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Behind The News Presents Professor Jodi Dean On Reclaiming Communism and the Political Party Form

24 Thu Nov 2016

Posted by in Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Imperialism, Anti-Totalitarianism, Neoliberalism, urban economics

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dsc_1239-former-west-jodi-deanLUMPENPROLETARIAT  Political Science Professor Jodi Dean (b. 1962) (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) is the author of various books, including The Communist Horizon (Verso, 2012), Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics (Duke University Press, 2009), Žižek’s Politics (Routledge, 2006), Blog Theory (Polity, 2010), and Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy (Cornell University Press, 2002).  She also blogs at ICite.com.

On this week’s holiday edition of free speech radio’s Behind The News, host Doug Henwood graced us with an encore broadcast of a 2013 interview he conducted with Dr. Jodi Dean, in which she discussed her book The Communist Horizon, crowd psychology, the political party form, the squandering of opportunity by the Occupy Movement for building an emancipatory people’s party in the United States, and other relevant topics. [1]  This is a timely re-broadcast in the aftermath of the electoral college’s antidemocratic coronation of Donald Trump, even though he lost the popular vote.  Listen (and/or download) here. [2]

Messina

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[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Behind The News.]

kpfa-free-speech-take-it-back-logo-121199BEHIND THE NEWS—[24 NOV 2016]  [PEDRO REYES:  “—or online at kpfa.org.  Stay tuned for Behind The News.”]     [Behind The News ‘world/classical’ instrumental theme music]

DOUG HENWOOD:  “Hello, and welcome to Behind the News.  My name is Doug Henwood.  Just one guest today:  Jodi Dean.  Jodi Dean, a professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in Geneva, New York has been on this show many times.  Though, it’s been more than a year, since her last appearance, which is way too long.  I find her one of the best thinkers on politics around, bringing, among many other things, a sense of the importance of organisation, as opposed to the love of structural-lessness and spontenaity, which is so popular these days and of the centrality of the psychological mechanisms to politics.  Yet, despite the complexity of the material, Jodi writes and talks with admirable clarity.

“She was on this show back in October 2013 to discuss her book The Communist Horizon, also from Verso.  In that book, she was trying to reclaim the idea of communism, a word and concept, which has been dragged through the mud by, both, its friends and enemies.  In her latest book, Crowds and Party, published earlier this year by Verso, Jodi undertakes two related texts—an analysis of crowds, demonstrations, spectacles, occupations and politics, which we always have with us, and the need for a revolutionary party, which we don’t.

“Today, and for the last several decades, many on the left celebrate the crowd as politics, in itself—the beautiful moment, as she calls it—that doesn’t lay the groundwork for a better future, but, basically, is that future.  There are no better examples of this phenomenon than those who claimed during Occupy Wall Street that the gathering itself was the better future and not merely an embryonic event, that could lead the way to a seriously transformative organisation.  (c. 2:08)

“Jodi isn’t shy about calling that organisation a party, a rather unfashionable term.

“She is eloquent in analysing the reasons for the unfashionability of the party.  We’re supposed to resist the form as sclerotic and oppressive by its very nature, imposing among many other things a uniformity on an endlessly variegated humanity.  (c. 2:27)

“Now, we’re all about multiplicities, movements of movements and so on.  This strikes me, to steal Karl Kraus‘ comment on psychoanalysis—which, by the way, I don’t agree with—as the disease for which it purports to be the cure.  This kind of thinking emphasises difference at the expense of solidarity and guarantees ineffectuality.  That ineffectuality might be welcome to those, who fear power.  But there can be no better world without engaging with, and taking power, as daunting and risky as that may sound.  Power may corrupt, as Lord Acton said, but powerlessness is no bargain, either.  (c. 3:01)

“As I say in the interview, I shied away from bringing up the psychoanalytic aspects of Jodi’s argument because I was afraid it might not work well on the radio.  But those aspects are quite important and one of the many reasons you should buy and read this book—that and her extended critique of the individualism, that pervades our society and our minds, myself included.  I’m not so sure how well I work with others.

“That’s another angle on the importance of the party organisation.  Not only is it essential to politics, it’s also a way to get us out of our solipsistic little heads, myself included.  I spend a lot of time in my own head, in my personal bubble.

“Enough from me; here’s Jodi Dean, author of Crowds and Party from Verso.  [broadcast cuts to archival audio]

“Welcome, Jodi.  You open the book with an anecdote about an event during Occupy Wall Street.  (c. 3:47)  [snip]  (c. 6:54)

“And, then, the collective energy and the collective capacity dissipated.  Right?  We had a capacity, at the beginning, actually, to take the park.  And, then, once each person started deciding for herself what was best for her, our capacity disintegrated.  And we no longer had it.

“And, so, of course, it became like: Well, there were exams at NYU next week.  And people were really busy and hadn’t planned.  So, maybe they needed to do something else.  And, so, it was like put off for another time.  And everybody ended up going home.

“And, so, my concern in the book is to try to capture the combination of collective capacity, that we all had together and to try to reclaim that and push it forward against the individualising tendencies, that hurt the movement that night, and, that have hurt the left now for the last 20 or 30 years.  [snip]  (c. 7:46)

DOUG HENWOOD:  What you write about—you talk about here really captures the frustration many of us felt about Occupy, that it was very skeptical about agendas, about structures, about turning this very exhilarating moment into something more permanent and, potentially, more transformative.

“And, as you point out later in the book, this is a lot of readings of the Paris Commune fall into this kind of interpretation that the Commune was, itself, not a way-station to a more permanent better society, but just the revolutionary life, in itself.  Isn’t this what you’re getting at?”  (c. 8:22)

DR. JODI DEAN:  “Yeah.  [snip]  (c. 8:45)  And there’s been a shift away from thinking organizationally and strategically, in terms of taking power, in terms of a struggle for power.

“And that has been pushed away, in favour of an approach, that looks at personal transformation, small-group transformation, immediacy, making our immediate relations better.  And this making our immediate relations, whether or not they’re self-relations or small-group relations, making those better has been the form of political struggle.

“I think it’s a form, that is, ultimately, politically damaging, bereft, and the left response to, and incorporation into, neoliberalism, or late capitalism.  Right?

“It’s not a real form of political struggle.  It’s only a kind of minor individuated resistance.

“So, I think that this is the problem, that we’ve encountered in the last 20 or 30 years on the left.  But it presents itself as somehow in advance.  Well, the problem is power.  No.  I would say the problem is our lack of power [chuckles], not power per se.  Right?  Anybody, who turns away from power, will not have it.  So, that’s the problem on the left.” (c. 9:59)

[snip]

[snip]  (c. 59:59)

Learn more at BEHIND THE NEWS.

[This transcript will be expanded as time constraints, and/or demand or resources, allow.]

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[1]  Catapulting social movements, such as Occupy Wall Street, towards building a revolutionary political party is a topic, which many of us have emphasised for years, including in real time and in an interview for Media Roots with Alexa O’Brien, from US Day of Rage, one of the four groups, which started the Occupy Movement.

[2]  Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving:  Behind The News, this one-hour broadcast hosted by host Doug Henwood, Thursday, 24 NOV 2016, 12:00 PST.

Also see related Lumpenproletariat articles, such as:

  • Reclaiming Communism With Political Science Professor Jodi Dean; 2 JUN 2015.

***

[26 NOV 2016]

[Last modified at 23:39 PST on 27 NOV 2016]

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Dr. Henry Giroux Discusses Critical Pedagogy on Project Censored

30 Fri Oct 2015

Posted by in Critical Theory, Education

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ProjectCensoredLUMPENPROLETARIAT—Dr. Henry Giroux offers us a refreshing radical perspective on education through his prolific work in the field of critical pedagogy.  Listen (or download) here.

Messina

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PROJECT CENSORED—[30 OCT 2015, TRANSCRIPT]  “Welcome to the Project Censored show on Pacifica Radio.  I’m Mickey Huff in-studio with Peter Phillips.  On today’s programme, we focus on critical pedagogy and the role of radical education in reclaiming democracy against the shadows of fascism.  We’re joined for the hour by Professor Henry Giroux, who has written prolifically about these matters over the last several decades.  Today on the programme, critical pedagogy and Henry Giroux.  Please stay with us.  [1]

“Welcome back to the Project Censored show on Pacifica Radio.  I’m Mickey Huff, with Peter Phillips.  Today on the programme, we’re joined by Dr. Henry A. Giroux.  He currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship and Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and the Paulo Freire Chair in Critical Pedagogy at the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning.  He’s a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University.  And his recent books include The Violence of Organized Forgetting:  Thinking Beyond America’s Disimagination Machine, Zombie Politics in the Age of Casino Capitalism, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle, and Dangerous Thinking in the Age of New Authoritarianism.  Henry Giroux is also a member of the board of directors at Truth Out.  And his website is HenryAGiroux.com.  Henry Giroux, welcome.”

DR. HENRY GIROUX:  “Thank you for having me on, Mickey.”

DR. PETER PHILLIPS:  “Henry, hi.  This is Peter Phillips.  Let’s give listeners a little background on critical theory, and the origins of that, and what you mean by critical pedagogy.”

DR. HENRY GIROUX:  “One of the things, that I wanted to do in the late ’70s, when many of us were concerned about the question of education in the United States, particularly with the rise of Ronald Reagan and, you know, the Reagan-Thatcher sort of marriage.  One of the things, that was happening was that on the Left there was an enormous attempt to view schools simply as prisons and sort of black boxes in which power was sort of equated with domination and nothing else.  And, on the other side, of course, there were people who were simply arguing that schools should simply train people for the workforce.

“I wanted to look at different traditions, that offered a language of critique and a language of possibility for being able to do that.  I was one of the people, of course, who went right to the Frankfurt School and looked at Adorno and Horkheimer and a whole range of people.  It seemed to me they offered a very valuable vocabulary for talking about schools, particularly as institutions that were involved in the production of particular kinds of subjects and desires and the role of culture and subjectivity and what that means and how to link that to larger questions in which the school became part of a much broader relationship of, both, domination and possibility.

“And, so, in theory and resistance, there was an attempt to bring that tradition into the American fold, so that became part of the dialogue of critical education theory.  And I think it was, actually, largely successful for many people.”  (c. 4:13)

DR. PETER PHILLIPS:  “Henry, what do you mean by ideological control and domination by culture and by institutions for human beings in society?”

DR. HENRY GIROUX:  “I think that what many of us became aware of, particularly after reading people like Gramsci and people like Althusser, was that schools were not just simply about instruction.  I mean schools were, in a sense, ideological state apparatuses.  They were institutions that promoted, legitimated, particular forms of knowledge, that they sanctioned, particular kinds of social relationships, highly competitive, generally, knowledge that basically mirrored the status quo.  They sanctioned and legitimated particular values and had a certain understanding of what the future should look like.  And I think that, in that sense, it became very clear that you had to talk about schools in ways, that could not be separated from questions of power and particular kinds of visions, that people had about what schools do and what they should produce.  We were trying to unravel that and, sort of, try to understand what the hidden curriculum was in many of these schools.  You know?  What were they trying to teach?  How did they correlate with larger assumptions about the dominant society?  In what ways were they stifling the imagination and critical thinking?  In what ways were they not becoming democratic public spheres, but, actually, simply work stations to segue people into the workforce?

“So, I think that, particularly, people who are concerned with critical pedagogy, people like Paolo Freire, myself, a number of others were trying to figure out how we could talk about pedagogy in a way that was, both, inspiring and energizing.” (c. 5:47)  [2]

Learn more at PROJECT CENSORED.

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PROJECT CENSORED—Peter and Mickey spend the hour speaking with author/educator Henry Giroux. Giroux explains the concept of ‘critical pedagogy,’ and the pivotal role that education plays for the whole of society. He warns of the increasing domination of the world by the ultra-rich, and a new form of anti-intellectualism fostered by a failing corporate media. Among the measures the left must take to resist these forces, he names the formation of a third political party, and more academics taking on the duties of public intellectuals, rather than limiting their activities to the campus.

Learn more at PROJECT CENSORED.

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[1]  KPFA News Headlines omitted from transcription.

[2]  Partial transcript by Messina.  The remainder of the interview will be transcribed as time constraints allow.

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[10 NOV 2015  07:27 PDT]

[Last modified 10 NOV 2015  07:31 PDT]