Revolution at the gates

I read an article today in the New York Times website that was writing on the social protests and minor revolts occurring in France. The crux of the article was a decicive derision for this form of social action- that protest has become petty and fickle, inauthentic. It was strange because of the place and indeterminate function it played: why would an institution like the New York Times be asking for real old school protest to bring down governments? The placement struck me as odd also because of the pettiness of the charge. It looked like they were just trying to pick fights with French people for whatever reason.

So, I read some Foucault.

In “Useless to Revolt?” he posits revolutionary forces in relation to politics. Revolution represents the limit that defines government and normal politics as the point at which no demand or threat of sovereignty can overcome a political demand for change. When someone steps in front a tank or a battalion of police officers, they demonstrate the basic limits of a government founded in the protection and regulation of life. The response to this by the politics of sovereignty is to define the specifics of revolution in an attempt to include it in its power. Essentially, to make revolution or radical protest intelligible to sovereignty. That’s why Mao instituted state run revolution: to define revolutionary actions as strengthening the state and so usurp their force as a limit. Another strategy is to diminish the limit function. To demonstrate the action as less than revolutionary – to relate the demands that require death to a specific state action, and so usurp their power. This then, is the function of the article: to regulate the limit-function ‘revolution’ has to state power.

“Can vegans smoke?”

I’m a vegan, but I sometimes smoke. More than a few people find this strange. Particular demands – not killing animals for human purposes – are more than their content, but an association with other types of demands to form a coherent whole. That’s why my vegan-ness gets associated with other types of demands for equality or social justice, etc. These other imperatives act in their particular context, but also in their relation to other analogus demands. This relates because it demonstrates how even the sometimes insignificant demands of whoever these people are become so threatening. Demand for not screwing young adults out of a job also presumes a demand that society provide for young people, a smattering of care-ethics, and a rejection of the demands of capital. All these things intersect in the protesters demands, and so they become a threat.

Duncan