Читать книгу Absent Rebels: Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dystopian Fiction - Annika Gonnermann - Страница 16

These factors listed above and the rise of neoliberal capitalism on a global scale produce a 21^st-century socio-cultural reality that contemporary dystopian literature reacts to. Indeed, a great number of narratives published in the new millennium have responded to this shift in power, identifying companies rather than states as primary objects of critique: bookshelves and cinemas abound in narratives that introduce the head of a corporation as the new ‘big bad.’ Dystopias like the TV-series Incorporated (created by A. Pastor and D. Pastor, 2016–17) or Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One (2011) present radically less perfect communities suffering from an omnipotent oligarchic billionaire CEO, terrorising the population. Examples even date back to the 1950s, when Pohl and Kornbluth published The Space Merchants (1953), introducing the idea that employees could owe their employer money for housing and food after having worked their hands to the bone for an entire month. Max Barry masterfully comments on the process, offering the following analysis in his dystopian satire Jennifer Government (2003):

John Nike was reading a novel called The Space Merchants; it had been reissued and he’d seen a review in Fast Company. They called it ‘prescient and hilarious,’ which John was having a hard time agreeing with. All these old science-fiction books were the same: they thought the future would be dominated by some hard-ass, oppressive Government. Maybe that was plausible back in the 1950s, when the world looked as if it might turn Commie. It sure wasn’t now. (123)

Dedicating a little more than 300 pages to the depiction of free market capitalism running amok, and introducing characters whose last name and therefore part of their identity is constituted by global economic players (“John Nike”), Barry’s novel belongs to a growing number of books that react to capitalism. Self-reflexively, the passage comments on genre conventions as established by traditional dystopian fictions (the reference to Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants is spelled out explicitly), which warn of authoritarian state power. The novel itself, though, shows that the 21^st century is by no means comparable to the future envisaged by the classics, but that it differs significantly with regards to the target of criticism: global neoliberal capitalism.

Despite their acknowledgment of capitalism as a growing problem, these novels and films are rather conservative in nature; they are content with a simple substitution process, adhering to the structures of classical dystopian fiction by simply replacing a totalitarian politician with a totalitarian CEO. This manoeuvre, however, can be no more than a “partial diagnosis” (Sandel 7). As the philosopher Slavoj Žižek has pointed out, these anti-capitalist critiques too often narrow down systemic criticism to individual sins like greed and corruption. John Nike, for instance, is cast in the role of the antagonist for he is willing to advertise the new Nike sneakers by increasing their ‘street credibility,’ having contract killers take aim at Nike’s own customers, creating the illusion that less wealthy individuals might resort to murder to get hold of these shoes. The systemic problems of free market capitalism are reduced to the failed morality of individuals, creating the impression that capitalism per se might work, if we only could eradicate individual flaws (cf. Becker, John, and Schirm 35) – a paradox Žižek considers too narrow a frame to attack capitalism, because the criticism often boils down to condemning pathological individuals. These novels thereby create the illusion that systemic problems (totalitarianism) could be overcome by, on the one hand, initiating a one man show rebellion or, on the other hand, by disposing of individuals like John Nike, who take sole responsibility for deficient structures. Instead of attacking the system, methodological individualism1 will always accuse criminal individuals, who “abus[e] the system” (Fisher 69). Relying on the structures offered by methodological individualism, external criticism as employed by these examples limits its scope of critical analysis – a flaw that has already weakened the anti-capitalist argument of many novels. Further examples include, for instance, industrial novels such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1855), which solves its systemic problems of unemployment, horrible working conditions, and growing economic inequality by having one factory owner undergo a Damascene conversion, re-discovering his Christian ideals of charity and altruism (cf. Glomb). Žižek and others repudiate this analysis, claiming that “[w]e should move from this simple moralistic anti-capitalism to more fundamental questions such as why people are pushed to act like that” (Žižek in an interview with Medeiros). Criticising the tendency to burden one individual with the faults of systemic problems, as classical dystopian fiction usually does, Žižek advocates a macro-systemic approach concentrating on the system.

Adding to Žižek’s position is Jane Bennett’s refusal to cleave to a simplistic pattern of cause and effect, attributing blame for macro-systemic problems to individuals. She states that “[i]n a world of distributed agency, a hesitant attitude toward assigning singular blame becomes a presumptive virtue” (38), advocating a turn away from the methodological individualism of the 19^th and 20^th century towards a network theory of responsibility.2 Dystopias that have replaced one totalitarian leader with another of a different shade do not attack neoliberal capitalism sustainably, but aim at buffing out the most disturbing aspects.

Capitalism’s persistence has to do with the inability of ‘external criticism’ – arguably the most commonly drawn weapon, not only by the anti-capitalist dystopias mentioned in the last paragraph, but also in everyday discourse – to formulate critique adequately. This mode is subject to two internal problems and thus fails to attack constructs like neoliberal capitalism for yet again two reasons, upon which the following paragraphs will elaborate. Firstly, while the application of external criticism is a fairly simple procedure, its legitimisation proves to be more complex. External criticism is a technique not uncontested in its efficiency: on the one hand, criteria employed as basis for external criticism are random at best and arbitrary at worst. External criticism derives its maxims from axiomatic deliberations about what constitutes the ‘good life’ – however, external criticism works equally well for less humanist and noble endeavours than promoting positive and negative freedom rights. As Tom Boland correctly points out, this kind of “critique operates as a kind of translation of language, capable of rendering anybody else’s account in derogatory terms. […] These accusations can be directed against anything; businesses, unions, parties, social movements, communities, families, intimate relationships” (“Cacophony”). Totalitarianism might just as easily harness the potential of external criticism to distribute its ideology. On the other hand, it remains unclear which of the many ills suffered by contemporary society actually originate from a capitalist system of production (cf. Jaeggi, “Drei Wege” 321). The concept of exploitation is a case in point: is it a capitalist problem, or is it a general one that happens to re-appear under capitalist rules of production (cf. ibid. 334)? An ethical or moral critique of free market capitalism brought forth by external criticism would first need to establish a normative basis before making a case.

Secondly, external criticism does not necessarily strive for the best option – the criterium exhausts itself in searching for a better version (not the best), thus running into the danger of substituting one dystopian system with a slightly less dystopian system. Many classical dystopian fictions have been trapped in this fallacy, meaning they propagate one system without sufficient critical examination. Christopher Ferns, for instance, has skilfully deconstructed the revolutionary potential inherent in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, arguing that it reproduces the very same system it wants to abolish. He shows that the alternative system the novel hopes to install via the figure of Winston Smith is but a pale shadow of the old one, thus reducing the subversive potential considerably.3 Moreover, Ferns writes that “albeit from a different perspective, [classical] dystopian fiction re-enacts the triumph of an essentially masculine dream of order” (129). Ferns thus confirms the suspicion proclaimed by Theodor W. Adorno in his “Message in a Bottle,” published in Mapping Ideologies (1994), namely that

[t]hose schooled in dialectical theory are reluctant to indulge in positive images of the proper society, of its members, even of those who would accomplish it. Past traces deter them; in retrospect, all social [e]utopias since Plato’s merge in a dismal resemblance to what they were devised against. The leap into the future, clean over the conditions of the present, lands in the past. (42f.)

Commenting on the seeming impossibility of ideology-free critique, Tom Boland is correct in his assertion that “the very thing that is ‘unmasked’ is the tool of ‘unmasking’ itself” (Spectacle 2). Any attempt to externally criticise a given society in order to propel an alternative is ultimately doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. “Past traces” will always link the two concepts and thus deter the possibility for radical social change. Nineteen Eighty-Four, its dystopian relatives, and its application of external criticism can thus not be considered subversive or rebellious, changing society for the better. On the contrary, classical dystopian writing is “formally and historically, structurally and contextually, a conservative genre” (Pfaelzer 61).4 Or in the words of Fredric Jameson: “our wildest imaginings are all collages of experience, constructs made up of bits and pieces of the here and now [.] […] our imaginations are hostages to our own mode production (and perhaps to whatever remnants of past ones it has preserved)” (Archaeologies xiii). By demonstrating that classical dystopias are trapped within the same conceptual problems and shortcomings they seek to criticise, these novels sabotage their own self-imposed agenda. As Jean Baudrillard and Arthur B. Evans write in Simulacra and Science Fiction (1991), science fiction is often “an extravagant projection of, but qualitatively not different from, the real world of production” (309, emphasis in the original). Inevitably, these constructs “wind up reproducing the conditions of society [they] seek to reform or replace” (Tally Jr. 20). Classical dystopia, then, is not necessarily the departure to better shores, but to places “in which our own ideological limits are the most surely inscribed” (Jameson, “Progress” 148). It fails to truly provide an alternative since it is constrained by its own cognitive limits.

Furthermore, the inefficiency of external criticism arises from capitalism’s systemic nature. Free market capitalism, other than totalitarianism with its monuments, headquarters and symbols of power, decidedly lacks centre and author. As Mark Fisher elaborates, it is difficult, if not nearly “impossible to accept that there are no overall controllers, that the closest thing we have to ruling powers now are nebulous, unaccountable interests exercising corporate irresponsibility” (63). Experiencing the capitalist system as almost Kafkaesque, as “unresponsive, impersonal, centerless, abstract and fragmentary” (ibid. 64), victims are left alone with their anger and frustration, unable to identify an addressee for their critique. As Fisher writes, “anger can only be a matter of venting; it is aggression in a vacuum, directed at someone who is a fellow victim of the system […]. Just as the anger has no proper object, it will have no effect” (ibid.). Zygmunt Bauman, too, diagnoses the centreless nature of modern capitalist systems. In Liquid Modernity (2000), he argues that our time is characterised by an absence of centres of power:

If the time of systemic revolutions has passed, it is because there are no buildings where the control desks of the system are lodged and which could be stormed and captured by the revolutionaries; and also because it is excruciatingly difficult, nay impossible, to imagine what the victors, once inside the buildings (if they found them first), could do to turn the tables and put paid to the misery that prompted them to rebel. (5)

No matter who sits at the world’s control desks, to speak metaphorically, systemic difficulties will always limit the possibility of reform. External criticism, which is essentially dependant on a recipient, i.e. on being direct at someone, will ultimately deflagrate without effect. Capitalism, it seems, is the ultimate, diffuse form of power decoupled from the individual and it thus remains almost impossible to criticise directly.5

As David Harvey correctly notes, “[c]apital is a process and not a thing. It is a process of reproduction of social life through commodity production, in which all of us in the advanced capitalist world are heavily implicated” (Postmodernity 343). The absence of an external point of view – a moral high ground so to speak – makes the attempt to formulate external criticism equally futile. This dilemma is grounded in the fact that free market capitalism involves nearly everyone on this planet, rendering external criticism useless. Indeed, for external criticism to work, there must be an alternative at hand that can claim the moral high ground and substitute the first system. Yet, in the words of Fredric Jameson, “it seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps this is due to some weakness in our imaginations” (Turn 50).6 The entire left and the anti-capitalist movement lack – to use Jameson’s terminology – “cognitive mapping,” or, the ability to chart alternatives to the current situation (cf. “Mapping” 356).7 Despite the fact that “capitalism has always pulled out of its recurrent crises, but never without laying a foundation for new and even worse ones” (Wood, Origin 1), the system seems without alternative at the present moment for its dynamics and interwoven complexities seem particularly difficult to untangle: “[c]ontemporary globalized capital presents particular difficulties when it comes to mapping its dynamics and limits, such that imagining what might lie beyond it becomes even more challenging than in earlier stages of capitalist development” (Best 498).

Moreover, Jürgen Habermas has diagnosed of a weakening in eutopian dreaming and potential in the face of the apparent inevitability of neoliberalism: “[t]oday it seems as if the [e]utopian energies have been used up, as if they had withdrawn from historical reflection. The horizon of the future has now narrowed itself and in doing so has fundamentally changed both the Zeitgeist and politics, at least in Western Europe. The future is occupied with the merely negative“ (2). Equally, Fredric Jameson speaks of “the Utopian problem,” the necessity of introducing a “vision of the future that grips the masses” (“Mapping” 355). The triumphant march of the post-apocalyptic narrative, and the mingling of dystopian and apocalyptic imagery and themes in novels such as Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003), Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway (2017), Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Science in The Capital” novels (2004–2007), or Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009) represent a case in point. Our imagination is able to conceive of the end of the world, the total destruction of the human race, yet not of an alternative to free market capitalism. With ideas and developments like universal basic income in their infancy, and alternative communities co-opted by ‘hipsters’ living the ‘Insta-life style,’ this dilemma is likely to continue for some time.8

Under these circumstances, novels in general, and dystopias, struggle to maintain their integrity as channels of criticism. They are always products of a neoliberal market policy and are produced as commodities by publishing houses and marketing departments to satisfy consumer demand for the highly popular dystopian genre. Consequently, the novels cannot occupy the moral high ground per definitionem, usually attributed to external criticism, since they are the product of the very system they seek to criticise. As Mathias Nilges claims in the context of the American novel, for instance, bestsellers are “formally complicit with the logical structures of neoliberal capitalism and free market ideology, [and] appear[…] altogether unable to work through the hegemony of the market” (158). Quoting Walter B. Michaels, he writes that “the American novel today […] is entirely in the grasp of the market” (Nilges 158) and therefore unable to address the real problem, namely “the full subsumption of culture under capital” (ibid.). Echoing Horkheimer and Adorno’s argument on the culture industry from Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Nigels ultimately declares the contemporary novel unfit to address the real issues of our time – the inequalities caused by contemporary neoliberal capitalism. Walter B. Michaels agrees, stating for instance that

the more unjust and unequal American society has become, the more we have heard about how bad, say, the Holocaust was. […] So maybe it’s time to forget about the Holocaust for a while and focus on the free market instead, to stop congratulating ourselves on being against genocide and to start questioning what it means to be for free trade. (“Going Boom”)

Inevitably, these novels are products of the system they want to criticise in the first place and have thus weakened their own position to do so. Subversive fiction must be aware of these limitations and consider them in their own production of literature.