Vivek Bhandari (
In Search of Sovereign Selves
I have been teaching at
Such interrogations are important
for activists who, by their very nature, are the kinds of people who seek to
change the way their world is ordered.
Activists are regularly confronted with questions that pertain to where
power is located within the institutional arrangements that they inhabit. It seems self-evident that in any activist’s
mind, a theoretical understanding of the world’s disciplinary
regimes (such as nation-states, corporations, even NGOs), which variously
employ statist, capitalist, or communitarian institutional arrangements,
usually precedes the acts of political engagement. (Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, articulated
such an understanding in his text Hind Swaraj, one of the most powerful
assertions of autonomous sovereignty.)
At their most fundamental level, acts of agency in support of, or
against these arrangements, are built on claims of personal sovereignty. This is because activists are political
agents who question the existing configurations of authority by claiming a
certain degree of autonomy (and by definition, therefore, undermining existing
claims to sovereign power). As agents of
structural change, they chip-away at the authoritative (hence sovereign)
pretensions of statist or corporate power by asserting their own
sovereign autonomy.
For these reasons, understanding
activism in terms of competing notions of sovereignty seems particularly
appropriate in our “globalizing” world because in many ways, what we have been
witnessing in recent years is the dispersal of sovereign power through
the networks being created by what the philosophers Antonio Negri and Tony
Hardt evocatively describe as the “multitude.”
This unstable “multitude,” people of the world who are increasingly
networked, restless, cacophonous, and as such have the potential to overthrow
imperial and hyperdisciplinary regimes, have succeeded in de-centering
sovereignty, dispersing power, and potentially, unleashing regenerative forces
on an extraordinary scale. These
dispersed forms of sovereignty are, at their core, emancipatory and
regenerative.
As someone on the verge of
returning to India after fifteen years in the US, I have struggled with my
professional location, my cultural values, and the ways in which I connect with
people around me in different parts of the world. In many ways, the act of leaving India years
ago opened me up to these questions in ways that may not have happened had I
stayed-on. Because I cannot, in complete
honesty, claim to belong to “India” or the “US,” I am very self-conscious about
the specificity of the professional norms and practices that set the
parameters of my life, or the contingent nature of the cultural values I
practice in different locations. In the
US, I work at Hampshire College, which makes no bones about its location within
the institutional culture of American higher education, an ivory tower
establishment if ever there was one.
This has been an enduring concern for me, because even as I applaud
Hampshire’s pedagogy, I struggle with many of its norms and practices (such as
the need to work towards a big endowment, something it needs to fulfill its
aspirations.). Even though I have no
illusions that the mainstream India I am returning to is attempting to emulate
the world that I am leaving, I am heading back with a deep appreciation of the
need to seek alternative sovereignties, communities and networks that have not
yet been cowed down by hyper-modern forms of disciplining. I know such communities exist in large
numbers. As an aspiring activist, I have
an enduring respect for the power of such sovereign groups and spaces — of the
kind that shape the creative impulses of the “multitude.” This appreciation has become an integral part
of the issues I raise in the classroom at Hampshire. Over the years, I have
come to use my courses as invitations to a friendly dialogue in which we
address, with as much a sense of urgency as can be mustered, the demands of the
political present by experimenting with alternatives and/or modifications to
the political arrangements currently available to us.
For reasons outlined above, I often
find it useful to distinguish between two, radically different kinds of
assertions of sovereignty among activists.
One, fairly mainstream type of activism tries to challenge existing
forms of authority by subverting it’s logic internally (by proposing, for
instance, the replacement of capitalism with socialism, or authoritarianism
with democracy). In this kind of thinking, activists seek to subvert and modify
the locus of power, but not the systemic, or structural logic of the
institutional apparatus in question.
They claim sovereignty, yes, but not, in my opinion, of an enduring
variety, since their assertions are premised on the notion that a
redistribution of power within the existing worldview (statist, corporate, and
so on) is adequate. A second, more
diffused group of activists attempts to undermine power with a spirit of
humility, by interrogating the fundamentals of the structural logic at the
heart of the disciplinary arrangements they inhabit, with a clear awareness
that they do not have a monopolistic understanding of how the world functions,
or ought to. Experimental in spirit,
this second kind of activism is fundamentally regenerative, allowing each
individual to claim sovereign power over his or her thoughts and actions. This form of engagement stems from a deep
appreciation of human creativity, and a courageous recognition of the need to
resist totalizing, “one-size-fits-all” forms of power (of the kind we associate
with governmental power and consumer culture in contemporary society). Even though this second kind of activism may
seem less “revolutionary” or dramatic, it is more effective at revealing the
ways in which people, including the activists themselves, have been inscribed
with power, how they have been conditioned to think and behave, indeed to live
their lives. Such activists don’t lack a
“program” or agenda, as some critics argue; they simply view their program as a
work-in-progress, whose goals are contingent, and indeed, grounded. To my mind, this kind of thinking is
conducive to a richer and more meaningful activism because it is based on a
deeper understanding of where and how power operates, and an imaginative
appreciation of the need to think outside the box.
Examples of the second kind of
activism, of the kind that I would describe as truly sovereign, are to be found
in everyday life, in the subtle ways in which people create meaning for
themselves outside of the gaze of hegemonic structures and ways of thinking. As a faculty member, my classroom experiences
have been most meaningful when my students and I have been able to move,
autonomously, beyond the conventions and power relationships fostered by a
“typical” classroom. This is a small
thing, but within the classroom, I have found that rules about who gets to
speak, when, where, and so on should be determined collaboratively by
individual members of a learning community.
Over time, these interactions have been enormously liberating for me personally. More fulfilling for me, however, has been
watching my co-learners make choices about their future that are clearly based
on their deep understanding of how power works, and how they must militantly
protect their humanity from its predatory nature.
We live in an interesting world, in
which the terms “liberalism,” “globalization,” “capitalism,” and “imperialism”
are increasingly coming to be used interchangeably. At times confusing, this muddle has also
clarified the degree to which the conceptual vocabularies normatively employed
in the academy are profoundly limited.
Conversations about such matters open windows into explorations of new
alternatives to these sometimes stifling ways of thinking, and I believe, leave
an indelible imprint on the imagination of all those who participate in
them. As a participant in the classroom,
I have tried hard to raise questions, and as Rainer Maria Rilke put it, to
“live the questions,” not to seek easy answers.
In this, I remain hopeful that the young men and women passing through
Hampshire engage with the world with a spirit of humility, and a sense of
political responsibility.
I have recently finished teaching a
course entitled “Locating Resistance in a Globalizing World.” The questions that we address in the course
are:
·
What does it mean to be political?
How is power dispersed in society, and in what ways is it embedded in
economic relations, culture, and the institutional apparatus of modern
governance? In what ways do institutions
of the state and corporate capital limit the political choices available to
individuals today? How does a critical
assessment of the conceptual vocabulary associated with modern societies
(citizenship, civil society, the “free” market, liberal democracy, the nuclear
family, etc) help us to understand the tensions that trigger acts of
resistance? To what extent is our very language,
the words and registers we use to construct meaning, a hindrance in our ability
to imagine emancipated futures? What, in other words, is the location of
power—and how do we subvert it without unleashing new tyrannies?
· Are non-violent forms of
resistance effective in an age in which people have acquired a morbid taste for
the surgical cleanliness of electronic warfare?
If not non-violent, then what form should resistance take? If violence begets violence — as has been the
case for most of human history — does non-violence beget understanding?
· How have the forces associated
with “globalization” altered the shape of modern societies? In an age in which the stridency of
technological determinism (in fields like biotechnology, information
technology, etc.) has reached unprecedented levels, what is the place of
humanistic values and sensibilities?
· What, fundamentally, are the
political choices available to individuals today?
* * * *
Partly in response to these
questions, one of my students, Siena Mayers, composed something that, with her
permission, I would like to share. She
wrote it at the end of the semester, and it articulates not just a cluster of
ideas, but a deeply humanistic sensibility and optimism that I find inspiring.
rough draft of a never-ending
process1
“Our lives begin to end the day we
become silent about things that matter” 2
so let us Begin:
to disbelieve in any system
claiming to have a “monopoly on the truth”3
to make Noise – and
to listen
to Eat great food – but not
too much
to Work – but not too much
to make Art without limit
to have a place to Sleep
– and someone to keep us warm
to be Untiringly Human
we refuse to be embarrassed about hope or to have dreams about
checking our email
we refuse to continue to see the world in the black and white
stark contrasts of Manichean design
we refuse to confuse Education with Capital, in which:
Chemistry is for Hotdogs
History is for War
Writing is for Contracts
Language is for Free Trade
Physics is for Bombs
Math is for Surveillance
we want to be free from the weapons of sugar and fat that they
load into our food to make us too groggy to notice the newspaper
when we go to the doctor we want to be free from the paper-work
that entangles us in the dirty details of bills and suing
we want to go to Farmers Market and know that they do not have to
throw away their greens at the end of the day
we will resist
then
build
a
not TOO perfect utopia
a space to
share with others and a space to go back to on our own,
to think
thoughts that no one else has put in our heads
constructively
changing together
daring to use
imagination to invent alternative rationalities (instead of just buying them at
the mall)
to agree to
disagree, to share an understanding to be misunderstood
that we may
drive out guilt and replace it with social responsibility 4
that we may
experience all there is to experience
that we may
triumph over the doubts that cause us to not share a piece of chocolate with
someone else
that we may
know what it is to have children because we are not afraid to burden them with
our mistakes
that we may
enjoy a January thaw but not forget its disturbing implications
that we may
experience what it is to be in control and outside of control
that we
laugh
and laugh at ourselves
that we will
go outside not just to talk on our cell phones
that we may
make bread and eat art together
that we may absorb something other than ourselves
that we may have someone to protect us
from
those who are trying to protect us5
that we may not have followers
for everyone needs to write their own
manifesto
we will do
this through militant humanism
by looking at
how power operates and functions
we will break
down the facade of an all-encompassing “ism”6
government is
only able to operate as long as we continue to consent to be governed
by
recognizing the emperor is wearing an invisibly sweat-shopped suit
we will find the state merely “an abstract concept, one that we
cannot shake hands with”7
by using humor and the politics of listening
caminamos preguntando8
we will walk while questioning
Endnotes
1. This piece
which resembles a manifesto however incomplete, was not written so much as a
call to action as a reflection on new thoughts and ways of thinking that I
encountered during a class I took with Vivek Bhandari in January 2006. Inspired by readings and class discussions
about resistance and social change, I felt compelled to set out in my own
words, in simple language, what my own political vision was, what I was
fighting for and against, what is important to me? What kind of world would I like to see? May it inspire my reader to ammend,
elaborate, collaborate, and/or write their own!
2. Martin
Luther King Jr.
3. Mahatma
Gandhi
4. Jessica
Benjamin from “Terror and Guilt Beyond Them and Us”
5. A
quotation from Banksy, an underground street artist from the UK who challenges
the ever-increasing boundaries of privatized spaces. http://www.banksy.co.uk/
6. A
reference to an in-class comment made by Vivek Bhandari
7. A
reference to an in-class comment made by Vivek Bhandari
8. A Zapatista saying, which means “walk forward, but while questioning.”