Agamben, Butler, Deleuze, de Man, Derrida, Fukuyama,
Hardt, Negri, Rorty, and Zizek. If you've ever considered endorsing any of these thinkers' views, you might want to read Walter Benn Michaels' latest challenge to contemporary theory and criticism, The Shape of the Signifier (Princeton, 2004). For those unfamiliar with Michaels' writings, he is the one who (with Steven Knapp) wrote the "Against Theory" (1982) essay that argued against the prevailing common wisdom of the day that texts can only mean what the authors intend them to mean.1 This was followed by his equally compelling The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism (1988) and, most recently, Our America (1995). The Shape of the Signifier (hereafter Shape) is a return to the theoretical point of "Against Theory" that ties it into the larger historical and theoretical claim in Our America: a claim against the politics of identity/difference or, as Michaels describes it, "against the idea that the things you do and the beliefs you hold can be justified by a description of who you are." (Shape 10). 1.
Shape is yet another of Michaels 'against' arguments and,
like his colleague and friend Stanley Fish, we might say that Michaels has made a career of making 'against' claims; he is a "dismantler" (Shape, 17) which, he is quick to point out, is different from deconstruction. In fact, Shape is an attempt to do away with deconstruction as a theoretical and political project once and for all and the crystalline logic replete with "if/then" clauses is Michaels' strongest tool in his dismantling endeavors.2 1.
But before we get into the formal argument of the book, a
few words about its range. Michaels has the unique ability to generalize a specific line of thought into a ability to generalize a specific line of thought into a cultural phenomenon so that his engagements with either Orson Scott Card's "Ender" series or Brett Easton Ellis' Glamorama are as relevant and punctual as his engagements with the 'A to Z' Pantheon of critical theorists listed above. Thus, the kinds of problems he sees emerging in the past thirty years in contemporary academic theory are the same kinds of problems emerging in late twentieth century post-apocalyptic science fiction writing. And this is not simply a coincidence: science fiction writing, in the end, is what contemporary political theory has become: 3 "a vision of the future inhabited by people with different bodies rather than different beliefs." (Shape, 171). 1.
Such a vision of different identities rather than
different beliefs is the crux of Michaels polemical point. What Fukuyama and Huntington got right, and what thinkers from Agamben to Zizek share, is a commitment to a world where identity replaces ideology. This deleterious shift, Michaels argues, is what it means to be post-structural. As Fukuyama argued in the infamous "End of History" piece, what ended with 1989 was not so much a political system, but an ideal of social organization. Extending this claim Michaels argues that what ends with the end of history is not simply an ideal of social organization, but the possibility of disagreement itself. This is the promise of our "post-political" era not simply announced by Fukuyama but theorized by post-structural theorists. With the substitution of identity for ideology, there is nothing left over which to argue. We no longer disagree about ideas; we simply see things differently. 1.
Put thusly, the dispute seems trite. But it isn't, as
Michaels' engagement with contemporary theory evinces. The book begins with a discussion of Susan Howe's The Birth Mark and the claim that the materiality of a book matters to its meaning. Howe is merely a straw person to get at the real target of Shape's introduction, de Man's deconstruction and his "material vision"4 approach to reading texts. De Man's literary criticism and its emphasis on polysemy, like Derrida's 'marks' (another target), is committed to the experience of the text rather than its meaning; and this implies a commitment to the subject position of the reader rather than to the interpretation of the text. Thus, Michaels asserts, "readers for whom the same text can have different meanings are not readers same text can have different meanings are not readers who have different beliefs about what the text means; they are readers who have different responses to the text, whatever it means. They do not, that is, have different interpretations of the text, they have different experiences of the text." (Shape, 8) If you're interested in the text's materiality, you find yourself committed to its ontology but also, by way of that ontological commitment, to the subjectivity of the reader. And, if you are thusly committed, then you cannot be an anti-essentialist as de Man and Derrida claim they are. 1.
The difference between experience and interpretation is
the difference between identity and ideology which is the difference between 'difference-as-such' and disagreement. In other words, the theoretical insights of the past forty years have brought us to a point where we cannot disagree with one another in principle because we believe that difference or culture (the material source of difference) matters to who we are. Culture has thus become "the primary technology for disarticulating difference from disagreement" (Shape, 16) and, thanks to thinkers like Rorty and novelists like Orson Scott Card, that has resulted in a way of thinking about politics a political program without political beliefs. This because if we think that identity matters in politics, then our beliefs don't matter and if our beliefs don't matter then the only thing that can matter is the position from which we experience the world. But, if that position is relevant to our way of being, then when we interact with others and they tell us that they see things differently (i.e., the all too common 'that's just my opinion' retort) we cannot be disagreeing with them (or they with us) because all we are doing is asserting different perspectives. At stake in such assertions is not an ideology or a belief but a subject position. And, as any seventeenth century anamorphic painter might tell you, the shifting of perspective might make it so that you see the same painting differently but that doesn't make it so that you disagree with what you previously experienced. 1.
As I suggested in my introductory remarks, these claims
and accusations are not mild. Nor is the ultimate and most startling accusation of the book: that the politics of identity/difference has made it so that, through a series of tactics whereby 'the poor' emerge as an identity category worthy of our admiration, economic inequalities are no longer a problem. "It is hard to see," Michaels longer a problem. "It is hard to see," Michaels off-handedly punctuates, "how appreciating the poor as opposed to, say, eliminating them can count as a contribution toward progressive politics." (Shape, 180) Indeed, for Michaels the failure of the American Left (and we should insist in a way that Michaels doesn't on 'American' as a qualifier) is that it is obsessively interested in a series of liberal issues like gay marriages, racism, etc. while disinterested in the problem of economic inequality. He repeats this accusation in a recent New York Times article on diversity admission policies in today's universities: "Race-based affirmative action," he asserts, "is a kind of collective bribe rich people pay themselves for ignoring economic inequality."5 1.
While engaged in the depths of Shape's argument, I was
vividly reminded of John Goodman's character, Walter Sobchak, in The Big Lebowski. Upon reflecting on the absurd happenings of that day's travails at the bowling alley, which included encounters with nihilists and a disappearing rug, Walter turns to the Dude (Jeff Bridges) and declares: "Say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos." It is perhaps the funniest line of the movie, especially coming from a Vietnam vet, recently converted to Judaism, who won't bowl on the Sabbath; to wit, a character who personifies 'identity.' But it is a line that I think also speaks to the thrust of Michaels' book. Our problem, as Michaels sees it, is the prevalence of nihilism that casts its shadow in academic debates about culture, as well as science fiction novels, the war on terrorism, and university admissions policies. And the extension of this problem, implied and sustained in the claim that postmodern politics is committed to "a political program without political beliefs" (Shape 16), is that we need to rethink our political principles and practices in order to avoid a politics of nihilism. 1.
This, I think, is the force of Michaels' 'against' form of
argumentation I described in my opening remarks. He is not simply a co-author of "Against Theory" the article he is, first and foremost, an 'against theorist;' in Shape Michaels obsessively performs the "taking of a position" not only as an argument against his opponents but also to show what it means to argue. In putting the point thusly I, of course, perpetuate Michaels' principal concern: I substitute an ontology of argument with an ontology of substitute an ontology of argument with an ontology of identity (i.e., Michaels' argument with Michaels, the one who argues). But this may not be entirely off the mark because the one form of ontologizing that Michaels does not examine is the one derived from his own form of argument. 1.
The quotes I enlist in this review are not simply examples
of Michaels' argument, they are exemplary of the style of argumentation Michaels uses. To call him the most analytic of contemporary literary critics is an understatement. Michaels is also the one most committed to refutation through reductio ad absurdum.6 For him there is a compellent 'must' in any claim that takes the claimant down a logical path as rigorous as that of an actuarial table: 'If you say X, then you must also endorse Y, which commits you to Z.' And this, in the end, might be what Shape is all about: a return to the trivium, a lesson in how to argue. 1.
This is both the strength of his intellect and, ultimately,
its limitation. There is an ethos to this form of thinking that insists on the apodictic stature of argument per se so that the moment someone makes any kind of claim, a whole series of consequences must follow that they must, in principle, sustain. Thus when he makes the "implausible (but nonetheless accurate)" suggestion that "if you hold, say, Judith Butler's views on resignification, you will also be required to hold, say, George W. Bush's views on terrorism and, scarier still, if you hold Bush's views on terrorism you must hold Butler's views on resignification" (Shape 13-14) we are left asking: why must we? That is, isn't the compellent force that leads me down that absurd path nothing other than a commitment to the force of absurdity (or, in his terms, "an empire of the senseless" 7 ) that is at the root of what's wrong with theory from A to Z? 1.
What's ultimately interesting about the reductio ad
absurdum as a style of argument is that, like Walter Sobchak's claim about the ethos of National Socialism, it is funny. It is amusing to think of what a person who would retain such a seemingly impossible position as to argue that Butlerian resignification and Bush's war on terrorism are mutually compatible is like, just like it is hilarious to see Walter Sobchak stumble his way through The Big Lebowski. But its humorous tone also helps The Big Lebowski. But its humorous tone also helps mask a commitment to credentialing standards of argument (which I would suspect Michaels would not deny he sustains) that are grounded in the philosophical principle of non-contradiction. And here is where I think things get tricky because, though the apodictic stature of non-contradiction may be a sound theoretical point, it is a difficult (if not absurdly impossible) standard to sustain in the turbulent world of politics. 8 1.
The point I want to make is that though it may be
logically consistent for a Judith Butler to sustain George W.'s war on terrorism, politically it will never happen because no human being qua citizen can be (or should be) expected to commit to that level of consistency. It is a burden of citizenship that no one imagines reasonable, possible, or even desirable because, as sustainers of democratic principles of government, we tend to believe that altering our positions is both a skill and a right worth having. 1.
To put this point in a more direct manner, the force of the
reductio ad absurdum as an apodictic principle of refutation lies in making argument itself a style of political engagement not up for debate. This, in fact, is what Kant means by 'apodictic' and, though Michaels never uses the term in the book, he endorses apodicticity as the ethical basis of his project. Thus, while Michaels laments the transformation of terrorists into criminals, and blames this on the refusal to engage terrorism as an ideology (and hence a belief with which we might argue) "so that the war on terrorism puts into place not only a global citizenship but a global ethics" (Shape 172), what he doesn't lament is his own way of making an ethics of apodictic argument equally globalist. 1.
It is worth noting that at the heart of the identity/ideology
distinction is a methodological distinction between ontology and epistemology. Michaels wants us to eschew ontological forms of argument in favor of epistemological ones: Ideas should be the focus of our analytic attention in matters of political import, not who we are. But in making this theoretical claim, Michaels is also insisting on a more robust ethico-political point: rather than individuals enacting identity, we should become individuals enacting arguments. This version of the Rawlsian "political, not metaphysical" claim is by now Rawlsian "political, not metaphysical" claim is by now familiar to most readers of political theory. However, what remains unfamiliar (because undefended) is why political agents ought not to appeal to their cultural identities, especially when, in times of duress, that is all they have? Or, to re-propose the question, why should individuals be expected to occupy the subject position of 'arguer' and not any other subject position with which they might feel more comfortable? This is simply to suggest that (a) the ability to argue the veracity of one's epistemological position and have that count as a legitimate political act requires the acceptance of a subject position (an identity) grounded in a post-Enlightenment culture of liberal proceduralism and (b) in politics, identities matter.9 1.
From a political perspective, then, the anti-empiricist
strain of Michaels' thought becomes suspect. For, if we are being asked to rethink our Leftist commitments and reconsider the problem of economic inequality (rather than racial inequality) it seems difficult to imagine how we might go about that without also considering the experience of hunger, for instance. Yet, the moment we turn to such empirical considerations, we inevitably 'ontologize' the body on Michaels' account. Or, even if it is not inevitable, at the very least we are endorsing a "materialist vision" of political experience. But then, even if you think that aesthetic experience (like reading a book or viewing a painting) should be something other than materialist, it seems difficult and unprofitable to deny the materiality of political life. 1.
Any book that compels us to examine our theoretical and
political commitments is worth reading. In the case of Michaels' book, this is especially true. What Michaels leaves us with is a challenging and admirable call to rethink the status of our current modes of political thinking, especially with regards to issues of economic inequality. Yet, the Kantian constructivist strain in Michaels' form of argumentation is never put to the same kind of scrutiny as Michaels holds for others. This is something that The Shape of the Signifier notably lacks and it's a lack that begs the question, 'why?' For, by simply endorsing and not defending an ontology of argument, it makes it seem as if Michaels does not want us to disagree with him. 1. Davide Panagia is Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at Trent University (Peterborough, Canada) where he teaches aesthetics and politics. His forthcoming book, "The Poetics of Political Thinking" (Duke UP), inquires into contemporary accounts of the nature of political argument from the perspective of modern political and aesthetic thought. He can be reached at davidepanagia@trentu.ca
NOTES 1See "Critical Inquiry," Volume 8, Number 4 (Chicago: Chicago University Press).
2 There is an interesting omission in Michaels' Pantheon
of post-structural theory: Michel Foucault. Though I do not discuss it in these pages, it is an absence that speaks volumes and Michaels' relationship to Foucault's thinking would be an avenue of inquiry worth exploring in greater depth.
3 "Political Science Fictions" is a subsection of Shape's
"Posthistoricism" chapter that originally appeared (along with sections of the "Coda" in New Literary History (2000, 31) 649-664.
4 Paul de Man, Aesthetic Ideology, 82.
5 Walter Benn Michaels, "Diversity's False Solace" in
The New York Times (April 11, 2004). His main concern in this piece is how universities use race-based initiatives to comfort themselves in thinking that they've dealt with the problem of cultural inequality at the expense of the problem of economic inequality. "But the real value of diversity," Michaels explains, "is not primarily in the contribution it makes to students' self-esteem. Its real value is in the contribution it makes to the collective fantasy that institutions ranging from U.I.C. to Harvard are meritocracies that reward individuals for their own efforts and abilities -- as opposed to rewarding them for the advantages of their birth." And further: "In the end, we like policies like affirmative action not so much because they solve the problem of racism but because they tell us that racism is the problem we need to solve. And the reason we like the problem of racism is that solving it just requires us to give up our prejudices, whereas solving the problem of economic inequality whereas solving the problem of economic inequality might require something more -- it might require us to give up our money. It's not surprising that universities of the upper middle class should want their students to feel comfortable. What is surprising is that diversity should have become the hallmark of liberalism."
6 The reductio ad absurdum has a long history in
political treatises but its greatest example is John Locke's refutation of Robert Filmer's Patriarcha in the first part of Two Treatises of Civil Government.
7 This is the title of Michaels' "Coda" to the book where
his critique of post-structural political theory comes out strongest.
8 It is, in a strange way, precisely what was at stake in the
recent U.S. Presidential campaign, making The Shape of the Signifier even more timely than Michaels might have imagined. On the one hand there is a Democratic candidate John Kerry accused of flip-flopping on various political issues (especially the war on Iraq); on the other hand, there is President Bush who is consistent in his beliefs, actions and practices despite the fact that these beliefs, actions, and practices are ones most reasonable people wouldn't sustain.
9 Take the example of the sans papier: They lack a name
because they lack papers and hence, lack any form of signification that might allow them legitimate access to a system of representation; they are, literally, the residue of non-sense' of modern political life. To be sure, this does not mean that they are insignificant or their status is meaningless, nor am I suggesting that we should embrace the sans papier as an ideal political category. It does mean, however, that epistemological arguments will not suffice when dealing with such forms alienation and disenfranchisement. And this, it seems, is the ideological flip side of the post-structuralist coin that remains unaddressed in Michaels' book; that is, though identity claims may turn out to be ontological claims, they are also claims about alienation and disenfranchisement. Davide Panagia is Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at Trent University (Peterborough, Canada) where he teaches aesthetics and politics. His forthcoming book, "The Poetics of Political Thinking" (Duke Univ. Press) inquires into contemporary accounts of the nature of political argument from the perspective of modern political and aesthetic thought. Currently he is finishing a second book manuscript, a genealogy of is finishing a second book manuscript, a genealogy of political reflection that examines the modes by which individuals constitute themselves as subject of perception through sensation. He may be contacted at: http://www.trentu.ca/culturalstudies/faculty_panag.htm.
Copyright 2005, Davide Panagia and The Johns Hopkins University
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