Suspicious to the Core (three / 2)

Hack the Abstraction—and Again

Arendt situates the polemic within the etymological framework noting the first mention of the word revolution on July 14, 1789. Allegedly, when Louis XVI commenting on the occupation of the Bastille called it revolt, it was suggested to him by Liancourt that a more accurate term would be revolution (On Revolution 38). According to Arendt’s commentaries, up to that moment, the meaning of the word revolution was known solely from the realm of astronomy. Particularly, it denoted cyclical movements of heavenly bodies. The symbolic of orbits that Liancourt could have implied in his remark might concern the historical fact disclosing the corruption of revolutionary freshness after the first phase characterized by unprecedented social shifts. In the aftermath of those tectonic reconfigurations, what is nowadays known as revolution started its downfall toward the climax of a distorted version of the initial vision. In other words, the trope might highlight that the events were revolving around the axis of revolt only to end up at the stage at which the state of affairs was not very different from what it was like at the very starting point, i.e., that the upheaval had gone full circle (only, the ruling elites—oppressive at that— were now composed of the subjects who once had fought against inhumanely brutal social conditions in the monarchy).

Yet, one can’t help but wonder how Liancourt could foresee the dynamics in question. Hence, one suspects that he might have had a different meaning in mind when he suggested a more accurate term for the turmoil. If so, what could it be? What does Liancourt talk about when he talks about revolution? One would like to know. From a contemporary point of view, what happened in France in 1789 hardly fits into the definition of revolution as the struggle for power on behalf of the proletariat. The notion of a working classes demographic in France in 1789 is highly questionable. So is it with regard to the situation in America prior to that. But then, how capitalist was the Tsarist Russia in 1917, let alone in 1905? One would like to know. 

When was revolution? According to some interpretations of historical records, it has happened more than once at different points in history at various locations. Yet, what those interpretations fail to see is a difference between the actual bloodsheds and what revolution is and should/can be. Scrutinizing Machiavelli’s strategy, Arendt demystifies erratic equations between certain violence inclined and/or violence soaked historical phenomena on the one hand and, on the other, revolution:”his insistence on the role of violence in politics was due not so much to his so-called realistic insight into human nature as to his futile hope that he could find some quality in certain men to match the qualities we associate with the divine” (On Revolution 29). Clearly, Arendt is in uncompromising disagreement with delusional demigodliness:

We shall see later that this latter part of the task of revolution, to find a new absolute to replace the absolute of divine power, is insoluble because power under condition of human plurality can never amount to omnipotence, and laws residing on human power can never be absolute. (On Revolution 29)

Just as she is critical of violence pertinent to conduct based on a deceitful idea of human omnipotence, so does Arendt object to senselessness characterizing radical approaches to  dedication to a cause--destructiveness partly sacrificial, partly directed toward the other. There are two major pillars of Arendt’s thought that safeguard her stance against such mindless strategies and tactics. First and foremost, it is the idea that investment in freedom, inherent in revolution, is also the main generator of revolutionary energies. The fervor engendered by virtue of such affinity is incompatible with (self)-destructiveness. Choosing death can by no means be part of wholesome sociopolitical reasoning, save in a symbolic sense such as in the idea of death to self. This maneuver, essentially anchored in humbleness, ensures vital responses in the individual and the communal realms. It is in a reciprocally supportive relationship with the predilection to create, rather than to destroy:”the revolutionary spirit, that is the eagerness to liberate and to build a new house where freedom can dwell, is unprecedented and unequalled in all prior history” (On Revolution 25).  Destruction and aggression are in a mutually fueling relationship with dominance driven socioscape. A devotee to unorthodox understanding of power relations, Arendt states the futility of the attempts to revolutionize otherwise:

In the contest that divides the world today and in which so much is at stake, those will probably win who understand revolution, while those who still put their faith in power politics in the traditional sense of the term and, therefore, in war as the last resort of all foreign policy may well discover in a not too distant future that they have become masters in a rather useless and obsolete trade. (On Revolution 8)

It seems that the word revolution entered the socio-historical dialogue in a slightly capricious fashion. It continued in a no less tainted manner. Thus, to hack it back to the realm where one reckons it belongs will require undoing at least twofold bastardization in discourse and the extralinguistic alike.

Like turntablist poetics, the remix : reemergence of the human face from blurry amalgamation--out of cacophony, and through subtonic hi-fi solidarity in peaceful/peaceable resistance.

Eathix off politix, a.k.a., happiness

Scrutinizing the pathways of revolutionary unfolding, Arendt is concerned with hindsight as a vehicle of reading into historical records paradigms that color words and apprehension with a shade of mystique. Specifically, nowadays, it is impossible to think the concept of revolution disregarding marxian context. Arendt points to the weird occasion of the intersection between economy / economics and politics in Marx’s political economy. “Political economy” of the period ensuing his time has seen civilization deeply entrenched in a nomadic haze of dislocated categories crippling the socioscape to the point of an image distorted beyond (self)recognition.

She detects the slippery slope, basically, featured in materialist dialectics heavily relying on hegelian legacy. More precisely, it is the emphasis on poverty as the cause of violence, instead of vice versa, that has enabled the development of the sociopolitical irrevocably fixated on materialist aspects. Thus, in retrospect, the French Revolution was mainly carried out on the bodily level. Put differently, in her opinion, Robespierre saw the number of participants gathered together around the common cause as the force leading toward the changes aspired by the revolutionaries: because of poverty, they were oppressed; hence they rebelled against it.

What in such a scenario becomes crudely severed to the point of invisibility is the ideological realm. The very fact that it is so magically marginalized becomes invisible, as well. Having undergone both discursive and extralinguistic manipulation, the social, essentially, appears as the economic under the disguise of the political. In the context of the French Revolution, Arendt observes:”Meanwhile, the revolution has changed its direction; it aimed no longer at freedom, the goal of the revolution had become the happiness of the people” (On Revolution 51). Likewise, within the framework of the October Revolution, she demarcates:”Not freedom but abundance became now the aim of revolution” (On Revolution 54).

A marxist perspective, negotiating between hegelian chemistry of reversibility and the positivist  (nonpopperian) paradigm, resulted in a somewhat deterministic vocabulary that as much as it aimed to empower, so did it limit possibilities for the dispossessed. One can’t help but suspect that insistence on the economic focus of socio-political dynamics may be a highly oppressive mechanism of control. Once the regime against which the uprising was directed is overthrown and new “political” elites rise to power, the “revolutionaries”-turned-rulers find economic vocabulary to be an extremely efficient manipulative—potentially sacrificial/scapegoating--means. Once people become deprived of the awareness of the significance and role of ideology, blind spots are created and room for a contestation of critical thinking is ensured through apparatuses of conventional power politics, to borrow Arendt’s wording.

She identifies the detail that, to her mind, distinguishes the American Revolution from the French Revolution in terms of the perception of individuality and power. Namely, while the French Revolution centered the fuelling motivation, that Arendt defines in terms of passion of compassion, around the inflated image of revolutionary leaders, the revolutionary predecessors anchored their liberation in God, not men. Yet, one can’t help but wonder if such a focus may exclude passion of compassion for fellow humans. One would like to know.

The logic of peaceful/peaceable resistance in the service of the remix creates a platform for dialogue between and among distinct, yet coexisting and possibly compatible, spheres. The response against social ills as described in and inferred from Arendt’s theory, from a contemporary point of view resonates with Baudrillard’s remark from The Vital Illusion (2000):

Through the media, it is the masses who manipulate those in power (or those who believe themselves to be). It is when the political powers think they have the masses where they want them that the masses impose their clandestine strategy of neutralization, of destabilization of a power that has become paraplegic. (53)

All the hindsight aiming to destabilize historical records certainly does not diminish the significance of Marx’s teaching based on profound investment in revolution. Nor does it prevent one from enduring in peaceful/peaceable resistance: persevering in disambiguating kaleidoscopically reversed image of socio-political categories and realities. Neither elitist nor populist is revolutionary endurance in cultivating the capacity to discern and sustain the distinction between individualism and individuality, between uniformity and unity.