Practicing Theory: Imagining, Resisting, Remembering The 2011 ASCA International Conference and Workshop 2-4 March 2011

Practicing Theory/Theorising Practice - Towards a Critical Theory of Praxis

Christian Garland Abstract

In practising theory, there is also a parenthetical demand for a theory of practice; in this we can discern the intersections of a radical Critical Theory of praxis, in which the two become radically and dialectically meshed. In this paper, it will be argued that it remains the task of our time to rework a Critical Theory of praxis in which Marxs original formulation for a ruthless critique of everything existing is the precondition of analysis. However, this Critical Theory can only be a reflexive form of thought which recognises and undermines its own presuppositions by way of continuous auto-critique. It will be contended here, that a Critical Theory is the most socially meaningful kind of theorising in that it is closely bound up with practical engagement with the world as it exists without losing sight of what it might yet be, in this sense it may be reasonably argued that between is and ought, thought must interpose itself as critique, in such a contention it is also important to recognise that thought cannot uncover the truth if it depends on straightforward generative first principles, or privileges its own foundational premises as being beyond question. Indeed, such a mode of thought demands a form of radical practice or praxis become inseparable from an interrogative Critical Theory of the social world in which nothing is sacred. A politically-charged Critical Theory such as the one outlined in the course of this paper starts from a negative ontology finding in the imperfection of thought the problematic of working against a positive or spuriously objective standpoint that instead defines the negative in the moment of truth it uncovers. This negative project finds a tentative mode of praxis in a radical - one might say revolutionary - politics of refusal in which a social subjectivity takes hold of the existent, the accepted, the given, in its own hands and begins the process of historical rupture and transformative promise that underlies such a mode of thought. Practicing Theory/Theorising Practice - Towards a Critical Theory of Praxis

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth - i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.i Marx Thesis II, Theses on Feurbach It remains the task of our time to rework a Critical Theory of Praxis, in which Marxs original formulation for a ruthless critique of everything existing is the precondition of analysis, demanding that we face the world as-it-is in all its seemingly overwhelming disenchantment, resolved to its radical transformation - praxis. Such a Critical Theory as the one this paper seeks to make a small contribution toward, can, however, only be a reflexive form of thought which recognises and undermines its own presuppositions by way of continuous auto-critique, making it the most socially meaningful kind of theorising in that it is closely bound up with practical engagement with the world as it exists without losing sight of what it might yet be, in this sense it may be reasonably argued that between is and ought, thought must interpose itself as critique; in such a contention it is also important to recognise that thought cannot uncover the truth if it depends on straightforward generative first principles, or privileges its own foundational premises as being beyond question. Indeed, such a mode of thought demands a form of radical practice or praxis become inseparable from an interrogative Critical Theory of the social world in which nothing is sacred. Indeed, a politically-charged Critical Theory such as this may be said to begin from the strandpoint of a negative ontology finding in the imperfection of thought the problematic of working against a positive or spuriously objective standpoint that instead defines the negative in the moment of truth it uncovers. This negative project finds a tentative mode of praxis in a radical - one might say revolutionary - politics of refusal in which a social subjectivity takes hold of the existent, the accepted, the given, in its own hands and begins the process of historical rupture and transformative promise that underlies such a mode of thought - a political practice such as this could be identified in what has been defined as autonomism, which itself can be traced back to earlier versions of Left Communism or antiLeninist Marxism a tradition at least as old as Leninism itself. This paper will aim to develop a critical theory of praxis, as well as being a critique of ideology protective of the state of things-as-they-are, as much as positive modes of thought which severely limit the capabilities of opposition and critique, with the aim of contributing to mapping a collective escape plan from the giant open air prison (Adorno) in which we are presently confined.

*** What is exactly is meant by a negative ontology? Ontology understood as being-in-the world, can be said to describe material existence, as the factual observation of social reality as it is. In recognising that this same social reality is itself not given, but the result of a

very specific material ordering of society, one riven by antagonism and contradiction, in which the we that is the social subject objectified, and alienated from itself - in fact the plaything of alien forces, is to recognise the social reality of life as it is not-lived under capitalism. Straightforward description of this world starts with the fact [] it does not explain it to usii, that of course is the task of ideology: Ontology is tacitly understood as the readiness to sanction a heteronomous social order, exempted from the justification of consciousness.iii As a mode of thought, the negative dialectical method renders any reconciliation with the given reality of the present impossible, but no less than this material negation of the existent, it embodies contradiction, rupture, antagonism and refusal: opposing the false assurances of reconciliation and closure promised by positive identity-thinking; this goes as much for a certain form of dialectics - a dead mode of identarian thought, become state ideology - as for the aporias of neo and post structuralisms. The concept of non-identity thinking is of key importance for a critical theory of praxis, and draws a bold contradistinction, with dialectical materialism become state diamat, making dialectical thought into a parody of itself with its simplified formulae and explanations direct from a central committee: non-identarian thought seeks to negate without any positive synthesis or resolving closure. To apply this mode of thought - which is by its very nature highly politicised - to an explicitly political practise, is the task of praxis. There is also a distinction to be made between the concept of totality as the terrain of critique: of calling everything into question and a positive idea of final synthesis. For what might be called an autonomist or anti-Leninist praxis by contrast, contradiction and negation are the essential truths of dialectics, not any positive synthesis, and it is this emphasis on the particular within the universal and conversely, the universal within the particular, that further resists any final, unifying synthetic totality. It is this same moment of contradiction and negativity that is of particular importance to a theory of praxis. Negativity as a basis for critical theory finds a formidable expression in the thought of Adorno, which is especially important to such a project, in the insistence that any such theory must be aware of its own shortcomings, or rigidify into a similarly petrified frozen object: the orthodox tradition of Marxism instantly springs to mind. As has been noted, by means of vicious circularity, explanation becomes tautological,iv referring to the reified nature of much theory, which especially in standard academic disciplines bears little relation to anything critical at all, but is instead a straightforward circular process of identification, determination, and categorisation; it is unfortunate that critical theories such as Marxism should also follow this same pattern, and it is crucial to carefully distinguish this from a praxis employing dialectical negativity, as such, the negative dialectical method aims at an immanent critique of the social world, but also itself, it is in this sense an auto-critique which resists thoughts calcification into ideology; antagonism, the negative dialectical moment breaks open what had previously been seen as given, immutable and inevitable. Adornos negative dialectical method offers a way of thinking that accepts nothing, including its own assumptions as given, and resists containment by any spurious attempt to create for it a positive identity or reconciliation with the present. Indeed, the significance of the concept of negative dialectics is in the fact that this mode of thought takes as its standpoint the subject: collective and individual, who is exploited, oppressed, and rendered as nothing by capital and at best secondary to objective forces and conditions by other so-called

revolutionary modes of thought. But to look to Adornos method is not to seek to preserve his mode of thought as a perfected model to which we should look for every answer or in which we might hope to find some notion of salvation, rather it is to adopt certain aspects of his thought and adapt them to better suit our own time and place, to go beyond it. It is the emancipatory quality of the negative that continues the project of Marx, and which stands diametrically opposed to the Orthodox tradition that would claim to monopolise that task as its own historical privilege, frequently ending up fitting social reality to an ideological blueprint, marking the difference between theory and ideology. The contemplative stance adopted towards a process mechanically conforming to fixed laws and enacted independently of mans consciousness and impervious to human intervention, i.e. a perfectly closed system must likewise transform the basic categories of mans immediate attitude to the world: it reduces space and time to a common denominator and degrades time to the dimension of spacevLukacs, G (1923) Time degraded to the dimension of space is Lukacss evocation of life determined according to the dead time of capital, but also serves as a striking description of the theoretical problematic of resisting a spurious mythology of immediacy, where thought congeals into ideology. Ideological explanations of the world as it is are themselves a product of the conditions of this world, offering a positive perspective on it. By positive is meant, everything from any number of examples of real-world pragmatism and straightforwardly conservative defences and justifications, to such common-sense homilies as this is the best we have in which things-as-they-are are explained purely and simply in terms amounting to: it could be worse serving to functionally mask reality, mystifying and diffusing the potential for its critical understanding. Conversely, another far more sophisticated positivity is apparent in postmodernism, and indeed poststructuralism. In this epoch of postmodernity - defined, and periodized here, along with Jameson, as the epoch of late capitalismvi - one of its notable theorists characterised this epoch as being marked by a temporal disjunctionvii, not seeing this diagnosis as symptomatic of thought such as his own which accepts the world as-it-is without question, or rather, - as for Baudrillards non-committal indifference and enraptured fascination with hyper-reality - by assuming a tiresome faux-blas pose, also assumed by the other variants of political and cultural postmodernism. Another, currently very influential poststructuralism that infuses a Marxian post-autonomism is undoubtedly that of Gilles Deleuze, which may speak of Marx but remains haunted by the ghost of liberalism. Indeed, the obsession with multiplicity, diversity and difference is not so very radical in practise, since such divergences are in fact the lifeblood of late capitalism. To invoke Marx, whilst celebrating difference is a futile task: difference, the particular contours and specifications of which the market is constantly refining itself to. Indeed, for all his invocation of a Marxian ontology, Deleuzes theory looks remarkably comfortable and well-accommodated within the capitalist postmodern epoch. Real opposition is based on negation and refusal. For all its breathless talk of desire and resistance, Deleuzean practise ends up as yet another postmodern celebration of the localised act, and the micro-political that changes nothing, antagonism and

negativity being dissolved in the harmless multiplicity of difference. Just as postmodern thought tends to concentrate its criticism on what it sees as tyrannising Grand or MetaNarratives rather than the material world of which it is itself part, it becomes apparent that postmodern capitalism has more than one trick up its sleeve, one of which would appear to be the disarming of the critique of it as a totality. Non-identity thinking is of key importance for a critical theory of praxis, in which thought is unfrozen or de-reified in-the-world, unpetrified and resolved to changing it: the practical-sensuous human activity of a critical theory engaged in practice, and practice itself engaged in critical theory. As Adorno once observed, in spite of everything, we are still alive - we exist in spite of everything that objectifies and subsumes us, thus, by our very existence we refuse and oppose this same subsumption and so it is possible here to speak of a negative ontology. By negative ontology we can restate that this is the recognition that human beings live in a world that is not their own, but seek - potentially at least - to remake it as their own. The starting point for such a rupture with things as they are is negation, and resistance to everything that imposes such misery on so many, without any pretence to offering positive alternatives spuriously demanded by the existing society as minimal (and false) grounds for opposition to it; this is what is meant by a negative ontology, the standpoint of social subjectivity. This social subjectivity is however, not meant as a merely wishful ideological position toward the world as it is at the expense of any deeper analysis: such a mode of thought is itself reified and faces the same incapacitating and fatal pitfalls of an objectivist logic: Just as the economic theory of capitalism remains stuck fast in its self-created immediacy, the same thing happens to bourgeois attempts to comprehend the ideological phenomenon of reification. Even thinkers who have no desire to deny or obscure its existence and who are more or less clear in their own minds about its humanly destructive consequences remain on the surface and make no attempt to advance beyond its objectively most derivative forms, the forms furthest from the real life-process of capitalism,, i.e. the most external and vacuous forms, to the basic phenomenon of reification itself.viii Lukacs, G. (1923) The social subject, is itself the restless movement of negationix that exists within, against, (and beyond) the present. To exist in spite of capital and its imperatives and against the infernal continuum of the history it has made and would make for the future, is merely to be and so the negation of that which negates us. Non-identity thinking, the mode of thought of critical theory opposes and resists any closure and spurious positivity, being aware that the untruth does not only exist as a forced synthesis and forced subsumption of the subject under the identity of the concept but also as an ideological disguise of historical definitions which are falsely introduced as naturalx Some notes toward a political practice - praxis We will fight, we will get strongerWe exist in this world.

- Philippina domestic workerxi As Walter Benjamin was well-aware - although writing of different events - the state of crisis, of emergency, of anxiety is not the exceptional moment in human history, but the rule, as such hope appears in the momentary ruptures of this same infernal cycle.xii Such acts of refusal can be observed in groups of workers going on strike to oppose and resist government austerity measures, or a demanded speed- up in productivity aimed at restoring the rate of profit or refusing to accept austerity cuts in order to pay off the deficit resultant from massive state intervention to rescue capitalist enterprises. Another example would be mass student protests refusing the burden of debt that comes from education becoming an unaffordable privilege, even as it is would be restructured into an instrumental production line. Elsewhere across Europe, social antagonism is illuminated by the flames of unrest in urban rebellions burning all illusions of any return to business as usual, or stability for the capitalist class. Such examples of class struggle are illustrative of the social subject becoming the dynamic real crisis of which we speak, and are indeed part. The proletariat as proletariat is the anaemic victim which capital continually drains vampire-like to sustain and nourish itself but this class relation is ruptured when the proletariat struggles with and against the normality of this relation, and the normality of its own objective functional category within it.xiii Class struggle is the negation of the class relation and the corollaries of value, profit, and exploitation through wage labour. Such an observation correctly contends that what interests us is not the stability of capitalism, but the instability, the crisis of capitalism - particularly the crises wrought by the class struggle. As John Holloway contends The working class is the negation and crisis of capitalism and therefore the negation of and crisis of itself. To negate capital is to negate that which creates capital that is abstract or alienated labour. To negate abstract labour is to struggle for the emancipation of that which is negated everyday by abstract labour that is to struggle for the emancipation of useful or creative doing. [This] means a struggle against the working class itself as a class and as (abstractly) working,xiv Holloway (2009) The class struggle can thus be seen as the struggle to refuse being objectified and reduced to the category of a proletarian, to refuse alienated, reified labour, and to refuse the categorisation and identity imposed by capitalism. One does not need to privilege a social subject to see a negative universality at work in the commonalities of multiple antagonistic subjectivities that unify into a cohesive collective negativity - that of the revolutionary social subject. That this subjectivity exists in spite of everything, would surely offer ample evidence that non-identity is the first attempt at becoming, at self-creation in and against the objective world of capital and instrumental reason. This subjectivity is a non-identical negation of the negation of all that suppresses and mutilates us and reduces human beings to objects in the service of money and power. Capital demands that value expands and that accumulation and reproduction of value is fulfilled in the direct relation of exploitation embodied in wage labour and the extraction of profit. Class struggle contests and refuses this relation, breaking open the continuum of capital and the class relation, for the the interests of capital and the interests of wage-labour are diametrically opposed to each other,xv a reminder for capital

that in every battle fought and in every moment where the proletariat imposes victoryxvi however small, there is only a postponement of the real crisis yet to come. A temporary resolution of these contradictions can only ever be that, temporary, and the side of capital knows it. A negative ontology recognises that subjectivity exists within and against the deadening reified, relation of objects which is the status of human beings buying and selling themselves in the market. Subjective refusal - both individually and collectively - recognises in its insubordination and refusal the negation of this (non)status, in which objectively we only exist for capital - so far as it requires our labour. Against these extremely conditional, and always precarious terms of existence, in which labour must always prove its worth and use to capital to even exist, there is the unconditional promise of communization and the freedom to be without compulsion or material justification or the requirement to produce value. Indeed, we might offer by way of a conclusion, the observation that the fatal rupture and crisis in the class relation would be the permanent destruction of the law of value and the capital-labour relation itself in which capital feeds vampire-like off living labour and demands the maintenance and continuous reproduction of this relation for its very lifeblood. This indeterminate and indefinite - for we cannot speak of permanence - state of being of invariant anxiety and relentless social insecurity in which the most basic material conditions of existence are precariously balanced on a knife edge at all times, when they are not effectively suspended altogether is the reality of life as it is lived under capitalism. The material contestation of this relation of insecurity and crisis is class struggle, which refuses and negates the imperatives and apparent necessities of existing within the world as-it-exists, and indeed refuses and negates the presumptions of the epoch. Class struggle and praxis are not just the motor of history, but also the accelerator; we exist in-and-against the capitalist present and in so doing break open the linear narrative of exploitation and domination that this remains. Indeed, the real, material existence of that which exists in the form of its own negation is the basis of hope.xvii References Adorno, T (1966) Negative Dialectics http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/nd1.PDF Benjamin, W. (1940) Theses on the Philosophy of History in Illuminations (1999) (London: Pimlico) Endnotes (2008) The Breakdown of a Relationship? Reflections on the Crisis, October 2008 http://endnotes.org.uk/articles/15 Holloway, J. (2002) Twelve Theses on Changing the World without taking Power http://libcom.org/library/twelve-theses-on-changing-the-world-without-taking-power Holloway, J. Matamaros, F. and Tischler, S. eds. (2009) Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism (London: Pluto)

Jameson, F (1991) Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso) Lyotard, J-F (1979/1984) 1. The Field: Knowledge in Computerised Societies in The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/lyotard.htm Marx, K. (1845) Thesis II Theses on Feuerbach http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm Marx, K (1844) Estranged Labour, First Manuscript, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/wages.htm Marx, K. (1847) Wage Labour and Capital http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch08.htm Sheifelbein, P. (1992) Adornos Negative Dialectics Chapter in Adorno: An Introduction Van Reijen, W. (Philadelphia: Pennbridge) p.65 Their Crisis and Ours: A Symposium on the Financial Crisis and & Austerity, SOAS, University of London, 4 September 2010 Dispatches: Britains Secret Slaves Channel 4 August 30 2010
i

Marx, K. (1845) II Theses on Feuerbach http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm ii Marx, K. Estranged Labour, First Manuscript, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/wages.htm iii Adorno, T (1966) Negative Dialectics http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/nd1.PDF iv Bonefeld, W. (2009) Emancipatory Praxis and Conceptuality in Adorno in Holloway, J. Matamaros, F. and Tischler, S. (2009) ibid. p.126 v Luckacs, G (1923) The Phenomenon of Reification, in Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat in History and Class Consciousness http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/hcc05.htm vi Jameson, F (1991) Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso) vii Lyotard, J-F (1979/1984) 1. The Field: Knowledge in Computerised Societies in The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/lyotard.htm viii Luckacs, G (1923) ibid. ix Holloway, J. Matamaros, F. and Tischler, S. (2009) Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism in Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism (London: Pluto) p.7 x Sheifelbein, P. (1992) Adornos Negative Dialectics Chapter in Adorno: An Introduction Van Reijen, W. (Philadelpia: Pennbridge) p.65 xi Quoted in Dispatches: Britains Secret Slaves, Channel 4, broadcast 30 August 201 0 - My emphasis xii Benjamin, W. (1940/1999) Theses on the Philosophy of History in Illuminations xiii See Endnotes (2008) The Breakdown of a Relationship? Reflections on the Crisis, October 2008 http://endnotes.org.uk/articles/15 xiv Holloway Negative and Positive Autonomism Part 2 in Holloway, J. Matamaros, F. and Tischler, S. (2009) pps97-98 xv Marx, K (1847) Wage Labour and Capital http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wagelabour/ch08.htm

xvi

Their Crisis and Ours: A Symposium on the Financial Crisis and & Austerity, SOAS, University of London, 4 September 2010 xvii Holloway, J. (2002) Twelve Theses on Changing the World without Taking Power http://libcom.org/library/twelve-theses-on-changing-the-world-without-taking-power