Zeynep Gambetti

This essay interrogates whether existent analytical tools remain adequate to identify and assess what is perceived as the revival of fascistic tendencies today, ultimately arguing that they are not. Fascism cannot be expected to assume the same forms it did a century ago. Class structures, resource distribution schemes, communication potentials, and modes of belonging and exclusion have undergone significant changes. To determine which of the traits of the contemporary power paradigm would foreground new fascistic tendencies, this essay first revisits some of the most crucial insights in Hannah Arendt's study of the origins of totalitarianism. Arendt's perspective is highly valuable in moving the discussion of fascism beyond the delineation of specific historical events toward a theory of fascist power. The point is to distill from Arendt's insights into the connections among imperialism, fascism, and totalitarianism a number of techniques of government that would enable us to repeat the gesture today, but this time within the biopolitics-security-neoliberalism nexus. The power paradigm that this essay (re)constructs is meant to contribute to identifying fascistic and totalitarian trends irrespective of ideological and historiographic differences.

Critics have recently begun to compare the Covid-19 crisis either to 9/11 or to the 2008 financial meltdown. This is highly misleading, in my view. The Covid-19 crisis is impossible to fully control by political fiat or to overcome by injecting money into the system. The sovereign right over life and death has been usurped by a virus, which is neither dead nor alive. Political decrees won’t be enough to stop the virus from killing, although they can slow down its spread. Nor are bailouts sufficient to revive economies devastated by the very lockdowns mandated by political authorities, since production lines cannot be reactivated without risking contamination. Perhaps for the first time since the dismantlement of the welfare state (et encore, since that was but a palliative that curbed the radicalization of working class demands), lawmaking and moneymaking pull in opposite directions. Political and economic imperatives have ceased to coincide: it’s either pandemic control or the economy.

This chapter focuses on the dual aspect of immanence, as both the self-perpetuating movement of totalitarianism and processes of neoliberal accumulation, on the one hand, and as the condition of action and resistance, on the other. I first look at Gilles Deleuze’s premonition that continuous networks, rhizomes or pseudo-planes of immanence might replace the rigid stratifications that were once the mark of 20th century politics. Deleuze’s work with Felix Guattari aims to underline the role capitalism plays into what they call the “flight into schizophrenia.” The permanent deterritorialization effectuated by the flux of money in capitalist reproduction processes can be grasped as the expanded immanence of the system, the limits of which are constantly displaced by equally immanent machines of anti-production. The desire for fascism – or rather, the constitution of micro-fascistic cancerous bodies without organs – must be analyzed within this setting, they argue, not as a reaction to it, but as one of its necessary products. After enhancing this argument by show how immanence characterizes neoliberalism, biopolitical security, and fascism, I turn to Hannah Arendt to consider how her construal of power is destined as an antidote to totalitarianism. The state of perpetual movement and instability, which are the distinctive traits of totalitarianism as spelled out by Arendt in her monumental study, Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt later develops this insight into self-perpetuating processes through what she called the “victory of animal laborans.” Under conditions of modern consumerism, she argues, a cyclical logic takes hold of all social processes such that all ends turn into means ad infinitum and ad absurdum. I then tackle the thorny question of how immanent criteria of political action and ethics may counter this trend. Reading Arendt through Deleuzean lenses and vice versa, I reassess the value of what Deleuze calls “transcendental empiricism” in coming to terms with micro-fascisms. Although sketchy, the last part of the paper aims to formulate the conditions under which immanence as a heuristic device may effectively serve as a basis for rethinking action and resistance in contemporary societies.

This chapter seeks to distinguish between two registers of vulnerability by using the notion of “agon” as an entry point. The risk associated with precarity arises from the differential exposure to visibility, to support systems, and to vital resources (Butler). But another way of construing risk would be through the notion of plurality, construed as an “ex-posure” to difference, to liminality, to new experiences, and to the unpredictability of outcome. While precarity necessarily implies antagonism, the second can be qualified as agonistic. Taking the cue from Hannah Arendt’s political thought as well as from the Occupy Gezi movement, I claim on the one hand that being affected by others can only be construed as a loss under conditions of antagonism. On the other hand, however, agonistic action, construed as comprising the risk of distinguishing oneself, of discord and difference, not only with respect to others but also with respect to oneself, might constitute the very condition of possibility of responsiveness. It might well be that without risking one’s identity one cannot sustain it either. I suggest that this perspective has important implications, not only in terms of gendered relations, but also in terms of collective action against local, cultural, national, or global structures of subjugation in the age of neoliberalism.

Etienne Balibar se réfère à l’idée arendtienne de la citoyenneté pour montrer que la démocratie se construit nécessairement au travers d’une aporie. D’une part, la démocratie évoque l’idéal isonomique de l’égalité pour fonder la communauté ; d’autre part, elle inscrit la différence dans l’éventualité d’une contestation permanente des principes unificateurs. Ce que je propose, c’est de contribuer à développer le dialogue entre E. Balibar et Hannah Arendt en m’interrogeant sur la possibilité d’aller au-delà de l’horizon de la violence. Le concept d’agon qu’Arendt utilise pour qualifier le vivre ensemble isonomique n’est pas la concurrence entre artisans, ni le conflit entre ennemis, mais renvoie plutôt à l’institution d’un monde commun grâce aux différences. L’agir agonistique comprend le risque de se distinguer, d’être en désaccord, de se différer, non seulement par rapport aux autres mais aussi par rapport a soi-même. Il faudrait alors définir la violence comme une force qui agit sur l’agon, c’est-à-dire, sur la capacité de « devenir-autre ». C’est justement ceci qu’aussi bien la loi que la notion moderne de droits oblitère.

This article pinpoints two lacunae – freedom and the subject of action – in post-structuralist epistemology and proposes to rethink agency through Hannah Arendt’s theory of action. It is argued that, given the sense of disorientation in theoretical and political practices, it is all the more important to re-conceptualize the singularity or uniqueness of agents as initiators of social change.

Foucault’s last lectures probe into the nature of a new type of power that he ends up naming biopower. Although several aspects of the phenomenon Foucault was trying to grasp are now being explored, one peculiar dimension of biopolitics did not yet receive the scholarly attention that it deserves. In 1976, Foucault noticed that the power to “make live” hinges upon its sinister opposite, the practice of “letting die”. Like fascism, this new “regulatory power” cannot have “life” as its main object without designating a portion of the population as a threat to that life. In 1978, he categorized this under the generic name “security”. Like market economy, security works by deducing the “norm” from life processes via normality curves, sacrificing those lives that fall outside. Fascism, biopower and neoliberalism seem thus to converge. Much earlier, Arendt confronted a similar problem. The distinguishing characteristic of totalitarianism is the transformation of human beings into “superfluous” bodies. But totalitarianism became possible partly through capitalism’s imperialist motives. This insight was later developed by Arendt, with a focus on what she called the “victory of animal laborans”. In the cyclical logic of modern consumption, all ends turn into means for the sake of “life”. This paper claims that focusing on sovereignty as Agamben does tends to obscure the relation between violence and the market fundamentalism of neoliberalism, and proposes instead to follow the path that Arendt and Foucault have opened.

C’est une des grandes lignes directrices de la pensée de Miguel Abensour que de relancer une philosophie politique critique. Le retour des choses politiques en constitue la nécessité et l’actualité. A notre époque, néanmoins, ce retour n’est pas sans être teinté d’un renouveau du danger totalitaire – soit dans les Guantanamo américains, soit dans la globalisation d’un mode d’être néolibéral vorace et expéditionnaire, mode d’être qui déstabilise valeurs et droits en les soumettant à un mouvement stupéfiant. Les pratiques globales du néolibéralisme sont telles que l’avertissement d’Hannah Arendt, à la fin de son grand livre Origins of Totalitarianism, y trouve un écho : « Les solutions totalitaires peuvent fort bien survivre à la chute des régimes totalitaires, sous la forme de tentations fortes qui surgiront chaque fois qu’il semblera impossible de soulager la misère politique, sociale et économique d’une manière digne de l’homme… Il se peut que les véritables difficultés de notre époque ne revêtent leur forme authentique – sinon nécessairement la plus cruelle – qu’une fois le totalitarisme devenu chose du passé ». A prêter l’oreille à cet avertissement, nous nous garderions de célébrer trop hâtivement l’avènement de l’ère post-totalitaire. Le cynisme, collé à jamais à notre peau depuis l’obscurcissement totalitaire de la distinction entre vérité et mensonge, semble bien être le signe de nos temps. La question se pose alors de savoir si aujourd’hui la critique de la domination ou de l’idéologie peut, à elle seule, atteindre son but. Pour rappeler la formule de Slavoj Zizek concernant la faillite de la critique de l’idéologie à l’ère de la fausse conscience éclairée, « ils savent très bien ce qu’ils font, et ils le font tout de même ». Il est fort probable que la prise de conscience ne peut plus servir de gage, car l’idéologie n’est plus un mode de voir ou de penser mais un mode d’être pratique, concret, un mode de gestion du quotidien. Le retour des choses politiques exige alors également un retour à l’agir – et dans le même sillage, un retour à Hannah Arendt. La théorie de l’action élaborée par Arendt possède deux forces principales. D’un côté, elle nous permet de concevoir la politique, ou plus précisément, l’agir ensemble, comme le plus grand antidote de la domination et du cynisme : ce n’est qu’en agissant qu’on saura bouleverser les pratiques idéologiques sociales, économiques et culturelles. De l’autre côté, elle recèle une éthique proprement politique, éthique à déduire de sa critique du totalitarisme. Le retour à Arendt est d’autant plus pertinent, voire nécessaire, que l’oubli de l’action incite les théories postmodernes à proposer des solutions insensées, allant de l’abandon total des lieux de pouvoir à l’autodestruction, en passant par un « souci de soi » apolitique et sans vision. L’éthique arendtienne, au contraire, permet de repenser la liberté, non pas comme une négativité absolue, mais comme une re-symbolisation, comme l’institution d’un mode d’être qui change les donnés de la situation. Bien mieux, elle nous permet de reconnaître les expériences actuelles de liberté là où elles surgissent. De telles expériences possèdent la force d’une critique concrète, critique réalisée et affirmée par les choses elles-mêmes.

In a recent article, Nancy Fraser accuses feminism of having losing its critical stance towards capitalism. We respond by pointing out several analytical and empirical problems in Fraser’s framework. Fraser universalizes a particular feminist experience, obscuring the difference between feminist movements of the North and the South. We argue that she stands on very narrow empirical ground when claiming that feminists have not been able to measure up to neo-liberalism. Analytically, Fraser disregards the impact of feminism as a critique of power and fails to see how it has led to deconstructing the category of “identity” instead of promoting it. More significantly, she overlooks the alliance between neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism, thus jumping to the erroneous conclusion that the critique of tradition has played into the hands of neoliberal power. She ends up advocating a one-dimensional class perspective as the principle axis of opposition to neo-liberalism, abandoning the integral, multi-dimensional approach she claims second-wave feminists once had.

Revisiting the concept of totalitarianism, together with and in spite of Slavoj Zizek, has utmost importance at a time when the post-9/11 world takes on totalitarian forms. These forms seem to escape both the logic of ‘‘everyday totalitarianism,’’ as elaborated by Zizek, and that of ‘‘Empire,’’ described by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.

This study aims to contribute to efforts to understand how redress occurs in local contexts impaired by armed conflict. Its particular focus is on events, dynamics and forms of relationality that (re)create public spheres on a local level. It takes the city of Diyarbakır, the largest in Southeastern Turkey, as the vantage point from which to explore the transformation of a site of violent conflict into a space for the expression of differences that were either nonexistent or suppressed. Since the beginning of the armed uprising of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 1984, the majority of political actors in Diyarbakır have in effect been polarized into two antagonistic camps (the Turkish state vs. the PKK). With the end of armed conflict five years ago, Diyarbakır has been astoundingly transformed into a paradise for civil society activists. The dynamics through which new urban spaces of existence and of expression have been created have not ceased being conflictual. In exploring the formative function of micro and macro struggles on publicness, the theoretical intent of this study is to argue against the Habermasian conceptualization of the public sphere. Accounting for the conflictual emergence of spaces of contact and communication requires a novel approach to the concept of “public sphere” itself.

This paper explores two examples of collective action, the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, and the Kurdish movement in Turkey, by focusing on how two particular places, Diyarbakır and Chiapas, were constructed by them after the subsiding of armed conflict. My first aim is to show how this place-making has affected the discourses and practices of these movements. I argue that place-making is not only about locality or physical settings, but also about constructing a movement. It is a form of struggle in its own right. My second aim is to discuss the broad outlines of what may be called the “appropriation of space.” This refers not only to the spaces of visibility and solidarity opened up by a movement, but also to its chances of acquiring significance within local, national or global spaces of power. I look at how the Kurdish movement has had an impact on democracy in Turkey and compare it with the Zapatista movement’s local and transnational effects. I do this by relating physical and metaphorical notions of space to several concepts generated by the social movement literature. As such, this study intends to contribute to spatial understandings of collective action. It is also likely to indicate various pitfalls and obstacles in the way of emancipatory social movements in the present neoliberal era.

Zeynep Gambetti nos mostra como estamos diante de um quadro que pede por novos conceitos e autocrítica de conceitos correntes. Para isso ela coloca acontecimentos. Por exemplo, como pensar as cento e trinta ou mais tentativas de linchamento quase-espontâneo e inúmeros outros incidentes de agressão coletiva que ocorreram desde 2005 em um país onde surtos de raiva coletiva ocorreram no passado, mas raramente em tal frequência e intensidade. Como a violência, da qual temíamos tanto, quando proveniente do Outro, tornou-se agora meio e fim ético declarado? Como as práticas e discursos de vigilância e securitização no Ocidente alcançaram a vida comum as pessoas comuns tão rapidamente, revertendo a mais pacífica e solidária capa de tolerância metafísica que nos protegia há menos de dez anos atrás? O livro "Agir em Tempos Sombrios" chega em boa hora, repleto de analogias e homologias espontâneas entre a situação turca e a situação brasileira. Um começo para a retomada da crítica em tempos sombrios.

This is a volume of feminist analyses focusing anew on the concepts of resistance and vulnerability in light of two main aims: to think about feminist vocabularies of vulnerability and resistance as they develop through translation and the negotiation of regional differences (including the US, France, Serbia, Turkey, Cyprus, and Palestine); to provide a substantial alternative to some dominant conceptions of vulnerability and action that presuppose (and support) the idea that paternalism is the site of agency, and victimization, a condition of inaction. The wager of is that one reason why there is resistance to (even an outright denial of) vulnerability is that vulnerability has not been adequately tied to the practices of resistance. The volume brings to task notions such as responsiveness, permeability, plurality and performativity to articulate and explore the complex grid of discourses and practices that connect vulnerability to resistance. Questions of feminist agency are addressed through occupy movements and street politics, informal groups at checkpoints and barricades, practices of self-defense, hunger strikes, transgressive enactments of solidarity and mourning, infrastructural mobilizations, and aesthetic and erotic interventions into public space that mobilize memory and expose forms of power. While each chapter contends with forms of gendered violence and militarism, resilience, neoliberal governmentality, and political vulnerability, the overall challenge taken up by the contributors to the volume is to point to possible strategies for a feminist politics of connective engagements and to suggest an ethics of bodily resistance that does not disavow either relational or historico-political forms of vulnerability.

"In Rhetorics of Insecurity, Zeynep Gambetti and Marcial Godoy-Anativia bring together a select group of scholars to investigate the societal ramifications of the present-day concern with security in diverse contexts and geographies. The essays claim that discourses and practices of security actually breed insecurity, rather than merely being responses to the latter. By relating the binary of security/insecurity to the binary of neoliberalism/neoconservatism, the contributors to this volume reveal the tensions inherent in the proliferation of individualism and the concurrent deployment of techniques of societal regulation around the globe. Chapters explore the phenomena of indistinction, reversal of terms, ambiguity, and confusion in security discourses. Scholars of diverse backgrounds interpret the paradoxical simultaneity of the suspension and enforcement of the law through a variety of theoretical and ethnographic approaches, and they explore the formation and transformation of forms of belonging and exclusion. Ultimately, the volume as a whole aims to understand one crucial question: whether securitized neoliberalism effectively spells the end of political liberalism as we know it today."

Online pdf version of the book available at: http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780814725481