Michael (2000) Critiques of Everyday Life, London: Routledge.

Garner, Robert (2000) Environmental Politics: Britain, Europe, and the Global Environment, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.

Gatens, Moira (1998) Feminist Ethics, Aldershot, Hants, England; Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate. Germain, Randall D. and Michael Kenny (2005) The Idea of Global Civil Society, London; New

York: Routledge.

Guha, Ramachandra (2000) Environmentalism: A Global History, New York; Harlow: Longman. Haber, Honi Fern (1994) Beyond Postmodern Politics: Lyotard, Rorty, Foucault, London:

Routledge.

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Held, David and Anthony McGrew (2002) Globalization/Anti-Globalization, Cambridge: Polity.

Howard, D. and D. Pacom (1998) 'Autonomy - the Legacy of the Enlightenment: A Dialogue with Castoriadis' Thesis Eleven 52, 83-102.

Klein, Naomi (2002) Fences and Windows, London: Flamingo.

Lechner, Frank and John Boli (2004) The Globalization Reader, Malden, Mass; Oxford: Blackwell.

McGee, D. T. (1997) 'Post-Marxism: The Opiate of the Intellectuals' Modern Language Quarterly 58:2, 201-26.

Merchant, Carolyn (1992) Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World, New York: Routledge. Pepper, David (1996) Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction, London; New York:

Routledge.

Rubin, Charles T. (1998) The Green Crusade: Rethinking the Roots of Environmentalism, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield,.

Sachs, Wolfgang (1993) Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conflict, London: Zed Books. Schalit, Joel (2002) The Anti-Capitalism Reader: Imagining a Geography of Opposition, New York:

Akashic Books.

Scott, James (1987) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven CN: Yale UP.

Scott, James C. (1992) Domination and the Arts of Resistance, New Haven CT: Yale University Press.

Seel, Benjamin, Matthew Paterson, et al. (2000) Direct Action in British Environmentalism, London: Routledge.

Sim, Stuart, ed. (1998). Post-Marxism: A Reader. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. Sutton, Philip W. (2000) Explaining Environmentalism: In Search of a New Social Movement,

Aldershot: Ashgate.

Taylor, Rupert (2004) Creating a Better World: Interpreting Global Civil Society, Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.

Veltmeyer, H. (2000) 'Post-Marxist Project: An Assessment and Critique of Ernesto Laclau'

Sociological Inquiry 70:4, 499-519.

Wall, Derek (1999) Earth First! And the Anti-Roads Movement: Radical Environmentalism and Comparative Social Movements, London: Routledge.

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The Exam

The Exam lasts three hours and counts for 100% of the assessment for the module. The paper consists of 2 sections. Section A is composed of quotes from the key texts examined in the course of the module – 6 in all. You are asked to comment on the ‘content and significance’ of 3 quotes. Section B consists of 4 general questions. You are asked to answer 1. All answers count equally, i.e. 25% of the paper.

In view of the above it is imperative that you familiarise yourself with the texts and with the issues addressed by the module. A good strategy re the former would be to use the

opportunity of the formative essays to write critical assessments of two texts, drawing on as much of the secondary material as possible.

The questions in Section B cover the following issues which can be regarded as topics for revision purposes:

1. The relevance of Marxism as a theoretical approach and guide to political action – this could encompass issues such as the role of the party form; the relevance of the working class as an agent of struggle; the validity of a single end point (communism) as a horizon for emancipatory efforts.

2. The relationship between theory and practice – do social movements need ‘theory’? should political theorists see themselves as ‘political’? Are they representatives in some sense?

3. ‘New’ forms of politics – networks, detournement, rhizomes, carnival etc – are they really more effective than traditional forms of mobilisation? Should networks replace parties?

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Sample exam paper

Write commentaries on the content and significance of three_{of the following}

extracts:

1. ‘In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists

do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement … The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all hence in the spectacle: at the top, at the bottom, in the middle but never outside the hierarchy, whether this side of it or beyond it. The role is thus the means of access to the mechanism of culture: a form of initiation. It is also the medium of exchange of individual sacrifice, and in this sense performs a compensatory function. And lastly, as a residue of separation, it strives to construct a behavioural unity; in this aspect it depends on identification.’ (Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution in Everyday Life, Chapter 15, ‘Roles’)

3. ‘Unlike the tree, the rhizome is not the object of reproduction: neither external reproduction as image-tree nor internal reproduction as tree-structure. The rhizome is an antigenealogy. It is a short-term memory or anti memory. The rhizome operates by variations, expansion, conquest, capture. offshoots. Unlike the graphic arts, drawing, or photography, unlike tracings, the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight. It is tracings that must be put on the map, not the opposite. In contrast to centered (even polycentric) systems with hierarchical modes of communication and preestablished paths. The rhizome is an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system without a General and without an Organizing memory or central automaton, defined solely by a circulation of states’ (Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A ThousandPlateaus, Plateau 1, The Rhizome)

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imaginary. Hence the project for a radical and plural democracy, in a primary sense, is nothing other than the struggle for a maximum autonomization of spheres on the basis of the generalization of the equivalential-egalitarian logic’. (Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe,

Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, p. 167)

5. ‘The struggle to liberate power-to is not the struggle to create a counter-power, but rather an anti-power, something that is radically different from power-over. Concepts of revolution that focus on the taking of power are typically centred on the notion of counter-power … Anti-power is not counter-Anti-power, but something much more radical: it is the dissolution of Anti-power over, the emancipation of power-to.’ (John Holloway, Change the World Without Taking Power, p. 36).

6. ‘“Lenin” is not the nostalgic name for old dogmatic certainty; quite on the contrary, to put it in Kierkegaard’s terms, THE Lenin which we want to retrieve is the Lenin-in-becoming, the Lenin whose fundamental experience was that of being thrown into a catastrophic new constellation in which old coordinates proved useless, and who was thus compelled to REINVENT Marxism — recall his acerbic remark apropos of some new problem: “About this, Marx and Engels said not a word.” The idea is not to return to Lenin, but to REPEAT him in the Kierkegaardian sense: to retrieve the same impulse in today’s constellation. The return to Lenin aims neither at nostalgically reenacting the “good old revolutionary times,” nor at the opportunistic-pragmatic adjustment of the old program to “new conditions,” but at repeating, in the present world-wide conditions, the Leninist gesture of reinventing the revolutionary project in the conditions of imperialism and colonialism, more precisely: after the politico-ideological collapse of the long era of progressism in the catastrophe of 1914.’ (Slavoj Zizek, Repeating Lenin – s. ‘Entre nous’)

PART B

Answer one_{of the following questions}

1. ‘The persistence of capitalism renders Marxism more, rather than less, relevant for those interested in radical politics’. Discuss.

2. What does the trajectory of radical thought since 1968 suggest in terms of the relationship between radical theory and radical political practice?

3. Which of the non-party political strategies emerging after 1968 would seem to be the most effective and why?

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Finally some dos and don’ts

Do …

• Attend the lecture-class – attendance requirements are hardly onerous so you need to make sure you get along and interact.

• Work around the idea of the module as an ‘onion’ structure at the heart which are the core/examinable readings, surrounded by layers of other primary work, then secondary work, activist materials, biographies etc.

• read and write as the module goes along – submit essays, if only of ‘provisional’ quality to get yourself motivated and learning. Wide reading is not merely desirable but necessary to do well on the module. If you find the reading demanding(!) then

get along to the reading group.

• think about the issues we are looking at and engage with websites and news media in which these issues are addressed – Indymedia gives a particularly good sense of how the issues looked at here cash out in terms of debating particular strategies. So does Schnews which is the weekly bulletin of disaffiliated activist currents in the UK.

• talk to activists and try to broaden your sense of how theory maps onto the world – or doesn’t. A visit to (for example) the SUMAC in Forest Fields for a film/debate will sharpen your sense of the stakes involved, as well any protest or demonstration, conferences and workshops are regularly organised locally. The Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) housed in the School hosts regular seminars and workshops which are open to all on themes which strongly overlap with this module.

• Let me know if you are struggling generally.

• Smile – be happy – it might be fun!

Don’t

• Think the module is necessarily more challenging than anything else on offer in the School – the exam paper follows a predictable path; use the format of the paper to help form priorities in terms of reading and revision.

• Go AWOL – tell me if something is not right; let tutors know if you are getting stressed or nervous about progress.