Customer Reviews

Wars of Position: The Cultural Politics of Left and Right

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a compelling, if not always entirely convincing book. Clearly Timothy Brennan has faced a few too many smug graduate students, spouting terms like 'hybridity' and 'difference'to prove their radical bona fides, across the seminar table. Any one whose been in the social sciences or humanities over the last twenty years probably recognizes the type. His argument is basically that between the anti-state rhetoric dominant among this type and the relentlessly identitarian politics they practice, there is little room to talk about political programs, electoral coalitions, and other actual mechanics of political change. They instead practice a politics of individualized performance, in which the ferocity of one's denunciations of 'hegemonic', 'western' culture, etc. epitomize ones commitments. He claims this neatly dovetails with the American right, and the wider culture of American liberalism, both of which are also anti-state. He works through this point in well-researched essays on a variety of figures including Salmon Rushdie, Eric Lott, Hardt and Negri, and Antonio Gramsci. Although I am predisposed to be a little skeptical of Marxists heatedly denouncing postmodernists, all of the essays are rich enough in the details to overcome the sense that this is more old left whining. What I found a little less than convincing is Brennan's mapping of performative politics onto the political right, as opposed to programmatic politics which open things up to the left. Okay, today's 'academic left' is self-indulgent and pseudo radical, true enough. But this distinction has broader purchase beyond academia. Many of the important political movements of the sixties--from MLK's 'beloved community' to the Weather Underground--had a strong element of performativity, of existentially trying to take a stand and live authentically rather than simply attempt to move a political program forward. The practice continues up to the present in, for example, the Zapatistas. Anti-statist notions do have some historical content with the disillusionment with bureaucratic leftist projects. I don't think these issues will fade any time soon. And notwithstanding that Brennan hits a number of targets hard, I don't think one can dismiss all those crowded around 'theory' as reactionaries. Stanley Aronowitz, for example, has had a history of political engagement in the more conventional sense. Despite these reservations, this book should definitely be read and grappled with.

While I expect that the author of this wonderful book may not entirely appreciate the comment which follows, I think it important to remember, as the author does, that Gramsci was a Marxist and that Marx was a Hegelian. I would add that Hegel was a Christian and that Christ called on believers to remember the lilies of the field, to study them, and remember that God cares for how they grow. So it follows to ask, as the author does:

"What is the dialectic between discipline and freedom? What kind of person do we want to be--or is it even a question of being rather than making such a person? But the "making" of people sounds so authoritarian. How do we resolve the tensions that exist between the militarization of the soul required to vie for power (rather than just talking about power, or the endless talking of postions) and the openings for self-determination that are possible only after taking it? If our position is that culture is conditioned in advance by material conditions, then precisely how are they connected? Why should we not be looking for changes in culture first (and perhaps forever) rather than bothering with the state? What is the relationship of ethics to politics?"

The danger is, as the author so persuasively argues, that we will reject the need to organize, spout ambivalent niceties, and, fall into the trap of simply mouthing neoliberal platitudes only differently clothed. The enemy is not in the final instance the state (as both the neoliberals and anarchists would have us believe), but our failure to articulate a politics which delivers the destitute to their rightful place on the earth. In short, biopower means nothing if it does not nourish the hungry.

This book is a very wide ranging look at the political spectrum. In one book he discusses Salman Rushdie's writings and the works of Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci, Hardt and Negri's Empire, Heidegger, Lyotard, Kristeva. In the way the book is written, it is almost presumed that the reader is familiar with these and other writers on our current world culture. As such, this is not a beginner's book. It's appeal, will I believe, be highest in academia as opposed to the rough and tumble world of politics where the title might lead you.

I also believe that the book presents a snapshot view of the political culture when it seems like the far right wing is in absolute control. It is almost a guarantee that American politics swings back and forth. The left leaning years that Roosevelt started have been followed by the Reagan years and now the Bush years where the far right has gained far more power than was neither expected nor can it be expected to continue.