Short post tonight. Hardt and Negri write, “Difference, hybridity, and mobility are not liberatory in themselves, but neither are truth, purity, and stasis. The real revolutionary practice refers to the level of production. Truth will not make us free, but taking control of the production of truth will.” (To which I ask: why, and how?) They continue: “Mobility and hybridity are not liberatory, but taking control of the production of mobility and stasis, purities and mixtures is. The real truth commissions of Empire will be constituent assemblies of the multitude, social factories for the production of truth” (156). Let’s assume for the time being that we can grant this. Particularize the theory into specifics: the emperor Tiberius took control of the production of truth. Weblogs are sites of production of a staggering multiplicity of truths. How do the diffuse truths of the many compare to the false and imperious truth of the one? Some will see in the truths of the many a hope for counterhegemonic and democratic freedom. Others will see in the truths of the many only solipsism, isolation, and ultimate political failure because of a reliance upon individualism rather than upon the insurrective rhetorical power of a collective univocity.
If I think enough about opposing the applications of the Tiberius example to the applications of the example of the multitude, I can start to see how Clancy’s reminder of the rhetorical perspective of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca — in particular, the middle ground in their continuum between the rhetoric that is “compelling” and the rhetoric that is “arbitrary” — seems particularly useful here. (I haven’t much thought about them since my contemporary rhetorics seminar four years ago.)
A bit later, Hardt and Negri point out that “imperial sovereignty [. . .] is organized not around one central conflict but rather through a flexible network of microconflicts. The contradictions of imperial society are elusive, proliferating, and nonlocalizable: the contradictions are everywhere. Rather than crisis, then, the concept that defines imperial sovereignty might be omni-crisis, or, as we prefer, corruption” (201). They make it quite clear that this definition of “corruption” is no “moral charge” (201), but rather a “process” of self-sustaining “de-generation” (201). Corruption means that the entity sustains its falling-apart from the inside via these often rhetorical “microconflicts” which actually define the space and the enactment of imperial sovereignty. The enacted microconflicts of declamation, whether they be of weblogs or of Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae and Suasoriae, constitute power itself.
OK, so Mike’s being all doom-and-gloomy again. A question: what might all this self-important pseudo-theorizing actually mean for the writing classroom?
Anybody?
Bueller?
Anybody?
Hmmmm, that post is written in such a way that it’s not easy to tell whether you’re asking the question earnestly, or if you’re looking for a particular answer that’s already in your mind, the way some professors lead class discussions, heh. For what it’s worth, here are my $0.02.
In thinking about the production of “truth,” I am reminded of Judith Butler and repetition:
I’m guessing that when Hardt and Negri talk about the production of truth, they’re talking about reified, hegemonic truth claims which get produced at the level of those in power: naturalized ontologies, as Butler says. But you know all about mystification already, and from the selections you quote, it sounds like Hardt and Negri don’t think the repetition of critiques of hegemonic truth claims is a very effective emancipatory strategy; rather, it bolsters imperial sovereignty. Like you, I’m wondering how that works. When I think of imperial sovereignty, I think of George W. Bush. Would Hardt and Negri argue that the more we bloggers argue among ourselves about how terrible Bush is, the more we’re constructing and reaffirming his power?
I should try to answer your question at some point, huh? Unfortunately, the implications for the writing classroom I see here aren’t anything most of us don’t already do. I’m thinking of the basic questioning of authority, looking at the discursive construction of truth claims historically (see Malinda Lindquist’s excellent work on the “black boy crisis”), and asking who benefits from existing truth claims. The truths of the many pose a slightly different challenge when we think of them in terms of first-year college students, who occasionally have the tendency to parrot their parents’ worldviews (I’ll cop to having done so in high school; one of the most intellectually shameful things I’ve ever done is vote for Bush, Sr. in the 1992 election.). It’s important, obviously, to be exposed to multiple truths, but it can be information overload, particularly in the case of blogging. The most difficult and also the most crucial thing is to commit to truth claims of one’s own (here I’m not making a distinction between teachers and students; that would assume the teachers already have their truth claims all thought out and squared away. Ha!) At iLaw a couple of days ago, we were talking about whether or not blogging will change political discourse. Several people expressed the argument you mention about solipcism; another popular metaphor to describe weblog discourse was “echo chamber.” Larry Lessig, however, optimistically observed that if you think through your opinions enough to write about them and make them public, you become more committed to your own perspective, your own ideals, which I talk about a little in the Perelman and O-T post you linked. Depending on the degree to which you agree with Lessig, weblogs are a beneficial tool for helping citizens become more active and thoughtful, if that’s your goal. If it’s a counterhegemonic revolution, weblogs wouldn’t be so helpful. What is the goal, if I may ask?
Actually, Hardt and Negri are pointing to a different model of imperial power. In the post-republican Roman empire (or, more accurately, the principate), power was localized in the person of the princeps: your George W. Bush is very much like their Tiberius. But as I noted yesterday, under the new model of Empire, “power has no actual and localizable terrain or center” and “is distributed in networks, through mobile and articulated systems of control” (384).
But, uh, yeah, I was asking the question earnestly. And I want to see a middle way between the two alternatives you offer in your last paragraph. The “more active and thoughtful” thing, while certainly a worthy goal, offers nothing new to the tired so-called “critical pedagogies” or “encouraging critical thinking” that composition’s been euphemizing about for 30 years. On the other hand, I don’t believe “revolution” is possible or even a worthy goal: productive social change that remedies inequalities comes, and can come, incrementally, and there is no need or possibility of overturning the entire hegemonic capitalist structure.
The middle road between the two possibilities you offer is the same middle road Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca offer between the “arbitrary” (rhetor as isolated and solipsistic politically ineffectual self contributing to a diversity of truths) and the “compelling” (rhetor as irresistible imperial power producing a single truth). This is in part due to the fact that, with digital technologies, economic production has become informatized, and rhetoric — including both the societal production of a heterogeneity of truths and the public self-production of subjectivities, which can sometimes be the same thing — has taken on an economic component.
This is why Lessig’s perspective is so important: it removes the myth of economic scarcity from informatized production. And I think we’ve yet to think through all the implications for the classroom. So that’s my goal, for now: to try and look ahead a little bit, and see how these new understandings might lead us, tiny step by incremental step, to a less unequal society.