Derrida contra Gone Girl Feminism

deconstructing pop-post-structuralism

Derrida

Recently the interpocula Substack has criticized the self-professed ‘structureless’ model of activism celebrated by right wing populists, terrorist networks or the radical left networks alike. Back in the1960’s Feminist theorists exposed structureless organisations as a mask for informal structures that foreclosed access of the many, for the benefit of an elite. Third wave feminism demanded formalised and transparent rules and selection processes to expose male privilege, at the same time some criticized  the role of elites within feminism and feminist movements. More recently, social media has empowered women with their own means of information sharing and organising protests and other forms of resistance. Despite pretences to the contrary, this form of empowerment reiterates the problem of elites for a new generation.

Networks are often controlled by a handful of anonymous individuals who make the rules for everyone on the group chats and channels. With tens of thousands of casuals being sent instructions from  anonymous group chat administrators, the well-meaning desire for social justice can be co-opted by a handful of individuals. Among the most sinister is a group that drugs, robs, and sexually assaults men for reasons that are more pathological than political. This group is abetted by the naive belief in the transparency, equality, and freedom of information of networks. A belief grounded in the myth of structureless and pop-post-structuralism.

Since the early 60’s the left has identified itself with an opposition to structure and centralised power. Post-structuralism is not a term just used by it’s detractors. What is often overlooked is that post-structuralists critically appropriate much from structuralism. Like structuralists, they deny that there are transcendent Ideas or essences on high. The real source of meaning and truth are not the traditional privileged centres of meaning- God, reason or consciousness. However, the critical insight of post-structuralism is not the abolition of structure.

The movement to decentre traditional sources of meaning and truth might sound more like post-structuralism and the modern left. Famously though, the poster boy of post-structuralism put an abrupt end to the reign of structuralism at a conference in 1967. With Levi Strauss in the audience, Jaques Derrida objected that the structuralists, having disabused themselves of transcendent centres of meaning and truth, only replaced those centres with structures.  Thus they were still thinking like traditional metaphysicians and epistemologists, only with a new centre.

The new left has popularised post-structuralism and it’s attack on deep structures, hierarchies and centres of power. However, they have done so without carrying over  its fundamental lessons. First, if structuralism betrayed a desire for a centre of meaning and truth, ‘structurelessness’ has become the new centre for the populist left. Second, the popularised notion of post-structuralism, as post-structure, cannot account for change. Third, the concept of structurlessness comes after the machinations of extreme groups and is not the source of meaning, truth, or legitimacy for their campaigns. Fourth, the tension in trying to balance unique singular individuals and measurable equality is, as Derrida warned, easily perverted, and used for egregious ends when it is not given form and structure.

 The network is both inside and outside the structureless organisation.

Levi Strauss claims (in Raw and Cooked) that his work on myths is scientific and external to myth, but also admits elsewhere (e.g. in The Oedipus Myth) that he is participating in writing myth. So the centre of meaning that he analysed was both outside the structure and in the structure. The discourse on modern movements as networks emerges from networks as an elaboration of networks, while also claiming to be objective discourses. These movements are championed as decentring political actions by theorists. However, many of these theorists of activism live in with political activist networks. Even theorists who share the ends of the movement participate in the myth of structurelessness by promoting leaderless model of egalitarian movements that the networks proclaim is central to their movement.

In much of the discourse on activism and networks, the informal hierarchies and structures are not acknowledged. Decisions about rules, participation and decision making are deferred because everyone feels secured by the network as an egalitarian and transparent centre. This is not incidental to political activism. It is only through the imposition of an elite network on a larger network, as the masked and displaced structure of structurelessness, that structurelessness appears as the meaning and truth of populist movements.

Structurelessness cannot account for change

One of the main criticism of structuralism is that it’s emphasis on universal structures cannot account for change. Indeed, the theory is founded on the effacing of change. Levi Strauss, founder of the theory, famously argued that language must have appeared all at once because it’s meaning could not have appeared gradually, one meaningful thing at a time. Thus, on his account, one day there was no language, and the next day there was language.  Derrida points out that this means that culture comes after nature, but nature can only become meaningful as ‘nature’ expressed in language. One of the main lessons of structuralism, is the criticism of such binary relations as nature and nurture. It criticizes the creation of one state out of another, and points to the interdependency of such concepts. It does not abolish binary relations by reducing one to the other. The concepts of hierarchical structures and structureless networks are another example. There are no networks without any unsymmetrical relationships and hierarchies. At the same time, hierarchical structures are only a form of network. Thus, networks are not a universal that will supersede hierarchies, despite the utopian hope in progress on the side of pop-post-structuralists.

According to Hardt, the multitude is comprised of minorities who are organising themselves in networks, or swarms. With the new communication technology, the multitude will rise to power and usher in communism- “in in the society of communication democracy cannot but be communist.” He asked if  the ‘transversal organization of free individuals built on a technology that makes it possible’ is ‘less Utopian than it used to be’ (174). He raises the possibility that, though domination becomes more perfect, perhaps ‘any man, any minority, any singularity, is more than ever before potentially able to speak out and thereby recover a greater degree of freedom’ (in N: 174).

Strangely, Negri seems optimistic about a Habermassian autonomous communicative action. This flies in the face of his Foucauldian framework in which language is always enmeshed in power/knowledge networks. The post-structuralist lesson in the ways discourses produce and are produced by power relations are being ignored, despite having opened up space for resistance and change to hegemonic orders. Hardt now believes the more fluid and immaterial production becomes, the more it escapes control and he anticipates a rather pure linguistic ‘activity’ coming to the fore in ‘communicational society’ (1992: 105). Deleuze however was more pessimistic, claiming that instant communication feeds into the spaces of control and their feedback loops. Indeed, he says that speech and communication are ‘thoroughly permeated by money - and not by accident but by their very nature’ (175), such that ‘a quest for “universals of communication” ought to make us shudder’.

The idea that information, wealth, and power would be distributed equally across networks is false. Network science could have told as much. New nodes do not attach themselves randomly to the network, they want to attach themselves to well connected nodes. So the well connected make more connections, and the returns of connectedness get concentrated in ever few hands. Unsurprisingly then, the ownership of social media platforms is incredibly concentrated, creating billions for a small number of people in Silicon Valley. Networks have become an incredibly source of inequality and influence. However, the channels of influence do not all run as Silicon valley intends. Ironically, the tools created by a liberal elite in Silicon Valley were the key tools used by a populist candidate. Donald Trump would not have won the 2016 election, with half the financial resources of Hilary Clinton, if he was forced to compete with her in a conventional campaign. Brexit is also unthinkable without the same social media platforms. The idea of a pure communication society has been superseded with polarization and conflict.

The new centre of meaning and truth comes after the fact.

Political movements started to organise themselves in networks and describe themselves as networks. Which is to say it comes belatedly to activism and social movements. It does not serve as it’s transcendental source. It is only in the imposition of the network, as the structure of ‘structurelessness’, that structurelessness appears as the grounding myth of the left and it’s moral superiority. It is not the source of it’s meaning or truth despite appearances. The appearance of epistemic equality and transparency, in and of networks, misleads people regarding the truth and moral meaning of so-called structureless activism.

The precarious tension between singularities and measurable equality

If we read the ideal of ‘leaderlessness’ generously as an attempt to resolve the tension between treating everyone the same and respecting the singularity of the individually, there are still problems. Leaderlessness is here a cypher for a form of equality in outcome at the centre of modern discourses on justice. However, the tension between the immeasurable singularity of the individual and the measurable equality of all qua citizens takes here a particularly sinister turn. The tyranny of structureless, as Freeman describes it, exemplifies the important distinction Derrida makes between the conditional and contingent pole of a concept on the one side, and the unconditioned absolute pole of a concept on the other. As Freeman points out, “there is no such thing as a structureless group”, and the claim to one is dangerous because it is a claim to the absolute.

“Structurelessness” is organisationally impossible. We cannot decide whether to have a structured or structureless group, only whether or not to have a formally structured one.

The danger is that a small anonymous group commands an ever-expanding network that believes in structurelessness. The anonymity of group chat administrators, even to national policing agencies and corporations, undermines any sense of responsibility to the members they (mis)lead, (mis)inform, and control. The broader membership is not informed of the core group’s actions and their motivations. This elite group secures consent by excluding the broad membership from the selection process, the rules of operation, and the flow of information.

This exacerbates the tension between democracy’s commitment to inclusivity on the one hand, and the exclusivity that emerges in political disagreements over which people make up the sovereign. The question of exclusivity also emerges over the conditions by which membership is determined. This is not just relevant to group chat membership, but also the membership of the core group of Gone Girl Feminists in Berlin who mislead the group chat membership. Only a certain type of women, with certain connections is allowed to know the motivations and violent actions of the group. Only an elite, that is, get to write the rules and control the membership of that elite. Meanwhile the multitude of well-meaning women that take orders are oblivious to their alienation within Gone Girl Feminism. Many women feel like they are bad feminists, and thus bad women, are content to take instruction and participate somehow. Equally men are eager to show they are not toxic. Most are content to outsource their moral character and defer their moral responsibility to their mother, to their girlfriends and their wife, conforming to tradition gender roles. The political problem of deciding who will be sovereign is close to Derrida’s heart:

It is a question of knowing how to transform and improve the law, and of knowing if this improvement is possible within an historical space which takes place between the Law of an unconditional hospitality, offered a priori to every other, to all newcomers, whoever they may be, and the conditional laws of a right to hospitality, without which the unconditional Law of hospitality would be in danger of remaining a pious and irresponsible desire, without form and without potency, and even of being perverted at any moment. (On Cosmopolitanism 22–3)

Pious because it disavows hierarchy and the properly political decision to include and exclude. It is irresponsible because it is anonymous and unaccountable. The informal leaders administrate violence arbitrarily and pervert the unconditional hospitality towards  multiplicity. The multitude elides the political problem of making distinctions between anyone and emergence of hierarchy and law. It evades the problem of it’s own violence because anyone who questions them, is accused of questioning the call for hospitality and the celebration of multiplicity. The multitude turns the law of hospitality against those who reject violence and the informal control of administrators who pervert the ends of various leftist movements.

Derrida celebrated democracy as the only concept that, as an absolute principle, assumes the right to criticize everything publicly, including even democracy. This right to question everything, is in large part of what Derrida means when he talks about the ineliminable ‘undecidability’ of justice and democracy. This concept of ‘undecidability’ in it’s strongest definition affirms the our predicament of not being able to form a grounded opinions about anything. Since a concept is only completely determined by the potentially infinite series of particular instances to which it applies, it is never fully present on a given occasion. This means, a concept must be an open-ended creation. Philosophy in the post-structuralist tradition creates concepts that are not about defining the true essence of things or to correspond to how things are in the world, but rather concepts describe the world in useful ways. Useful here means, in order to make the world better. New ways of describing the world, mean new ways of acting in and on the world.

However, this undecidability is said to pose a danger in so far as it opens a void in the intellect into which fanaticism and tyranny can rush. In the absence of decently argued for opinion, incorrigible opinions run amok. The deconstruction of traditional opinions, and of any grounds to hold opinions, traditional or otherwise, could engender a kind of passive acquiescence in whatever rises up in it’s place. However, it can be argued that undecidability presents it’s own anecdote to this danger in so far as all opinion are susceptible to scepticism. All opinions are met with perpetual vigilant scrutiny precisely to withstand those most egregious opinions. However, detractors of deconstruction felt themselves vindicated when Paul de Man’s anti-sematic writings for a Nazi sponsored newspaper caused a revelation. Derrida’s most eminent acolyte proved the dangers of fanaticism. Not least because Paul de Man could not be described as intellectually lazy. What chance does ‘the multitudes’ then have in defending themselves from their impending acquiescence in whatever rises up in structureless spontaneity.

Equally, algorithms are working to figure out what news the viewer will like and share because that is how Facebook gets advertisers, by showing that people are stuck to the content they go to on Facebook. This creates echo chambers of personalised news feeds, rather than forming an autonomous society of communication. People contend for likes and shares with ever more extreme content. As psychologists have pointed out, the moral emotions that garner most likes and shares- such as hatred, shame and disgust- act like a call to action. What emerges are  small groups who know how to construct a disgusting Other with online content to provoke anger, hate, shame and disgust. The call to action coincides with instructions on how to abuse and humiliate the target in scripted abuses.

One of the central role of activists is to keep people angry and engaged in their campaign. In the case of Gone Girl Feminism, their exploits are only validated to the extent that they are seen as political activists, and not as pathological abusers. They know to mislead the public regarding the physical and sexual abuses the target suffers. They know to present the reaction they provoke after months or years of abuse as the retrospective justification of the harassment. Only the more mild and humiliating harassments are deemed suitable content for the vanilla feminists on their group chats, who the Gone Girl Feminists despise and command. Meanwhile, the multitude are happy to outsource their moral and political judgement to the network. The group chat gives members security in numbers, and allows them to hide their own lack of interest in feminism, post-colonialism and ethics. Paradoxically, they take commands with a vague belief that the network is made up of the dynamic symmetrical relations of unique singularities like them, and this makes them good. Ensconced in the ephemeral clouds of structrurelessness, thousands of people follow orders to drug strangers who are slandered online.