On solidarity (II) -- response to a comment

Nate posted a comment at I cite that I want to respond to here.  Nate says, inter alia:

As much as I like the formulation of solidarity as an event between those who don't (or don't need to? that seems an important difference, somehow, and I'm not clear on which you mean) have anything in common... there's also the matter that there are points and places where solidarity should not be extended, or should be only in the most limited of senses (such that extension or full extension of solidarity would be something of a mockery of the word). At a basic level, I mean solidarity with bosses. Class struggle involves hurting people at least emotionally (and more so if we look at a number of historical examples - I hope I don't sound like I'm romanticizing violence against people, I think that's actually quite ill advised). Picket lines hurt bosses profits, and some frontline managers almost always get fired in a successful union drive, in retaliation for not busting the union and because managers don't have (m)any protect labor rights so they make good sacrifices to appease upper management's anger. Of course, you could say that no schema of solidarity (certainly not one I can indicate) contains a decision procedure for who solidarity happens to/between and who it doesn't happen to/between, and I'd have to agree. But solidarity with some minimal limits of belonging does provide at least a very rudimentary compass for that, which the sort of infinite/limitless solidarity with those whom one has nothing in common with doesn't seem to offer or even really to allow the existence of.

I disagree -- let me see if I can articulate this.  "Solidarity" in the fundamental sense that I'm trying to develop is in fact inherently unstable, that is, lacking in the kind of limits that Nate (and many others) think are necessary for political action.  That's because although solidarity qua event is a response to singularity -- and therefore "limited" in the extreme -- Nate is correct that there are no theoretical (or ethical) limits on  the singularities (the "faces") to whom one turns one's own face.   But that doesn't render politics impossible (something that I think is a concern of Jodi's as well), it simply humanizes it, if I can use that word.  Again, there's a level-of-analysis elision that seems virtually impossible to avoid with Levinas (a sign, I think, of the genuine novelty and brilliance of his thought) that creates this confusion.  Let me put it this way, using a Levinasian example.  Levinas says, "Thou shalt not kill" is an unbreakable injunction; that is, one quite literally cannot "kill" the Other whom one encounters in the face-to-face.  Yeeesh, you say, how  am I supposed to go about my day-to-day political activities without "killing" at least some Others, if not literally then at least figuratively or indirectly (by causing a front-line manager to get fired, lose her health insurance, fail to get needed medical attention, and die, to use Nate's example)?  The answer is that the unbreakable injunction "thou shalt not kill" is for Levinas an injunction at the (ontologically constitutive, albeit) level of the ethical debt to the Other.   That is, the thing that one cannot kill is one's pre-existing debt (or responsibility) to that Other.  What does this mean in terms of Nate's example?  It does not mean that you should refuse to join the strike because the event of your solidarity with the striking Other will have lethal consequences for some Third (the front-line manager).  In fact every act of solidarity with an Other has quite literally lethal consequences for some Third, in fact a multitude of Thirds (Derrida has some really beautiful and passionate lines on this in The Gift of Death).  What it means is that your act of solidarity with the striking Other cannot and does not relieve you from your ethical responsibility for all those other Thirds, including the  front-line manager.  It precludes you from relying on the political calculation -- "the achievement of the greater good for the union members justifies the sacrifice of certain lackeys of the bosses" -- as a mode of dismissal of that responsibility. 

Does this induce political paralysis?  It does not and cannot, it is never a matter of "choice," of "choosing" to act politically or not.  Every day in every way, everything you do (and every single thing you don't do), is a political action in this sense that, again, to put it hyperbolically but not unrealistically, sacrifices a multitude of Thirds to the (fundamentally political, whether one is conscious of this or not) calculation of the moment.  I get out of bed.  Should I immediately go to my check book and contribute to Oxfam to save the life of three malnourished children?  No, I need to eat breakfast and get to work . . . .  There is no escape from this, and so "political paralysis" is no more an option than eliminating one's ethical responsibility for all those Thirds that you've just killed by deciding to eat breakfast.  That's finitude; politics is not a choice, and what Levinas tells us, I think importantly, is that ethical responsibility isn't a choice either.

So what then?  Given that politics is inevitable and responsibility for that politics is inevitable, where does that go?  What difference do those inevitabilities matter at the level of the political decision?  Two not entirely consistent responses to this:  Initially, this (let's call it) politico-ethical condition of existence determines nothing, at least in terms of normative guidance to the content of the political act (this is the point of Derrida's discussion of the unbridgable split between the ethical injunction to act politically and the indeterminate content of the responsive political act in Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas).  But secondarily, it seems to me, this ethical origin of the political (to give it another name) has at least two consequences.  The first is at the level of discourse about and justifications for the political act.  It seems to me that the underogable responsibilty for the Third puts significant limits on how one talks about one's political opponents -- de-humanization, it seems to me, is right out, inconsistent with that responsibility.  That, I think, is very important in its own right.  But I also think that that limitation will have implications -- indeterminate ones, but implications nonetheless -- for the content of the political calculation itself.  The underogable fact of this responsibility for the Third can -- in fact, arguably must -- itself become a factor to be weighed in the political calculation, and that will -- usually, maybe not always (I don't think you can rule out in advance the possibility that war will sometimes be necessary even from an ethical perspective) -- eliminate certain political options (to take an easy example, the mass slaughter of one's political opponents).  So even at the level of the content of the political decision, "Levinasian solidarity" affects one's political decision.   (This, by the way, is an example of what I mean by the ethical "suffusing" the political calculation in earlier posts here and here.)

One final point and then I'll stop.  Nate says, "solidarity with some minimal limits of belonging does provide at least a very rudimentary compass for that, which the sort of infinite/limitless solidarity with those whom one has nothing in common with doesn't seem to offer or even really to allow the existence of."  Maybe, but hasn't that "infinite/limitless solidarity with those with whom one has nothing in common" in fact always determined the teleology of the great "solidarity-based" political movements, from salvationist religious discourses to Marxism?  Doesn't the Internationale (I think these are words; I ought to know this . . .) look forward to the day when the "working class becomes the human race"?  It seems to me that one of the great advantages of the Levinasian (especially in this regard I should say "Derridian/Levinasian") notion of solidarity is that it provides a way of articulating that traditional teleology with political action in a way that avoids the rather historically disastrous consequences of standing by that teleology as such.  And since this thread is partly about Agamben, too, I should say that one of the most admirable things about  Agamben's onto-linguistic utopian politics of "life itself" is the way it tries to preserve the utopian element of the traditional political teleologies while ridding them of the elements that have led to their demise in premature declarations of their achievement (and the resultant slaughter of those who don't agree or whose existence provides evidence to the contrary).  While I think that Agamben's effort to save the form of the political embodied in these traditional teleologies ultimately fails as a basis for politics, I think he comes closer to succeeding at this level -- that is, at eliminating those lingering elements that allow for the perversions of Stalinism, the Crusades, and so on -- better than anyone else.

Comments

[Dan]

Adam, as I posted over at Jodi’s this is an immensely interesting discussion and I really appreciate your ongoing comments. You have really helped be with some of the nuances of Levinas’ politics. As someone who comes from a politics background, these discussions are really helpful. As such I was just wondering if you (or someone else) could clarify some questions that I had based on your reply here.

These are largely a levels-of-analysis issues which you have pointed to above. If the ethical responsibility to the Other and all the Thirds relies heavily on the contingent circumstances (and the limits that you outlined) that stem from Levinasian ethics, I am just curious as to where ‘the political’ fits into this understanding. I personally agree with the inescapable consequences that stem from the tedious and banal day-to-day choices, but I wonder what that means when we ignore or reject those consequences. In other words, if I go about my day as a good consumer and remain ethically bound whether or not I choose to do so, what remains of the political? Thus while I agree entirely that the inescapable ethical responsibility cannot be sacrificed by a choice or political calculation, I am less clear about what constitutes a politics.

In a similar vein, while I agree that the ethical call does not need to induce a political paralysis, does the bounding of discourse and politics with a responsibility to a Third not just produce a foreclosure that bears little specific action? I am not trying to be dogmatic and repressive with my conception of the political, because I think those boundaries are really significant, but I can’t help but wonder about their markedly liberal (and I don’t mean this is the pop-culture/right-wing/fox/cnn/newsy way) in the establishment of a space – albeit contingent – where the politics can take place? It might be that your references to Agamben here were your responses to this, and I appreciate your critique of the teleological basis of historical Marxist and religious conflict, but does this solidarity become a politics? I don’t know if this is semantics, and I have similar issues with ‘collectivity’ for attempting to develop out of a coming-togeather that limits its sociality; or tendency to reject the connections to existing practices of resistance (but it does retain a rejection of politics as ‘choice’). I suspect this has to do with the singularity and the event that I am unable to grasp at the moment, and perhaps I am blurring my levels of analysis, but I genuinely think that Levinas is important for these discussions and perhaps it is the lack of a specific moment that is creating my confusion.

In either case, thanks for the great posts,
Dan

[Nate]

hi Adam,
Thanks very much for this. It clears up a lot. At the ethical level, I'm in complete agreement. I like this example as it's quite clear (though it carries a bit of a risk of romanticizing in its overblown-ness):
if the Nazis come to your door to take away the family member/neighbor/stranger at the dinner table, the most ethical option may be to throw the pot of boiling soup in their faces. That doesn't mean it's not a gross violation of someone's humanity (and some of these kinds of acts need to be dealt with in the aftermath of activities if they're not to poison the new condition).

I'm not sure what to do with any of this, though. Given the infinite nature of the debt to the other, my sense is that infinities are not comparable but equivalent (in their all being beyond measurability or something), such that it doesn't help calculate directions of activities and so forth. It can be an underlying motivation, and probably should be, but I don't see how it could help one in making decisions or plans beyond a sort of general reminder to try to be in line with one's ethics as best as one is able. I'm willing to have my mind changed, of course, and I may be unfairly asking something that this perspective isn't set up to answer.

Three more short things: First, I didn't mean to say that the kinds of limits I was suggesting may be necessary were necessary for politics, or even for class politics. They strike me as requisite for my politics, the type or mode of class politics I think is a good idea. I don't think politics as such is reducible to my politics. (That said, I do think my ideas are better, which is why I hold them.)

Second, re: Agamben, I'm glad you said that. One of things that I thought of during this is Agamben's description of what he wants, the 'community without conditions of belonging'. That strikes me as uninstantiable, as the community would require the minimal condition that no member of the community would possess both the power and the inclination to impose conditions of belonging, other than that minimal one, on others. To my mind this is an ineliminable political problem.

Third, re: the Internationale, it's "unite the human race" but that doesn't really matter - the idea of the working class as the new humanity is to my mind predicated on the elimination of the owning class (to be clear, of the social relations of owning/employing - and thereby also of employed - class). This can't be accomplished, as you I think implicitly agreed, a minimal violence (at the least, a stern talking to, I suspect stronger activities like, strikes at the least) to anyone who might seek to retain those social relations. Oh wait, now I've confused myself - am I agreeing with you on this point? You're saying this is what happens but the Levinasian ethical perspective can temper that? If so, agreed, but with the caveat that tempering does not tell us the contents of the (decisions made by) tempered perspective.

take care,
Nate

ps- I just had a thought, which I'd like to hear your thoughts on. Could this debt to the other be made part of/ground for (mode of convincing someone to make) a declaration of equality like those posited by Badiou and Ranciere, political equality as axiomatic point of departure? If so then I'm more sold on it than I was before.

[Jodi]

Hi Adam,
Interesting post--it's becoming clearer to me that I don't know enough about Levinas and Derrida to be a terribly interesting interlocutor on these matter. Yet, what I find absolutely fascinating and helpful is the ways that the more you explain about Levinas, the more divergent appear our approaches to solidarity. So, I've made another longer response over at I Cite.