Читать книгу Absent Rebels: Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dystopian Fiction - Annika Gonnermann - Страница 17

Contemporary dystopias and changes in their style and structure make sense when read within the tradition of immanent criticism, employing this method as the narrative modus operandi. Externally, they seem to agree with Tom Boland, who laments the ineffectiveness of external criticism: “perhaps the remedy to the crisis of critique is not more or better or purified critique, but other ways of thinking” (“Cacophony”). As previously stated, immanent criticism is neither a straightforward matter of imposing one world view onto another (external criticism), nor is its aim to recover the underlying values and morals (internal criticism). In the tradition of the Critical Theory as brought forth by the Frankfurt School, immanent criticism is essentially diagnostic in nature: it requires neither an Archimedean point of reference outside a system, nor a direct recipient. Its transformational potential aims to solve the immanent paradoxes by making them comprehensible in the first place, rather than supplanting one system with another. It does not claim to know a solution to the problem but is restrains itself to analysing the systemic inconsistencies, and to develop reforms based on what it has identified as defective.

In order to analyse said systemic inconsistencies, immanent criticism always relies on a theoretical framework necessary for illuminating the immanent contradictions of the respective object of critique. This theoretical framework is needed to trace the connections between two seemingly unrelated phenomena, which – upon closer inspection – are co-dependant and arise out of the same structures. As has already been mentioned, capitalism’s destructive attitude towards families and its simultaneous reliance on family structures to produce future workers and to create and maintain a recreative safe place for stressed workers to relax is a case in point (Fisher 32f.). Another is neoliberalism’s claim to be the system which produces most freedom for everyone. The free market stylises itself to be the one social order, which has fulfilled the promises of civilisation, having created free individuals that answer to no higher authority than to themselves (cf. Shonkwiler and La Berge 4f.). Shunning any form of coercion and force (e.g. in the shape of enforced labour, cf. Dörre 23),1 neoliberalism seems to achieve freedom to its “highest possible extent” (E. Olin Wright 50). As Serena Olsaretti paraphrases the advocates of the free market, “since the free market hosts only mutually advantageous and therefore non-coercive transactions, it is a realm in which freedom and voluntariness alike are respected” (141f.). Consequently, as Johansen and Karl argue, neoliberalist thought claims to achieve as much ‘freedom’ for the individual as possible:

[N]eoliberalism [is] an economic dogma and political rationale that holds that free markets and competition will produce the best outcomes for the most people. This tenet often presumes and produces scenarios of radical individualism and self-proprietorship that are predicated upon this competitive ethos. (3)

In sum, neoliberalist rhetoric “with its foundational emphasis upon individual freedoms” (Harvey, Neoliberalism 41) uses freedom as key terminology, advocating neoliberalism as the prime engine of individual freedom and responsibility. The “assumption that individual freedoms are guaranteed by freedom of the market and of trade is a cardinal feature of neoliberal thinking” (ibid. 7), seemingly making the system more appealing. As Zygmunt Bauman writes, the individual is made “responsible for his or her actions” (Freedom 3) in modern Western free market capitalism, resulting in the individual obtaining “the whole and undivided responsibility for the action” (ibid. 2f.). Indeed, the very name “free market” conjures associations with opportunity, choice, and free will, culminating in the claim that “the market implies not compulsion but freedom” (Wood, Origin 6). This notion of neoliberal capitalism, as the “guardian of liberty” (Metcalf) or as “perfection of freedom” (ibid. 16), is based on a process that Stuart Hall and Alan O’Shea have termed “individualisation of everyone” (12).

Although advocates of neoliberalism argue that everyone “who lives in [a] neoliberal society is free to determine their fate” (Fevre 13; cf. also Mirowski 100), reality has proven the promises made to be deceptive at best and false at worst. Therefore the discussions around freedom within neoliberalism move centre stage, ever since Karl Marx argued in Das Kapital (1867) that “one of the historical conditions for capital’s eventual hegemony […] is the generalized appearance that market exchange, as a formal and hence non-coercive social mechanism, replaces direct coercive control (founded on religious bond, feudal obligation, or absolutist prerogative)” (Best 505), fostering the illusion of autonomous, ‘free’ individuals. As David Harvey writes, “[p]olitical struggles over the proper conception of rights, and even of freedom itself, move centre-stage in the search for alternatives” to neoliberal capitalism (Neoliberalism 182). Continuing, he states that neoliberalism has put on “a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights” (ibid. 119). These words, however, only “hide the grim realities of the restoration of reconstitution of naked class power” (ibid.) within a neoliberalist context; the critics of neoliberalism indicate that neoliberal individualism “condemns them to less and less freedom, even as common knowledge declares it self-evident that their fates are in their own hands” (Fevre 13f.). Harvey continues by providing examples from Britain and the United States where the neoliberal system is much more prominent than in parts of Europe.

This obvious paradox (the insistence on freedom, while simultaneously producing conditions that systematically undermine the possibility to lead a free life) is a possible leverage point of immanent criticism. Its argumentative cogency arises from the fact that neoliberalism is a construct full of such inherent contradictions, creating mutually exclusive demands that make it impossible to sustain both at any given time. Immanent criticism is the only form of critique able to visualise the connections between the freedom-focused agenda of neoliberalism and the coercive structures in which individuals find themselves – despite the absence of totalitarian leaders, and without resorting to notions of false consciousness.2 Exemplifying the paradigmatic merit of literature, dystopian fiction in combination with immanent criticism offers a mode of reading that disturbs the common sense offered by neoliberalism. By applying immanent criticism these novels demystify the claims of neoliberalism, showing that this form of life can neither fulfil its promises nor provide a sustainable path for the development of future generations. They thus deconstruct the claims brought forth by neoliberalist advocates, and allow us to see the inherent contradiction within the system. It may pass off as freedom as it seems uncoupled to the juridico-political notion of power, however it produces a yet more complex web of power difficult to define theoretically. In the words of Hannah Arendt, “the rule by nobody is not necessarily no-rule; it may indeed, under certain circumstances, even turn out to be one of its cruellest and most tyrannical versions” (Condition 40).

Jaeggi maintains that in order to function properly, immanent criticism relies on the support of a theory-based reading of the criticised. In this case, immanent criticism “does not simply extract the ideal from reality [but] combines the idea that the standard of criticism resides in the thing itself with the claim to provide a context-transcending critique” (Critique 191). The theoretical framework promising to be most illustrative in this context is the theory of power developed by David Grewal in his Network Power (2008), an investigation into the nature of power in the 21^st century. This study adds a new layer to the ancient discourse about the characteristics of power, which comes in many guises: the most typical form is what Michel Foucault refers to as “juridico-political model” (cf. Discipline and Punish, 1979). This notion of power as sovereignty dates back to the beginnings of political theory, often associated with Machiavelli, Locke, and Hobbes, who famously identified the Leviathan as the sole pole of power within their respective treatises of political power (cf. King and Kendall 217ff.). This top-down structure conceptualises power as radiating from one centre of (political) authority, and designates power in terms of its influence on others’ behaviour; by way of an example, Agent A imposes her will on Agent B. Foucault correctly asserts that “we have not ceased talking and thinking in terms of [the juridico-political model], [but] we actually live in relations of power that are quite different and that cannot be described properly in its terms” (Grewal 136). In her study How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence (2009), Karen E. Dill argues along the same lines:

When we think about manipulation, we are likely to think of strong-arm techniques: fascist dictators and terrorists manipulate and they do it with an iron fist. Think George Orwell’s Big Brother. Think of the motto of the Borg on TV’s Star Trek: The Next Generation: ‘Resistance is futile.’ Think Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, or the general view Americans had of Russia in the mid-twentieth century. The idea is that we’ll know when people want to manipulate us because they’ll publicly declare their intention or brag about how we’re powerless against their strength. (25)

Dill argues that we still think about manipulation and power “similar to how villains operate in the movies, on television and in video games” (ibid.): those exercising power do so according to Foucault’s juridico-political model in terms of oppression, violence, and threat to life and limb. Equally, King and Kendall also consider the Hobbesian notion of sovereign power as “the most fundamental form of power, a notion from which we have (for better or worse) yet to escape” (219). Sovereignty, then, is still the most ‘popular’ concept of power – not only in classical dystopian writing but also in the everyday usage of the term – that dominates our understanding of the concept, although contemporary forms of power have long since taken other forms.

David Grewal no longer defines power as influence but reconceptualises it as a peculiar mixture of individual agency and systemic coercion,3 captured within the term ‘network power.’ Grewal’s theory supports the understanding that power must not necessarily be conceived of in oppressive, coercive, and totalitarian terms but that the absence of voluntariness suffices as evidence of coercive structures. To formulate his argument, Grewal introduces the notion of standard, a “shared norm or practice” that facilitates cooperation among members of a network (21). He puts forward that individuals adopt a given standard whenever they hope for personal advantages in entering a network, providing examples ranging from linguistics to economics. Conceptualising English as a linguistic network, he argues convincingly that a desire to learn a new language, particularly the world’s number one trade and business language, is motivated by the wish to gain access to this community (cf. ibid. 74): “the French Canadians in Quebec are under pressure to learn English in order to benefit from national economic and political life, which occurs in predominantly Anglophone setting” (ibid. 71), although they might have preferred to enhance their competence in French or any other language. Whoever wishes to participate in the standard of English – a standard with “great network power” (ibid. 75) – must study English vocabulary and thus devote time and energy, which can no longer be invested in learning Hungarian, for instance. The same mechanisms are detectable in economic spheres, particularly money and the gold standard, which “was required for access to the [imperial] British market,” thus constituting a barrier to anyone wanting to engage in trade at the middle of the 19^th century (ibid. 97; cf. also Metcalf). In the first part of his analysis, Grewal has thus shown how self-reliant, rational individuals might perceive of the idea of switching to a certain standard without external coercion or threat to life and liberty. On the contrary, the switch to a dominant network seems to bring only advantages.

Broadly speaking, a standard is a neutral entity on display, an offer to autonomous agents who aim at maximising their chances in life. These standards can spread, all “propelled by people’s desire for access to members of a network” (Grewal 23). Network power is “the amount of real and potential influence exerted by that standard in relation to others” (J. Ai-Etsuko Brown, emphasis in the original), meaning the appeal of a given standard to be adopted by initially free individuals in the hope of obtaining previously unattainable advantages in whatever aspect of life. Ultimately, as Grewal concludes, “the growth of a network is driven by the active choices of individuals rather than by their passive acceptance of something external to them” (26, emphasis in the original) – choices that are neither tainted by a false consciousness nor the product of coercion (cf. ibid. 128). Grewal makes it absolutely clear that “[i]t is our choices that lie behind network power, and nothing beyond or outside them” (26). While this first step in the development is often an autonomous decision by a rational individual, the following step conflates the notions of coercion and freedom considerably.

We can call a standard whose invitation has been taken up by everyone a universal standard. The power of a standard thus follows a peculiar trajectory on its way to universality: starting from reason [i.e. intrinsic or extrinsic motivation], force [i.e. avoidance of direct and indirect costs], or chance [i.e. accidental convergence], it grows in relation to the size of its network – even at an increasing rate – up to the point at which it replaces all competing standards. (ibid. 42, emphasis in the original)

Once a standard has become a ‘universal standard,’ “[c]hoices made in such conditions can become more and more constrained by the lack of acceptable alternatives until they prove formally free but substantially coerced” (ibid. 106). It becomes ever more costly for individuals to actively refuse a given standard, until it might actually be conceived as impossible, leaving them with no choice but to ‘choose’ the dominant standard no matter how disadvantageous: “[a]s a dominant network moves towards universality, the costs of deviation from the to-be-universal standard increase until not being a member of the universal network is equivalent to social exclusion in the domain governed by that standard” (ibid. 107). Fateful moments are times when events come together in such a way that an individual stands, as it were, at a crossroads in his existence; or where a person learns of information with fateful consequences. Fateful moments include the decision to get married, the wedding ceremony itself – and, later, perhaps the decision to separate and the actual parting. […] There are, of course, fateful moments in the history of collectivities as well as in the lives of individuals. They are phases at which things are wrenched out of joint, where a given state of affairs is suddenly altered by a few key events. (113)

Universal standards may thereby eliminate the opportunity to choose due to their tendency to reduce choices to non-choices. Without active coercion, people can find themselves in situations where they have no choice left but to accept a dominant standard – due to past choices they and others have made. This is a phenomenon captured with the term of ‘path dependence,’ an idea that boils down to “history matters,” that is to say, “where we are today is a result of what has happened in the past” (Liebowitz and Margolis, “Dependence” 17). This helps to explain the phenomenon “that we are pulled by our choices along avenues smoothed by the prior choices of others” (Grewal 140) and are thus shaped by powers beyond control.4

Such a standard can be found within a neoliberalist world order. David Harvey describes the effect of network power by tracing the history of neoliberalism itself: “[t]he general progress of neoliberalization has therefore been increasingly impelled through mechanisms of uneven geographical developments. Successful states or regions put pressure on everyone else to follow their lead” (Neoliberalism 87, emphasis in the original). His ‘creeping neoliberalization’ can thus be seen as a slow erosion of impediments of neoliberalism (e.g. trade barriers), forcing other countries to adopt the standard even if they originally opposed it (cf. ibid. 89, 93). Manuel Castells, too, comments on the network structure of neoliberalism, calling it “self-expanding logic”: “the more countries join the club, the more difficult it is for those outside the liberal economic regime to go their own way. So, in the last resort, locked-in trajectories of integration in the global economy, […] amplify the network, […] while increasing the costs of being outside the network” (142).

Grewal argues that neoliberalism and network power are a match made in heaven. They form a unique blend of coercion and reason, yet seemingly favour freedom (cf. 252):

Neoliberalism […] privileges relations of sociability and mistrusts those of sovereignty, since (on its own accord at least) the latter are distorted and corrupted by power in a way the former are not. Instead, neoliberals place their faith in those activities that people undertake as individuals choosing to participate in broader structures of social life. (ibid. 247)

But while neoliberalism and its defendants like to think of themselves as formally free, they are bound by the principle of network power – or in the words of Karl Marx, “[t]he social division of labour entails that each free-worker is inserted into, and thus becomes entirely dependent upon, a system of production that vastly exceeds him/her, geographically, temporally, spatially, and so on” (Best 501). The fact that neoliberalism does not originate from a single centre of authority – and thus does not force its participants like totalitarianism would do – does not mean that it is free from oppression. On the contrary, globalization and neoliberalism prove to be “coercive or entrapping even if [they are] entirely driven by free, choosing people who create the conditions under which their agency gradually loses the power to later the circumstances” (Grewal 56). Grewal furthermore argues that “[m]arket relations offer obvious examples of this domination of formally free persons obligated not by direct authority but by interest” (118) – thus creating a potentially threatening system disadvantageous for themselves, which once created is difficult to be tamed by individual decisions any longer.

Following Serena Olsaretti, Grewal introduces a necessary differentiation between free and voluntary choices, thereby arguing that what appears to be a free choice due to the absence of external coercion, must not be confused with voluntariness. To say it in the words of Serena Olsaretti, “[f]reedom does not guarantee voluntariness” (141). Grewal goes on to argue that

[i]n liberal political thought, particularly of libertarian bent, freedom is often identified with an individual’s freedom to make choices for herself. In this identification lies a truth and a danger. The truth is that freedom may sometimes be manifested in the choices a person makes. The danger is that the simple act of choosing does not signify anything until we specify the domain of options over which someone chooses. (108)

A precondition for voluntariness is ultimately the availability of two equally desirable options, not just the mere act of choosing. To illustrate his point, Grewal quotes from Serena Olsaretti’s Liberty, Desert and the Market (2004), which tells the story of a girl, Daisy, wishing to leave her hometown, a desolate city in the middle of a desert. While nobody actively forces her to stay there, Daisy knows that she has no means to cross the desert alive. Thus, “[h]er choice to remain in the city is not a voluntary one” (Olsaretti 138; cf. Grewal 109f.), although she is formally free to leave. Olsaretti’s desert city is thus a good example for a situation “that is in some sense coerced even while being formally free” (Grewal 112), since there are no other acceptable options. We cannot, however, speak of a voluntary decision, as Daisy wants to leave.

This example stands in opposition to Olsaretti’s second thought experiment, the “Wired City”: “Wendy is the inhabitant of a city fenced with electrifying wire, which she is unfree to leave. However, her city has all that anyone could ever ask for, and Wendy, who is perfectly happy with her life there, has no wish of leaving it. She voluntarily remains in her city” (138; cf. Grewal 110). The difference between Daisy and Wendy is the notion of voluntariness. Both girls are theoretically unable to leave their respective cities, yet while one cannot do so due to the desert, the other does not want to, although one might presume that she lives in a somewhat repressive community. Therefore, a “choice is voluntary if and only if it is not made because there is no acceptable alternative to it” (Olsaretti 139, emphasis in the original). Tellingly, Olsaretti’s first example works without the notion of an oppressive authoritarian leader, who forces their subjects to remain in the city. Wendy’s decision to stay in the city is a form of coercion despite the fact that there is no detectable form of juridico-political power. Following Gerald Cohen then, Olsaretti concludes that a person can only be considered to have made a free choice, “if he has a reasonable or acceptable alternative course” (Cohen quoted in Grewal 109); anything else should be considered unfreedom in the sense of non-voluntariness. When Darko Suvin asserts that “free choice [must be the] guide of any society worth living in” (“Bust”), he actually demands the right to make voluntary choices between two equally desirable options.

Referring to the writings of thinkers like Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and others (cf. 131ff.), Grewal’s network power can thus be seen as an addition to the macro-theory of structuration, “an integrated account of agency and structure” (55). As a result of neither expressing preferences for one structure over the actors nor the other way round, the theory of structuration (a term introduced by Anthony Giddens) helps to “move beyond the dichotomy that supposes either that we are masters of our contexts or that our contexts must master us” (Grewal 56). It thus provides an explanation of how power prunes freedom, even if no identifiable actor, i.e. a totalitarian leader, actively deprives people of their rights and choices. With the notion of network power, “direct coercion as such is not necessary” (ibid. 121). Rather it works “through the simultaneous promise of belonging to a dominant network and the threat of social exclusion, which together give a network influence over the actions of individuals” (ibid. 122). This type of power then thrives off the all-too human wish to belong to a community, fostered by the fear of expulsion and the unavailability of alternatives after enough people have joined the dominant network:

[N]etwork power exists in all the ways people are drawn to each other, wanting to gain access to cooperative activities with other people. It is relational: we cannot even talk about this power outside the multiple networks of individuals whose choices are shaped by allegiance to a common standard. It is immanent: not an abstract force, but inherent in our mediating social institutions. (ibid. 140)

To summarise, the analytics of network power show how aggregated individual choices can come to constitute a form of decentralised power immanent in social relations – and all without the command of a central authority (cf. ibid. 139). While “many theorists would prefer to attribute all relevant causation to identifiable individuals and their actions alone” (ibid. 127), Grewal opts for the middle line between individual responsibility and systemic coercion, thus paving the way for literature to escape the notion of methodological individualism. Grewal argues that “[i]t is possible to articulate a systemic condition of power without attributing ultimate agency to anything other than interdependent human choices and actions” (ibid. 129, emphasis in the original). In the context of neoliberalism this theory explains why “the blame for [the] failure [to abolish capitalism] does not lie with the subjects of contemporary capitalist societies, even though the responsibility for social change can lie nowhere else (that is, with ‘us’)” (Best 499). In fact, the people suffering from certain standards might actually be the origin and stabiliser of the system in the first place; we must acknowledge that “the structure, in this case, is a product of ‘our’ collective agency” (ibid.).5 Describing a vicious circle of support and suffering, Grewal’s approach visualises the neoliberal mechanisms of power: while neoliberalism claims to be free of coercion and oppression (in the West)6, its proponents constantly conflate the notions of freedom and voluntariness. He and Olsaretti argue convincingly that freedom alone does not suffice; it is voluntariness for which we should strive. His theory thus becomes the theoretical framework through which contemporary dystopian fiction can critically assess neoliberalism, showcasing its inherent misconception of ‘freedom.’