under the banner of "crisis": citizenry or the consumerist logos?
For a society that champions its Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a paramount declaration of shared values, principles and prerogatives, it is problematic that the rights of its consumers seem to garner greater value than the freedoms of its citizens. In the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the word “freedom” correlates to matters of the mind, namely – freedom of conscience, of religion, of thought, belief, expression, communication, peaceful assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of association. These are the foundational components of a participatory democracy which, according to Ivan Illich (1978: 3), is beginning to erode under the forces of unchecked, accelerating technologic expansion. Writing from over a quarter of a century ago, Ivan Illich voiced concerns about a capitalist consumer culture that was losing faith in the “political power of the feet and of the tongue” (9). The result of this, he worried, would be a topsy-turvy technocracy, in which the individual “wants a better product rather than freedom from servitude to it” (10).
Illich’s prophetic concerns, articulated in his article “Energy and Equity,” are premised on a thesis of velocity and acceleration, a thesis which is more relevant today than it was a quarter of a century ago. “High speed,” he asserts, “is the critical factor which makes transportation socially destructive” (6). Illich’s elaboration of this claim is as articulate as it is expansive, and while I cannot offer a comprehensive summary of it here, I hope to apply my own interpretation to his theory.
Whereas Illich commits his thesis of speed to the context of traffic, I am interested in understanding how the implications of his discussion are relevant to an entire rationale that dictates the way we have come to understand and correlate notions related to “progress.” Words like “rationality,” “progress” and “growth” have not only become unmoored from their historic reference to general prosperity, the common good, and the common wealth, but have become synonymous in a problematic process of semantic and ideologic dissolution, the implications of which are dire and worth expounding.
I would like to explore these implications by making a drastic cross-disciplinary leap. By situating the process of terminological dissolution within the narrative context of classical and comparative literature, the relationship between dissolution and crisis can be seen as profoundly causal. Consider, for example, the tragic hero, Hamlet. His is a world where the boundaries that separate those fundamental differences upon which values, morals, and social and political systems are precariously but profoundly dependent have been rapidly corrupted, blurred and abandoned. Take for example the murder of Hamlet’s father by his own brother, Claudius. This intolerable act of regicide/fratricide is ironed over by the new powers-that-be in a speedblur of “efficiency,” “speed” and “progress.” Hamlet’s morbid despair is seen by the Court as a revolt against the rational progression of aristocratic succession, of “nature,” and of the narrative structure itself. These so-called rational adults in Hamlet’s world have distorted and (con)fused their capacity for reason with the impulsiveness of their desire. In doing so, they generate the damning psychic conditions which lead to Hamlet’s internal “crisis.” The real tragedy is that Hamlet’s crisis is diagnosed by an illegitimate power elite as a subjective, personal malady in need of a cure, rather than a reaction to the repugnant conditions that generated it.
I see this narrative as a microcosmic parallel to a much broader, much more complicated relationship between speed, rationality, desire, and crisis, one which Illich is criticizing in “Energy and Equity.” In the same way that the adults in “Hamlet” conceal the wreckage of a socio-political order that has been unraveled by their own corruption, hypocrisy and unchecked libidinal desire by focusing on Hamlet’s internal crisis, so too is the “energy crisis” typified with a “euphemistic term [which] conceals a contradiction and consecrates an illusion” (Illich, 2). In other words, the declaration of an “energy crisis” functions essentially as a mechanism of denial: mindless and indulgent habits of consumption go unchecked, uninterrupted, and uncontested in a libidinal economy, while a looming “energy crisis” legitimates rampant credit expansion, unsustainable urban and rural land-use patterns, exploitative markets for fuel, and the list goes on (see O’Connor, 243). As Illich puts it, “North American and [M]exican ideologues put the label of ‘energy crisis’ on their frustration, and both countries are blinded to the fact that the threat of social breakdown is due…to the attempt of industries to gorge society with energy quanta that inevitably degrade, deprive, and frustrate most people” (4). I suspect that it is because we continually fail (either out of learned or intentional ignorance) to distinguish between loaded semantic differences that we struggle to openly and critically confront the conditions that generate our real crisis: the simultaneous abandonment of hope for freedom as citizens and submission to the “iron cage” of the consumerist logos.
When Illich advocates for the kind of “technological maturity” that “permits a variety of political choices and cultures,” (5) he is also implicitly invoking the foundational values and principles upheld in the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. The social ills generated by uncurbed indulgence and submission to the “pleasure principle,” as it is termed in literature studies, could be checked by the decelerating processes of reason, thought, and conscience. Or, in the contextual terms of energy politics, the unabated growth of energy consumption could be countered through conscientious recognition and acceptance of a “socially critical threshold of…energy quantum” (Illich, 22). A society that harbours such a deep aversion to the notion of limits confines itself to a fate of maddening insatiability, while exporting the unlivable conditions of real crisis to other localities within the global network of unequal exchange. The political ideals of a participatory democracy – ideals which we claim are worthy of fighting for – cannot keep up with the unfettered acceleration of a burgeoning technocratic socio-political landscape. Only by reclaiming our freedoms as expressive, communicative, thoughtful and conscientious citizens can we hope to salvage the ideals of a truly progressive and prospering participatory democracy.
References:
Ivan Illich, “Energy and Equity” from Toward a History of Needs. New York: Pantheon, 1978.
James O’Connor, “Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible?” and “The Second Contradiction of Capitalism” from Natural Causes. New York and London: Guildford Press, 1998.
November 30, 2010 1 Comment
Confronting semantic emptiness – "prosperity" and the power of the "individual" (CR #2)
It is striking to me that Tim Jackson shows no hesitancy interrogating the semantic emptiness of the word prosperity in his article “Prosperity Without Growth?” As an ‘economics commissioner’ for the Sustainable Development Commission, Jackson is unavoidably caught between the perilous crossfires of economic and environmental discourses. Economists and environmentalists alike carry arsenals of loaded and intentionally nuanced words, which bolster and uphold their various systems of meaning and morality. For this reason, economic and environmental jargons can lean towards essentialism and exclusiveness, leaving little room for comprehensive and participatory dialogue.
There is cause for concern when one of these words or phrases becomes entrenched within a much broader ideological landscape, because the word itself is often stripped of it poignancy. For example, the over/misuse of the word “sustainable” has in a way voided the word of its actual meaning through the exploitation and deployment of its considerable discursive affect. Thus, the word “sustainable” has been increasingly used as a pliant prefix, whose meaning and value bends to the will of its user. By depending on stock phrases and words that have become “cliched” through mindless repetition, communication breaks down. A word turned cliche becomes the most reliable safeguard against the significance of words, the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.
I think Jackson’s article in part wrestles with this taken-for-granted ‘discursive affect’ by interrogating popular conceptions of “prosperity.” Even his title, “Prosperity without growth?” is defensively poised in the gesture of a question. And the intent of his article is just that: to question, to challenge, to penetrate and provoke. In doing so, Jackson creates a crucial space for reexamining the fundaments that inform our capitalistic values and principles.
He begins by inquiring into the cause of the 2008 banking crisis. The undoing of the market, he argues, was “not the result of isolated malpractice or simple failures of vigilance” (6). Rather, the crisis was generated by growth itself; or, more acutely, by the systematic sanctioning of economic growth as the paramount socio-political imperative.
Here, what I find particularly interesting is Jackson’s insistence that it was not “individual greed” but a broader “systematic irresponsibility” that eventually led to the 2008 recession. Though I find much of Jackson’s argument invaluable, this kind of assertion and analysis strikes me as being deeply problematic. Most significantly, it underestimates and devalues the agency of the individual. Erasing the “individual” from a narrative of economic growth, or in any socio-political scenario, is an inherently defeatist gesture. It is precisely this gesture – where the “individual” is severed from the broader architecture of “the system” – that sources a whole range of social ills: irresponsible consumption, apathy, nihilistic disregard for the “other,” and alienation—from labour, from things, from the environment, the community and the self. In other words, placing blame on “the system” essentially voids the significance of the individual.
And this is not Jackson’s aim. I would argue, in fact, that Jackson is intent on fostering a trend of re-empowering the individual with agency and with a sense of purpose in a world so fixated with unfettered economic growth. But I think Jackson is perhaps hesitant to expound his argument in a thesis that deals with the intimate and diminutive scale of the “individual.” Investigations that work on this scale are inevitably “complicated” by the daunting messiness of emotions, morals and ethics. But in the same way that Jackson relies on deconstructing the small-scaled single word (prosperity) to summon information about a society-wide consumerist ethos, Jackson cannot avoid tracing the vastness of “systematic irresponsibility” back to the local scale of “individual greed.” “Systematic irresponsibility” and “individual greed” are mutually engaged in a destructive feedback loop, whereby the one evil is justified and bolstered by the other. That is, greed breeds more greed in a system of unchecked credit expansion; and the expansion of an unstable credit system is “justified” and indeed “necessary” to stimulate consumption growth (and the supposed “prosperity” that comes with it).
Jackson knows that the transition to what he calls a “sustainable economy” can only be achieved by addressing social logic and irresponsibility at all different levels of society, from the vast scale of “the system” to the intimate scale of the “individual.” Even though Jackson’s theoretical ambition prompts him to address the over-arching system of macro economics, his genuine hope for change is invested in the small scale of human-to-human interaction. “To do well,” he argues, is about the “ability to give and receive love, to enjoy the respect of your peers, to contribute useful work, and to have a sense of belonging and trust in the community. In short,” he concludes, “an important component of prosperity is the ability to participate meaningfully in the life of society” (7).
As important as it is to be educated and critical of the economic and political systems that we are inextricably bound within, we cannot forget the importance of seeking out and creating meaning in the often overlooked details of our day-to-day. An important part of this process is being critical of the way our words shape our experience of reality and our ambitious pursuits of happiness. It is in the local, intimate gestures of social interaction that we can hope to discover our real potential to flourish and our real capacity for prosperity.
Reference:
Tim Jackson, “Prosperity without growth? The transition to a sustainable economy”
November 22, 2010 3 Comments
Excess, meet Scarcity. Critical Response #1
Zizek writes that “Power generates its own excess which it then has to annihilate in an operation that imitates what it fights” (27). I think this paradoxical logic offers an interesting point of departure in a discursive discussion of the economic concept of “scarcity.” In “The Second Contradiction of Capitalism,” James O’Connor constructs a poignant critique around the central notion that capital “is its own barrier because of its self-destructive forms of…power… appropriation [and the] capitalization of external nature…” (159). O’Connor advances this notion by suggesting that so-called “natural barriers” are in fact capitalistically produced. In a capitalistic context, the notion of “scarcity” is conveniently translated into economic jargon, where ‘Limits to Growth’ are cast as a necessary evil, over which capital/ism must exercise brute force and declare its anthems of ‘progress,’ ‘efficiency’ and ‘expansion.’
The capitalist obsession with identifying “limits” and “barriers” to growth is, I think, an internal function of capitalism, where “barriers assume the form of economic crisis” – a mess in need of cleaning up. Seen in this way, it is tempting to suggest that the so-called “barriers” of capitalism are in fact that which structures capitalist excess. Put another way, “scarcity” is the phantom-limb of excess, which capital/power/excess is compelled to see as the Other of itself, something which must necessarily be annihilated.
What becomes dangerously problematic here is the failure to recognize “scarcity” as that which resists our immersion in daily reality. More simply stated, we fail to identify ourselves, our excesses, and our greed with the production of “scarcity.” From this perspective, it is not difficult to recognize the extent to which capitalism – as something caught up in this schizoid, annihilative pattern – is inherently crisis-ridden and crisis-dependent. What I find troubling is the potential for a supposed ‘crisis of scarcity’ to be expounded as a scientific absolute, an assertion which effectively disarms the capacity for open discussion and prevents important questions from being asked about destructive patterns of consumption.
Here, I think it is useful and compelling to reference Ivan Illich’s “The Social Construction of Energy,” where he casts the concept of scarcity into the dynamic folds of technologic and discursive history. Illich is interested in the role of words as “verbal symbols,” and focuses largely on the co-dependence and interconnected effects (and affect) of these “verbal symbols” to construct social reality. The significance of historical context in Illich’s argument is essential. The reason for this, Illich contends, is largely because he “discover[ed] in the emergence of this verbal symbol (“energy”) the means by which nature has been interpreted as a domain governed by the assumption of scarcity… Once the universe itself is placed under the regime of scarcity,” Illich continues, “homo is no longer born under the stars but under the axioms of economics” (13). By making a pointed reference to the mid-1800’s “message of spiritual awakening to a cosmos defined by the assumptions of scarcity” (16), I think Illich makes a strong case for recognizing scarcity as inherently economistic and capitalistically constructed. (It is no small coincidence that this “spiritual awakening” coincided with groundbreaking technological advances in the industrial revolution, including the steam engine, the dynamo and and the electric motor, each of which had profound effects on the division of labour and the conceptualization of “energy.”)
For O’Connor, the importance of understanding scarcity as both a political and economic conceptual instrument is advanced in the question: “where does the extra commodity demand that is required to buy the product of surplus labour originate?” Here, O’Connor cleverly and intentionally complicates the notion of “scarcity.” By reversing the base status-quo relationship between supply and demand – where human consumers are defined as “nature’s ever needy clients” (Illich 13) – O’Connor subtly undermines the faulty justifications for capitalistic excess. Simply by asking – where does surplus need come from – O’Connor makes a rhetorical jab at the entire normalized architecture of capitalistic greed and patterns of consumption. Within these patterns of greed and consumption, real needs are supplanted by desire, and the Nature of economics (see Jane Jacobs) as replaced by a libidinally driven economy.
What I have attempted to do in this brief reflection is offer a critical, alternative conceptualization of “scarcity” as the dispossessed product/ion of capitalistic excess. Though there are many important voices and implications missing from this discussion, I think it is important to exercise situating the assumed threat of the ‘crisis of scarcity’ within a larger philosophical and moral framework. In so doing, I aim to open a space in which important interrogations of capitalist consumer excess can be made.
References:
Jacobs, Jane. “The Nature of Economics.” Vintage Canada, 2001.
Illich, Ivan. “The Social Construction of Energy. ” New Geographies (vol 2).
O’Connor, James. “The Second Contradiction of Capitalism.” Natural Causes, New York and London: Guilford Press, 1998.
Zizek, Slavoj. “Welcome to the Desert of the Real.” New York: Verso, 2002.
October 28, 2010 2 Comments