Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics

Butler does not always avoid condemnation. Important to my argument is the fact that her ethics need not preclude condemnation and that it can and should be sharpened so as to account for such divisive, political moments. When Butler does condemn, though, it is as if she finds herself in that moment trapped within a discourse she rejects, to which she can only gain access through a condemnation. In Precarious Life, she condemns "on several bases the violence done against the United States and do [es] not see it as 'just punishment' for prior sins"' $( P L , _ { 4 0 } )$ . Butler seems to find herself compelled to condemn those who attacked the United States on September n, 2001, before she criticizes the U.S. government, as if this condemnation gives her permission to argue. Yet in her analyses of U.S. policies of indefinite detention in Guantanamo Bay, U.S� violence against Afghanistan, the "shock and awe" attacks on Iraq, and the Bush adminstration's he emonization of political discourse after 9 I 11 in terms of its own position as victim, she does not condemn. Rather, she analyzes, explains, contextualizes, interprets, interrogates, and, in so doing, critiques. This raises the question of Butler's separation of condemnation and critique and the political place and function of each.

Butler presumes that condemnation involves closure and that closure entails finality and disconnection. That is, she treats condemnation a^s an act of sovereignty bent on efacing its own supporting conditions, its own vulnera�ility and dependence. So even as she recognizes judging as a mode of address preril.ised on the context of address that "can and should provide a sustaining condition of ethical deliberation, judgment, and conduct;' she reads condemnation as violently eroding "the capacity of the subject addressed for both self-reflection and social-recognition" and denunciation as working to "paralyze and deratify the critical capacities of the subject to whom it is addressed" (PL, 49) . If the one who is condemned and denounced is already positioned in a prior relation of subordination, such erosion and paralysis may result. But not necessarily. The condemned may reject the bases, the terms, of condemnation-! am not who you say I am or Because I am who you say I am, you are the one who ultimately sufers, who is left shattered and bereft in condemning me. The denounced may accept the words of the denunciation, but challenge the suppositions supporting these words, the suppositions that give it an ethical valence beyond a mere statement of fact-Yes, I am a godless communist so ?

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Condemnation and denunciation may not succeed. Their efects on the addressee as well as their relation to other acts and interpretations cannot be determined in advance. If the condemned is powerful, at the head of a mighty military machine, then to associate condemnation with paralysis and deratification surely overstates the power of the address. One could wish that condemnation had such efects, and with respect to Bush's unconscionable, immoral, unjustified, illegal, and imperialist war against Iraq, I certainly do. Bush's persistence in his preemptive war against Iraq in the face of the condemnation of millions throughout the world, however, points to the weakness and ineficacy of condemnation unbacked by force.

At the same time, condemnation may work in a diferent direction. Weakness in. one respect may enable another sort of strength, a capacity to form new alliances and connections, to open a space wherein to imagine the possibility of another world. So condemnation and denunciation may produce new links. When I condemn, I may do so in the context of addressing another, one whom I am not condemning. If in a political gathering I condemn the president of the United States, I wil be addressing others, ·attempting to politicize and change the scene in which we find ourselves. Such politicization, moreover, may well be called for by the very inconsistency and lack in this scene that excites us, as Santner suggests.

Condemnation is not as powerful and eficacious as Butler implies. And insofar as it occurs within a context of address, condemnation is citational, relying for its eficacy on a set of prior norms that it reiterates, a set of prior practices and values to which it connects. Condemnation does not occur ex nihilo but is based on something, something shared, something that wil be unavoidable, incomplete, and fissured. As with other utterances, condemnation is "uncontrollable, appropriable, and able to signify otherwise and in excess of its animating intentions" (ES, 98). To condemn, then, is to appeal to a prior set of connections at its basis and thereby to open up this basis for critique and politicization. It is also, and more importantly, to be excited by the lacks fissuring our social formation and to take responsibility for the past harms and omissions that enable it.

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Politics and Unkowingness

Butler argues for an ethics that stems from an irresolvable unknowability, a trauma that limits and makes possible our need and capacity for response. Attunement to this unknowingness, this limit "within each of us, calls up the ways we are each given over to another. · Butler rejects moralizing responses to vulnerability, trauma, and opacity that seek to shield the subject from pain through appeals to self-defense and recourse to violence. Yet her rejection remains ethical. She ofers an alternative response to vulnerability that emphasizes our common place, our common risks, and our common limits.

"What can be said about a political response to those who reject this ethics? What about those who prioritize preservation of a narrowly conceived self and nation over acknowledgment of common vulnerability? Should they not be condemned, denounced, opposed? Butler's account of the context of address seems to presume an other who shares this conteXt or who can and wil accept her account of it, as if the other answers the call to give an account in necessarily the same way, without a fundamentaly diferent ethics of "his own. If the subject's sel£-crafting takes place in relation to the norms in which he finds himself, then difering sets of norms wil condition difering senses of oneself and others and difering ways of conceiving this relation.

In light of the decline of symbolic eficiency and the inconsistency of any ideological formation, moreover, the risks to which we find ourselves vulnerable, the experiences of embodiment inflecting our senses of exposure, wil necessarily be uncommon. For you, to be in my presence as a menstruating woman may risk defilement. For me, to confront your jouissance may be unbearable. Once we emphasize these fundamental gaps and conflicts, politics cannot be avoided. Not only are we called by inconsistencies in our social formations, by the past harms and omissions that make them what they are, but we are responsible for the arrangements of power in which we encounter each other. In the face of these inconsistencies and responsibilities, we make decisions, political decisions for and

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against, decisions of which we may remain unaware (insofar as we fail to attend to how in our daily practices we repeat and reinforce given arrangements) but which are no less political for this unawareness. Butler, however, displaces attention from the political matter of decision as she presents an ethics animated by an appreciation for the opacity and unknowingness rupturing any expectation to complete coherence or fully transparent self-identity.

If unknowingness conditions ethics then it necessarily conditions politics as well. Our political choices to condemn and denounce, the connections we pursue through what we exclude, take place under traumatic conditions of unlmowability and unpredictability. Our decision for this rather than that wil necessarily involve a kind of violence, a foreclosure of the possibility of the future that would have resulted had we decided otherwise. When we intervene politicaly, we act within situations not of our own making, often in terms of representations and practices we might otherwise trouble or critique. Through our actions, we afect these representations and practices, changing them and ourselves in ways we cannot predict.

Associating condemnation and denunciation with sovereignty, Butler eschews a politics of conviction as necessarily incompatible with the ethical conditions sustaining the scene of address. Yet condemnation and denunciation need not be associated with a notion of mastery or unconditionality. Instead, they can be necessary and proper political responses to the violence that informs the scenes in which we find ourselves and the inconsistencies that attempt to cover over past omissions and harms, r�sponses necessary for emboldening left politics. As mentioned above, despite the way she opposes conviction to responsibilty] Butler also condemns: she condemns the attacks made on the United States on September ${ \bf 1 1 } _ { \mathbf { \theta } }$ 2001. She does so as a way to enter into a certain conversation, enacting thereby the way that condemnation may provide not closure and detachment but an opening to new relationships, a possibility of political alternatives. Condemnation of one may be the way we address another, answering the lack that excites us, and forming a new, militant connection.

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9 I 1 1 C O N S P I RACY T H E O RIES AND P S YC H O S I S

n a poll conducted in 2004 by Zogby International, 49·3 percent of New York City residents said that some U.S. leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September u, 2001 and that they consciously failed to act:'1 According to a New York Times- CB S News poll carried out in October 2oo6, only 16 percent of those surveyed thought the Bush administration was telling the truth about what it knew prior to September 1 about possible terrorist attacks on the United States.2 Fifty-three percent of respondents said that they thought the administration was hiding something. Twenty-eight percent thought the administration was mostly lying. A Scripps Survey Research Center- Ohio University poll carried out in July 2006 asked the more pointed question as to whether respondents thought 9 I 11 was an "inside job." Thirty-six percent of respondents found it very or somewhat likely that "federal oficials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took riO action to stop them 'because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East: "3 The press release for the poll notes that this 36 percent is slightly less than the 40 percent convinced that. a lone gunman was not responsible for the death of President John F. Kennedy and the 38 percent who believe the government is withholding proof of the existence of extraterrestrial life. It also reports that those suspecting 9 l11 was an inside job are more likely to get their news from the Internet than from mainstream media sources, which is hardly surprising given the hundreds of w'ebsites devoted to investigating the day's events, criticizing the oficial account, and finding patterns in facts scattered throughout and virtually ignored by the mainstream media.

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What, if anything, might these numbers mean for left politics in the United States? Does the movement loosely organized around 9 I 11 truth involve dynamic political struggle? Is the movement an essential site of resistance against the policies of the Bush administration, its illegal wars, and its attempt to increase executive power and stifle civil liberties? Insofar as information at odds with the oficial story of 9 In circulates primarily on the Internet, do we find in the truth movement an example of the power of alternative and participatory media over the corporatecontrolled mainstream media?

The conflict over 9 I 11 truth is a battle over facts, knowledge, who knew, who knows, and who has a right to know. Pervasive skepticism renders every fact, every claim, suspect. So does the push to uncover the truth of September 11 continue the democratic project of underminig the sovereign privilege of secrecy by making hidden knowledge public?

Most mainstream discussions of the 9 I 11 truth movement, even those challenging the adequacy of the administration's account of the events of September n, dismiss truth activists as a lunatic fringe, as paranoid conspiracy theorists with a fragile hold on reality. This gap between oficial and alternative accounts raises the question of the possibility of facts credible both to those convinced by the oficial aq:ount and to those who reject it. Could any information exist that would disprove the suspicions of the MIH O P or made-it-happen-on-purpose segment of the 9 l n truth movement (the other segment is LIH o P, let it happen on purpose) ? Conversely, could any facts be revealed that would firmly establish the Bush administration's complicity in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? Diferently put, is the matter simply one of revelation and disco�cealment such that a smoking gun could emerge that all would agree is definitive proof of the truth of the event? Or is something else at stake, something that concerns the conditions of possibility for knowledge and credibility?

Confronting this dilemma is crucial for thinking through the role of media.old and new-as well as for grasping the setting of contemporary politics. If facts and information are introduced into a media environment wherein they are rejected or suspected in advance, that is to say, if facts are immediately presumed to be either lies in the service of ideology or the irrelevant factoids of the reality-based community, and if they circulate primarily as eyebal bait in communicative capitalism's endless circuits, then are they necessary for or relevant to left political projects? Vhat if the so-called facts circulate tribally, consolidating comunities of the lil<:erninded even as they fail to impress-or even register to-anyone else?

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Building movements, particularly of those alienated from the mainstream, is no trivial task. It has been a key tactic in the culture wars-as the success of the previously discredited school of neoliberal economics as well as of Christian fundamentalism indicates. Each has benefited from contestations over truth and the pluralizing of facts and values, from the relativism toward absolutes that construes each as entitled to her own opinion. Nonetheless, new media advocates often feti�histically proceed as if networked and participatory med.ia-blogging, the introduction of videos onto the Web, the independent journalism associated with indy media-are necessarily progressive, as if radical left politics is somehow built into the technology. They presume their introduction of information into the media stream is a crucial element of left opposition or anticapitalist resistance. Not only do they c_�ry on as if the information and images they produce are visible and known, as if this information registers within the massive circulation of contributions within comunicative capitalism, but these content providers also take it for granted that the information they provide is meaningful. They act as if those who come into contact with this new information wil find it credible, as if common standards for the assessment and evaluation of this information exist and are widely, . rather than tribally, shared.

Most political discussion (as well as democratic theory) takes for granted the existence of a consensus regarding the rules and conditions for establishing truth and falsity, not to mention a shared notion of reality. Quickly formatting "the conversation" via the exclusion of myriad views and positions as crazy or not serious, such discussion is premised on the fantasy that there is no fundamental disagreement over the basic character of the world (or that such disagreement has no bearing on politics) .4 This presumption is misplaced. Our present political-medialogical setting is one of dissensus, incredulity, and competing conceptions of reality. Communicative capitalism thrives under these conditions-but can left politlcs?

In Publicity 's Secret ( 2002), I discuss the deep imbrications of conspiracy thinkg and the hope for an American public, imbrications that demonstrate the ways democracy relies on publicity as a "system of distrust;' to use the words ofJeremy Bentham. Crucial to democracy's triumph over absolutism was the power of revelation, a power claimed for the people over and against the arcane mysteries of monarchy. As Carl Schmitt explained over eighty years ago, belief in openness as a value for its own sake is a product of this time, a product ill-suited to the practicalities of party politics under mass democracy where electoral victories and defeats depend on much more than a revelation here or there. In the present setting, moreover, openness, publicity, and the power of revelation further the expansion of networked information technologies to con� solidate communicative capitalism. Materializing democratic aspirations and suspicions, the adoption, expansion, and intensification of communicative technologies is urged-on all sides, by left and right, privileged and disadvantaged-as vital to increasing democratic participation (as if a deficit in participation were the primary problem confronting democracy today). The ideal of publicity functions ideologically, serving global capitallsm's reliance on networked information technologies and consumers convinced that their every blog post, virtual march, or YouTube uploa,d is a radical act rather than ;tn entert�g diversion. Communicative capitalism mobilizes the faith in exposure animating democracy as the perfect lure. Subjects feel themselves to be active even as their every activity reinforces the status quo. Revelation can b� celebrated because it is inefectual. Its results are .medialogical, just another contribution to the circulation of content with little impact on power or policy.

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Is the 9 I 11 truth movement, then, another instance of the convergence of conspiracy thinkg and the Internet, another manifestation of the desire to make the links, to enact the fantasy of publicity by revealing the secrets? No. Something diferent is going on. The movement associated with 9 I n truth manifests a shift in conspiracy thinkg, a shift from questioning to certainty and from a logic of desire to a logic of drive. And this shift isn't confined to the conspiratorial fringes. On the contrary, it is symptomatic of a larger sociocultural development that involves a new constellation of questionig, doubt, credibility, and certainty.

To make this argument, I turn again to Lacan, Zizek, and Santner. I explain the shift as one from the discourse of the hysteric to a new form of psychotic discourse, a shift that replaces a logic or economy of desire with one of drive. As chapter 3 explains, the discourse of the hysteric is one of four kinds of social link. Its primary characteristic is questioning. The hysteric constantly asks the master, '�m I what you say I am? What are you saying and why are you saying that?" The discourse of the hysteric can thus be understood as providing the basic form of democratic discoursewhich reminds us that these Lacanian terms are ofered as analytical categories, not means of pathologization. Like the hysteric, democracy challenges claims coming from a master. It is motivated by desire, a desire enabled by the very law that seems to block its fulient. By way of an example, we might note how various Democrats and journalists contested the Bush administration's classifying of previously public knowledge, its removal of all sorts of documents from the Internet after 9 I u. It's unlikely that th�se Democrats and journalists knew or even cared about this information while it was public. After it was secretized, however, then they desired it.

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Some conspiracy theorists echo democratic assumptions insofar as they don't provide theories but instead ask questions. They desire the truthj they want to know. They endeavor to reveal secrets and thereby call into being a public that wil get rid of the corrupt conspirators and restore legitimate government. In so doing, they situate themselves firmly in the democratic, anti-absolutist tradition (a tradition in which the American Declaration of Independence also belongs). Asking questions, making links, such conspiracy theorists try to persuade readers and hearers to think, to find out for themselves. Yet under contemporary conditions of comunicative capitalism, this desire to reveal is a trap. For all its aspirat�ons to democracy it remains caught in a pseudo-activity that reduces politics to a single operation-revelation.

Appeals to "find out for yourself" appear in the videos, books, and web sites of those involved in 9 I 11 truth. But frequently accompanying these injunctions to ask questions and chalenge authority is another sort of claim, a claim to certainty. This introduction of certainty changes the mode of the injunction to "find out for yourself' It now indicates less the openness of desire, a desire to know, than the closed circuit of drive. The facts are already there, we can be certain of that. There's no need to accept anything on the basis of belief Commemorating the first anniversary of the group Scholars for 9 I 1 Truth, its founder James Fetzer writes: "We have established beyond reasonable doubt that the Twin Towers were destroyed by a novel form of controlled demolition from the top down, that WTC-7 was brought down by a classic form of controlled demolition from the bottom up, and that, whatever may have hit the Pentagon, multiple lines of argument support the conclusion that it was not a Boeing 757:'5 Fetzer, a university professor, doesn't adopt the discourse of the hysteric. He is certain. The Scholars for 9 I 11 Truth know some things to be true. They don't need to persuade people to consider the evidence. The facts speak for themselves.

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