Re: <nettime> Germany's geopolitics

[Ted Byfield <tedbyfield@gmail.com>]

Andre, you really nailed it.

As some may have noticed, the US in particular is suffering from, let's
say, a *maldistribution of agency*. It's mostly imaginary, but like all
imaginaries, it functions like a mass-magic spell: its very unreality
makes it that much more real.

The left — not a good name for it, but that's a discussion for another
time — has been consumed with efforts to "give agency to" or "empower"
its various grassroots constituencies for decades. I happen to support
those liberationist struggles, *and* I can also see the myriad ways
those cultural activities are inextricably intertwined with the left's
plainly obvious inability to effectively occupy governmental entities
and functions at *any* level. The right, which has been supremely
effective at subsuming government functions — whether by simply taking
them over or by rewriting the laws and media that construct them — is
consumed with growing imaginary allegations of excessive agency:
conspiracies, "the gubmint," "globalists," various insidious "agendas,"
"cancellations," "false flags" (i.e., misattributed agency), and
ridiculous "lizard people"–style nonsense (i.e., allegations of infinite
agency to entities that look like they don't have agency *because they
look like us*), etc, etc

More: US police forces are increasingly consumed by their sense of
helplessness and even fragility, even as their numbers skyrocket, their
budgets and powers expand uncontrollably, and the quantity and "quality"
of their weaponry — as well as their willingness to use it on the
slightest pretext — has metastasized.

US courts have become little more than a forum for rightists to
adjudicate ways to destroy ideas and facts developed by the left. But
the courts can't *do* anything directly — all they can do is direct
other branches not do or not do this or that. So they too are acutely
aware of their lack of agency and power, even as they grow by the day.

And the US federal government, with almost undisputed military and
financial power, is suffering from some sort of collective aphasia,
unable to effectively *name* the abuses tearing people's lives to
pieces: "insurrection" and "coup," the "mass murder" of gun violence,
"criminal negligence" (like public beta tests of allegedly self-driving
cars on the public at large), mass "disenfranchisement" through
gerrymandering and worse, the "indentured servitude" of student debt and
the "slavery" of so much employment, the "price-gouging" and
"profiteering" of corporations, large-scale "fraud" and "theft" by
networks of grifters. The state's undisputed power to *name* things is
dissolving into endless scholastic debates and procedural formalisms,
resulting in inexplicable paralysis. It's a prime example of how *seeing
like a state* — which is more about naming than seeing — both works and
doesn't work: if you can't name it you can't do anything about it, so if
you don't want to do anything about just don't name it.

I could go on with this list, but there's no need because they're all
variations on the same paradoxical misapprehension of agency. People,
institutions, forces see it where it isn't, can't see it where it is,
imagine they have none and others have it all.

No realistic or effective analysis of agency or power can come from this
mess.

The funny-not-funny thing about this is that the left has the conceptual
tools it needs to sort this out this, but (wait for it...) can't seem to
use them. For example, if someone were to apply theories of
intersectionality — a staple of leftist thinking that comes from (cue
the horror-movie soundtrack) CRT and therefore for domestic use only —
to Ukraine and its people, lo and behold, their struggle could be seen
in both/and rather than either/or terms: as part of a cynical
geopolitical strategy *and* a legitimate struggle for autonomy, as
politically problematic *and* morally right, as terrifyingly risky *and*
worth the risk, etc. But acknowledging that might mean supporting their
struggle, however awful the consequences.

And that support would violate Rule #1: it would be *inconsistent*.
Inconsistent, that is, with other stances and beliefs - pacifism or
commitment to nonviolence, say. And so we can see that one major
obstacle to support often has little or nothing to do with actual
Ukrainians, their actual lives, their actual country. Instead, it stems
from a reluctance to make exceptions on whatever grounds, to hold
incompatible beliefs, to recommend one thing in one context and its
opposite in another. To do that, to take the personal authority of
believing things that don't fit together easily or clearly, is a
sovereign act: it asserts priority over the systems of thought that
constrain agency.

Doing that, being inconsistent, doesn't go well these days, because much
of our mediated landscape — and therefore much of our conversational
landscape, at every level — is devoted to "holding people accountable"
for being, saying, or doing inconsistent things. Your career prospects
will tank, your credit score will plummet, and your insurance rates will
skyrocket. Your puritanically consistent friends will (as we've seen
here) denounce you as hypnotized by the "media" or "propaganda," or just
a "troll," or some will suspect you must've taken some colored pill —
red, blue, black, it doesn't matter which, as long as it can explain
away your sense of agency. Academia, consumed by nonsense about
ever-narrower job titles, consistent patterns of consistent publication,
application of consistent "methodologies," will banish you. And if
anyone pays too much attention, the media will treat you variously as
"mavericky," a "personality," or part of — that is, consistent with —
some subculture organized around either (a) the assertion of raw
privilege that consists entirely and only of being completely
incoherent, or (b) some boutique model of hyper-consistency applied to
anything without regard for others' humanity — for example, incels on
the one hand, long-termists on the other.

And so it's no surprise to see, basically, white male leftists receding
into the ether of world-systems theory — again, consumed with dreams of
finding some consistency. That is, taking a view (which implies
occupying a position, however imaginary) whose theoretical
sophistication and breadth of considerations are matched only by a
complete lack of engagement with the simple truth: one country — which
as you say, has a broken political environment — ruthlessly invaded
another country and has rained total destruction on it for a year now.
So, again as you say, we imagine Ukrainians are, or at least should be,
*like us*: NPCs — that is, no agency. And the recommendation is that
they should accept *being like us* by submitting to an inexorable and
incoherent system of power. If they'd just do that, everything would be
fine. For us. But they won't, so we should stop helping them to be
different from us.

The solipsism you point out is really astonishing. And it certainly
affects the UK, but someone else who knows more would have to make that
argument. But, clearly, the UK suffers from dynamics that are all too
similar: a lunatic series of Tory governments that have systematically
plundered all things public and rewritten the fabric of everyday life at
every level — all so they could, in their own way, *be like us*, and not
like those awful people on the continent who don't suffer quite so much
from problems of agency.

If people want to object specifically and concretely to support for
Ukraine's fight for independence, that's a conversation worth having.
But grounding opposition in imaginary terrains whose defining qualities
are abstraction — systemic, theoretical, historical — that negates what
anyone with eyes and ears can see, no. Those considerations might be
real, valid, or important, but if weighing them *necessarily* results in
paralysis — a lack of agency that seeks to deny others' agency — that's
not a conversation worth having, because it's not really a conversation.

Cheers,
Ted


On 1 Mar 2023, at 5:37, Andre Rebentisch wrote:

> An interesting pattern - also in conspiracy theory type imagination - is to imagine your own government as a capable, acting party that in a way starts or controls developments. Basically one ensures that the
> main narration is its capability to lead action, good or evil.
>
> Here we have a uthless invader of Ukraine and a broken political
> environment in Russia, but instead one talks about the West. and
> Ukraine supposedly did something wrong but not on its own but as a
> proxy that distracts Europe from its smarter geopolitical choices,
> whatever they are, something Chinese, Tianxia.
>
> You know, like there is no Vietnamese perspective in the Vietnam war narrative complex, all are NPC. It is all about US faults, suffering,
> politicians, soldiers, veterans, protests.
>
> One does not leave it to Russia to do wrong and for Ukraine to suffer and others to react, the initiative needs to be claimed for "us" who allegedly orchestrate it to go wrong.
>
> -- A
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