Postmodem Anarchism

Postmodem Anarchism

Lewis Call

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For Mom and Dad, who taught me to question

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: The Postrnodem Matrix

I. Toward an Anarchy of Becoming: Nietzsche

31

2. A Thought Outs ide the State: Foucault

61

3. The Gift of Postmodem Anarchism: Baudri l lard

89

4. Anarchy in the Matrix: William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

1 17

B ibliography

1 43

Index

1 53

About the Author

161

Acknowledgments
I would l ike to thank Professor Mark Poster for helping me to discover my
i nterest in postmodemism . I would also l ike to thank Dr. Robert Blackman for
many long and fascin ating discussions ab out an arch ism . Dr . Sharif Gemie,
editor of Anarchist Studies, was kind enough to provide me w ith a forum i n
w h i c h I could articulate a n d develop many of my ideas . Thanks to Professor
Craig Harlan for all those hurried hallway conversations about Richard Rorty .
Thanks to Chelle for carefu l proofre ading and ass i stance w ith N i etzschean
experim ents . Most especially, I want to thank Professor George Cotkin for his
patient encouragem ent; w ithout h i s guidance, this book m i ght never have
happened.
An earlier vers ion of chapter 1 appeared in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies
21 (spring 2001): 48-76 . A vers ion of chapter 4 appeared in Anarchist Studies 7
(1999): 99-117. Grateful acknow ledgment is made to the editors and publ ishers
of these j ournals for perm ission to reprint this material.
Lyrics from " Everyday i s a Winding Road" by S heryl Crow, Bri an
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Introduction

The Postmodern Matrix

The recent advent of hypertext as a profoundly new form of writing has been
heralded by some as a pedagogical gold m ine; it also seems to confirm certain
postmo dem pred ictions regarding the dec line o f linear narrative. 1 Hypertext,
which deconstructs conventional text by interspersing such text w ith nonlinear
hypertextual links , is now used by w i de segments of the population throughout
the posti ndustrial w orld. Hypertext also makes it tempting to view i deas, con
cepts, and inte llectual deve lopments not in terms of a linear progression, as was
once fashionable, but rather through the metaphor of the web, or as cyberpunk
2
pioneer Will iam G ibson would have it, "the matrix." The metaphor of the ma
trix is especially tempting, not only because it seems to conform to our present
technolog ical condition, but also because it fits nicely into an i nterpretive
framew ork wh ich has been employed w ith some success by a number of prom i
nent structuralist anthropologists and literary critics. While Claude Levi-Strauss
and C l i fford Geertz inquired into the deep structure o f certain non-Western
mythological tradit ions, Roland Barthes and Marsha ll Sah lins provocatively
pointed out that the same technique could eas i ly be applied to an analys i s of
contemporary Western bourgeois cu lture.3 Could we not, as an i nteresting ex
periment in structuralist intellectual history, apply the same methodology to the
h i story of postm odem philosophy? Indeed, if we prov i s ionally accept the
provocative thesis of G i lles De leuze and Felix Guattari, perhaps a certain ins ight
may be gained by abandoning those histories of thought which articu late suspi
cious teleologies in favor of a new model, more "rhizomatic" in nature, in which
thought is conce ived as a web or matrix, w ith every "node" connected to every
other.4
Thi s approach m i ght also addres s some of the h i storiographic concerns
raised by Jacques Derrida, who has poi nted out that "success ively, and in a regu
lated fashi on, the center receives different forms or names. The history of meta-

Introduction

phys ics, l i ke the h istory of the West, is the h i story of these metaphors and
m etonym ies . Its m atrix . . . i s the determ ination of Being as

presence

in all

s e n s e s o f th i s w o r d . " 5 Derrida i s r i ght to b e skept i c a l of the centered

"metaphysics of presence" which h as dom inated Western thought since Plato,
for presence implies absence, and any fixed center must depend for its very
ex istence upon an exc luded marg i n . The m atrix I wish to propose, however, i s
t h e very Other of t h e "matrix" of Western metaphysics w h i c h Derrida describes
here, for the postmodern m atrix h as no center. It deve lops according to the
m odel of the decentered computer network, and therefore h as w h at Jean
B audri llard would call a certain

hyperreality,

but no " B e ing as presence." It is

much closer to B arthes ' s vis ion of an " i deal text" in which "the networks are
m any and interact, w ithout any one of them being abl e to surpass the rest ; this
text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of sign ifieds; it has no beginning; it
is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of wh ich can be
authoritatively declared to be the main one . "6 The postmodem matrix, l ike the
" ideal text, " i s thus profoundly plural istic and nonhierarchical : it h as neither a
single concrete origin nor a definite teleology, and none of its strands or nodes
may be said to rule over the others . Taking the centerless, hypertcxtual matrix as
our model an d postm odern phi losophy as our topic of inquiry, we m i ght then
proceed as follows .
Strand One b e g i n s , of course, w ith Friedrich N i etzsch e . S o m etimes
regarded as "the l ast m etaphy s i c i an i n the West," sometimes hailed (or
denounced, w ith equal enthu s iasm) as the philosopher who marks the "turning
point" into postmodern ity, Nietzsch e ' s importance in the h i story of nineteenth
an d twentieth-century phi losophy is w ithout paral lel .7 If N ietzsch e ' s apologists
and critics are in agreem ent on any point, it i s surely this : that N ietzsche ' s
thinking represents w h at some postmodern ists m ight cal l a

rupture.

After

Nietzsche, phi losophy cannot proceed as it did before . His dispersed, nonl inear,
aphoristic style combines w ith his powerfully destab i l izing genealogical method
to produce a th inking wh ich calls everything i nto question : our epistemological
confidence in our ability to understand the truth about ourselves and the world,
an d even our ontological confidence in our own existence as rational se lves in
possess ion of free w i l l . N i etzsche ' s thinking lays waste to every received truth
of the m o dern world, i n c l uding those of science, p o l itics, and re l i gion. H i s
p h i l osophy i s thu s anarch istic i n t h e strong sense of the term : it i n c l udes
i m portant e l e m ents of an anarchist politics, but (more importantly) it also
contains an

anarchy ofthought.

Nietzsche ' s writing attacks h ierarchy not only at

the p o l itical level but at the philosophical level as w e l l , underm in ing the very
foundations of the deeply entrenched metaphys ics of domination upon which the
West has come to rely .

The Postmodem Matrix

Where, one m ight w e l l ask, is philosophy to proceed after this critique? The
answer to this question is prov ided in large part by the author-positions who oc
cupy the next two nodes on Strand One, namely Miche l Foucault and G i l les
D e l e u z e . Foucault rad ical izes N ietzsche ' s thought-not ep istemo logica l ly ,
w hich w o u l d be almost impossible, but in the more straightforward sense that
Foucault g i ves the genealogy a spec i fi c a l l y p o l it i c a l d i m ensi o n . Whereas
N ietzsche used genealogy primari ly as a weapon against Judeo-Christian moral
ity, Foucault is much more interested i n genealogy as a strategy for the subver
sion of judicial discourses about prisons and punishment, or psychological dis
courses about sexual ity . And Foucault employs the genealogical strategy in a
more patient, detailed, and empirical way than N i etzsch e did in his Genealogy

of Morals . G enealogy reaches its maturity in the works of Foucault. L ike

Foucault, Deleuze deploys Nietzsche ' s genealogy in a politically radical way,
p art i c u l arly i n A Thousand Plateaus, the c o l l ection of profoundly nonlinear,
genealogical counterh istories which Deleuze wrote w ith Felix Guattar i . And it is
in the work of De leuze and G uattari that the genealogy develops a spec ifically
anarch ist agenda. To be sure, Foucault's genealogy is heavily politicized, to the
point where (as I argue below) his thinking may be read as a "thought outsi de
the state . " Deleuze ' s texts are much more exp l i c it in this m atter, however.
Particularly i n the " Treatise on Nomadology," Deleuze and Guattari acknow l
edge that the kind of "nomad thinking" in itiated by N i etzsche is profoundly at
odds with all forms of statist thought.
Strand Two begins w ith S i gmund Freud. Like N ietzsche, Freud obl iterates
the easy confidence in the primacy of reason and in the unity of the sel f which
dom inated Western thinking prior to the late nineteenth century. B ut whereas
N ietzsche launches his assau lt w ith the weapons of poetic ph i l osophy, Freud
e m p l oys psychoanalysis, demonstrati n g that beneath our t h i n veneer of
rat i o n a l ity l urk untidy sex u a l obsessions, neuroses, death inst i n cts, and
monsters of the i d . The unconsc ious is a battleground for Freud, a place where
the ego engages in a courageous but improbabl e effort to mediate between the
conflicting drives of id and superego . The fi rst casualty to appear on th is
battl eground is surely any unified conception of the self. Strand Two continues
to Jacques Lacan, who dramatically radical izes Freudian psychoanalysis by
employing a symbol i c logic based upon structural ist l inguistics. This approach
inspires Lacan to launch a devastating attack upon the conventional Cartesian
concept of s ubjectiv ity . "Man speaks," Lacan tells us, " . . . but it is because the

symbol has made him man."8 For

Lacan, the structure of symbols is prior to the

c onstruction o f s ubjectiv ity, and i ndeed stands as a prerequ isite for such
construction. In an effort to transcend repressive forms of subject-centered logic,

Lacan proposes a Freudian equivalent to the Cartesian cogito: desire .9 By

Introduction

privileging des ire in th i s way, Lacan rad ically destabil izes a p h i l osophical
trad ition which has, since Descartes, grounded subj ectivity in the operations of
reason; as we shall see, th is h as serious impl ications for postmodem politics .
Ju l i a Kristeva is being provocative, but not entirely unrealistic, when she
suggests that "perhaps the Freudian discovery of the unconscious was merely the
cautious start of an epistemological and existential revolution wh ich destroyed
the whole rational system installed by the classical age. "1 Furthermore, it
appears that des ire may be quite useful for the construction of a postmodemism
wh ich can finally move beyond an endless ly spiraling, recursive critique towards
the articulation of a positive theoretical and political agenda; as Rosi Braidotti
has quite rightly pointed out, des ire can help us rescue postmodem ism from the
charge of nihilism. 11
Lacan ' s work has certainly generated a great deal of controversy, especially
am ong fem inists. Yet it seems clear that fem i n ists, while they m ight well raise
legitim ate concerns about Lacan ' s phallocentrism, cannot afford to ignore the
rad ical impl ications of h is thought. Indeed, as El izabeth Grosz has pointed out,
" i f . . . Lacan is guilty of a certain logocentrism, as Derrida claims, and a certain
phal locentri sm , as [Luce] Irigaray argues, this does not m ean that fem i n i sts
must abandon his work altogether. On the contrary, it may be because of his
logocentric and phallocentric comm itments that h i s work is so useful in the
proj ects of m any fem inists . "1 2 Th is may help to explain why Lacan ' s theories of
des ire and subjectivity continue to have such resonance am ong post-Lacan ian
fem i n i sts such as Grosz, Irigaray , and Jud ith B utler. Whi l e Lacan ' s work does
point up the dangers of phallogocentrism (a term into which the Lacanian dual
problematic tends to coll apse), Lacan ' s categories also open up v ibrant new
theoretical terra i n for postmodern fem i n i s m . I r igaray, for exam p l e , h as
provocatively expanded the Lacan ian concept of desire, to suggest that women ' s
pleasure h as the potential t o put into question al l prevailing econom ies . 1 3 For
I r i garay, women have t h i s rem arkab le power prec i s e ly because they are
themselves the fundamental commodities which underwrite exchange. And if it
is women who establ ish the val i d ity of the economy in the first place, then that
economy w i l l always be vulnerable to a fission of its elementary particle, its
unit of trade. 14 It is, perhaps, th is intriguing revolutionary poss i b i l ity wh ich
leads Irigaray to rej ect those fem inisms wh ich equate emancipation with the
appropriation of a discourse of subj ectivity . For Irigaray, any theory of the
subj ect has always been appropriated by the mascu line. 15 Women h ave thus
always been excluded from subj ectivity , and from the activities of exchange
carried out by speaking subj ects . Indeed, it is precisely here that women ' s most
interesting revolutionary potential m ay lie. Irigaray writes: "this s ituation of
spec ific oppression i s perhaps what can allow women today to e la b or ate

The Postmodem Matri x

'critique of the political economy, ' inasmuch as they are in a pos ition externa l
t o the laws of e x c h a n g e , even though they a r e i n c luded i n them as
'com m odities . ' A critique of the p o l itical economy that could not, this time,
dispense with the critique of the dis course in w h i ch it i s carried out, and in
particu lar of the metaphysical presuppositions of that discourse."16 For Irigaray,
then, woman is the potential site of a radical ruptu re in the preva il ing political
and econom ic order. And when Irigaray speaks of "pol itical economy," she uses
this term in its broadest sense. To be sure, women-understood by Irigaray as
commodities who speak, who take themselves to market--can be seen as deeply
subvers ive of the capital ist commod ity-exchange system.17 But the revolutionary
potent i a l of w o m an and her des ire goes far beyond that. Much m o re
importantly, woman and h er sexual ity represents a fundamental threat to the
ent ire d i s curs ive or s i g n ifying economy upon w h i ch capita l i sm is founded .
"When women want to escape from exploitation, they do not merely destroy a
few 'prej udices , "' Irigaray declares . "They disrupt the entire order of dom inant
values, economic, social, moral, and sexual. They call into question all ex isting
theory , all thought, all language, inasmuch as these are monopolized by men
and men alone . The y ch all e nge the very foundation of our social and cultural
order, whose organ ization has been prescribed by the patriarchal system." 18
Like lrigaray, Judith Butler is deeply skeptical of any fem i n ist pol itics
w h i ch re l i e s upon prob lematic modern concepts of subj ectivity . Indeed, for
Butler, "the question of women as the subj ect of fem inism raises the possibil ity
that there may not be a subj ect who stands 'before ' the law, awaiting representa
tion in or by the law ." 19 Butler ' s work thus s uggests that there is a crucial con
vergence between post-Lacan ian fem inism and what I call postmodem anar
chism . In their postmodern m odes , both anarchism and fem inism a im to move
beyond the critique of specific laws or governments; they aim instead at the
overthrow of the Law as an epistemological category . In the case of postmodern
fem inism, th is radical chal lenge involves an attack on the Law of the Father,
wh ich is the proto-Law that underwrites all patriarchy and all phal locracy . It is
Lacan ' s inab i l ity to move beyond th is Law which marks , for postmodem fem i
nists, t h e u ltimate l i m it of his th inking . E l i zabeth Grosz argues that for Lacan,
"it i s not men per se who cause women ' s oppression, but rather the socio
econom ic and linguistic structure, i . e . the Other. Yet in [Lacan ' s] formu lation of
th is structure as an inevitab le law, patriarchal dom inance i s not so much chal
lenged as disp laced, from biology to the equally unchangeable, socio-l inguistic
law of the father. "20 In a s imi lar vein, Butler suggests that "there does seem to
be a romanticization or, indeed, a re ligious idealization of 'fai l ure, ' humility and
limitation before the Law, which makes the Lacanian narrative ideologically
suspect."21 The project of postmodern feminism, then-much like the project of

I n tr odu c t i o n

postmodem anarchism which I shall outl ine be low-is concerned w ith articulat
ing strategies for the subvers ion of the Law as a psychological, linguistic, and
epi stemological category . Such strategies appear to require the rej ection of any
fixed or static concept of human subj ectivity and the simultaneous deploym ent
of flu id, flexible postmodem subj ectivities. "As opposed to the founding Law
of the Symbolic that fixes identity in advance," Butler suggests, "we m i ght re
cons ider the h istory of constitutive identifications w ithout the presupposition of
a fixed and founding Law ."22 To reject the Law of the Father (Lacan's Symbolic
Law) i s to call into qu e s t i o n the fou n dation of all l aw s , all states, a l l
econom ies. S u c h a rej ection is therefore a revolutionary gesture which holds
powerfu l impl ications not only for fem i n i sm , but also for radical th inking in
general, and espec ially for the radical critique of bourgeois political economy.
The first two strands in our m atrix of postmodem theory have proceeded in
a predictab le enough fash ion, so much so that the alert reader is now presumably
prepared to insert the inevitable m is s i ng th ird term. Derrida m i ght cal l th i s
missing term a "specter of Marx.'' The term is m i s s ing, however, for a reason .
For some time now , those who write about postmodem pol itics h ave unfortu
n ately insisted that postm odemism i s best view ed through the interpretive lens
of M arx i s m . D i scussions regarding the p o l itics of postmodern ism tend to
invoke the terms , categories, and concepts of a M arxist discourse; sympathetic
discuss ions of postm odern ism exh i b i t th i s tendency , and it is perhaps even
more evident in those discourses which are critical of the postmodern proj ect.
I bel ieve that th is ongoing obsess ion with Marxism rea l ly m isses the point
of postmodern politics. That point is simply th is: although M arx ism was unde
n i ably successful at inscribing itself as the one and only true destination of n ine
teenth-century radical politics, it was not rad ical enough to produce genuine lib
eration i n the modern world, and it is _no.t nearly-radicaLenoughto confront
qdequately the-exigencjes oftbe postmodern condition. The theoretical problems

inherent in M arx ism are too numerous to articulate fu l ly here, but perhaps a few
observations w i l l suffice. First, Marxism is often blind to crucial cu ltural forces
which, far from be ing mere ghosts of ideology, are instrumental to the construc
tion of structures of oppression. Interesting attempts have been made to expand
Marxism ' s awareness of culture, notably through Anton io Gramsci ' s concept of
hegemony and Lou is Althusser ' s idea of overdetermination. Nonetheless, culture
remains secondary in m any Marxist analyses; Ernesto Lac lau and Chantal
Mouffe have quite rightly pointed out that even for Gramsci, "po l itical struggle
is sti l l a zero-sum game among classes . This is the inner essentialist core wh ich
c o n t i n u e s to be present i n Gram s c i ' s thought, setting a l i m it t o the
decon structive logic of hegem ony.'m Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact
that, as Baudri llard has observed, Marxism may be radical in its content, but

The Postmodem Matrix

certainly not in its form, which retains the vocabulary of bourgeois political

economy almost in its entirety. 24 I t is for th is reason above all that Marxism ' s

medium-the eminently orderly, rational science o f the Hege l i an dialectic

m ust always contradict and underm ine its message.
A w are , perhaps, of its own th eoretical A c h i l les ' heel, Marx ism h as at
tempted to re inscribe its authority in the o n ly way it knows how to do so. Just
as it thoroughly eclipsed anarchism during the struggle for contro l over the First
I nternational during the nineteenth century, Marxism now attempts to ecl ipse
postmodemism as wel l--or more precisely, it attempts to incorporate postmod
emism into a preex isting M arxist intel lectual trad ition, in order to tum post
modernism into the latest term in the nonstop dialectical cr itique of pol itical
economy. I t does this by way of the Frankfurt Schoo l , an impassioned and fas
c inating attempt to fuse Freudian thought w ith Marxism. The Frankfurt Schoo l
has offered some of th is century ' s most radical postmodem pronouncements ;
particularly interesting is the attempt by Herbert M arcuse to envision, in Eros

and Civilization and e lsewhere, a culture wh ich m ight get beyond repress ion
and alien ation by replacing modem civi l i zation ' s deb i l itating real ity princ iple
w ith an erotic "Logos of gratification ."25 Yet ironically, the most influential late
twentieth -century heir of the Frankfurt School is not Marcuse but Jllrgen
Habermas, who is certainly no radical critic of modern ity. Habermas ' s main pro
j ect invo lves the attempt to move critical theory beyond the critique of " instru
mental rationality" developed by Frankfurt School lum inaries Max Horkheimer
and Theodor A dorno in their Dialectic of Enlightenment. Habermas hopes to do
this by p lacing instrumental rational ity-the "rational ity " of concentration
camps and hydrogen bombs-w ith in the context of a broader and m ore hopeful
"communicative rational ity" which, Habermas asserts , can operate within a kind
of cultural and political "pub l i c sphere" to produce v iable (and implicitly l iberal)

communities. 26

The present destination of the Frankfurt Schoo l , then, is apparently not

postmodem or even particularly Marxist. Habermas ' s work reads more as a man
ifesto for the contemporary welfare state . To be sure, we m ight well understand
why a German thinker of the late twentieth century, acutely aware of the twin
h i storical dangers of Nazism and East German state communism, would be
tempted to seek a theoret ical "m iddle ground" whose pol itics correspond,
rough ly, w ith those of the Federal Repub l i c . The danger here is that by articulat
ing the legacies of N ietzsche, Marx, and Freud as he does, Haberm as renders in

v i s i b l e some of the most interesting and important critical impulses of the

postmodem proj ect. This danger is further exacerbated when Habermas ' s work
intersects yet another strand--one which, we could eas i ly imagine, has no place
at all in the Cont inental web which we have so far been spinning. Th is strange

Introduct i o n

a n d possibly aberrant strand appears t o c o m e from a different w e b altogether,

one which is spun by an Anglo-American spider whose name is Pragmatism . 27
The nodes of this strand range from John Dewey to Wi l l iam James and, most
importantly for our purposes , to the Am erican p o l itical philosopher Richard
Rorty. A self- proc laimed "postm odem bourgeois l iberal," Rorty has been even
more exp licit than Habermas in his rej ection of a l l radical postmodem politics.
Like Haberm as, Rorty tries to use the terms and categories of the debate about
postm odem politics to reinforce the rapidly eroding theoretical and epistemolog
ical foundations of the modern liberal state.
My argument is that postmodemism can and should be read as more radical
than th i s . I therefore postu late that Strand Three should begin not w ith Marx, as
m ight be the case in a m ore conventional "radical" analysis , but w ith Em ile
Durkh e i m . A tru ly rad i c a l critique of political econ omy-a postm odern
critique-must accept neither the language nor the structure of the model which
it w i shes to criticize. The postmodern critique of political economy must stand
entire ly

outside that

seemingly hegemon ic system . It must articulate alternative

models of exchange, models which are so al ien to cap italism that at first they
seem truly bizarre to us-and yet as we begin to exam ine them, we realize that
t h e ir ghosts and echoes are s t i l l to be fou n d even in t h i s most heav i ly
c o m m o d i fi e d of c u l tures. S trand Three, then, uses the meth o d o l ogy of
Durkh e i m i an socio logy to trace such an alternate p o l itical economy. F rom
Durkhe im, this strand proceeds to Marcel Mauss , whose extremely influential
essay

The Gift offered

g ift-exchange as a radical Other to capitalism. The next

node on th i s stran d is s urely occupied by Georges Batai lle, who radical ized
Mauss ' s c oncept of the gift in

The Accursed Share,

a full-fledged, multivolume

assault on that most bas i c concept of bourgeois political economy : the principle
of scarcity . The destination of Strand Three is the work of Jean Baudri llard, who
uses gift theory to deve lop a critique of political economy that is radical in both
content and form. Baudr i l lard ' s work is especially cruc ial to the postmodern
proj ect, for his critique implicates not only bourgeois econom ics but bourgeois
sem iotics as well; B audri llard offers us a critique of the political economy of the

sign

which is increasingly re levant as questions about contro l over the means of

production are e c l i p s e d by questions about control over the m e an s of

8
information. 2
So far I have been discussing what we m ight call horizontal strands of the
postmodem matrix. By this I mean that each of these strands can, i f the reader
w i l l forg ive me a certain tactical m i cro linearity, be understood as a rather
straightforward inte llectual progression. Of course, this schematic by its e l f
w o u l d hardly seem t o be productive of any k i n d of subvers ive counterepistemol-

The Postmodern Matrix

Foucault/Deleuze

Nietzsche

Freud

Lacan

Durkheim

Mauss/
Bataille

IrigarayIB utler/
Grosz

Baudrillard

Figure One. Postmodem Matrix (horizontal strands).

ogy. It is only when we add what I call the vertical strands that this episte
mology begins to manifest itself. By themselves, the vertical strands (like their
horizontal counterparts) can be viewed as rather orthodox models of linear de
velopment. But when these vertical strands intersect the horizontal ones, some
thing very interesting happens. The vertical strands disrupt the tidy linear pro
gression of the horizontal, deflecting thought in strange and unpredictable new
directions. What emerges with the addition of these vertical strands is some
thing more than a simple grid. The addition of the vertical strands creates a se
ries of junctions which rapidly begin to multiply in complexity, in much the
same way as neural pathways develop within a child's brain. It is with the addi
tion of these vertical strands that the postmodern matrix becomes truly rhi
zomatic; in other words, it becomes a cognitive model in which every node can
be linked to every other, and must be. The model now becomes quite analogous
to the decentralized network architecture of the Internet, an architecture in which
every IP node is joined to every other in a remarkably nonhierarchical way.29
No one who is familiar with the postmodern literature will be surprised at
the first vertical strand I wish to propose. This strand begins with the work of
the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, and continues in the work of struc
tural anthropologists such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Clifford Geertz, and Marshall

Introduction

10

Sah l ins . For our purposes, the essence of this strand lies in the

bitrary sign.

thesis of the ar

As a kind of thought experiment, Saussure proposed a model of

language i n which the relationship between spoken sounds or written letters

(signifiers) and the ideas and obj ects they purport to refer to (s ignifieds) was
taken to be w ithout foundation. This seemingly innocent experiment in struc
tural linguistics, of course, turned out to be epistemologically revoluti onary, for
it would eventually evoke the profound

crisis of representation which

character

izes much of the postmodem proj ect. Once we begin to question the comfortable
certainty that words must surely equate to things, entire categories of thinking
are rendered untenable. These include, but are not limited to, ideological ly mo
tivated attempts to represent the working class in such a w ay that all revolution
ary impulses are c ircumscribed by dis courses of m i litari stic nationalism or "law
and order," racially motivated attempts by the West to represent "Oriental" cul
tures in a w ay which w i l l inscribe imperialism upon such cu ltures, or attempts
by a patriarchal culture to represent the "essence" of women in a w ay which will
inscribe the basic terms of the phallocracy upon female bodies.30 To the extent
that the thes is of the arbitrary s ign makes possible pro foundly radical new un
derstand ings o f c l a s s , race, and gen der, we

must provis i o n a l ly accept

Baudr i llard ' s assertion that the hypothesis of S aussure is, l ike Mauss ' s hypothe
sis of gift-exchange, "more radical than Marx ' s or Freud ' s, whose interpretations
are censored by precisely their imperialis m . "31 This Saussurian vertical strand is
radical not only in its political implications; it is also (not surprisingly)

turally

struc

radical. For wherever it intersects the horizontal strands of the postmod

em m atrix, it creates new links, new possib i l ities. To give but one example, it
is in large part the structuralist fascination w ith language which diverts the
Freudian strand into the interesti ng poststructuralist critiques of psychoanalyt i c
discourse which a r e to be found in De leuze a n d Guattari ' s
Foucault' s

Anti-Oedipus

or

History of Sexuality.

The second vertical strand I wish to propose is more strictly political,

though it also contains a s ignificant linguistic component. This is the strand of
anarchist political theory which begins in the nineteenth century w ith the work
of Michael B akunin and Peter Kropotkin, and continues in the twentieth century
w ith the w ork of Noam Chomsky and Murray Bookch i n . If the present book
provokes controversy, I suspect that it will be on the basis of my inclusion of
this strand, at the expense of a more conventional fore grounding of the Marxist
political phil osophy. But I make this theoretical and interpretive choice for sev
eral important reasons. First, the anarchist tradition does not suffer from what
s eem s to be an inherent danger of Marxist thought, nam e ly that Marx ism, de
spite its pretenses to l iberation, too eas i ly turns into a totalizing and totalitarian
theory which runs the risk of obliterating theoretical nuances in its haste to co-

The Postmodem Matrix

II

opt postmodem i s m . To be sure, there have been some noble attempts to rescue
Marxism from this danger, notab ly Michael Ryan's adm irable effort in

and Deconstruction

Marxism

to challenge a stultifying, monolithic Leninism in favor of

a far more p luralistic Marx ist theory . Sti l l , one cannot help but suspect that a
theory which is b u i lt upon the Hegelian d i a l ectic-surely one of the most
totalizing grand narratives i n the h i story of Western thought-is l ikely to
remain totalitarian .
Anarchism, which is by its very nature skeptical of fixed structures, is a far
more fluid and flexible theory . A narch ism is thus a political ph i los ophy which
seems perfectly well suited to the postmodern world. While the dem ise of the
Soviet Union or the recent moves which "Communist" China has made towards
the estab l i s hm ent of a m arket economy might be taken as evidence that
Marxism's revolutionary proj ect has fai l ed, the same cannot be said of anar
chism . Despite much recent talk about the w ay in which the state is being
ec lipsed by the power of multinational corporations, state power remains a cru
cial fonn of oppres sion in the postmodem world. In certain instances, the level

of state power may even be increas ing. 32 Anarch ism continues to provide the

most effective and com pelling critique of all varieties of state power. And be
cause it is such a flexible body of theory, anarch ism is perhaps better suited than
any other political phi losophy to articulate the critiques which must be spoken
in our rapidly fluctuating postrnodem world. Today it m ay n ot be enough to
speak out only against the armies and the police, as earlier anarch ists did. No
matter: a postmodem anarch ism can j ust as eas i ly speak out against consumer
culture, against the eros ion of privacy through the proliferation of databases and
surve i l l ance systems, or against the environmental degradation which threatens
postindustrial soc ieties everywhere. I therefore argue that the strand of anarch ist
politica l theory-frequently ignored, typically m i s i nterpreted, and often dis
mis sed as "infantile" L eftism33-is a key strand in the postmodem matrix . This
apocalyptically radical strand deflects postrnodem ism in some of its most inter
esting and important directi ons .
Our postmodern m atrix is almost complete . It lacks only one strand-or
perhaps I should say "m etastrand," for this particu lar strand w i l l at first glance
seem so tangential to the proj ect of intellectual postmodernism that the reader
may well suspect that it belongs (as I suggested w ith respect to pragmatism) on
some entirely different grid. I wish to argue, however, that at second glance the
agendas and concerns of this strand are, in fact, d irectly relevant and perhaps
even indispensable to the postm odern proj ect. I am speaking of the strand of
science fiction literature known as cyberpunk . The concepts of postm odernism ,
and specifically of what I call postmodcm anarchism, are to be found throughout

Introducti on

12

Saussure

Bakuninl
Kropotkin
Foucault/Deleuze

Nietzsche

Irigaray/Butler/
Grosz

Freud

Baudrillard

Durkheim
Levi-Strauss/Geertz/
Sahlins

Chomsky/
Bookchin

Figure Two. Postmodem Matrix.

a great deal of popular science fiction. Kim Stanley Robinson explores radical
gift economies in his Mars trilogy. Radical gender theory is to be found
throughout the novels of Samuel Delany, and also in Marge Piercy's Woman on
the Edge of Time. Anarchist politics infuse the work of Ursula K. LeGuin,
particularly in The Dispossessed. Unfortunately I do not have space here to give
all of these science fiction subgenres the critical attention they deserve, so I will
focus on cyberpunk as a vital case study in the reception of postmodem
philosophy. Cyberpunk, as deve loped especia l ly in the nove ls of Wil liam
Gibson and Bruce Sterling, articu lates nearly every major theme of radical
postmodemism: the deconstruction of the self, the erosion of Cartesian spatial
concepts , the e laboration of new network-based mode l s of identity and
communication. Though some might dismiss these nove ls as mere popular
literature, they actually serve a vital translation function, for they take the unde
niably inaccessible ideas of radical postmodemism and make them available to a
much wider audience. It is in the novels of Gibson and Sterling that postmodem
anarchism emerges from its ivory tower and takes to the streets. I therefore sug
gest that cyberpunk may reasonably be understood as a metastrand which cir
cumscribes the entire project of radical postmodemism, and serves as a vital in-

The P o stm o d em

Matrix

13

terface between that project and the concerns of the ordinary citizens of our
"wired" world.

Postmodern Anarchism

I am now in a position to articulate in more detail the meaning of the theoretical

construct which is named in the title of this book. Let me begin with the
"postmodem" part of the "postmodern anarchism" couplet. First, I must admit
that I do not have a great deal of interest in exploring the subtle distinctions be
tween "postmodernism" (understood as a philosophical or critical movement)
and "postmodemity" or the "postmodern condition" (understood variously as a
mood, a stage in the development of the mode of infonnation, and/or a socio
economic condition which exists beyond the industrial phase). While I readily
acknowledge that these distinctions are important, I would prefer to emphasize
the commonalities which exist within the postmodern. To be sure, I am acutely
aware here of Lyotard's charge that within the postmodern condition "consensus
has become an outmoded an d suspect value,"34 and I would sooner delete the
computer file which contains the manuscript of this book than embark upon any
intellectual project which might eradicate difference and Otherness in the name
of a specious agreement. Nonetheless, I must insist that the exclusive focus on
difference hides another danger, one which is less obvious and therefore more
insidious. This is the danger of extreme fragmentation. Granted, one of the cru
cial contributions of postmodernism (particularly in its radical genealogical
mode) has been that it "fragments what was thought unified."35 However, when
the technique of genealogical fragmentation turns upon postmodernism itself(as
it inevitably does), the postmodern project runs the risk of fracturing into an in
coherent multiplicity of mutually antagonistic "postmodernisms."
It seems to me that such a fragmentary ethos cannot be the basis for a viable
revolutionary theory or praxis. Therefore I wish to argue not in favor of a sus
pect consensus among postmodernisms, but at least in favor of a provisional
tactical alliance. Let us suggest as a hypothesis that postmodern feminists,
postmodern socialists, postmodern subaltern theorists, and others have, in addi
tion to specific agendas which are and must remain unique, a good deal of
common theoretical ground. I would map the terrain of this postmodem "com
mons" as follows: construed as a fairly broad group, postmodernists generally
share a certain incredulity towards metanarratives, a suspicious attitude towards
the unified and rational self characteristic of much post-Enlightenment philoso
p hy, and a powerfu l ly critical stance towards any and a l l forms of power
(including those produced by the state and by capital , but also those produced in

14

I nt ro duc tio n

fam i l ies, in hospitals, in psychiatric offices, and so on). Broadly construed in

this way , postm odem ists typically also possess a strong interest in sem iotic
theory , or at least a critical awareness of the ways in which language can pro
duce, reproduce, and transm it power. I shall therefore make the somewhat con
trovers ial c laim that what has been called poststructural ism may be construed as
a variety of postmodem thinking. 36
Th i s somewhat broader theoretical perspective distinguishes the present
study from some prev ious attempts to re late anarchism to twentieth-century
Contin ental thought. In h i s interesting and important book The Political

Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism, Todd May draws a viable connec

tion between the anarchism of Bakun in and Kropotkin and the poststructuralist
phi losophy of Foucault, De leuze and Lyotard. However, May exp l i citly ex
cludes Baudri l lard from his theoretical fram ework, argu ing that whereas the
poststructuralist thinkers are primarily "tactical" in their approach, Baudril lard is
more "strategic . " 3 7 My approach is intended to broaden the horizons of post
m odern anarc h i s m cons iderab ly, by adding not only the Mau s s - B ata i l le
B audri llard strand of gift theory and radical symbolic critique, but also the
Gibson-Sterling strand of cyberpunk fiction. I bel ieve that this broader perspec
tive is j ustified by certain recent trends and developments within the postmod
ern condition itse lf. The expansion of advertising into prev iously unheard-of
realms/8 plus the growth of a massive " information economy" in which data is
now the maj or commod ity form , suggest that it is now imperative to launch a
critique of the p o l itical economy of the s ign, i . e . , a critique of the sem iotic
fom1s which underwrite all manifestations of capitalist exchange. S i m i larly, the
sp iral ing schizophreni a which has al lowed the Internet to become simultane
ously a thoroughly commod ified medium and the s ite of some of the most out
rageous revo lutionary dec larations in h istory po ints to a need for the kind of rad
ical cu ltural analysis which is to be found in cyberpunk.39
Let me now tum to my use of the term "anarchism." In its class ical context,
of course, anarchism refers to the rad ical critique of all state systems, inc luding
so-called worker's states, undertaken by political phi losophers such as Bakunin.
It also refers to the critique of private property relations developed by Proudhon .
And it inc ludes the concept of solidarity and "mutual aid" which Kropotkin
developed as a rad ical alternative to nineteenth-century Darw in ist models of
" natural" competition . 4 Classical anarchism is fundamental ly opposed to the
h ierarch ical social relations implicit in the capital ist mode of production, and to
the coercive pol itics i m p l i c it in all state systems. Such anarchism envisions
strictly voluntary (and typ ically smal l-scale) forms of social organ ization. Like
Ma rx ism and most other forms of n ineteenth-century ra di ca l th i n k ing, classical
anarchism purports to liberate some kind of authentic human essence which has

The Postmodem Matrix

15

supposedly been repressed b y capitalism and/or the state . A s Bakunin observed,

classical anarc h i sts " desire the fu ll and definitive abol ition of classes, the
un ification of society, the econom ic and social equalization of all human beings
on earth . "41 To the extent that it dream s of a secu lar paradise on earth, classical
anarchism is therefore (like orthodox Marxism) a variety of utopian thinking.
The influence of anarchism upon twentieth-century politics, w h i le not as
dramatic as that of M arxism, has been considerab le, particu larly in the Spanish
speaking world . 42 But classical anarchism, much like classical Marxism, suffers
from certain theoretical liabilities. F irst, it carries out its revolution under the
banner of a prob lematically unified human subj ect. This may be B akun in's
worker-peasant subj ect rather than Marx's strictly pro letarian subj ect, but it is a
di sturbingly homogenous subject nonetheless: unified in its wants and asp ira
tions , allegedly responsive to historical forces which operate according to natural
laws, supposedly susceptible to rational and sc ientific analysis. "Behind us is
our animal ity and before us our humanity," dec lares Bakunin; "human light, the
only thing that can warm and enl ighten us, the only thing that can emancipate
us, give us dignity, freedom , and happiness, and real ize fraternity among us, is
never at the beginning, but, relatively to the epoch in which we live, always at
the end of history . " 43 Voltaire himself could not have said it better. B akunin's
anarchism is quite clearly a humanistic political philosophy; in that sense, his
worldview should be read not, perhaps, as an all-out radical assault on the very
foundations of modem political theory, but rather as a continuation of the eman
cipatory project inaugurated by the philosophes of the Enl ightenment. The prob
lem with t h i s human ist anarc h i s m , of course, is that its ontology and its
epistemo logy are nearly i n distinguishable from those of b ourgeois political
econom y . As the twentieth-century "green" anarchist Murray B ookchin has
astute ly observed, "socialism and canon ical anarchism-the 'isms' of homo

economicus, of 'econom ic man'-were born w ith the emergence of commercial

and i n d u strial capita l i sm . And however oppos itional they m ay be, their
underly ing assumption that the wage worker is inherently subvers ive of capital
tends in varying degrees to form the counterpart of the very system they profess
to oppos e . "44 The great twentieth-century proletarian revolutions have almost
u n i versally fa i l e d to real ize the s o c i a l , p o l i t i c a l , and econom ic utop ias
env i s i oned by nineteenth-century radical philosophy; contemporary anarch ists
like B ookch in are certainly entitled to ask why this is the cas e . B ookch in's
answer-that these utop ias were perhaps constructed on the bas is of a concept of
human subj ectivity which is inherently flawed-seems compe lling.
Bakunin and other orthodox anarch ists must also confront the charge that,
by focusing alm ost exclusive ly on the unden iab ly repressive power structures
characteristic of cap ital ist econom ics and bourgeois states , they unfortunately

I n tr od u c t i o n

16

overlook the equa l ly d isturb ing power relations wh ich are to be found outs ide
the factory and the government m i n istry : in gender relations, i n race re l ations
(and indeed, i f we are to bel ieve Foucault, i n each and every social re lation).
Anarchist theory can ill afford to disregard such power relations, especially s ince
it i s becoming increas ingly obvious, in the postmodem world, that these re l a
tions precede and enable both state power and econom ic power. S ince these om
n ipresent e lements of m i croscop ic power remain largely invisible to conven
tional forms of rad ical an aly s i s , one could argue that they actually represent a
greater threat than the more obvious, traditional forms of power. M icropower is
also more easi ly internal i zed than macropower, and because of this, m icropower
presents two unique dangers . F irst, it is extremely hard to get rid of, because it
f l o u r i s h e s and flow s w i th i n and between i n d i v i d u a l s u bj e cts . Second,
internal ized m icropower saves capital and the state a great deal of work. Thanks
to the internal ization of power, we carry out the proj ect of oppression largely
w ithin the framework of our own consciousness. From th i s perspective, the en
gines of capital and state, ominous as they are, seem epiphenomenal and perhaps
even a b i t s uperfluous . "The interna l i zation of h i erarchy and dom ination,"
laments Bookchin, "forms the greatest wound in human development and the
m o s t deadly engine for steering us toward human i m m o l at i o n . Temples,
palaces, factories, yes, even prisons, concentration camps, barracks, police, and
the vast legal and executive power of the State, form the flesh and organs that
hang on the skeletal structure of our own perverted sensibil ities. "45 Un less and
unti l anarchist theory finds a way to reverse this deadly internalization, it is dif
ficult to imagine how any revo lution can avoid the spectac le of eternally recur
ring states.
F inally, classical anarchism is h aunted by a rationalist semiotics wh ich se
riously l i m its its radical potenti a l . Kropotkin, for example, argued that "by ap
plying the method of natural sciences, we are enab led to prove that the so-called
'laws' of bourgeo i s social science, including present po l itical economy, are not
at all laws. "46 Surely this is a noble endeavor. The problem, however, i s that the
rational ist l inguistic structures emp loyed by nineteenth-century anarchism are
substantially equival ent to those of bourgeois science, which in tum grow out of
the European Enl ightenment. Kropotk in-himself a geographer and biologist of
some repute--could conceive of anarchism only in purely scientific term s . His
p o l itical p h i losophy and h i s scient i fi c v iewpoint were one and the sam e .
"Anarchism," he declared, "is a conception o f the Universe based on t h e mechan
ical i nterpretation of phenomena, which comprises the whole of Nature, includ
ing the l ife of human societies and their econom ic, pol itical , and moral prob
lem s . "47 It i s understandable that Kropotkin would w ish to deploy the sem iotics
of modern s c i ence against capital and the state, for i n his t i m e, s c ientific

17

The Postmodem Matrix

a n a l y s i s appeared to be capab l e o f addressing a n y a n d all problems . But

Kropotkin's era was to be followed by a century of instrumental reason run ram
pant, and it is for this reason that postmodernists such as Jean Baudri llard have
argued that a rational, scientific language cannot possibly be used to art iculate a
tru ly radical politics.
Twentieth-century anarchists have tried to confront these concerns in a vari
ety of ways. The noted l inguist Noam Chomsky, for example, has attempted to
expand the critique of power relations beyond the boundaries of the state.
Chomsky's analysis of the structure and functioning of the mass media in post
industrial "democrac ies" is especially important; in

Manufacturing Consent

and

elsewhere, Chomsky argues that for certain structural reasons, mass media insti
tutions tend to function essentially as propaganda organs for the state, despite
the fact that direct state control over the media is re latively rare in such "democ
rac ies."48 Not surprisingly, given his dual background as a l inguist and " l iber
tarian socialist," Chomsky does occasionally try to develop a connection be
tween linguistic structures and radical political ideas .49 However, he does so
only in a very cautious and tentat ive way. The connection between language and
p o l it i c s a l w ays re m a in s e l u s ive fo r Ch o m sky; it seems to have the status of an
agenda rather than a developed project for him , and one is tempted to wonder
why this is the case. The answer m ay have to do w ith the fact that, although his
work does represent a s ignificant attempt to update classical anarchism in order
to take into account new issues surrounding the creation, control, and distribu
tion of infor m ation, Chom sky nonetheless remains w ithin the horizons of the
modern world.

self-proclaimed "child of the Enlightenment," Chom sky as

serts that " it is l ibertarian social ism that has preserved and extended the rad ical
humanist message of the Enlightenment."5 Chom sky m ight question the limits
of bourgeo i s rationality and he m ight look beyond the state into the media
world, but he c l e arly is not prepared to chall enge the humanism o f the
Enl ightenment. His work represents an interesting and important attempt to ex
pand the boundaries of classical anarch ism-but only up to a certain point.

somewhat more radical vers ion of twentieth-century anarchist think ing is

to be found in the work o f Murray Bookch i n . Part i c u l arly in

Anarchism,

Post-Scarcity

Bookchin uses language remin iscent of Mauss, Bataille, or Marcuse

t o argue that posti ndustrial societies are also postscarcity societies which can
imagine "the fulfillment of the social and cultural potential ities latent in a tech
nology of abundance."51 Writing in 1971, at least a decade before the advent of
cyberpunk, Bookchin could already imagine that cybernetic technology m ight be
a key factor in the development of human p otent i a l itie s . Like Chomsky,

Bookch i n re cogn i zes that developments in information technology are not

nec
essarily l iberatory, s i nce the "bourgeois control of technol ogy" makes the prop-

I n tr odu c t i o n

18

agation of propaganda fairly s imple.52 But unl ike Chomsky, Bookchin does not
hesitate to counter communicative control by dep loying radical and innovative
new technologies of the self. Fol lowing an impulse which is to be found i n the
later Frankfurt Schoo l-not, of course, in the work of the neo liberal Habermas,
but rather i n the consi derab ly more rad ical writings of Herbert M arcuse
B ookc h i n declares that "power can only be destroyed by the very process in
w h i c h m a n acqu i res power over his own l i fe and in which he not only
'discovers ' himself but, more meaningfu l ly, formulates his seljhood in all its
social dimens ions ."53 Nor is this the only point where B ookch in ' s thinking in
tersects the M arxist tradition. Indeed, there i s a remarkab le affin ity between
B ookc h in ' s analysis and that of the " autonomist M arxism" developed by
A ntonio Negri and others . Speaking on behalf of this tradition, Nick Witheford
has described the postmodern technological condition w ith words which could
eas i ly have been written by Bookc h i n himse lf: "as [the] v irtua l pro letariat
emerges, there . . . appears a tension between the potential for freedom and
fu lfillment that it sees in its technological environment, and the actual banality
of cybernet ic contro l and commodification ." 54 It is important to remember that,
Bookch i n ' s frequent ant i-Marxist polemics notwithstanding, the k ind of post
industrial anarchism which Bookchin advocates is not necessari ly incompatible
w ith M arx ism per se. The " autonomist" M arx ists remain deeply skeptical of
state power, and their line of thinking suggests (among other things) that the
decentral ized and democratic allocation of resources through computer networks
could " underm ine cap ita l ' s imperative of monetary exchange w ithout substitut
ing the centralization of state authority ."55 Th is vis ion of a radically decentral
ized, poststatist social and economic order could exist in perfect harmony with
the Bookchin ite vision.
Nonetheless, Bookchin (l ike Baudri l lard) does remain somewhat skept ical
about the radical poss i b i l ities of any critical theory which re l ies upon the two
great modern ists, M arx and Freud . This is especially true as Bookchin develops
and articu lates his ecological v iews . " Here is the nub of the problem," Bookchin
provocatively asserts i n The Ecology of Freedom: "the Victorian v e i l (to wh ich
M arx and Freud gave a radical dimension) that obscures the function of ecology
as a source of values and ideals ."56 However, a c loser examination of Bookchin ' s
critique reveals that the real problem, for him, is the inab i l ity o f certain critical
theories to move beyond the dialectical dead ends in which "Victorian" thinking
must remain perpetually trapped. "It would be a grave error to v iew my remarks
on M arcuse as a critique of Marcuse as an individual thinker," Bookchin hastens
to warn us. " Inasmuch as h i s theoretics h ave dealt more directly w ith social
pro blem s than that of any other neo-Marxist body o f theory, they more clearly
reveal the limits of the neo-Marxian project. Habermas is veiled by a formalism

The Postmodern Matrix

19

so abstract and a j argon so equivocal and dense that he is almost beyond the
reach of pointed criticism ."57 Here Bookchin emphasizes the crucial importance
of the ongoing debate regarding the meanings and legacies of the Frankfurt
S c h oo l . 5 8 Marcuse ' s thought, w ith its radical denial of scarcity and its quasi
anarchistic politics of desire, represents for Bookchin a revo lutionary possibility
w hich m ight well be appropriate to life in the late twentieth and early twenty
first centuries. The problem, of course, is that th is possibi lity has been eclipsed
by Haberm as ' s quixotic attempts to rescue the proj ect o f m odernity by
c o n s tr u c t i n g

an

e m i n e ntly

V i ctorian

"public

sph ere"

through

which

"communicative rationality" might flow . A n d this is a problem which Richard

Rorty shares with Haberm as; thus " an activist rati onalism of the kind so
endearing to both Germ an idealism and American pragmatism is a rationalism
of conquest, not of reconciliation."59 Bookchin recognizes that Habermas, Rorty,
and others like them foster a dangerous i l lusion: the i llusion that a problematic
modern ity can or should be saved. Bookchin proposes instead that we should
look away from the m odern world-e ither to the deep past, where he
investi gates the same k inds of "pre literate" or "organ ic" societies which fasci
nated Mauss and Levi-Strauss, or to the future , where he envisions a technologi
cally sophisticated and ecologically s ustainable cybernetic utopia.
To be sure, Bookchin ' s radical vision has generated a good deal of contro
versy . A lthough Bookchin has frequently challen ged other schools of environ
m ental thought-particularly "deep ecology"-as overly mystical, Bookchin
himself has been taken to task for promoting a self-acknowledged "messianic"
proj ect, especially in The Ecology of Freedom .60 A long simi lar lines, Bookchin
has been charged w ith retaining a "religious" faith in the revo lutionary potential
of contemporary American society . 6 1 Such critiques are perhaps a bit too easy .
After all, a great m any radical political visions-including most anarchist vi
s ions----<: o ntain an eschatology which is recognizably "religious" in its structure,
if not its content. If anarchist theory is to move beyond critique towards the ar
ticulation of a positive social, political, and ecological agenda, then the mes
sianic e lement is perhaps unavoidable. More troubling are the accusations that
Book chin has profoundly misunderstood the nature of technology in the modem
and postmodem worlds . David Watson, for example, argues that Bookchin has
not recognized the new problems and pathologies which emerge in soc ieties
b uilt upon mass technology.62 And John Clark has po inted out that Bookchin ' s
utopian faith i n the l iberatory possibilities o f technology-especially communi
cation s techn o logy-ignores the vast potential for manipu lation through mass
media and commodity consumption .63
These critiques are valid, to the extent that they point out the dangers inher

ent in a naive faith in the liberatory p ot e ntial of technology . It is undeniable that

I ntroducti o n

20

postm odern commun icative technology h a s been forged i n the fires of cap ital;
spec i fically, this technology i s the child of a deeply react ion ary Am erican
m i litary-industrial comp lex . But Bookchin ' s critics wou ld do well to remember
Donna Haraway ' s important point: the cyborg may have been conceived by the
Pentagon ' s cold warriors, but she is notoriously unfaithful to her origins.64 To
be sure, in recent years , the level of commodi fication on these postmodern net
works has increased stead i ly . B ut so too has the level of resistance, according to
a formula which is recogn izably Foucau ltian : since power creates its own trans
gressions, an increase in the level of power or control inevitably generates a cor
responding i ncrease in the level of subversion . The s ituation is therefore consid
erably more comp lex than B ookch i n ' s critics have recognized. While it may be
the case that Bookchin sometimes overstates the Iibera tory potential of cybernet
ics, some of his critics show a disturbing di sregard for those em anc ipatory im
pulses which communications networks enable and generate . An unreflective
ecological Luddism disregards the crucial possibility that Bookchin ' s cybernet
ics m i ght offer a way out of the theoretical trap which the Frankfurt School
could not escape . Stephen Duplantier has persuasively argued that B o okch in ' s
" organ ic society" is the ont o l ogical matrix of a soc iety n ot of communicative ra
tionality, but of communicative ecstasy .65 Perhaps the "Habermas problem"
specifically, the apparent phenomenological imposs i b i l ity of separating "com
m u n i cative

rat i o n a l ity"

from

a destructively

n i h i l i s tic

" i n strumental

rationality"-can be so lved, then, by a turn towards what Jean Baudrillard has

called the "ecstasy of com municati on . " Bookchin ' s invocation of a pol itics of
desire against the repressive rationality of a "Victorian" modernism suggests that
h i s cyberneti cs-along with Deleuze ' s "desiring machines," for example, or
l rigaray ' s vision of women ' s sexuality as an assault on all prevailing systems of
political economy-actually represents a profound chal lenge to the phi losophical
proj ect of the Enl ightenment . Bookchi n ' s cybernetic utopia underm ines the
epistemological stab il ity of the E n l i ghtenment ' s speaking subject-and, not
inc identally, the system of political economy which presumes and requires that
subject. I must therefore d i s agree with John Moore, who has argued that
" Bookch i n ' s defence of Enlightenment rational ism against Nietzsche and post
l e ft i s t anarchy neatly c o m p l e m ents the

l i beral d e m o c ratic d e fence of

rat ional i s m . "66 In fact, Bookchi n ' s radical cybernetic gestures stand in stark
oppos ition to the Enli ghtenment' s repressive ly rationalistic proj ect, j ust as his
antihi erarch ical, anarchist politics stand opposed to the kind of rationalistic
libera l ism advocated by late modernists like Rorty and Habermas.
B o okchin ' s thought c ontains many cruc ial elements o f a postm odcrn anar
ch i s m . H i s thinking rej ects c onventi onal forms of subj ectivity and emphasizes
the imp ortance of cybernetics and other form s of " high " techn o l ogy . It a ls o chat-

The Postmodem Matrix

21

lenges our fascination w ith the modem, looking back to those societies which
a l l Victorians dismiss as "preh istoric" to find models of sustainabil ity, abun
dance, and political freedom wh ich are rel evant, perhaps, to the postmodern
world as w e l l as to the prem odern . F inal ly, Bookch in ' s thinking contributes to
the postmodern anarchist position by ins isting "that every revo l utionary move
ment must be a cu ltural one as well as a social one . . . the revolutionary proj ect
remains incomp lete if it fails to reach into the prob lem s of hierarchy and domi
nation

as

such ."67 Postmodern anarch ism begins w ith this prem ise: a Marxist or

classical-anarch ist "rad ical" position which insists upon the primacy of eco
n o m i c s and c lass analy s i s lacks m e a n i n g fu l revo l uti onary potent i a l . A s
B ookchin suggests, i t is necessary t o develop a much broader critique of power,
by making the concept of h ierarchy itself into an obj ect of analysis. This can be
done only by expanding the conventiona l anarchist proj ect into the cu ltural and
lingu istic realms. And this is the proj ect of postm odem anarchism.
How m ight such a postmodern anarchism fit into the broader theoretical and
political project of contemporary anarchism? First, let me emphas ize that post
modem anarchism represents only one strain of contemporary anarchism-an in
teresting and important strain, I b e l ie v e, but a single strain n onet hele s s . I wish

to avo id the temptation to create a monolith i c v i s ion of contemporary anar

chism ; such a vis ion would be contrary to the very spirit of anarchism itself. It
is perhaps a bit of a cliche to suggest that there are as many anarch isms as there
are anarch ists, but there is nonetheless some truth to this observat i o n . The
strength of contemporary anarc h i s m comes prec i s e ly from its d i v ers i ty .
A narch ism, w ith its emphas is o n decentralizat ion and local contro l, has been
very useful to those who would chal lenge the ongo ing deployment of a global
economic system . A s a theory and practice of working-c lass organ ization and ac
tion, anarchism also represents a strategy for challenging sweatshops and other
forms of econom ic explo itation, especially in those areas of the Third World
where such exp l o itation is frequently sanctioned by state power. Whereas
Marxism sometimes exhibits a frustrating lack of concern for the concerns of in
digenous peoples and agricu ltural societies in general, anarchism sees peasant
soc ieties as legitimate and vibrant systems which may in fact have some advan
tages over industrial societies ; th is has made anarchism interest ing and usefu l to
organ izations such

as

Mexico ' s Zapatista Liberation Front. And anarch ism, with

its deep skepticism of the logic of perpetual economic growth which is common
both to cap italism and to Marxism, remains comm itted to proj ects of econom ic
sustainab i l ity which have m ade the anarchist trad ition of great interest to con
temporary environmenta l ists. The anarchism which I dis cuss in this book
p ost m ode m anarchism- " i s m e ant to be one voice in this l arge an d growing cho
rus of anarchisms . By no m e ans should it be seen as a subst itute for or a chal-

Intro d u cti o n

22

l enge t o these other varieties of anarchist thought and practice. Indeed, it i s my

hope that anarchists of a premodern or modern persuas ion m ight actually benefit
from thinking through the postmodern anarchist pos ition . A look at postmodern
anarchism m ight help such anarchists to identify and solve possible theoretical
problems in their own worldviews, thus strengthen ing their positions.
An anarchism of the postmodern kind wou l d certainly include the tradi
tional critiques of cap ital and the state, but would also go well beyond these
conventiona l critiques to develop a pol itical theory wh ich is appropri ate to the
postmodern condition. One : against the suspiciously un ified subj ect of classical
anarch ism, postm odern anarch ism decl ares, beginn ing w ith Nietzsche, an anar
chy of the subject. The postmodern subj ect is and must remain multiple, d is

persed, and (as Deleuze would have it) schizophrenic. Thi s anarchy of the sub
j ect encourages the preservation and cultivation of d i fference and Otherness
w it h i n the po stm o dern proj ect. By ins isting that a l l subj ectivities must be
strictly provis ional, and by encouraging the development of m u ltiple strands of
subj ectivity w ithin a single "person," this anarchy of the subj ect precludes the
possib i l ity of a tota litarian subj ectivity such as that of the Len i n i st vanguard.
To ensure that th is anarchy of the subj ect w i l l have the status of a permanent
revo lution, Nietzschean phi losophy offers a corresponding anarchy of becoming.
A postmodern anarch ist in the Nietzschean mode must engage in a perpetual
proj ect of self-overcom ing. By constantly reradical izing the subj ect, by con
stantly immersing the "self'' in the river of becom ing, the Nietzschean anarch ist
evades the pos s i b i l ity that her subj ectivity w i l l recrystal l i ze in a total izing fash
ion.
Two : against t h e class ical anarchist ' s obsession w ith capital a n d the state
or perhaps we should say "in addition to" the concern w ith economic and state
power-postmodern anarchism offers a much broader and more nuanced under
standing of power. This is the case espec ially, of course, in the works of
Foucault. Eschewing a s impl istic top-down model of power, Foucault insists
that power is "capi l l ary," i . e . , that it is always already present in any social rel a
tion. A l though Foucault is frequently critic ized on the grounds that h i s om
n ipresent conception of power offers l ittle space for res istance, I argue that his
p h i losophy does indeed contai n s ignificant revolutionary potent i a l . F irst, we
should note that for Foucault, power implies res istance: wherever there is power
there i s always res istance, and power i s everywhere . Second, Foucau lt ' s broad
concept of power enab les an equally broad concept of resistance, one which
grows out of B ata i l le ' s concept of transgression, and includes not only tradi
tional revolutionary activity, but student rebell ion, prisoner' s revolts, and gay or
lesbian rcvo lutions.68

The Postmodem Matrix

23

Three: i f Marxism and classical anarchism retain too much o f the language
of bourgeois pol itical economy, postmodern anarchism offers a transsem iotic
revolution grounded in radical

symbolic theory.

It is here that Baudrillard ' s work

is crucial. B audrillard ' s unrelenting critique of all rationalist semiotics, whether

bourgeois-liberal or classically "radical," opens up a space for truly revolutionary
symbolic subvers ions. And against those who would complain that this kind of
radical symbolic critique is nothing but an abstract theory with no practical po
litical application, I must point out that postmodern anarchism, particularly as
arti culated in B audrillard ' s critique of the political economy of the sign, con
tains the formula for a profound revolutionary praxi s. This is the formula of
May 1 96 8 . It is the formula for a postmodern revolution which was carried out
not by the politically suspect would-be bureaucrats of the Leninist vanguard, but
by the students and workers themselves. The "events of May" were largely
inspired and influenced by the S ituationist International, a collection of vehe
mently anti-Stalinist artists and phi losophers who were perhaps the ftrst practi
tioners of a postm odem anarchism. Under the influence of the Situationists, the
revolut ionaries of May 1 96 8 took to the streets of Paris and carried out a
revolution of the symbol , a revolution of posters and graffiti, s l o gan and
counters logan, gesture and antigesture. This was a revolution which bol dly
asserted that, as B audrillard put it,

even signs must burn.

It was revolution in a

new register, revolution which abandoned all pretense towards rational bourgeois
semiotics.
It was also a revolution, Baudri l lard would later insist, which "shook the
system down to the depths of its symbolic organization," creating a "catas
trophic s ituation" which, he argued, sti l l existed in 1 976 (and which, we sus
pect, m i ght sti l l exist even at present).69 The symbo lic critique of bourgeois
semiotics continues today, and finds its highest expression in Baudrillard ' s the
ory of simulation. The world of simulation, B audrillard te lls us, is inaugurated
by the " l i quidation of all referentials" ; it is the "desert of the real itself."70 It also
happens to be the world in which we presently l ive. The sphere of s imulation is
that p lace in which thought and communication, image and representation are
electronically mediated through the television, the laptop computer, the fax
machine, the cell phone. Today simulation has become a massive social and
cultural fact; it is therefore in the realm of simu lation that any meaningful polit
ical action must take place. Against a dom inant line of (predominantly Marxist)
critical interpretation which dism isses Baudrillard ' s work as politically irre le
vant, I therefore argue that B audrillard ' s s imu lation theory actually enables a
powerfu l ly anarchistic neo-S ituationist politics.
I conclude this book by exam ining the ways in which the politics of simu
lation are further radicalized (and dispersed throughout the much l arger vi rtual

24

I ntroduction

world w h i ch exists outs ide the academy) by the cyberpunks. The works of
Wi l l iam G i bson and B ruce Sterling begin where Baudril lard ' s texts leave off. In
his groundbreaking novel Neurom ancer, G i bson describes the electron ic matrix
as a "consensual halluc ination ," a vast s im u l ated sociopolitical space in which
any gesture, no m atter how radical, is poss i b l e . In later cyberpunk novels, the
v irtual space of the network becomes increasingly nonlinear. In these novels, the
articu l ation of a non-Cartesian spatia l order i s no fancifu l postmodem dream ; it
i s the v irtual geography in which the characters l ive their l ives . S i m i larly, the
deconstruction of Enl ightenment subj ectivity i s no m ere theory in the pages of
cyberpunk s c ience fiction ; it i s an estab l is h e d epistem o lo g i c a l condition.
Characters i n these books routinely experience sensory perceptions which " be
long" to someone else. Cases of postmodem sch izophren ia and m u ltiple e lec
tronic identity are common. A character m ight up load a simulation model of her
m i n d to the net; it is not unheard of for the netw ork itself to attain conscious
ness. The pages of cyperpunk fiction are also fu l l of neo-S ituationist revo lution
aries like G i bson ' s Panther Modems, or the young art i st i c avant-garde of
Sterl ing' s Holy Fire. These people, who shed conventional forms of conscious
ness and percept ion l ike some unnecessary modernist skin, are perhaps the true
revolutionary vanguard . They are beyond ideo logy . They have no stake in theo
retically bankrupt dialectical agendas. They experience power (and res istance) at
a capi l lary level, and perhaps even at a molecular leve l . They create new vocabu
laries, new languages to rep lace the empty signifiers of political economy . They
also create new cultures and new econom ic systems , and in doing so they pro
vide an answer to a charge which is commonly leveled against both anarchism
and postmodemism, namely that these bodies of theory contain a great deal of
critique, but l ittle in the way of positive alternatives. The nomad cu ltures of cy
berpunk nove ls-e . g . , the networked "prole" gangs in Sterli ng ' s Distraction,
w ith their g i ft-exchanging "prestige" econom i es-provide that a lternat ive
cu ltural and econom ic v i s io n . By articulating this kind of anarch ist worldview,
cyberpunk pro v i des a pos s i b l e response to the call which has recently been
issued by postm o dem socio logist Pierre B ourdieu : that we must restore utopia
in order to counter neo l iberalism . 7 1
Heav i ly enhanced a n d deeply decentered, t h e citizens of these subvers ive
cy bernetic cu ltures are profoundly lacking in essence, but they do have a poli
tics. It i s a politics which occupies what I have been ca l ling the postmodem ma
trix. It is a p o l itics which eludes the charge that Foucault once m ade against
M arx i s m , that it " exists in nineteenth-century thought like a fish in water : that
is, unab le to breathe anywhere else."72 The po l itics of cyberpunk is, in short, a
radical politics for the n ew millennium: a politics of postmodem anarchism.

The Postmodern Matrix

25

N o tes
I.

See Landow,

2. The Matrix

liypertext

and Derrida,

Of Grammatology,

especially p.

85-87.

is also the title of an interesting cinematic exercise in postmodern

anarchism. The fi lm eschews its mainstream Hol lywood origins by incorporating no

fewer than two references to the French postmodern phi losopher Jean Baudri l lard .
The fi l m ' s narrative structure makes extensive use of Baudri l lard ' s concept of simu
lation; indeed, the entire narrative takes place within

an

electronically simulated en

v i ronment. The p lot of the fi l m i s equally subvers ive: a postmodern pro letarian
(played by Keanu Reeves) seizes control of the means of simulation and launches a
revo lution against the domi nant cu lture of his v i rtual world . It is perhaps these
subversive elements which prompted the mainstream American med ia to undermine
the fi l m ' s interesting political themes by foregrounding sty l istic s i m i larities be
tween Reeves ' cybernetic anarchist character and right-wing youths who committed
mass murder at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
3. S ee Barthes, My t h o log i e s and Sahlins, Cultural and Practical Reason,

chapter 4.
4 . See Deleuze and Gu attar i , A Thousand Plateaus,
5 . Derrida, Writing and Difference, 2 7 9 .
6.

7.

Barthes, S/Z,
Heidegger,

5.
N i e tz s c h e ,

D isco urse of Modernity,

8.

Lacan,

6 ff.

volume 3 ,

and Habermas,

Th e

Ph ilosop h i c a l

chapter 4.

The Language of the Self.

3 9 (emphasis added).

9 . Lacan, Fo ur Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1 4 1 . Here and e lse

where, Lacan's thinking i ntersects that of other theorists of desire such as Deleuze
and Herbert Marcuse. The concept of desire which emerges from the writings of these
authors is, I wou ld argue, very d i fferent from what bell hooks has described as "a
very postmodern vision of desire, as the new place of transgression that e l i m inates
the need for radical politi cs" (hooks,

Outlaw Culture,

44). Indeed, for theorists like

Deleuze and Marcuse, desire is to be understood as a powerfu l revolutionary force

which can potentially enable, through its transgressions of conventional subj ectiv
ity and the repressive " real ity principle," political theories and practices far more
radical than those which depend for thei r exi stence u pon traditi onal concepts of
identi ty .
1 0. Kristeva,

The Kristeva Reader, 2 1 7 .

I I.

Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects,

1 2. Grosz, Jacques Lac an, 1 8 9 .

1 97.

1 3 . Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, 3 I .

1 4 . Irigaray, Spec ulum of the Other Wom an,
1 5. Ibid., 1 33 .

23 7.

Intro duction

26

1 6. Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, 8 5 .

1 7. Ibid., 1 5 8.
1 8. Ibid., 1 65 .
1 9. Butler, Gender Trouble, 5 .
20. Grosz, Jacques Lacan, 1 44 .
2 1 . Butler, Gender Trouble, 72 .
22. Ibid., 85.
23 . Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 69. Laclau and Mouffe
po int out that similar problems exist w ith Althusse r ' s approach; thus "the most
profound potential meaning of Althusser ' s statement that everything existing in the
social is overdetermined, is the asserti on that the social constitutes itself as a
symbol ic order." (Ibid., 97-98). Pending the perpetual ly deferred introduction of the
cultural and the symbo lic into the Marxist corpus, however, this does indeed remain
merely a "potential meaning."
24. See, for example, B audri llard, The Mirror of Production, 3 2 .
2 5 . See Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, especially chapter 5 .
2 6 . See Habermas, The Theory of Communicative A ction, especially volume I ,
386 and volume 2, 3 89 .
27. F o r more on the connections between Habermas and t h e American pragmatic
tradition, see Bernstein, The New Constellation, 4 8 .
28. See Mark Poster, The Mode of Information.
29. For a good discussion of the origins of this decentral ized network model,
see B ruce Sterl ing, "A Short Hi story of the I nternet" at the Electronic Frontier
Foundation: http ://www .eff. org//Pub l i cations/Bruce_ Sterling/FSF_columns/.
30. Edward Said ' s Orienta/ism provides an excellent poststructuralist critique
of the Orientalist discourse . Good examples of postmodern feminism are to be found
in Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism, especially chapter 6, and Soc ial
Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics, ed. Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman.
3 1 . Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, 1 .
32. Consider the recent alarming growth of the Ameri can prison-industrial com
plex, for example. Between 1 972 and 1 996, the combined state and federal prison
population increased from 93 prisoners per 1 00,000 residents to 427, an increase of
no less than 3 5 9 percent (Miringoff and Miring off, The Social Health of the Nation,
1 1 3).
3 3 . Michael Walzer, for example, charges Foucault with such "infanti le lefti sm"
in Foucault: A Critical Reader, ed. David Couzens Hoy, 5 1 .
34. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 6 6 .
3 5 . Foucau lt, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," in Language, Counter-Memory,

Practice, 1 47 .

The Postmodern Matrix

27

3 6 . Poststructuralism, as the name suggests, i s a line o f thinking which takes as

its point of departure the strand of structural ist linguistics and anthropology I dis
cussed briefly above. Despite the sometimes strenuous protests of its major propo
nents, notably Foucault, I therefore contend that poststructuralism intersects the
postmodem matrix at many cruc ial j unctures.
3 7 . May , Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist A narchism, 1 2 . Another
helpful, though very brief, sketch of the re lationship between poststructuralism and
anarchism can be found in Karen Goaman and Mo Dodson, "A Subversive Current?
Contemporary Anarchism Cons idered," 86-88.
38. There has also been a corresponding increase in the technical sophistication
of the advertising techniques themse lves. For a good description of the l atest de
velopments in the advertising industry-and for a compe l l ing neo- S ituationist cri
tique of those developments-see the web site for Adbusters magazine at http://
www . adbusters.org.
39. Manifestations of the electron ic anarchist revo lution are far too numerous to
m e n t i o n ; i n tere s t i n g e x a m p l e s i n c lude " ( A n ) Anarchy H o m e Page" at
http : / /w w w . andrew . c m u . e du/-ctb/anarc h y / , the S i tu at i o n i s t arc h i v e s at
http ://www . nothingness.org/, the Seatt le-based rad i cal " paper" Eat the S tate at
http ://EatTheState. org , and http ://www. chumba. com/, a site ded icated to the British
anarchist rave-culture band Chumbawumba. Another group of "virtual anarchists"
which has received a good deal of press recently is the very sizable commun ity of
Internet users who exchange free digital copies of copyrighted songs using services
such as N apster and Gnutella. Siva Vaidhyanathan has rightly characterized these
MP3 music trading systems as " free, open, decentral ized, uncommercializable,
ungovernable and uncensorable" ( The Nation, July 24/3 1 2000, 34 ). They are also
excel lent examples of fu lly functional gift-exchange economies.
40. Kropotkin's model works equally well as a challenge to the attempts made
by social evol utionary t h inkers like Herbert Spencer to natural ize economic compe
tition in the capital ist world. See Kropotkin, Mutual A id, 2 3 .
4 1 . Bakunin, "Al l-Round Education" i n The Basic Bakunin, I l l .
42. For example, anarchists participated in the Mexican Revolution and fought
against Franco ' s Fasc ists duri ng the Spanish civil war. See Hart, Anarchism and the

Mexican Working Class, 1 860- 1 93 1 , especially 1 04 ff. , and Bookchin, The Spanish
A narchists.
4 3 . B akunin, God and the State, 2 1 .
44. Bookchin, The Modern Crisis, 1 24 .
45. I b i d . , 1 2 1 .
46. Kropotkin, "Modern Sc ience and Anarchism" in Evolution and Environment,
54.
4 7. Ibid., 5 1 .

I ntrodu c t i o n

28

48. Indeed, Chomsky describes t h e "manufacture of consent" a s crucial t o the

functioning of such "democratic" states, which ty pically do not have recourse to the
kind of pol itical vi olence inherent in totalitarian systems (Chomsky, Language and
Po litics,

5 99-600). Chomsky has even gone so far as to claim that in the United

States, "the entire spectrum of thinkable thoughts is now caught within the propa
ganda system," (Ibid., 622), an assertion which bears remarkable similarities to
Foucault ' s discussion of the functioning of the epistemc in The Order of Things.
49. See, for example, Chomsky, "Language and Freedom" in Reasons of State.
50. Chomsky, Language and Politics, 773 ; Chomsky, "N otes on Anarchism" in
Reasons of State,

375.

5 1 . Bookchin, Post-Scarc ity A n archism, 1 1 . The denial of scarcity in anarchist

l iterature has a venerable pedigree; arguably Kropotkin began the process by argu
ing in The Conquest of Bread that nineteenth-century industrial societies could po
tentially satisfy all the material needs (and even many wants) of their entire popula
tions. In Stone Age Econom ics, Marshall Sahlins provocatively pointed out that such
a culture of abundance was possible even in anc ient hunting-gathering societies.
And

given
production, the motives for maintaining the

Bookchin goes so far as to argue i n Toward an Ecological Society that,

recent revolutions in the m e ans of

concept of scarcity in the contemporary West are almost entirely ideological : "under
capital ism, ' planning ' is basically the conscious organization of scarc ity am idst
abundance, the attempt to impose a social nexus of want, denial, and toil on a tech
nological system that, potentially at least, could remove all of these dehumanizing
conditions from social life" ( 1 3 6 ; sec also Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, 7 1 ).
An anarc hist or l i bertari an-socialist pol itical cu lture based upon the denial o f
scarc ity has also become quite prevalent among those w h o interpret and analyze the
pol itical economy of the Internet. For example, John Perry Barlow, cofounder of the
Electron ic Frontier Foundation, has recently argued that in the virtual economy,
"abundance breeds abundance . . . when you ' re selling nouns, there is an undeniable
relationship between scarcity and value. But in an economy of verbs, the inverse ap
plies" ( Wired, October 2000, 242).
52. Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, 3 4-3 5 .
5 3 . Ibid., 1 67 (emphasis added).
54. Witheford, "Cycles and C ircuits," 226.
5 5 . Ibid., 232.
56. Bookchin, Ecology of Freedom, 272.
5 7 . Bookchin, Toward an Ecological Society, 222.
58. Michael Ryan nicely summarizes what is at stake in this debate: "JUrgen
Habermas ' Theory of Com m u n icative A ction marks a right turn in the tradition of
Germ an Crit i c a l T he ory . Habermas rej ects m arx i s m and the rad ical materialist per
s p ecti v e i n favour of an am algam of l iberal rat i onal i s m , conserv ati v e s o c i o logical

The Postmodern Matrix

29

theory, and mainstream language phi losophy, and h e puts aside the revolutionary
goal of earlier Frankfurt School thinkers like M arcuse in favour of a social demo
cratic accommodation w ith the ' rational' real ities of cap italism" (Ryan, Politics and

Culture,
59.
60.
61.
62.
63 .
64.
65.
66.

27).
Bookchin, &o/ogy of Freedom, 302 .
See, for example, Joel Kovel, "Negating Bookchin," 33-34.
S e e J o h n Clark, "Municipal Dreams," 1 40.
Watson, " Social Ecology and the Problem of Technology," 2 1 5 .
Clark, "Municipal Dreams," 1 42.
See Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," 1 93 .
Duplantier, "The Social Ecology o f Communication," 1 93 .
Moore, "All Nietzscheans Now?" 82.

67. Bookchin, Toward an Ecological Society, 2 9 .

68. B atai lle, Er o t i s m , chapter 5 ; Foucault, "Preface t o Transgression" i n
Language, Counter-Memory, Practice.
69. Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, 3 4 .
70. B audri llard, Simulacra and Simulation, 1 -2 .
7 1 . GUnter Grass and P ierre Bourdieu, "A Literature from Below," The Nation
(July 3 , 2000) 26.
72. Foucault, The Order of Things, 262.

Chapter One
Toward an Anarchy of
Becoming : Nietzsclle
Thus, t o speak frankly: i t is necessary for us t o get real ly angry for once i n order
that things shall get better.
-Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator

Let us begin by conceding what w i l l at first appear to be a great deal . In his

published works and in his notes, Friedrich Nietzsche made it quite c lear that he
opposed any and all forms of radical politics, inc luding socialism and anar
chism. He often confused the two. He dism issed mass-based radical movements
as manifestations of "herd politics ." He denounced contemporary anarchists as
representatives of a destructive nihilism, of bad conscience, of resentment.
Nietzsche famously referred to himself as "the last anti-political German"; to the
extent that he did advocate a political phi losophy, that phi losophy is one which
appears to be quite conservative in its implications. lf N ietzsche endorsed any
radicalism at all, it is what Georg Brandes referred to as "aristocratic radical
ism," an elitist ideology which asserted that the meaning and value of any soci
ety could be assessed by judging the extent to which that society paved the way
for the development of superior individuals. "Mankind in the mass sacrificed to
the prosperity of a s ingle stronger species of man-that would be an advance,"
Nietzsche proclaimed in On the Genealogy of Morals; he went on to assure his
readers that anything which opposed such a development should be dismissed as
a "democratic idiosyncracy" or "modem misarchism (to coin an ugly word for an
ugly thing). " 1 Nietzsche was no friend, it seems, of the "misarchists" who hated
strong rulers, for such misarchists might interfere with Nietzsch e ' s first and
foremost concern : the production of spiritually strong beings known as

Chapter One

32

Obermenschen (Ovenn en). H e intended for these beings to inherit the earth, and
what would happen to the herds of ordinary humans when they did so was of
depressingly little consequence to him. Nietzsche ' s most significant political
l e gacy lies not on the Left but on the Right; H i t l er ' s N azi Party used
Nietzsch e ' s ideas (albeit at the cost of an extreme interpretive vio lence which
ignored, among other things, Nietzsch e ' s viru lent hatred of anti-Sem itism) to
grant their own reprehens i b l e p o l it i c a l proj ects an a i r o f p h i l o sophical
legitimacy .
But there is another Nietzsche as well. A carefu l examination of Nietzsche' s
writings reveals a profound and fascinating critique o f capitalism, bourgeois cul
ture, and the state.2 This is especially true in Nietzsche ' s earlier works, particu
larly Schopenhauer as Educator, Daybreak, and Human, A ll Too Human. Lest
the skeptic dismiss these themes as mere intellectual aberrations of an "imma
ture" Nietzsche, however, let me emphas ize that these critiques are also to be
found in later works such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra and On the Genealogy of

Morals . Ironically, then, the same Nietzsche who eagerly and enthus iastically
denounced all m an i festations of n ineteenth-century anarchist politics was simul
taneously developing his own radical critique of bourgeois economies and state
centered politics . Should this astonish us? Not really. Nietzsche is fam ous (or
infamous) for developing phi losophical positions which are incredibly diverse
and varied (or as his detractors would have it, inconsistent and contradictory).
Th is is, of course, deliberate. Articulating a diversity of seemingly incompatible
positions i s s imply part of N i etzsch e ' s dis persed, aphoristic sty le. And this
sty l istic choice is one with profound philosophical implications . A century be
fore Jean-Franois Lyotard denounced metanarratives, Nietzsche was already tear
i n g the foundations out from under a l l u n i versal "truth s . " Nor should
Nietzsche ' s refusal to adopt a petty cons istency be taken as a l i cense to ignore
h i s work . As the w e l l-known twentieth-century Nietzschean M i chel Foucault
once remarked, "do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same :
leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." 3
So despite Nietzsche ' s hostility toward anarchism, his writing contains all
the elements of a nineteenth-century anarchist politics . But Nietzsche ' s work is
actually far more radical than that of Bakunin, Kropotki n, and the rest. First,
N i etzsch e ' s critiques tend to be cu ltural rath er than stri ctly political or
econom i c . Th i s perm its him to suggest that capitalism and the state are
dangerous not o n ly to the workers but to the culture as a who l e . I f p o l itical
economy and statist p o l itics represent, as Ni etzsche argues, decadence and
decline in general, then this is bad news not only for the proletariat but for the

bourgeoisie as w e l l . Second (and in the long run, far m ore s ignificantly),

N ietzsche ' s philosophy broadens the traditional anarchist critiqu e by expanding

Toward

an

Anarc hy of Becoming

33

it into new real m s . Conventional anarchism retains con cepts o f human

subjectivity and human rational ity which are implicitly bourgeois and statist; it
i s therefore extremely d i ffi c u lt, if not theoretically imposs i b l e , for such
anarchism to transcend the sociopolitical order which it purports to chal lenge .
N i etzsche ' s philosophy, on the other hand, points to a new kind of anarchist
p o l i t i c s . The basic characteristics o f this extremely unorthodox vari ety of
anarchism are as follows. First, Nietzsche ' s philosophy creates an

subject,

anarchy of the

violently destabilizing the post-En lightenment concept of subj ectiv ity

which is the underlying bas is of all modern pol itical phi losoph ies, including
l iberalism, M arxism, and conventional anarchism . Subject-centered reason is a
collateral casualty of this critique. In the space created by this radical critique of
modern subj ectivity, Nietzsche unleashes another kind of anarchy, an

becom ing.

anarchy of

By teaching us that we must pursue a perpetual proj ect of self

overcoming and self-creation, constantly losing and finding ourselves in the

river of becoming, N ietzsche ensures that our subj ectiv ity w i l l be fluid and
dispersed, multiple and plural istic rather than fixed and centered, singular and

total itarian . Th ese tw in anarch ies, the critical anarchy of th e subj ect and the
affirmative anarchy of becoming, form the bas is for a postmodern Nietzschean
anarchism . N ietzsche ' s ph ilosophy thus creates not o n ly the idea of postmodern
anarchism but also the postmodern anarchists themselves; his work is therefore
perforrnative rather than prescriptive.
Nor should these twin N ietzschean anarchies be understood as isolated, ir
relevant political eccentricities. Rather, I would argue that the anarchistic strands
w ith in Nietzsche ' s writing can be understood as an intrinsic part of the vast web
of political theory which encompasses the rise and fall of rationalist pol itical
human i s m . An egregiously overs implified schematic of th is web m ight look
something l ike this: at one end stands the pol itical and intellectual order of the
European Enl ightenment, the great liberal revolutions of the late e ighteenth cen

tury, the l iberal states which grew out of those revolutions, and all the assump
tions about ep istem ology and representation which underwrite such state s . At
the other end of th is web stand the postmodern po l itics of the m i l l enn ium .
These politics are characterized by the commodification of political candidacy
an d the s imultaneous dec l ine of voter partic ipation in most liberal states, the in

creasing irre levance of n ation-states in the face of the globalized "free trade"
agendas of major multinational corporations, and the constant mystification of
p olitical issues by an ever more "spectacular" mass media system.4 Other strands
on th is side of the web m ight include the increasing fragmentation of what was
once k n o w n as a "radical " or "revo lutionary" movement into various

m ic ropo l itical entities : fem i n i s t , gay, green, su balte rn , and so on . We should

al so cons ider in this context the recent explos ion of electronic communications

34

Chapter One

technologies, w h i ch has al lowed many of these m ovements to constitute them

selves as vibrant cybernetic m icrocommunities.
It is perhaps difficult to imagine how we m ight have moved from one s ide
of this web to the other in less than three centuries, yet c learly we have done so.
The prob lem, of course, is that our political theories and institutions have not
been able to reflect these incredible cu ltural transformations . Our politics remain
stubbornly

m o dern ,

trapped

w it h i n

th e

inte l l ec t u a l

horizons

o f the

Enl ightenment. They refuse to recogn ize that our world is no longer the world
of Vo ltaire, Locke, and Rousseau . The space which we occupy-described vari
ously as the postmodern condition, the w ired world, the postindustrial age, or
the end of history- is a different spac e . It must be understood and analyzed in
different term s . As we strive to articu late those terms and to develop an appro
priate analytic apparatus, what we need above all else is a way to conceptualize
the h istory of a transformation which i s as invisible in the realm of politics as it
is profound in the world of cu lture , theory, and epistemology .
I b e l ieve that N i etzs che ' s thought is a cru c i a l conceptual too l for
understanding these dramatic changes . Chronologically, Nietzsche ' s work stands
at the approximate center of the web wh ich stretches from the Enli ghtenment to
the m i l lenn ium . Them atically, his work represents a m aj or nodal point in this
web--what JUrgen Habermas has correctly identified as the "turning point" or
"entry" into postm odern ity . 5 Indeed, N i etzsche ' s work constitutes what a
computer sc ientist m ight call a "h igh bandw idth node" in this theoretical web.
Deeply aware of and influenced by the E n l i ghtenment tradition, N ietzsche
accepts as inputs empirical science, human rational ity, individual consciousness,
and all affi liated political and sem iotic system s . But w ithin the black box of his
thought a remarkable change occurs . The outputs of Nietzschean phi losophy are
a transrational epistem o logy, a dispersed and radically pluralistic subj ectivity, a
metaphorical rhetoric which is profoundly at odds w ith the logos-and perhaps
a politics of postmodem anarchism . As we move from the "N ietzsche node" to
ward the overwhelm ing cu ltural fact of the m i l lennium, we see how Nietzsche ' s
thinking becomes intertw ined with a great many other inte llectual strands . There
is Freudian psychoanalysis, w ith its radical detonation of the Enl ightenment ' s
imaginary id-less cogitators. There is the Frankfurt School, which teaches u s
that the terrain o f the unconscious can b e a most fertile ground for the radical
imagination . From a different direction comes the strand of structural ist l inguis
tics, attacking not the metaphysics of subj ectivity but rather the falsely represen
tational langu age of these speaking subj ects . B eyond all th is l i e s a certain
antianthropology, articu lated by Batai lle, Baudrillard, and Foucau lt, which turns
the assau l t upon m an and h i s sc iences into a fu l l- fl edged attack on the sem iotics
o f p o l i tical econ omy and all d i s cipl in ary institutions which grow out of that

Toward an Anarchy of B ecom i ng

35

semiotic order. The strands of postmodern consciousness which emerge from the
N i etzsche node are as numerous and diverse as the strands of Enlightened
thinking which flow into that node . And the genie does not go back into the
bottle: once we reach the event horizon of this N ietzschean explos ion of mean
ing, there can be no com fortab l e return to the s impler days of the
Enlightenment, despite the most strenuous liberal arguments to the contrary.
For these reasons I must insist that what is at issue here are not the political
opinions of an obscure nineteenth-century German philologist. What concerns
us, rather, is what might be called the N ietzsche effect. Keith Anseli-Pearson
points out that "the consensus which seems to be emerging at the present mo
ment in time is that the most fertile aspect of [N ietzsche ' s] writings for the for
mulation of a radical philosophy l ies, not in their overt pronouncements . . . but
rather in their ' styl e ' (s), in their attempt to communicate a philosophy of the
body, in their disclosure of the metaphoricity of philosophical discourse, and in
the exemplary way in which they are seen to deconstruct the logocentric bias of
western thought and reason." 6 I w ish to subscribe to this consensus and, hope
fully, contribute to it. My argument is simply this: postmodern anarchism is a
very possible manifestation of the Nietzsche effect which has been conspicu
ously ignored in the mainstream Nietzsche l iterature . This l iterature has been
dominated in recent years by the arguments of certain "postmodern bourgeois
liberals" who attempt-outrageously, in my v iew-to reconcile N ietzsch e ' s
thinking w ith a defense of late twentieth-century political l iberalism. In p lace of
this approach I w ish to emphasize those elements of N ietzsche ' s thinking which
underm ine the theoretical foundations of capitalist economics, statist politics,
and the varieties of subj ectivity and rationality which underwrite such systems.

The Usual Suspects :

A Critique of Nietzschean Liberalism

"The Revolution ' s been shot; round up the usual suspects ! " Bryan S inger ' s
interesting postmodern film noir The Usual Suspects raises the order of c ine
matic simulation to a level that is rather unusual for Hollywood c inema. The en
tire narrative of the film is a tale told by a self-proclaimed idiot, a fiction spon
taneously generated by a "short con operator," the appropriately n icknamed
Roger "Verbal" Kint. Verbal ' s story revolves around a mysterious and possibly
mythological crim inal masterm ind known as Keyser Soze. Soze is a nomadic
fig ure, as G i l les Deleuze might say : possibly Turkish, definitely Eastern, a
creatu re of the stepp e s who is certainly a threat to the very structure of the state
apparatus represented by Chazz Palm interi ' s Agent Kuj an . What is interesting

36

Chapter One

about Keyser Soze is his unreal ity . "The greatest trick the devil ever pul led was
con v i n c i n g the world he didn ' t exist," as Verbal po ints out. To maintain the
i l l u s ion (or the truth) of his nonexi stence, Soze operates through unwitting
dupes-the " usual suspects" of the film ' s t itle . The usual suspects are ordinary
crim inals, defin itely outclassed by the world-shaking transgressions of Keyser
Soze . The usual suspects thus act as a kind of safety valve, separating the order
of the real from the dangerous, nomadic, mythological underworld of Soze .
They serve the n arrative function of shielding and insu lating the "real world"
( i . e . , the statist order of Agent Kuj an) from the nomadic anarchy of Keyser
Soze-w h i c h i s iron i c , since in the fi lm the usual suspects are them selves
cri m i n a l s . 7 Why are the pol ice so obsessed with finding Keyser Soze? Perhaps
because he represents a terrify ing trut h : that power is ephem eral , and has no
basis in reality . Jean B audri llard has argued provocatively that the secret shared
by all great politicians is their knowledge that power does not actually exist.8
Perhaps the cops should be gratefu l that they never do find Keyser Soze
instead they find only the usual suspects, common crim inals who can easily be
controlled, intimi dated, and d i sc iplined, and who therefore allow the state to
reinscribe its tenuous, hyperreal power.
The debate about Nietzschean politics has its own usual suspects who, l ike
the ir c inematic counterparts, perform the im portant function of defending the
real world of the state from nomadic anarchy . These suspects include, most
fam ous ly, Richard Rorty and JUrgen Habermas . These authors, and others l ike
them, approach N ietzsche's writing w ith a pretheoretical comm itment to the
m odern l iberal state (and, impl ic itly, to the capital ist econom ic systems as
sociated w ith such states) . Nietzsche's work puts these authors in a difficult the
oretical position, because although the usual su spects typically adm it that
N ietzsche's work is phil osophically important, they also recogn ize that his phi
losophy contains the foundations for a politics wh ich i s radically at odds with
all existing m odern pol itical system s (including, most importantly from the
perspective of the usual suspects, modern l iberal system s) . They therefore face
the daunting task of recon c i l ing N i etzs che's p h i l osophy w ith a pol itical
ideology to which they were irr e trievably comm itted prior to reading Nietzsche .
R ichard Rorty attempts to accom p l ish this by b i secting N i etzsche into a
"public" and "private" N i etzsche. Rorty asserts that thinkers l ike N i etzsche (as
well as Hegel, Derrida, and Foucault) are " invaluable in our attempts to form a
private self-image, but pretty much useless when it comes to politics . " 9 The at
tempt to bracket the pri vate off from the public i s , of course, a standard bit of
l i beral phenomenological legerdemain, despite the fact that even the most tal
ented l i beral p h i losophers find it almost impossible to identify what, exactly,
di stingu i shes these two realms. Rorty would have us engage in N ietzschean pro-

Toward

an

Anarchy of Becoming

37

j ects of self-creation on ly in the comfort and safety of our own private lives ;
when we wake up the next morning, we are meant to shake off the hangover of
the previous evening ' s Dionysian festival, put on our John Stuart M i l l masks
and enter the public world. It' s hard to see how we might accomplish this feat
without descending into schizophrenia10 (so if we fol low Gi lles Deleuze ' s read
ing of Nietzsche, maybe there is something revolutionary about Rorty ' s ideas af
ter all).
According to Rorty , Nietzsche insinuates that "the end of re ligion and
metaphysics should mean the end of our attempts not to be cruel." 1 1 The concept
of cruelty is central to Rorty ' s "postmodem bourgeois liberalism"; he asserts
(w ithout providing much ph ilosophical warrant for th is assertion) that nothing
is more important than the avoidance of cruelty. The problem with this claim
an almost completely intact version of nineteenth-century liberalism ' s classical
dictum that one person ' s right to swing her fist ends where the next person ' s
nose begins-is that i t functions to defend existing institutions and to prevent
radical change. Suppose that revolutionary social transformation requires us to
be cruel-not necessari ly to people, but at least to ideals and institutions? Of
course, this is precisely the kind of change which Rorty seeks to avoid, and his
rejection of cruelty is quite convenient for that purpose. But in fact the a priori
rej ection of cruelty is indicative of postmodem liberal ism ' s totalizing nature. 1 2
B y insisting that we shou ld not b e cruel, Rorty removes entire regions o f
discourse from the intellectual agenda.
L ike most liberal critics of Nietzsche, Rorty focuses only on the literal
meaning of Nietzsche ' s pronouncements, and fai ls to understand that these are
performative, rather than prescriptive, statements. Nietzsche ' s thinking does not
imply that we shou ld run through the streets engaging in unthinking cruelty.
But it does imply that we should use the idea of cruelty to redesign ourselves
and our institutions from the ground up. Th is radical redesign, which is per
formed through an infinitely spiraling critique and a permanent linguistic revo
lution, stands in stark oppos ition to the status quo pol itics of l iberals like
Rorty. Indeed, one suspects that no system of liberal politics would be likely to
survive a full engagement with the profound cruelty and critique which charac
terize Nietzschean thought. This is, of course, why the typical strategy of some
one l ike Rorty is to refuse the uncom fortable impl ications of such thinking a
priori . But such a strategy requires troubling exclusions . 1 3 For Rorty to employ
Nietzsche in the service of postmodem liberalism, he must ignore or overlook
those extens ive elements of Nietzsche ' s thought which render the liberal concept
of human subj ectivity deeply problematic. These include the irrational or anti
rational e lements of Nietzschean philosophy, his attack on representational and
referential thinking, his attempt to develop a sustained and self-perpetuating

C h apter One

38

critique of the language of modem subj ectivity, and so on. Rorty ' s Nietzsche is
at best a partial N ietzsche, and he is a N ietzsche who has forgotten some of his
most interesting ideas .
In

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity,

Jtirgen Habermas attempts to

res cue certain key elements of the Enlightenment ' s intellectual proj ect from what
is now regarded in m any c ircles as the overwhelming force of postmodern and
poststructuralist critiques . Habermas is especially interested in preserving a kind
of stripped-down, noncoercive form of human rationality . G iven the epistemo
logical s ituation in which we find ourselves in the late twentieth century, when
traditional forms of reas on and subj ectivity are continuously underm ined by cy
bernetics, simulation, and so on, Habermas ' s proj ect is ambitious, to say the
l e a st . 1 4 H abermas critic izes N ietzs che ' s work on the grounds that "w ith
N ietzsche, the criticism of m odernity dispenses for the first time with its reten
tion of an emancipatory content. Subject-centered reason is confronted with rea
son ' s absolute other." 1 5 What Habermas overlooks here is that the struggle for
emancipation or liberation does not necessarily require a comm itment to the phi
losophy of the subj ect or to hum an rationality. Gilles Deleuze recognizes th is
important fact when he argues that "contrary to a fu lly estab lished discourse,
there is no need to uphold m an in order to resist. What resi stance extracts from
this revered old man, as N ietzsche put it, is the forces of a l i fe that is larger,
more active, more affirmative and richer in poss i b i l ities . The superman has
never meant anyth ing but that : it is in m an himself that we must liberate life,
since man himself is a form of imprisonment for man . " 1 6 Ironically, then, the
postmodern antihuman ism whose origins De leuze rightly locates in N ietzsch e ' s
think ing

does

constitute a n emancipatory proj ect . Following Deleuze, I would

go so far as to argue that Nietzsche' s writing leads us toward an emanc ipation

that is far

more radical

in its impl ications than anything which m i ght emerge

from the traditional Enl ightenment . By subj ecting not only the conventional

fames

in

church, state, dominant social classes-but also subj e ct-centered reason

itself to a profound and immanent crit ique, N i etzs che dramatically raises the
stakes of the Enlightenment ' s critical project . Habermas does not recogn ize this
as a move in favor of emancipation, s imply because it does not fit into his pre
conce ived, subj ect-centered, and implicitly l iberal idea of what human liberation
must look like . But given the fact that the thinking of the Enlightenment has
not managed, in the last two hundred years , to complete its emancipatory pro
j e ct, it certainly does not seem unreasonable to suggest that we m i ght want to
move toward a more radical emancipatory agenda.
Habermas also identifies a pe rform ative contrad iction in N i etzsch e ' s
writing, suggesting that N ietzs che cannot really p lace h i s critique of reason
"outs i de the horizon of reason" itself, at least not if N ietzsche w ishes to retain

Toward

an

Anarchy of Becoming

39

the capac ity for "prov iding argumentative grounds . " 1 7 But t h i s i s prec isely
N i etzsche ' s sty l i stic g i ft . In fact, N i etzs che

can

speak outs ide the horizon of

reas on. He does so when he speaks through a series of loosely connected

aphori s m s , and he certai n ly does so when he employs the incandescent,
m etaphorical l anguage of

Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Th i s kind of language is

probably frustrating to p h i losophers like Rorty and Habermas, and perhaps it

does not count as formal philosophical argument. But again, we cannot afford to
dismiss or ignore the philosophical impli cations of N i etzsch e ' s thought simply
because it does not conform to the rational linguistic style characteristic of most
acade m i c phi losophy . We can sti l l read N ietzsche ' s spiraling critique, but we
must read it as poetry, not as conventional phi los ophy .
Nor is it fair to say that N i etzsche rej ects rationality out of hand. "A

little

reason, to be sure," Zarathustra s ays, "a seed of w isdom scattered from star to
star-this leaven is m ixed in with all things . " 1 8 N i etzsche ' s th inking does seem
to p erm it a kind of tact ical, local reason, a " m i croreason . " And perhaps
Habermas recogn izes this option as a pos s ible way out of the cri s i s of subj ect
centered rationality . Following Nietzsche, Habermas attempts to draw distinc
tions w ith in the category of reason. Acknow !edging that it is difficult to sustain
subj e ct-centered reason as an epistemological category under the postm odem
condition, Habermas argues in favor of a "communi cative rationality . " This
"procedural" form of rational ity, Habermas contends, will act as a "nonco er
cively unify ing, consensus-bui lding force of a discours e in which the partici
pants overcome their at first subj ectively b i ased views in favor of a rationally
motivated agreement . " 1 9 Obviously, this is the form of rationality characteristic
of l iberal dem ocrac ies, at least in their mythological ideal form . There are, of
course, s everal problems w ith t h i s form of reas o n . F i rst, it doesn ' t exist.
Advert i s ing and mass-media institut ions ensure that a "rationally motivated
agreement" cannot be attained in any late twentieth-century l iberal democracy .
Second, even if such a consensus were possible, it would be extremely danger
ous. I do believe that smal l-scale consensuses can be reached, w ithin the frame
work of lim ited communities whose m embers actually do share certain values,
bel iefs , and inte l l ectual comm itments (see, for example, my discussion of the
"p ostmodem commons" in the I ntroduction) . I do not believe, however, that
such consensuses can be attained at the level of the nation-state. The cultural and
political values of such a national community w i l l inevitably be far too diverse
to perm it the kind of agreement which H abermas seeks . Such a large-scale
consensus could on ly come into being through the exclusion and suppress ion of
d i s senting voices . 20 This exclusi on always represents a theoret ical v i o lence;
sometimes it involves a physical vio lence as well . I n any case, a h e a lt hy polity

Chapter One

40

requ ires not consensus but rather the endless interplay of rad ically dissenting
voice s .

Nietzs che and Anarchism

C ontra "postm odern bourgeoi s l iberal ism," then, I w ish to advocate a very dif
ferent reading of N i etzsche, one which authorizes not the complacent status quo
pol itics of institutional dem ocracy but rather a unique new form of radical poli
t i c s . I call this pol itics anarch istic because of its intense opposition to capital
and the state ; I call it postmodem because of the ways in which it explodes con
ventional forms of subj ectivity and concepts of rational ity . A s is often the case
w ith N i etzsche ' s writings, we can find the po int of departure for this new read
ing in some interesting notes from

The Will to Power.

In these notes, N i etzsche

denounces anarchism as a p o l itical and econom ic theory w ith " n i h i l istic conse
quences .'m He views anarchism as a "consequence of decadence" and associates
it w i th " i nstincts of dec l i n e ."22 These comments are quite s i gn i fi c ant-n ot
because they reveal N i etzsche ' s wel l-known oppos ition to nin ete enth-century
anarch ism, but rather because they hint at the m otivations wh ich lay behind h i s
crit i que . A n arc h i s m i s problematic for N i etzs che to t h e extent that it i s a
destruct ive form of cu ltural n i h i l is m-and indeed, the terms " anarchi st" and
" n ih i l i st" were often used interchangeably in late n ineteenth-century European
p o l i t ical cu lture . For N ietzsche, then, it seem s that an arc h i s m is a

cultural

problem, rather than a spec ifically pol itical one. The problem N i etzsche had
w ith the anarc h i sts who were h i s contemporaries-and also w ith the socialists,
the fem i n i sts, the nationalists, and representat ives of most other " - i s m s"-i s
that they seemed, t o h im , to represent symptoms of a deeply fragmented and
dangerous ly decadent pol itical cu lture .
N i etzsche abhorred such n i h i l istic cultural decadence because it m i ght pre
vent the creation of a v ibrant new European culture . The articu lation of such a
cu lture was the project which came to dominate much o f N ietzsche' s later work.
One could argue that he first undertook this proj ect in

Thus Spoke Zarathustra,

a w ork which can be read on one level as a kind of in struct ion m anual for the
estab l i s hment of a sp iritually profound, trans n ational political cu lture . B ut al
though one can certainly gain gl impses of such a culture in Zarathustra ' s impas
s i oned calls for the legislation of new values, it is in N i etzsche ' s subsequent
works that this new cu ltural ethos is m ost c learly articulated. Its m ature expres
s i on i s to be found partic u l arly in Part E ight of
concerns "Peoples a n d Fatherlands" :

Beyond Good and Evil,

which

Toward an Anarchy of Becom ing

41

Call that i n which the d i stinction o f the European i s sought " c i v i l ization"
or " h u m an izat i o n " or " p rogre ss," o r c a l l i t s i m p ly-without p r a i se o r
b l am e-us i n g a pol itical form u l a, Euro p e ' s dem ocratic movement: b e h i n d
a l l the moral and p o l i t i c a l foregrounds to w h i c h such formulas p o i n t, a
tre m e n d o u s phys iological process is tak i n g p l ace and gaining momentum.
The Europeans are becoming m ore s i m i lar to each other; they become more
and m ore detached from the conditions under which races ori ginate that arc
tied to some c l i m ate or c l ass; they become increasingly independent of any

de term inate m i l ieu that would l i k e to i n scribe itse l f for centuries i n body
and soul with the same demands. Thus an essent i a l l y su pra-n ati o n a l and
n o m a d i c type o f man

is gradu a l l y c o m i n g up, a type that possesses,

p h y s i o l o g i c a l l y speak ing, a m ax i mum o f the art and power of adaptation as

Z3
its ty p i c a l d i stinction.

Th is remarkable pass age reveals a great deal about the political traj ectory of
Nietzsche ' s thinking. F i rst, l ike the Darw inians and other nineteenth-century
evo l utionary thinkers whose ideas he s i m u ltaneously attacked and util ized,
N i c tz s c h e bel ieved that po l iti cal culture was conditi oned by the same kinds of

evolutionary forces which drove development in the natural world. Second, th is

evolutionary perspective encouraged Nietzsche to take the long view where poli
tics and cu lture were concerned . For Nietzsche, the problem with particular po
litical forms such as anarchism, l iberalism, or nationalism was precisely that
they were particular. Such forms obscured the l arger h istorical processes which
Ni etzsche believed were at work . He bel ieved that those processes were produc
ing a very di stinctive new kind of political m i lieu, one which was supranational
in character. The nineteenth-century anarchist, ironically, could not partic ipate in
th i s type of m i l ie u , becau s e for all its antinat i o n a l i st rhetoric, c lassical
anarchism continually constructed itsel f as a particularistic sect-a Nietzschean
could argue that the anarchists ended up promoting a political theory which
would re p l ace the nations o f Germany and France w ith a " n ation" of
Bakun i n ites . The dom inant figure in Nietzsche ' s utopian political imaginary is
much more profoundly nonsectarian . She is indeed nomadic in character.Z4
The future-ori ented descript i on of a vast pan-European cu lture which
Nietzsche prov ides in Beyond Good and Evil sounds occas ionally l ike a man i
festo for the twentieth-century European Union:
O w i n g to the path o l o g i c a l estrangement w h i c h the i n sanity o f n a t i o n a l i ty
has i nduced, and sti l l i nduces, among the peop l e s of Europe; owing also to
the shortsightedness and q u i ck-handed po l i t i c ians who arc at the top today
w i th t he h e l p o f th i s i n san i t y , w i th o u t any i n k l i ng that th e i r separat i s t

42

Chapter One
policies can of necessity on ly be entr 'acte policies; owing to all this and
much else that today simply cannot be said, the most unequivocal portents
are now being overlooked, or arbitrari ly and mendaciously reinterpreted

that Europe wants to become one. 2 5

N ietzsche ' s prescience here is remarkable, although Europe had to suffer through
two world wars and a cold war before it real ized that it did indeed want to be
come one. To read th is passage as a straightforward cal l for political unification
would be dangerous, however. It is difficult to imagine that N ietzsche was envi
s ioning the petty squabbl ings of Europe ' s financial ministers as they struggle to
fix the value of their respective national currencies relative to the unpopular
Euro. Rather, N i etzs ch e ' s primary concern, here and alway s , i s cu ltura l : he
rej ects nationalism because it eclipses and interferes with the establ i shment of a
genuine, authentic pan-European culture . C lass ical anarchism, to the extent that
it represents a particularistic viewpoint which is culturally di sruptive rather than
unifY ing, can be rej ected on the same grounds .
Th i s i s important for three reasons: first, i t suggests that N i etzsche does not
actually obj ect to anarchist thinking per se, but specifically to that form of anar
chism w h ic h contri b utes to a fragmented, decadent culture . Second, it suggests
that N ietzsche, or people who could reasonably call themselves N i etzs cheans,
m ight well be able to endorse a variety of anarchist thought, if such a th inking
were to be articu lated within a different cultural context. A postmodem anar
chism-articulated within a late twentieth-century political framework, for the
express purposes of underm ining languages of statism and n ationalism and en
a b l i n g creative new p o l itical d i s c ourses-cou ld fit quite e as i ly into the
N i etzschean proj e ct. Such an anarchism endeavors to detonate conventional
forms of political agency and subjectivity in order to promote the creation of a
radically new kind of pol itical terrain. This terrain m i ght be understood as the
k i n d of postmodem commons which I described briefly above , for w h i l e
postmodem anarchism certainly affirms t h e importance of difference, i t a l s o un
derstands the need to draw together different strands of radical thinking-anar
chist, fem i n ist, postco lon i a l , and so on-into prov i s ional tact i c a l a l l iances .
Deeply suspicious of the enforced l iberal cultural consensus of the usual sus
pects, postrnodem anarchism is nonetheless qu ite distinct from the sectarian
anarchism of the nineteenth century, which frequently exhausted itself in bureau
crat ic disputes over control of the workers ' movement. The postrnodem a lterna
tive offers a possible resolution to Nietzsche ' s concerns regarding c lassical anar
c h i s m : n a m e l y that such anarch i s m is part and parce l of the fractu red,
fragmented p o l i t i c a l cul ture which it purports to oppos e . P ostmodem anarchism

is not, by any m e an s , a un i v e r s a l o r tot a l i zin g po l it i c a l theory . But it does

Toward

an

Anarchy of Becoming

43

constitute a kind o f common theoretical space i n which might grow a profound

new kind of radical political culture, one which might employ (as no previous
pol itical culture cou ld) the N ietzschean concepts of value creation and self
overcoming.
Postmodern anarchism is thus distinct from both the bankrupt institutions
of the modern liberal state, and from the culturally decadent modernist critique
of those institutions which classical anarch ism developed, as Nietzsche m ight
say, "at the expense of the future." And this is the third crucial point about radi
cal N ietzschean politics. It does not attempt to legitimize itself with reference to
the past. It does not try to ground itself in any kind of quasi-historical founda
tion story, as classical l iberalism does with its social contract mythology, as
German nationalism does with its Teutonic-Wagnerian mythology, as classical
anarchism does w ith its vision of a return to an authentic human condition
which supposedly existed prior to alienation. N ietzschean politics, and the
postmodern anarchist politics which grows out of N ietzsche ' s philosophy, looks
not to the past but to the future. Posbnodern anarchism is thus a unique kind of
m i l l enarian po litics which coincides quite closely w ith the kind of utopian
thinking which, as I have argued elsewhere, is to be found in abundance in
N ietzsche ' s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 26
Let us now take a c loser look at some of the passages where Nietzsche
seems to develop a variety of anarchist thinking. The younger Nietzsche, in par
ticular, tends to make some rather radical denunciations of the state. "One of the
duties that seems, at least to me, to be higher than serving the state," Nietzsche
writes in Schopenhauer as Educator, "demands that one destroy stupidity in ev
ery form, and therefore in this form too.'m Of course, Nietzsche is more con
cerned w ith the cultural, intel lectual and (anti)moral development of the indi
vidual than w ith those questions which we usually describe as pol itical . But
Nietzsche ' s critiques of cu lture and morality have deep political implications,
and in his early books he often recognizes this. In Daybreak, he laments the fact
that "conscience, reputation, Hell, sometimes even the police have permitted and
continue to permit no impartiality ; in the presence of moral ity, as in the face of
any authority, one is not allowed to think, far less to express an opinion : here
one has to----o b ey!"28 By associating moral thinking with blind obedience to au
thority in general, Nietzsche grants the critique of morals a specifically political
character.
Nor are these themes present on ly in Nietzsche ' s earlier works. The pseudo
anarchistic critique of morality continues in Thus Spoke Zarathustra . Here
morality is defined as the child of Zarathustra' s "old devil and arch-enemy, the
spirit of gravity," who created "constraint, statute, necessity and consequence
and purpose and w i l l and good and evil ."29 One of Zarathustra' s main goals,

Chapter One

44

then, is to overcome the statutes imposed upon society by the spirit of gravity :
"whoever must be a creator in good and evi l , veri ly, he must first be an annihi
30
lator an d break values . " The form of th is statement is strikingly s i m i lar to
B akun i n ' s fam ous pronouncem ent that the urge to destroy is a l so a creative
urge . And Z arathustra te l l s us that the creator does not only break values, but
also breaks the tablets upon which those values are inscribed: "He breaks tablets
31
and old values. He is a breaker, they call him lawbreaker." He who creates new
values, then, i s neces s arily a criminal--or, if we recognize the strong political
implications of value creation, an anarchist.
Nietzsche ' s pseudoanarchistic critique of law and custom reaches its zen ith
in the second essay of

On the Genealogy of Morals .

This p iece is absolutely

crucial to the anarchist reading o f N ietzsche, a fact which has been recognized by
some of the m ost important postmodem and poststructuralist anarchi sts of the
32
In this essay, Nietzsche suggests that "a legal order thought

twenti eth century .

of as sovereign and universal, not as a m eans in the struggle between power

complexes but as a means of preventing al l struggle in general . . . would be a
principle hostile to l i fe. ' m Such a legal order is , of course, characteristic of all
modem, post-Enl ightenment l iberal democrac i e s . And the epithet "host i l e to
l ife" is perhaps the hars hest denunciation in N i etzsche ' s extensive vocabulary.
The tendency toward the universal expansion of the legal order (and the implicit
growth o f the state system which must accompany such an expansion) thus
stands i n p re c i s e opposition to N i etzsch e ' s m o d e l for a healthy cu lture .
N ietzsche also emphasizes the arbitrary nature of the state ' s penal schemes.
Against a l iberal orthodoxy which would have us believe that the state ' s pun
i s h m ents refer in some c l e ar, distinct, and rational way to actua l crimes,
Ni etzsche characterizes punishment as a "continuous s i gn-chain of ever new in
terpretations and adaptations whose causes do not even have to be related to one
34
another. " Like morality, then, punishment i s exposed via genealogical critique
as a purely contingent and historical operation. Also like moral ity, punishment
does not lead to the improvement of cu lture : "puni s hment

tames

men, but it

does not m ake them ' better'-one m i ght w ith more j ustice assert the oppo
35
s it e . ' ' As always, N i etzsche is the m aster of reversal, taking the dominant in
terpretation of the legal-j udicial-penal complex and subj ecting it to relentless cri
tique unti l it implode s .
F e w peop le have recognized the ful l implications of Nietzsche ' s genealogy
of punishment, but G i l les Deleuze has . "It could be that, spiritual or temporal,
tyrannical or democratic, capitalist or social i st,

State,

there has never been but a single

the State-as-dog that ' speaks with flam ing roars. ' And Nietzsche suggests

how this new soc ius proceeds : a terror w ithout precedent, in comparison w ith
which th e anc ient system of cruelty, the form s of prim itive regimentation and

Toward an Anarchy of Becom ing

punishment, are n oth i n g . "

36

45

Contra Rorty, Deleuze suggests that the l iberal

"cure" of punishment is in fact far more terrifying than the "disease" of cruelty .
Deleuze also builds upon another cruc ial theme from the Genealogy' s second es
s ay, the theme of indebtedness . Nietzsche suggests that we feel an enormous
debt toward our ancestors, our tribe, our gods ; for Nietzsche, "the advent of the
Christian G od, as the maximum god attained so far, was therefore accompanied
m
by the maximum feel ing of guilty indebtedness on earth. '
It is not d ifficult for
De leuze to tran s form this critical analysis of cultural debt into a p o l itical and
econom ic critique. Deleuze describes the deve lopment of feelings of indebted
ness as the growth of "reactive forces" : "the association of reactive forces is thus
accom pan ied by a transformation of the debt; th i s becomes a debt toward
38
' divinity ' , toward ' soc iety ' , toward 'the State ' , toward reactive instances . "
De leuze radicalizes the discuss ion of the debt by adding a discussion of money :
" m o ney-th e c irculation of money-is the means for rendering the debt
infinite. . . . the abol ition of debts or the i r accountab le transformation initiates
the duty o f an i nterm inable service to the State that subordinates all the

primitive all iances to its e l f. " 39 In Deleuze ' s capab le h ands, the category of the
debt becomes the instrument of an extremely radical, and indeed anarch istic,
critique of the state system and the econom ies associated w ith that system .
" P o stm odern bourg e o i s l i beral s " w o u l d presumably l ike to d i s m i s s

Deleuze ' s reading of Nietzsche a s a n outrageous left-wing polemic which has n o

textual bas i s in Nietzsche ' s writings . But they can do s o only b y ignoring the
extens ive critique of bourgeois culture and capitalist values wh ich is present in
40
We find the y oung

N i etzsch e ' s w ork, p art i c u l arly in h i s ear l i e r books .

Nietzsche making remarks which would have fit quite easily into the nineteenth
century radical tradition. In Daybreak Nietzsche critic izes the privileging of ex
change value over use value : "the man engaged in commerce understands how to
appraise everything without having made it, and to appraise it according to the
needs of the consumer, not according to his own needs ." 4 1 This remarkable work
even contains a critique of alienated labor which would find itself quite at home
on the pages of the Comm un ist Manifesto. "To the devi l w ith setting a price on
ones elf in exchange for which one ceases to be a person and becomes part of a

machine ! " 42

Of course, Nietzsche ' s primary obj ection to capital ism is not social or eco
nom ic, but cultura l . "There exists a species of m isemployed and appropriated
culture, " he tells us in Schopenhauer as Educator. "You have only to look
around you ! And precisely those forces at present most actively engaged in pro
moting culture do so for reasons they reserve to themselves and not out of pure
d i s interestedness. Among these forces is, first of a l l, the greed of the m oney
makers, which requires the assistance of cu lture and by way of thanks assists

46

Chapter O n e

cu lture in return, but at the same time, of course, would l ike to dictate its stan
dards and obj ectives. "43 Marx and Bakun in have already warned of the social
inj ustices which capitalism engenders. N ietzsche adds a cu ltural d imension to
this critique, pointing out that the unre lenting emphas i s on profit tends to
eclipse more authentic cultural concerns. (Today we measure the qual ity of films
in term s of their box office receipts and the qual ity of political candidates in
term s of the ir campaign war chests ; N ietzsche ' s critique is probab ly more rele
vant than ever.) The young N ietzsche also denounces the state as the accompl ice
of these culturally decadent "money-makers ." "Nowadays the crudest and most
evil forces, the egoism of the money-makers and the m i l itary despots , hold
sway over almost everything on earth . In the hands of these despots and money
makers , the state certainly makes an attempt to organize everyth ing anew out of
itself and to bind and constrain all those mutually hostile forces : that is to say,
it wants men to render it the same idolatry they formerly rendered the church ."44
Here the state sounds a b i t l i ke Marx ' s "executive comm ittee of the
bourgeoisie," but in N ietzsch e ' s v iew the state is actually even more dangerous
than that. By de sc rib i n g the state as an idol, Nietzsche makes it hard to imagine
that any state , even a utopian "w orker' s state , " could possibly provide any
meaningful human l iberation . And if the st at e is an idol, then the Nietzschean
phi losopher' s j ob is to approach it as she approaches all idols: with a hammer.
N ietzsche returns to th is theme in a famous section of Thus Spoke Zarathustra
entitled "On the New Idol." Here Zarathustra characterizes the state as an instru
ment of the herd. "All-too-m any are born : for the superfluous the state was in
v e n t e d . "45 The state is described as l i fe-deny ing; as always, this is one of
N ietzsche ' s most powerful critiques. " S tate I call it where all drink poison, the
good and the w icked; state, where all lose themselves, the good and the wicked ;
state , where the slow suic ide of all is called ' l ife. "'46
Nietzsche ' s critique of the state in general certainly includes a critique of the
l iberal state, and this is someth ing which should worry the usual suspects . In

Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche points out a bas ic contradiction in the phi
losophy of the liberal state . While such a state claims to endorse and enforce the
rights of the individual, it cannot avo id creating a homogenizing political cul
ture which will in fact underm ine the poss ibil ity of any meaningful ind ividual
ity . "The state is a prudent inst itution for the protection of indiv i duals against
one another: i f it is comp leted and perfected too far it w i l l in the end enfeeble
the individual and, indeed, dissolve him-that is to say, thwart the original pur
pose of the state in the most thorough way possible."47 Of course, the state must
attempt at al l costs to conceal th is fatal flaw . Th is is the origin of parliamentary
p o l i t i c s , which gi ves the c i t i zens of a l iberal state the i llusion that they possess
meaningful political choices. " Parl i amentariani sm-that i s , pub l i c perm i ssion to

Toward

an

Anarc hy of Becoming

47

choose between five bas ic political opinions-flatters and wins the favor o f all
those who would like to seem independent and individual, as i f they fought for
th e i r o p i n i o n s . U ltimate ly, however, it i s i n d i fferent wh ether the herd is
comman ded to have one op inion or permitted to have five."48 Th is is a telling
and quite relevant attack on electoral politics . N i etzsche ' s argument implies that
the distinctions between fas c i sm (one perm itted o p i n i on), European-style
parliam entary democracy (five opin ions), and Ameri can federal pol itics (two
largely indistinguishable opinions) are not nearly as meaningful as the liberals
would have us believe. N i etzsche also suggests a very interesting interpretation
of voter apathy. "If whenever the occas ion for using the vote arises hardly two
th irds of those entitled to vote, perhaps indeed not even a m ajority of them,
come to the ballot-box, th is is a vote against the ent ire voting-sy stem as
such . "49 L i b erals insist that wi despread voter apathy (fewer than one-third of
e l igible American voters tum out in many elections) requ ires us to mobilize the
electorate through voter registration drives and so on. N i etzsch e ' s refreshing
suggestion is that perhaps a vote is being cast here, namely a vote to abo lish the
entire sy stem of false choices and meaningless dec i s ions . Against the party
politics of the bourgeois state, N ietzsche always advocates independent thought:
"perhaps there w i l l one day be laughter at that which nowadays counts as moral
am ong the younger generation brought up under parl i amentary institutions :
namely, t o set the pol icy o f the party above one ' s own wisdom."5 Free, creative
thought is for N i etzsche the on ly poss ible source of authentic culture . But such
th i n k i n g stan ds in stark oppos ition to the restrictive cu ltural and political
consensuses enforced by modem liberal states.

Anarchy of the Subj ect, Anarchy of Becoming

It would seem, then, that there is an anarchist politics in N i etzsche' s work. It is
not the only politics to be found in his writings, by any means, and it i s a poli
tics to which he himself often expressed explicit oppos ition. Nonetheless, this
p olitics is present in h i s notes and pub li shed texts, an d we cannot afford to ig
n ore it. As we have seen, N i etzsche is frequently critical of states in general and
l iberal states in particular; he also attacks the social and cu ltural values of the
"m oney-m akers" who support such states. " Postmodem bourgeois liberal ism"
can make functional use of N i etzsche' s thinking on ly at the price of excluding
these critiques . The usual suspects are happy to perform such an exc lusion, often
by d i s m i s s i n g N i etzsche ' s criti cisms as the unfortunate rantings of a self
proc laimed "antipol itical G erman ."

Chapter One

48

But the usual sus pects have another, much more serious problem . Even if
postmodem l iberals can rej ect N i etzsche ' s assaults on capital ism and the l iberal
state-and it is easy enough to locate passages in N i etzsch e ' s books where he
seems to contradict these assaults-those who would use N ietzsche to shore up
the eroding foundations of l iberal democracy must contend with the even more
powerful and radical forms of anarchy which are to be found in N i etzsche ' s
thought . They must contend, for example, w ith N i etzsche ' s wel l-known anarchy
of the subj ect. A number of comm entators have pointed out th at one of
N i etzsche ' s main contributions to pol itical thought is his destruction of the con
ventional concepts of human subj ectivity which lie at the basis of most modem
p o l i t i c a l theories . Ke ith Ans e i i-Pearson suggests, for exam p l e , that the

Genealogy

aims "to show that one of the central ideas of moral and pol itical

theory , that of a human subj ect in possession of conscience and a free w i l l , is

not a natural g iven . " 5 1 W i l l iam C onnolly po ints out that after N i etzsche, "the
subj ect is not s imply or unam b i guously the self which estab l i shes its un ity,
52
And the assault on conventional

freedom, independence and self-transparency . "

( i . e . , post-Enlightenment) ideas of subj ectiv ity is not s imply a metaphysical or

epistemological issue. It is also a deeply pol itical issue which has profound
impl icat ions for the construction of pol itical theories and institutions . Those
impl ications do not bode well for l iberal ism . Mark Warren summ arizes the
problem n icely : "Because l iberals put a metaphys ical placeholder in the space of
the indiv idual, they fai l e d to theorize th is space. As a result, they j ustified
l iberal forms of the state in terms of a h istorically conditioned effect m istaken
for a un iversal essenc e . Th is is why N i etzsch e ' s understanding of n i h i l ism in
Western cu lture as the col lapse of the individual as agent also implicates the
indiv idual istic metaphysics of l iberal ism ." 53 N ietzsche ' s assault on modem sub
j ectiv ity , then, underm ines the phi losophical foundations of the liberal state.
After N ietzsche, l i berals find them selves thrown into a confusing postmodem
world of multiple subject pos itions and decentered identities . They are forced to

try to develop a new kind of l iberal pol itics, one which w i l l not rely upon epis
tem ologically suspect categories of indiv idua l i ty . Th i s i s , as we have seen, a
difficult task, and one which liberals rarely complete in a s atisfy ing way .
L e t us n o w look in m ore deta i l a t N ietzsche ' s anarchy o f the subj ect.
Nietzsche famous ly regarded the free will which is central to most conventional
not ions of subj ect ivity as an egregious error. For example, he notes in

A ll Too Human

Human,

that "we do not accuse nature of immoral ity when it sends

thunderstorm s and makes us wet: why do we call the harm fu l m an immoral?

Because in the latter case we assume a voluntary commanding free will, in the

former necessity. But th is distinction is an error. " 5 4 H ere N ietzsche seems to be

advocating a kind of radica l determinism: he v iews individual actions not as the

Toward

an

Anarchy of B ecoming

49

product o f some chimerical free w i l l , but rather as the indirect product o f the
social an d cultural forces which have constituted the ind ividual who performs
those action s . Of course, this has rad ical im pl ications for pol itical theory . If we
understand individual actions as the product of the soc iety and culture which
produced the individual, then society is qu ite l iterally to blame for what its
members do. Th is naturally renders conventional ideas of pun ishment radically
incoherent. "How i s it that every execution offends us more than a murder?"
N ietzs che demands . " It is the coldness of the j udges, the scrupulous preparation,
the ins ight that here a human being is be ing used as a means of deterring others.
For it is not the guilt that i s being punished, even when it exists : th is lies in
educators , parents , envi ronment, in us, not i n the murderer-! mean the
c ircumstances that caused him to become one."55 Th is is a key point for the
postmodem anarch ist. If we accept that human s possess no metaphysical, pre
social essence, if we accept that they are l ittle more than nodal points where var
ious social, economic, and cultural forces converge to produce the

illusion

of

subj ectiv ity , then the punishment schemes of the l iberal state make no sense .
Indeed, on this readi ng it would m ake more sense to execute

the system itself.

since it is the system that is guilty of manufacturing criminals. Revo lutionaries

who fo l l ow this kind of i nterpretation would also, perhaps, be less l ikely to al
l ow the ir upris ings to descend into the k ind of m indless terror which was, un
fortunately, to be found in abundance in France during the 1 790s, in Rus s i a dur
ing the 1 920s and 1 9 3 0s, or in China during the 1 9 5 0 s . I s ay this because the
radical denial o f free w i l l applies to the ru lers as well as the ru led. This point
was made, rem arkab ly eno ugh, by Bakunin, who observed in 1 8 69 that "the
k ings, the oppress ors, exp lo iters of al l k i nds, are as gui lty as the criminals who
have emerged from the masses ; l ike them, they are evi ldoers who are not gui lty,
since they, too, are involuntary products of the present social order."56 Let the
gu i l lotine be deployed, then, not against aristocratic or bourge o i s tyrants , but
aga inst the philosophy of subj ectiv ity which g ives such tyrants their power in
the first place .
N ietzsche continues his assault on trad itional forms of subj ectiv ity and con
sc iousness in

Beyond Good and Evil,

questioning whether "there must necessar

i ly be something that th inks , that th inking is an activ ity and operat ion on the
part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an ' ego, ' and, finally,
that it is already determ ined what is to be des ignated by thinking-that I

know

what th inking i s ."57 An obvious assault on the old Cartesian concept of subjec
tiv ity ("I think, therefore I

am"), Nietzsche ' s critique of consciousness also has

dramatic pol itical m ean ing. Th ese "thinking ego s"-the rational, autonomous
subj ects who have dominated pol itical di scourse s ince the En l ightenment-are
supposedly the beings who vote in l iberal elections , who serve on the l i beral j u-

50

Chapter One

ries which dec ide the fate of the supposedly autonom ous criminals who stand
before them, who use the media to inform themselves about issues so that they
may form rational opinions, and so on . In short, a whole host of l iberal theories
and inst itutions depend upon a certain idea o f subj ectivity which is, after
Nietzsche, extremely difficult to sustain .
Th is anarchy of the subj ect makes possible another, possibly even more rad
ical form of anarchy, an anarchy of becom ing. I f N ietzsche is right about the sta
tus of the subj ect in the l ate modern period-and an entire tradition of
twentieth-century C ontinental phi losophy suggests that his analysis is at least
presc iently persuasive w ith regards to the postmodern period-then we must
radic ally rethink what it means to be human. Previous concepts of subj ectivity
(and thus previous political theories) focused on being: I am this autonom ous
person, I am this rational c itizen of a l iberal democracy . Nietzsche shifts our
attention to becoming. I f, as he argues, the subj ect has no finn metaphysical
ground and no center, i f indeed our subj ectivity is i n a constant state of flux,
then the meaning of our l ives must be constantly changing. It is, of course,
somewhat alarming to think that we m ight have no fixed being, that our essence
(i f we have one) must res ide in a constant stream of transformations. However,
the thought of becoming can also be a very l iberat ing thought. A l l rad ical
th inking demands ch ange, and N i etzsche ' s demands more than most. To the
conventional radical ' s demand for soc ial and political change, Nietzsche adds the
demand for a change in our very consciousness, in the way we view our
re l ationship to time and h istory . In this sense Nietzsch e ' s thought stands as one
of the m ost radical ever conceived, for it asserts nothing less than th i s : change is
the very heart of who and what we are . And this i s true, says Nietzsche, not
only of ourselves but of our worl d. "If the world had a goal, it must have been
reached. I f there were for it some unintended final state , this also must have
been reached. If it were in any way capab le of a pausing and becom ing fixed, of
' being, ' if in the whole course of its becom ing it possessed even for a moment
th is capab i l ity of ' being, ' then all becom ing would long since have come to an
end, along with a l l th inking, a l l ' spirit. ' The fact of ' sp irit ' as a form of
becom ing proves that the world has no goal , no final state , and is incapab le of
being."58 For N ietzsche the world has no teleo logy, no destination. The forces of
history do not direct us toward a Zeitgeist named Hege l . Indeed, if Hege l was
the preem inent p h i l osopher of the state, Nietzsche ' s phi losophy of perpetual
becoming can only herald the state ' s dem ise.
C onventional radicals who find them selves dismayed at the seeming invin
c i b i l ity o f oss i fi ed states and entrenched econom i c structures m ight find
N i etzsch e ' s thought inv igorating i n this respect, for the phi l o s o p hy of beco m i ng
assures us th at noth ing is permanent . Oppress ive institutions and react i on ary

Toward an Anarchy of Becoming

51

ideas w i l l not endure; these institutions and these ideas are, like the people who
created them , nothing more than streams of becom ing. The p h i losophy of be
coming thus suggests that we are in a state of permanent and total revolution, a
revolution against being. 59 Becoming also implies the kind of radical personal
respon s i b i l i ty wh ich is so crucial to anarchist theory . " W e , however,

become those we are-human

want to

beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who

give themselves laws, who create themselves ."60 N i etzsche v iews humans not as
fi n i shed beings but as works of art, and spec i fi c a l ly works in progre s s . The
p h i losophy of becoming i m p l ies a single eth ical imperative: become who you
are, create yourself as a masterpiece. And as N i etzsche argues, this involves cre
ating one ' s own law . Needless to say, thi s kind of radical individual leg i slation
i s hardly compatible with the legis lative system of any statist order.
It is thus m is leading to suggest, as Bruce Detwei ler does, that the phi loso
phy of becom ing "means that the Left' s cry for social j ustice i s based upon an
error."61 Detwei ler should say that the

orthodox

Left suffers from this error. The

postmodem Left embraces becoming, and refuses to formulate its emancipatory

p o l i c ies in terms of ep i stemologically suspect categories of subjectivity. Thi s
m a y s e e m strange-whom are we liberating?-but it i s t h e only w a y for radical
thinking to avoid the traps of modern i st political theory . And w h i l e this post
modem revo lutionary thinking may be odd, it is not imposs ible. The revo lu
tionary pos s i b i l ities of becom ing have been conceived most c learly by De leuze
and G u attari

in

A Th ousand Plateaus .

"All

becom i n g

is

b e c o m i ng

m inoritarian ," t h e y tell u s ; " becom ing-m i noritarian i s a p o l i t i c a l affair and

necess itates a labor of power, an active m i cropolitics. This i s the opposite of
macropo l itics, and even of H istory, in which it is a question of knowing how to
w i n or obtain a m aj ority . "62 Thi s m icropo litics i s crucial to any postrnodern
pol itical agenda. The Left must learn once and for a l l the lessons of Len i n ,
Sta l i n , a n d Mao : macropol itical action, however w e l l - intentioned, d o e s not
produce meaningful l iberation. The attempt to seize contro l of the state, to direct
the flow of h istory in the name of some i l l-defined class of supposedly rational
pro letarian subj ects, i s doomed to fai lure . But this by no means heralds the end
of radical thought. It simply means that we must refocus our attention on the
po s s ib i l ities of postmodem anarchi s m . "Common sense, the unity of all the
facu lties at the center constituted by the Cogito," writes Deleuze, "is the State
consensus rai s ed to the ab s o l ute ."63 But t h i s consensus is confronted by
"counterthoughts, wh i c h are vio lent in their acts and discontinuous in their
appearances, and whose exi stence i s mobile in hi story."64 N i etzsche ' s thought of
becoming is certainly such a counterthought. Its effect i s not to encourage the
reform o f the state or the seizure of state power but rather to abo l ish the
conditions of thinking which make the state possible in the first place .

Chapter One

52

The m icropolitics implied by the phi losophy of becom ing suggests that our
primary duty is to reprogram or redes ign ourselves, creating ourselves anew as
the k i n d of beings who can legis late new values and inscribe new law s .
Interestingly, then , the anarchy of the subj ect proc laimed b y Nietzsche does not
by any means imply the end of our responsibi lity to constitute ourselves as sub
j ects . 65 Out of the critical anarchy of the subj ect, there emerges an equally pow
erful but affirmative anarchy of becom ing, one which understands humans not as
beings w ith fixed essences but rather as selves- in-process . Of course, the im
pl ication of th is for state in stitutions is quite dire : such institutions run the risk
of becoming entirely irrelevant once these processes of becom ing and self
transformation proceed past a certain point. As Rol ando Perez astutely observes,
"the overman or over(wo)man is she who no longer needs the State, or any other
instituti on, for that matter. She i s her own creator of values and as such the first
true an(arch ist) ."66
There is, of course, a danger here . The move toward an anarchy of becoming
is an extraordinarily rad ical one, both politically and ep istemologically . L ike all
such moves, it carries w ith it th is risk: i f all essence, all fixed being, all laws of
state s and subj ects are to be swept away in the torrent of becoming, can w e be
sure that th is torrent w i l l not carry us into some dark quagm ire? Can we avoid,
for exam p l e , the danger of becom ing- fasc ist? This i s a genuine danger,
espec ially if (following Deleuze) we begin to suspect that what lends fascism its
terrifying seductive power is its ab il ity to operate at an almost cellu lar level:
"what makes fascism dangerous is its molecular or m icropol itical power, for it
is a mass movement : a cancerous body rather th an a totalitarian organ i sm . "67
The real horror of fascism grows not, perhaps, out of the fact that it can se ize
power at the macropo l itical leve l ; any state can do that. What is pecu liarly hor
rifi c about fascism is the way that it penetrates the smal lest nooks and crannies
of the social organ ism . " Rural fascism and c ity or neighborhood fascism , fas
cism of the Left and fascism of the Right, fascism of the couple, fam i ly, school
and office: every fascism is defined by a micro-black hole that stands on its own
and communicates w ith the others, before resonating in a great, general ized cen
tral black hole . "68 At the microscopic level, fasc ism is able to divert many of the
supposedly liberating streams of personal becom ing, sucking them down into
the seemingly irresistible gravity-we ll of an eth ical-political black hole.
Is th is the limit of becoming? Must we conclude that becom ing is bordered
by a law after all-a visceral, pretheoretical law which says sim ply, "I will not
give myse lf over to the fascist ins ide me"? Perhaps. But I do not believe that
th i s constitutes a fatal flaw of anarcho-becoming. The pos s i b i l ity of fas c i s m
does not s t r i p becom i n g of i t s anarchistic impl ication s . Rather, m i crofas c i s m
s h o u l d be understood as the l i m it w h i c h defines be c o m i n g , grants i t a defin ite

Toward

an

Anarchy of Becoming

53

(albeit fl u i d and flexib le) shape, and prevents it from diss ipating into a politi
cally meaningless gasp of chao s . Foucault reminds us that "the limit and trans
gress ion depend on each other for whatever density of being they possess : a
l i m i t could not ex ist if it were abso lutely uncrossable and, reciprocally, trans
gression would be pointless if it merely crossed a l i m it composed of i l lus ion
and shadow s . "69 I would say of anarcho-becoming and m i crofasc i s m what
Foucault has said of transgression and the limit. They have a defin ite relation
ship-not dialectical, to be sure, but sp iral ing. The thre at of microfascism is
what motivates anarcho-becom ing, what makes it possible, and indeed what
completes it. Anarcho-becom ing is thus locked in a perm anent duel with micro
fascism, but ironically th is due l is actually crucial to the anarchy of becom ing,
for it is what channels and focuses that anarchy into a coherent program of polit
ical self-creation. By granting the anarchy of becoming something to define it
self against, m icrofascism takes a strange force-wh ich might otherw ise exhaust
itself in futile, form less rage-and transforms that force into a powerfu l post
modern p o l itical agenda. Kill your inner fascist-th is single, m in i m a l l i m i t
opens up incomprehens ibly vast vi stas of becom ing, for there are surely a b i l
lion ways to fu l fi l l th is prescription. And it is a prescription which comes not
from the mind but from the viscera-as N ietzs che would surely be delighted to
observe .
Anarchy of the subj ect, an archy of becom ing-N ietzsche lays the founda
tions for some of the most unique and innovative varieties of anarchist th inking
which are to be found in modern pol itical theory . And yet the usual sus pects
would be quick to point out that there are powerful e lements of Nietzsche ' s
th inking which seem to underm ine those foundations. I s not der Obermensch
some kind of acting agent who hopes to impress his w i l l upon h uman hi story?
And (even more troub ling for the postmodern anarchi st) does n ' t N i etzsch e ' s
thought, despite all the rhetorical force of its drive towards becom ing, return
eternally to a deep concern for being? Nowhere are these twin problems made
more m a n i fest th an in the works of Martin Hei degger . " We m ust grasp
Nietzsche 's philosophy as the metaphysics of subjectivity, " Heidegger provoca
tive ly declare s . 70 "Nietzsche ' s thought has to p lunge into metaphysics because
Being radiates its own essence as will to power; that is, as the sort of th ing that
in the h i story of truth of beings must be grasped through the proj ection as w i l l
to power. The fundamental occurrence of that history is ultimately t h e transfor
mation of be ingness into subj cctivity . "7 1 Heidegger' s deep ly disturbing pol itical
comm itment to the Nazi party makes it tempting, of course, to dismiss his
reading o f Nietzsche as reactionary. A subject-centered N ietzschean ism which
dam s up the river of becoming in a fut ile attempt to iso late the elusive essence
o f B e i ng-sure ly , s ays the postmodern anarch ist, th is is nothing more than a

Chapter One

54

l i m it case which shows the extreme ethical and epi stemological dangers inherent
in the totalitari an " l iberal" consensus of the usual suspects .
Yet such a d i s m i ssal is too easy . Jean- Franois Lyotard, one of the fore
most French postm odern rad icals, has persuasively i n s i sted that "one must
m aintain both assertions-that of the greatness of [Heidegger' s] thought and that
of the obj ectionable nature of [h i s] ' p o l itics '-without concluding that if one is
72
true then the other is false." For Heidegger' s thought is great: it provides use
fu l an swers to m any interpretive questions regard ing Nietzsch e ' s phi losophy,
and it helps to tease out some very interesting answers to some of the most
73
stubborn riddles in N ietzsch e ' s writing. Controvers ial and problematic though
it is in some ways, there is much to recommend Heidegger' s interpretation of
N i etzsche

as

"the last metaphysician in the West."

For the postmodern anarchist, what is most valuable in Heidegger ' s reading
of N ietzsche is precisely th is point: N ietzsche stands at a crucial trans ition po int
in the inte llectual h istory of the Western world. He is s imu ltaneously the last
m etaphys i c i an and the entry into postmodem ity . Th i s lim its the radical poten
tial of N i etzsche ' s thi nking in one sense, for it means that N ietzsche' s phi loso
phy must contain e lem ents of a very trad itional m etaphysics. Yet the un ique
dual identity of N i etzsch e ' s thought also provides that th inking w ith a multi
faceted theoretical versati lity which m akes it

more radical,

in another sense, than

any prev ious p h i losophy . Y e s , the m etaphy s i c s of subj ectivity l i n gers in

N i etzsch e ' s writings, and yes, those writings are h aunted by the specter of
Being. No one knew th is better than N ietzsche. Perhaps this is why he chose to

Die Unzeitgemasse Betrachtungen. Typically translated as

Untimely Meditations, th is title has also been rendered somewhat less accurately
(but perhaps more interestingly, for our present purposes) as Thoughts Out of
Season. This is the essence of N ietzsche ' s thought, to the extent that it can be
title h i s second book

said to have one. He simu ltaneously concludes the proj ect of Western meta

whose time has not yet come. "I know my

fate," N i etzsche declares in a section of Ecce Homo which the humorless com
mentator m ight overlook s i m p ly because it is entitled "Why I Am a Destiny ."

physics, and begins to th ink thoughts

"One day my name will be assoc iated w ith the memory of something tremen
dous-a cri sis w ithout equal on earth ." 74 And Nietzsche is quite careful to em

political
great politics."75

phasize that this i s a spec ifically

that the earth knows

crisis : " it is only beginning w ith me

We should not let N i etzsch e ' s p l ayful bombast obscure th e fact that he is,
to a certain extent, right about th i s . Nietzsche ' s thought does indeed m ark the
b e g i n n i n g of great p o l it i c s . Partic u l arly in France, some of the best and
brightest m inds of the twentieth century have dedicated substantial portions of
their intell ectual c areers to the project of articulating this new radical politics.

Toward

an

Anarchy of Becoming

55

Deleuze and Derrida, Baudrillard and Bataille, Lyotard and Foucault have gone
to great lengths to tum the sketch for a postmodem anarchism which is to be
found in Nietzsche' s writings into a full-fledged political philosophy. For
Nietzsche himself, however, postmodem anarchism must remain an agenda for
the future. His thought continues to be captive to the metaphysical tradition
which it completes. He must leave it to others to articulate the full meaning of
the political and philosophical position toward which the twin anarchies of
subjectivity and becoming clearly point. Like all the great radical thinking of
the nineteenth century, Nietzsche's thought is utopian. It develops a devastating
critique of the world as it is, and dreams of a better future. But the construction
of that future is for those who follow.
So: Nietzsche's thought, which explodes all manifestations of the conven
tional political subject-its rationality, its language, its thoughts, its theories,
its states, its economics-stands at the origin of the subversive counteridea
which I call postmodem anarchism. Such an anarchism represents a tactical use
of Nietzsche' s thinking, not (as the usual suspects propose) to shore up the
rapidly eroding theoretical foundations of liberal democracy but rather to finish
off that withered remnant of subject-centered post-Enlightenment politics, in or
der to open up a space for something more interesting. Postmodem anarchism
asserts that the problems which face us today are not the result of flaws in our
political structures which can be alleviated through reform or through the seizure
of state power. Rather, the problem lies in the structures themselves, and in the
epistemologies which sustain those structures. Nietzsche's anarchy of the subject
makes it quite clear that our culture is to blame for the sorry state of affairs in
which we find ourselves. Following this guilty verdict, modem political culture
in general and liberal political culture in particular may expect to receive a death
sentence. The liberals warn that this way lies madness. We say: we cannot know
what may lie further down this river of becoming. But at least we know that it
will be radically different from the disastrous political situation in which we
find ourselves presently.
Perhaps the greatest appeal of postmodem Nietzschean anarchism lies in the
fact that it runs little risk of falling into the theoretical and political traps faced
by all merely modern revolutions. Marxism and nineteenth-century anarchism
criticized capital, bourgeois values, and the liberal state-but they did so using
the language, the terms, and the theoretical tools of the very bourgeois order
they sought to undermine. Lenin and Mao sought to reshape the state into
something which could sanction genuine political and economic freedom, but
they retained so many of the old forms that they ended up reproducing the old
varieties of repression and exploitation. "The problem for revolutionaries today,"
as Deleuze argues,

56

Chapter One

is to unite within the purpose of a parti cular struggle without fal l ing into
the despotic and bureaucratic organization of the party or state apparatus.
We seek a kind of war mach ine that will not re-create a state apparatus, a
nomad ic unit related to the outside that will not revive an internal despotic
unity. Perhaps th is is what is most profound in Nietzsche ' s thought and
marks the extent of his break with phi losophy, at least so far as it is mani
fested in the aphorism : he made thought into a machine of war-a battering

ram-into a nomadic force. 76

As a lways, it is the perform ative effect of Nietzsche ' s thought, rather than its
exp l i c it content, wh ich concerns u s . And one cruc ial effect of h i s thinking is
that it removes p h i l osophy from the horizons of the state . This is an event
which is unprecedented in the h i story of Western thought. And it is an event
whose ramifications w i l l continue to be fe lt for some time. Just as news of the
death of God takes a long time to reach us, so too does news of the death of the
state . But word of t h e s e deaths draws in exo r ably nearer. For no God and no
state can hope to survive a fu l l engagement w ith that thinking which detonates
a l l fixed human ident ities and reveals as mere phantasms of consciousness a l l
fixed politics, econom ics, and cu lture .

Notes
B ecause there are a great many different editions a n d translations of Nietzsche ' s
writings,

refer to those w ritings b y section number (or i n the case o f Thus

Spoke Zarathustra, by section name) rather than by page number whenever pos
sible.

do, however, refer to Schopenhauer as Educator (published in Untimely

Meditations) by page number, as the length of the sections in this work makes
it impractical to refer to the work by section number.
l . Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, essay 2, section 1 2 .

2. A lthough this aspect of Nietzsche ' s thinking has been widely disregarded, a
few commentators have noted it. See, for example, Peter Marshall,
Impossible,

Demanding the

1 5 5 ff.

3 . Foucault, Archae ology of Knowle dge, 1 7 .

4 . I mean "spectacular, " of course, in the sense that Guy Debord uses the term .
See Debord,

Society of the Spectacle .

5 . Habermas, Philosoph ical Discourse of Modernity, 83 ff.

Toward an Anarchy of Becoming

57

6 . Ansel i-Pearson, "Nietzsche, woman, and pol itical theory, " i n Nie tzs c h e ,
Feminism, and Political Theory,

ed. Paul Patton, 29.

7 . As Michel Foucault poi nts out in Discipline and Punish, however, habitual
criminals or "deli nquents" such as the usual suspects actually do perform a number
of very important functions for the state. See Foucault, Disc ipline and Punish, 272
ff.

8 . Baudrillard, Forget Foucault, 5 8 - 5 9 .

9. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, a n d Solidarity, 8 3 .
1 0. David Owen i s being kind to Rorty when h e suggests mildly that "it i s not
immediately apparent that the commitment to a culture of individual ironists . . . can
easi ly be reconc i l ed with an interest in developing human soli darity . " (Owen,
Nietzsche, Politics, and Modern ity,

I I . Rorty,

1 48 ) .

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,

1 96.

1 2. Dav id Owen points out that it is very difficult for Rorty to j ustify th is rejec
tion of crue lty without descending into precisely the kind of epistemologically sus
pect essentialism which Rorty strives to avoid. See Owen, Nietzsche, Politics and
Modernity,

1 49 .

1 3 . Gerald Mara and Suzanne Dovi astutely point out, for example, that Rorty
must exclude the figure of the madman, a crucial figure in Nietzschean philosophy.
See Mara and Dovi, "Mill, Ni etzsche, and the Identity of Postmodem Liberalism," 3.
1 4 . The cu ltural implications of si mu lation and virtual ity have been theorized
most extens ively by Jean Baudri llard . See for example The Perfect Crime, espec ially
25 ff. Cybernetics has been presented as a radical alternative to conventional sub
j ectivity, most famously by postmodern femin ists such as Donna Haraway . See
Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs . "
1 5. Habermas, Philosophical Discourse of Modern ity, 9 4 .
1 6. De leuze, Foucault, 92.
17. Habermas, Ph ilosophical Discourse of Modern ity, 96.
18. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "Before Sunrise ."
19. Habermas, Ph ilosoph ical Discourse of Modernity, 3 1 5 .
20. This is also a problem for Lawrence Hatab, who attempts in A Nietzschean
Defe nse of Dem ocracy

to use phi losophy as a model for an ostens ibly new kind of

political pluralism which in fact ends up looking very much l ike old-fashi oned
l i beral consensus politics. Unfortunately, the measures which Hatab proposes to
ensure that radical dissenting voi ces will not be si lenced by this consensus (equal
fundi ng for all p u b l i c schools, media access for third parties) seem ne ither
particularly innovative nor particularly l ikely to be real ized-at least, not within the
context of contemp orary American pol itical culture. See Hatab , A Nie tzschean
Defense of Dem ocracy, 223

and 226.

2 1 . N ietzsche, The Will to Power. section 1 .

Chapter One

58
22. Ib id. , sections 42 and 864 .

2 3 . Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, section 242.

24. It is their recognition of th is important fact which prompted Gilles Deleuzc
and Felix Guattari to devote some of the most interesting sections of A Th ousand
Plate aus

to a detailed analysis of the figure of the nomad . See for example Deleuze

and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 368 ff.

2 5 . Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, section 256.
26. See Call, "Aspects of Enl ightened Utopianism in Nietzsche ' s Zarathus tra . "
27. N ietzsche, Schopenhauer a s Educator, in Untim ely Meditations, page 1 48.
28. Nietzsche, Daybreak, section 3 .
29. N ietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "On the Old and New Tablets," section
2.
3 0 . Ibid. , "On Self Overcoming."
3 1 . Ibid. , "On the Old and New Tablets," section 26.
32. For example, the second essay of the Genealogy provides the theoretical un
derpinnings for Foucault ' s Discipline and Punish, and also for some very important
sections of Deleuze and Guattari ' s Capitalism and Sch izophren ia .
33. Nietzsche, O n the Genealogy of Morals, essay 2, section I I .
3 4. I b id. , essay 2, section 1 2.
3 5 . I b id. , essay 2, section 1 5 .
3 6 . Deleuze and Guattari, A nti-Oedipus, 1 92 .
3 7 . N ietzsche, O n the Genealogy of Morals, essay 2, sections 1 9-20.
38. Deleuze, Nietzsche and Ph ilosophy, 1 4 1 .
3 9 . Deleuze and Guattari, A nti-Oedipus, 1 97 .
4 0 . On the basis of this critique, Mark Warren h as astutely placed Nietzsche
w i th i n the trad ition o f " romantic anticapita l i sm . " See Warren, Nie tzsche and
Political Thought,

224 .

4 1 . Nietzsche, Daybreak, section 1 7 5 .

4 2 . Ibid. , section 206.
43. Nietzsche, Schope nhauer as Educator in Untimely Meditations, page 1 64 .
44. Ibid. , page 1 50 .
4 5 . Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, " O n the N e w Idol."
46. Ibid.
47. N ietzsche, Human, A ll Too Human, secti on 235.
48. N ietzsche, The Gay Science, section 1 74 .
4 9 . N ietzsche, Human, A ll Too Human, section 276.
50. N ietzsche, Daybreak, section 1 83 .
5 1 . Anseli-Pearson, Introduction to Nietzsche, 1 28 .
5 2 . Connolly, Political Theory and Modernity, 1 5 6 .
5 3 . Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought, 2 1 5 .

Toward an Anarchy of Becoming

59

54. Nietzsche, Human, A ll Too Human, section I 02.

5 5. Ibid. , section 70.
56. Bakunin, Bakunin on A narchy, 1 5 0.
5 7 . N ietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, section 1 6 .
5 8 . N ietzsche, The Will to Power, section 1 062.
59. One could argue, perhaps, that the philosophy of the eternal return ex
pressed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra opposes this radical concept of becoming. After
all, the idea of eternal return suggests the possibil ity that, although nothing is per
manent, everything returns-including smashed states, overturned economic struc
tures, and so on. It is generally accepted, however, that the eternal return is not meant
to be taken as a metaphysical doctrine but rather as a psychologically performative
idea. In other words, the eternal return is not meant to describe the literal nature of
time and hi story but rather to condition a certain human attitude t o w ard time and
history-and th is attitude is, I would argue, an attitude of becoming. F,or a brief
summary of th is debate on the meaning of the eternal return, sec Call, "Aspects of
Enlightened Utopian ism in N ietzsche ' s Zarathus tra, " 89-90.
60.

N ietzsche, The Gay Science, section 3 3 5 .

6 1 . Detweiler, Nietzsche and the Politics of A ristocratic Radicalism, 7 7 .

62. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 29 1 -92.
6 3 . Ibid. , 376.
64. I b i d .
6 5 . I therefore think that Daniel Conway is right t o suggest that t h e primary
goal of N i etzschean critique is not social reform but self-transformation. See
Conway, Nietzsche and the Political, 63. I n this context, I would also agree with
Richard White ' s intriguing suggestion that "after proclaiming the ' death of man, ' re
cent Conti nental p h i l osophy has tended to avoid this issue as anathema; but
through its account of the Apol lonian and the Dionysian, the eternal recurrence, the
will to power, and how one becomes what one is, Nietzsche ' s philosophy sti ll offers
a very powerful and compe lling discussion of individual sovereignty and the self
in-process, which is aware of the pitfalls and excesses that have plagued traditional
accounts of autonomy and the individual life." (White, Nietzsche and the Problem of
Sovere ignty,

1 85).

6 6 . Perez, O n A n (archy) and Schizoanalysis, 2 0 . I disagree with Perez's claim

that this is a "non-political an(archy)," however (Ib id. , 1 7) . Perez seems to make the
common mistake here of assuming that personal self-transformation is not a politi
cal act. B ut as people pursue their own personal becomings, these becom ings are
bound to have macropol itical effects . Such transformations as becoming-environ
mental i st, becom ing-femin ist, or even becoming-vegetarian begin as personal
changes, but they have macropol itical impl ications.
67. Deleuze and Guattari , A Th ousand Plateaus, 2 1 5 .

Chapter One

60
68. I b i d . , 2 1 4.

69. r o u cault, "Preface to Transgress ion"

Practice,

in L a ng u age,

Co u n te r m e m ory,

34.

70. Heidegger, Nietzsche, volume 4, 1 47 (Heidegger's emphasis).

7 1 . Ibid., 1 8 1 .
72. Lyotard, "He idegger and 'the j ews, ' " 1 3 8.
7 3 . A m o n g t h e m o s t interesting of these is H e idegger ' s fasci nating attempt to
read the pri nciple of eternal recurrence in a way which w i l l sti l l permit action and de
cision. See, for examp le, Heidegger, Nietzsche, volume

2, 5 7 .

7 4 . N ietzsche, Ecce Homo, " Why I Am a Destiny," section I .

7 5. I b i d .
76. Del euze, "Nomad Thought" in The New Nietzsche, e d . David B . All ison, 1 49.

Chapter Two
A Thought Outside the
State : Foucault
The recent translation of the first two volumes of Foucault ' s Ess ential Works
has given the Engl ish-speak ing world important new ins ight into the political
i m pl ications of Foucaultian thought . These volumes inc lude , for example, an
interv i ew conducted shortly before Foucau lt' s death, in wh i ch he remarked that
he had "been s ituated in most of the squares of the pol itical checkerboard, one
after another and sometimes simu ltaneously: as anarch ist, leftist, ostentatious or
disguised M arx ist, n i h i l ist, exp l ic it or secret anti-Marxist, technocrat in the ser
vice of Gau l l ism, new l iberal, and so on . . . . None of these descriptions is im
portant by itself; taken together, on the other hand, they mean someth ing. And I
must adm it that I rather like what they mean . " 1 What, then, is the meaning of
th is puzzling confusion as to the political consequences of Foucau lt ' s philoso
phy? Is it possible to articu late a viable and coherent political position on the
bas is of Foucau lt ' s thought? And if so, what might such a pos ition look l ike?
As with Nietzsche, a number of l iberal c ritics have endeavored to dismiss or
curta i l the pol itical importance of Foucault ' s work. Again, Richard Rorty is typ
ical in th i s regard. In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Rorty admits that
Foucau lt ' s work is valuable to the extent that it reveals the constraints wh ich
l iberal soc i eties impose upon their members ; Rorty develops a "disagreement
w ith Foucault," however, by asserting that the " decrease in pain" which liberal
societies enj oy is enough to compensate for these constraints . 2 Rather provoca
tively, Rorty claims that Western social and pol itical thought m ay not real ly
need the k i n d of conceptual revo lution toward which, I shall argue below,
Foucau lt ' s thinking seems to point. Here I wish to develop a disagreement with
Rorty . Though I do agree with h i m that nineteenth-century l iberalism represents
an im press ive and h istorically important body of work, I do not agree w ith his
assertion that the pol itical ph ilosophy of John Stuart M i l l represents essentially

Chapter Two

62

the last word of Western political thi nking.3 There is a certain arrogance behind
the claim that l iberal ism i s such an epistemologically complete body of theory
that no new theory shall ever be requ ired once the l iberal viewpoint has been
fu lly articulated . Ironically (and this is perhaps one element of Rorty ' s l i beral
" iron ism") such a c l a i m i s s i m i lar in scope and structure to Marxist c laims
about the "end of h istory," though Rorty would presumably not wish to grant
dialectical m aterialism the same sort of teleological priority which he reserves
for l iberal i s m . Rorty ' s claim that our c i v i l society should be strictly structured
around political i deas wh ich are now well over a century o l d also seems to me a
dangerously ahistorical position. Rorty ' s privileging of n ineteenth-century l iber
a l i s m excludes and s ilences the vast body of pol i t ical thought which has, in
fact, developed after (and frequently against) the l i beral position. In particular, of
course, the extreme priority wh ich Rorty grants to l iberalism imposes a d isturb
ing s il ence upon radical thinking.
Rorty ' s reading of Foucault is troubled by two related, pretheoretical l iberal
comm itments. The first is a comm itment to the idea of consensus. Rorty ins ists
that a consensus among l i berals i s a good enough bas i s for a soc iety . 4 Many
postmodern feminists, h owever, would find this to be an extrem ely dangerous
c l a i m . Jud ith B utler argues that "the power re lation s that condition and l i m it
dialogic pos s i b i l ities need first to be interrogated . Otherwise, the model of
dialogue risks rel aps ing into a l iberal model that assumes that speak ing agents
occupy equal pos itions of power and speak w ith the same presuppositions about
what constitutes ' agreement' and ' unity ' and, indeed, that those are the goals to
be sought." 5 In short, Butler suggests that the liberal model of d i scourse which
Rorty advocates is one wh ich grants an impl icit, invisible priority to those who
occupy the pos ition o f the masculine speaking subj ect. In a s i m i lar vein, Rosi
Braidotti has argued that "there cannot be social change w ithout the construction
o f new k i n ds o f des iring subj ects as molecu lar, nomadic, and multiple. One
must start by leaving open spaces of experimentation, of search, of tran s ition :
becom ing-nom ads . This is no call for easy p lural ism, e ither-but rather a pas
s i onate plea for the recogn ition of the need to respect the multipl i c ity and to
find form s of action that reflect the complex ity-w ithout drowning in it."6
Postmodern multiplic ity i s a social and epistemological principle wh ich is qu ite
d i fferent from Rorty ' s l iberal pluralism. For postmodern fem i n ists l ike Butler
and B ra i dott i, a l iberal consensus framework is m ost certai n ly not the basis for
an adequate epistemology; the problem of consensus is, rather, prec isely the s ite
where d is pute and contestation occur. And Foucault expresses similar concerns.
For Foucault (and Rorty quotes him in this context) "the problem is, prec isely,
to decide if it is actua l ly su itab le to p lace oneself within a ' we ' in order to assert
the principles one recogn izes and the values one accepts ; or if it is not, rather,

A Thought Outside th e S t ate

63

necessary t o m ake the future form ation of a ' w e ' possible b y elaborating the
question . " 7 It seems to me that this gets right to the heart of the debate about
postmodern p o l i t i c s . The postmodern l iberal (Rorty) privi leges agreement,
community, and shared values over diversity and difference. A Foucaultian, on
the other hand, bel ieves that it i s much more important to maintain a space for
nonconform ity, transgression, dissent, and d i fference: in s hort, he or she wants
to protect and defend an Other which could easi ly be ecl ipsed by tota lizing l i b
eral d i scourses . To be sure, the Foucaultian ' s emphasis on d ivers ity does not
prec lude the p o s s i b i l ity that she m i ght p lace hers e l f within a "w e"-but she
must be care fu l to do so only i n a tactical and prov isional way . It i s , i n s hort,
perfectly possible for a Foucau ltian to occupy what I described above as the
postmodern commons. The danger emerges when people l ike Rorty try to
imagine a commons w h i c h w i l l inc lude each and every member of l i beral
society. Such a move is extremely problematic, because Rorty ' s universal l iberal
c o m m o n s is necessarily b u i l t upon a c o m m itment to cert a i n conceptual
c ategories of l ibera l i s m , such as the pub l i c sphere. These categories do not
necessarily resonate w ith every member of the community which Rorty w ishes
to construct; i n particular, of course, radicals often view such categories w ith
extreme skeptic ism. Ironical ly, then, it seems that the very act of attempting to
generate a un ivers a l consensus m ay be exc lus ionary by its very nature . By
insisting that he has identified the proper "we" to w h i c h everyone s h o u l d
b e l o n g , Rorty forec loses t h e possibi l ity of future debate; for Foucault, this is
too great a price to pay .
The second comm itment under which postmodern l ibera l s labor i s , of
course, to the institutions of l iberal soc iety itse lf. Richard Bernstei n develops a
rather telling critique of th i s aspect of Rorty ' s thinking: "there are forces and
tendencies at work (e . g . , c lass conflict, social division, patriarchy, rac ism) that
are compatible w ith l iberal po l itical practices but nevertheless foster real in
equ a l ity and l i m it effective p o l itical freedom. At the very least, Rorty ' s
' defense' o f l iberal democracy requires h i m t o show the falsity o r speciousness
of the c l a im s of the radical critics of l iberal i s m . But Rorty does not argue his
case, he s imply asserts it."8 Rorty ' s pretheoretical commitment to the political
institutions of l ibera l i s m also causes h i m to d istort the meaning of Foucau lt ' s
t h i n k i n g i n s o m e u n fortunate ways . F o r exam p l e , Rorty recogn i zes the
phi losophical validity of Foucault ' s anti-Platonism, but refuses to admit that
t h i s p h i l o sophy c o u l d i m p ly that there is something wrong w ith l iberal
societies, or with the "networks of power" which characterize such societies .9
Fol lowing Jacques Derrida, however, I would argue that the logos which begins
w ith Plato represents the theoretical and semiotic und erpin n in gs of all formally
rat io na l systems , in c l u d i n g the l iberal ones. As D errida notes, "the possibility

Chapter Two

64

of cap ital ization and of pol itico-administrative organ i zation h ad always passed
through the hands of scribes who laid down the term s of m any wars and whose
function was always irredu cible, whoever the contending parties m i ght be . " 1 0
T h e econom ic, political, a n d bureaucratic institutions upon w h i c h modem
l i beral soc ieties rely so h eav i ly depend upon a certain kind of writing and a
certain k i n d of reason which, as Derrida persuas ively argues, originates in
P l aton ic thought. If Rorty accepts the critique of Platon ism, he must therefore
be prepared for the possi b i l ity that this critique m ay underm ine the linguistic
and ep istemological preconditions of li beral society itself.
One final element that is m issing from Rorty ' s l iberal reading of Foucault
is an adequate account of Foucault ' s genealogical method . Rorty attempts to
hold on to what he sees as valuable in Foucau lt' s work (he l ikes Foucault ' s cri
tique of Cartes ian epistemology), while rej ecting the political impli cations of
the Foucaultian genealogy . The problem here is that these strands of Foucaultian
thought cannot be so eas i ly separated. A heavily politic ized Nietzschean geneal
ogy is the very core of Foucault ' s method . It is this method which motivates
h i s e m p i r i c a l w o rk and h i s e p i stem o l o g i c al critiques ; i n d e e d, it i s h i s
genealogical method w h i c h makes these things

possible.

It is therefore difficult

for Rorty to accept as valuable the resu lts of Foucau ltian genealogy while
simultaneously rej ecting the political consequences of the genealogical method
itself. The " for-the-sake-of-wh i ch" of genealogy is resistance, as Todd May has
correctly noted . 1 1 Foucau lt can therefore reasonably be read as a " Left
Nietzschean," whose genealogies chal lenge the dom ination of a particular kind
of political theory . 1 2 I hardly need to add that the kind of political theory whose
dom ination they challenge is that of l iberals such as Rorty .
By engaging in an unquest ioning celebration of our present, Rorty is pro
ducing prec isely the kind of discourse which Foucaultian (and also Nietzschean)
genealogy is meant to combat . Rorty begins by assuming that our modem lib
eral societies are in some sense better than earlier ones. Of course, this imme
diately raises a troubling question : to what universal standards or criteria can
Rorty possibly hope to appeal as he attempts to substantiate such claims? The
point of genealogy, in Foucault as in Nietzsche, is precisely to show how

ferent our

dif

cu lture is from those that came before, and to show that our world is

not theirs . To c laim that our world is better than the irs is as outrageous as
claim ing that cap ital i st pol itical economy is better than mercant i l ism, or that
oxidation is better than ph logi ston . These things come from d i fferent episte
mological worlds, and they do not permit such easy comparisons. The motiva
tion which underlies Foucault ' s genealogical work is precisely the h istorian ' s
desire t o subvert a naive and presentist faith in our own superiority.

A Thought Outside the State

65

Against Rorty , 1 w ish t o argue for the legitimacy and importance o f a

postm o d ern anarch ist traj e ctory wh ich i s , 1 b e l i eve, to be found w i th i n
Foucault ' s work . Of course, to c a l l Foucault a postmodem ist

or

an anarchist

would be to meet with the same Nietzschean laughter as one would receive for
calling h im a Marx i st or a G au l l ist technocrat; to label (libel?) h im postmodern
and an anarch ist is surely a theoretical obscenity. I believe, however, that there

are sufficient grounds for referring to h is thinking as a variety of postmodem an

arch ism . Let me begin w ith the term postmodem . Certainly Foucault rejects this
as a label for h is work; he h as even been known to claim that he does not under
stand what kinds of prob lems are shared by the people we call postmodem . 1 3
And yet w e m u st recogn ize, desp ite the author' s claims to the contrary, that
Foucault sh ares some fundamental phi losophical positions w ith a group of
th i nkers who are referred to w ith increas ing frequency as postmodern . The
t h i nkers i n question include B arth e s , B audri l l ard, Lyotard, Derrida, and
Deleuze; the pos itions in question include an incredulity toward metanarratives,
a hostil ity toward the colon izing tendencies of the Enlightenment ' s autonomous
s u bj ect-pos i t i o n , a powerfu l critique of rat i o n a l i s t s e m i ot i c s , an d (most
importantly for our purposes here) a strong interest in articulating a new kind of
radical p o l itics, one which w i l l not remain trapped w ith in the d ialectical dead
ends of Marxism.
I c a l l Foucau lt' s th inking postmodern in t h i s sense, leaving aside as
theoretically un interesting any questions about where the late M ichel might have
positioned h imself w ith respect to modern ity and postmodem ity . Let us now
tum to the question of anarch ism. Again, I am not interested in whether M ichel
Foucault was an anarchist; I am interested in the pol itical trajectories along
which his thought may guide us. Also, we must recognize that although h is
thinking contains sign ificant and profound anarch ist impl ications, that th inking
could never perm it itself to be explicitly anarch ist. This is because (as I shall ar
gue below) the kind of anarch ism impl ied by Foucault ' s thought-postm odern
anarch ism-adamantly refuses to make its elf into a total izing theory . For
Foucault ' s thinking to announce "I am an arch istic" would be impos s i b le, for
such a total izing formu lation would immed iately foreclose the poss i b i l ities of
an ongoing, open-ended, fl u id anarchist discourse. Iron ically, the thinking that
po ints to postmodern anarchism can do so only ind irectly and w ith great cau
tion.
Foucault ' s postmodem anarchism is thus very d i fferent from t h e merely
modem anarch ism of Bakunin or Kropotkin. This is a new anarchism, and one
which operates at a much h igher theoretical level. Foucault ' s critique includes,
but does not begin w ith , the state . Instead, fo llowing N i etzsche, Foucault be
gins w ith the h umanist subj ect which h as domi nated all post-En l i ghtenment

Chapter Two

66

discourse in the West. Foucau lt shows u s that although this subj ect has con
stantly claimed to be the authorizing agent of a profound l iberation, its dis
course has instead created disciplinary techn i ques which are an affront to free
dom. And Foucault goes further, criticizing the rationalism inherent in this dis
course, showing us that the language of reason employed by the humanist sub
j ect i s also d i sturbingly statist.
Against th is human ist d i scurs ive order, Foucault offers u s tw o powerful
weapon s : m i cropol itics and genealogy . Foucault' s m icropo litics is based on his
observation that power does not operate, as m any people believe, from the top
down . Rather, power is cap i l l ary : it is everywhere, and it flows through every
social relati on. Most importantly for the postmodern anarchist, th is means that
everyone has power: not only the oppressors, but those who suffer under op
pres s i on as w e l l . Where there is power there is always already res istance; this is
because, as G i l les Deleuze aptly puts it, power for Foucault "passes through the
hands of the m astered no less than through the hands of the m asters (since it
passes through every re l ated force) . A profound Nietzschean i sm . " 1 4 Foucault ' s
u s e o f Nietzsche i s t o b e found, then , i n the m i cropolitical theory o f power, but
the influence of N i etzsche is also evident in Foucau l t ' s genealogical method.
Foucault uses the Nietzschean genealogy to d isturb and fragment some "truths"
which are, if anyth ing, even m ore deep ly embedded in our m odern intel lectual
c u lture than the C h r i s t ian values toward which N i etzsche was s o hosti l e .
Foucault develops a genealogy o f the modern self, exam ining (particularly i n

Discipline and Punish

and

The History of Sexuality)

t h e pract ices a n d tech

n i ques by which we are constructed as individuals. Like N i etzsche, Foucault

app l i e s geneal ogy to show that

things could be otherwise.

Indeed, one m ight

suspect that genealogy has a certain perfo rmative aspect: perhaps when we
demonstrate the poss i b i l ity of a d i fferent order, we have already effected some
ty pe o f change i n the present order o f th ings . Geneal ogy subverts the
En l i ghtenment ' s autonomous subject an d its l inguistic practices; it thus opens
up a d i s cursive space in which a new thinking i s possible. Foucau lt calls this

the tho ught of the outs ide.

B e c a u s e o f its an t i s t at i s m , its c r i t i q u e o f

"governmentality , " its antihuman ism, a n d its a s s a u l t on rationalism, I call it

postmodem anarchism.

Logos and Nomos

Before turning to a more deta i led explorat ion of Foucau lt ' s postmodem anar
chism, I w o u l d l ike to exam i ne some of the theoretical origins of that anar
chism, and cons ider some of the ways in wh ich Foucau l t i an anarchism differs

A Thought Outside the State

from previous varieties o f anarch ist thinking.

67

take a s paradigmatic o f the

n i neteenth-century anarchist position the philosophy o f the Russ ian anarchist

M ichael Bakunin, particularly as developed in Statism and A narchy. Th is work
encapsulates most of the maj or precepts and problems of what

call classical or

orthodox anarchism . Like n ineteenth-century Marxism, Bakunin ' s anarchism at

tempts to bring about a dramatic social and political revolution in order to real
ize a utopian vision of total human emancipation . Also l ike the Marxism with
which it was contemporary, Bakun in ' s anarchism rel ies heavily upon an analysis
of class power. Bakun in ' s m a i n critical target is the n ineteenth-century state ,
wh ich he understands to be the pol itical organ of the dom inant classes. Here one
m ay be rem inded of Marx ' s famous dictum that "the executive of the m odem
state is but a comm ittee for managing the common affairs of the whole bour
geoisie." 1 5 However, Bakun in ' s class analysis differs from that of the Marxist in
at least one crucial respect. Bakun in does not privi lege the bourge o i s ie as a
modernizing class, nor the proletariat as a revolutionary one. For Bakun in, the
m ost powerfu l and most dangerous state is not a well-establ ished bourgeois par
l i amentary state such as that of England. It is the German state , w h e r e the
conservative Junker ar istocracy has a l l ied itself w ith the emerging German bour
geoisie to produce a state which, under Bismarck, attains new he ights of reac
tion.
Germany i n its present form, unified by t h e bri l l i ant a n d patriotic dup l i c i ty
of Prince B i s m arck, re l i e s . . . on the patri otism of its loyal subjects; a
boundless national am bition that goes back i nto anc ient h i story; and the
equa lly boundless worship of authority, and obedience to it, for which the
German nob i l ity, the G e rman bourgeo i s ie, the G e rman bureau cracy, the
German Church, the entire g u i l d of German scholars, and often, alas, under
their combined influence, the German people, too, are all d i stinguished to
thi s day. Germany, I say, proud of the despotic-constitutional power of its
autocrat and sovere ign, represents and embodies one of the two poles of
c o ntemporary social and p o l i t ical development: the p o l e of stat i s m , the
state, reaction. 1

In Bakun in ' s view, conservative Germ an scholars dupe German peasants and
workers into accepting an equally conservative all iance between " iron and rye,"
and false consciousness is thereby institutional ized.
An anarchist l ike Bakunin fi n ds the Marxist class analysis to be i n applica
b le to the less industrial ly deve loped parts of the n i neteenth-century world, in
c l u d ing Ea s t e r n Eu r op e i n part i c u l a r. B aku n i n ide n t i fi e s both the pe asants and
the i n d u strial w orkers as po s s ib l e re vo l ut i o n ary c l a s s e s , and a c c u s e s t h e

Chap ter Two

68

Marxists of abandoning the former to the potential ru le of the l atter. " I f the pro
letariat is to be the ru ling class, it may be asked, then whom w i l l it rule? There
must be yet another pro letariat which w i l l be subj ect to th is new ru le, th i s new
state . It m i ght be the peasant rabble, for example, which, as we know, does not
enj oy the favor of the Marxists . " 1 7 With rather uncanny preci s ion, B akunin thus
anticipates the social and pol itical problems of the future Soviet Union. And
B akun i n ' s critique of M arx i s m i s based n ot only upon a recogn ition of
problems w ith the M arx i st class analy s i s ; B akun in understands that M arxism
suffers from methodological problems as w e l l . In particu lar, B akun i n contrasts
an anarc h i s t s o c i a l rev o l u t i o n w ith the abstract revo l u t i o n of Hege l i an
metaphysic ians, positivists, "and in general all the present-day worsh ippers of
the goddess science. " 1 8
I t is here that B akun in provides u s , perhaps quite i nadvert e ntly, w ith a
point of departure for postmodem anarch ism . Already in the n ineteenth century,
B akunin was articu lating something which would become i ncreasingly com
monp lace in twentieth-century thought : namely, a radically skeptical interpreta
tion of modem scientific t h i n k ing . Science, for Bakunin, was m arr e d by a dan
gerous and di sturb ing stati s m . "What is now t h e bas is of all the i nfluence
exerted by the States?" B akun i n deman d s . "It i s science. Yes, science. The
science of government, the science of adm inistration, and financial science; the
science of fleecing the people w ithout making them complain too much and,
when they begin to complain, the science of impos ing s i lence, forbearance, and
obedience on them by scientifically organizing violence . " 1 9 Foucault would l ater
genera l i ze B akunin ' s critique by speaking out against the "sciences of man" in
the i r entirety . And so it would seem that postmodem anarchism is a political
and phi losophical traj ectory which does begin in the n ineteenth century-though
of course, a Foucaultian would be quick to point out that the classical anarchism
of B akun in and Kropotk in must always remain caught within a fu ndamentally
rationalist nineteenth-century episteme. The nineteenth-century anarchist critique
of science, then, has a status s i m i lar to that of the anarch ism which (as I argued
in chapter

1)

can be derived from N i etzsche ' s thinking. In each case we are

dealing w ith a thought which represents a radical beginning or origin, but which
cannot possibly be aware of its fu l l impl ications or eventual consequences .
B akun in ' s assault on scientific thinking is therefore necessarily l i m ited in its
scope. B akunin does not rej ect sc ience in its entirety ; rather he rej ects certain

kinds of scientific thinking, espec ially those which seem to retain a complicity
with statist thought. Thus he calls for "the revolt of life against science, o r
rather against the government of science, not to destroy sc ience-that would be
h igh treason to h uman ity-but to remand it to its place so th at it can ne v e r
l eave it again ."20 Sc ience, then, m ight be acceptab l e to B ak u nin b ut only if it
-

A Thought Outside the State

69

renounces its political claims, and refuses t o see itself a s a system o f thought
which m i ght rule over soc iety .
Postmodem anarchism considerably broadens the classi cal anarchist critique
of scientific thinking, particularly by expanding that critique (as Baudrillard
does) to include the rati onalist semiotics which form the foundation of modem
science . Like its c lassical predecessor, however, postmodem anarchism does not
necessarily abandon the category of scientific thought altogether, but rather seeks
to isolate and oppose those form s of sci entific thinking which contribute in
some way to p o l itical oppression. Here we can turn to the work of G i l les
Deleuze to identify an important distinction between "royal science" and "nomad
science . " For Deleuze , royal science involves the search for laws and the ex
traction of con stants, whereas for nomad science, " it is not exactly a question of
extracting constants from variables but of placing the variables themselves in a
state of continuous variation . " 2 1 Deleuze ' s fluid, flexible nomad science thus has
a great deal in common with the postmodem concept of writing developed by
Roland B arthes . For B arthes, writing " l iberates what m ay be called an anti
theo logical activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary s ince to refuse to fix
meaning i s , in the end, to refuse God and h i s hypostas es-re ason, s c i ence,
22
law . " Nomad science, then, i s a kind of thinking which can (hopefully) resist
the temptation to become a colonizing, totalitarian discourse. Royal science, on
the other hand, i s the type of thinking which perm its and authorizes state power.
It does so by authorizing the search for invariable scientific laws; thi s c losely
parallels the quest for abso lute laws in the realm of human affairs. S im ilarly, the
attempt to "extract con stants" parallels the attempt to create a constant, and
there fore static, social and political order. Royal science is the kind of scientific
thinking which aroused the ire of Bakunin in the n ineteenth century, and which
insp ires the twentieth-century critiques of the postmodern ists . It is a kind of
science wh ich, unfortunate ly, counts Marx and h i s followers among its adher
ents, s i nce no one pursues the quest for universal h i storical law more ardently
than the Marx i sts, and noth ing is more static than the socialist utopia which
supposedly awaits us at the end of hi story .
Jean-Franois Lyotard has argued persuasively that the postmodem should

be viewed as a part of th e modem. 23 S i m i larly, postmodern anarchism is, in a

se nse, the continuation of B akun in ' s project. But there are v ital distinctions be
tween these two proj ects as well. First of all, Bakunin ' s work does not entirely
elu de the rational i st metaphysics which he so strongly and rightly criticizes; in
th is sense B akuni n ' s thought remains, unfortunately, a variety of royal sc ience.
B aku n i n ' s th inking re l i e s too heavily on b i n ary oppos ition . "E ither the
bourgeois educated world must subdue and enslave the e lemental force of the re
bell ious people so as to compel the laboring masses to work as before by force

70

Chapter Two

of bayonet, knout, or rod . . . or the workers w i l l at last throw off their hated,
centuries-old yoke and eradi c ate bourge o i s exp lo itat ion and the bourgeois
c iv i l ization that is based upon it."24 There are several prob lems w ith this kind of
e ither-or l o g i c . F irst and m o st obvious ly, the actual p o l i t i c a l and s o c i a l
s ituation i s a l m o s t alway s m o r e c o m p l e x than an analy s i s b a s e d on s i mple
b inary oppos ition will a l low. Even as B akun in was denouncing Germany as the
most reactionary state in Europe, B ismarck had begun to develop the social
programs wh ich would eventually come to serve as the m odel for twentieth
century welfare states. Whatever we may think of such states, we must recognize
that the laboring masses in these states are not prec isely ens laved by force of
bayonet, nor have they erad icated bourgeois civil ization .
On a more theoret ical leve l , we must acknow ledge the pos s i b i l ity that b i
nary logic itse l f may be deeply imp l icated in statism . De leuze speaks of a "state
apparatus that proceeds by a One-Two, distributes binary distinctions, and form s
a m i l ieu of interiority. It is a double articulation that makes t h e S tate apparatus

into a stratum ."2 5 If anarchism is to avoid the deadly danger of re inscrib ing the

very state power it seeks to overturn, it can not continue to deve lop its critiques
i n terms of s uch b i n ary oppos ition s . Th i s i s espe c i a l ly cru c i a l because, as
De leuze points out, such a statist b inary logic impl ies a particular kind of polit
ical and theoretical space, a " str iated" space . The question of the state is, in an
important sense, a spatial question . It i s l iteral ly a question of phy s ical bound
aries and territories and the movement of troops, to be sure, but beyond that, it
i s also a question of what Foucault would cal l an epistemological space. The
state remains one of the dom inant political figures of the modem world, in large
part because statist thought i s able to chart a p o l itical space in w h ich a l l think
ing points back to the state itse lf. Th i s i s the trap into which orthodox anar
ch ists l ike B akun in fal l . B akun i n ' s critique relies upon conceptions of both
physical and theoretical space which are, in the Deleuzian model, imp l ic itly
statist. Statism and A narchy is dom inated by a very conventional political geog
raphy : B akun i n d iscusses the German state, and the French state, and the
Rus s i an state, treating each national example as a un ique case to be analyzed
separate ly . And B akunin occupies a fairly tradition al theoretical space as w e l l .
H i s analy s i s i s dom inated by a standard n ineteenth-century c lass analy s i s ; h i s
v i s ion of prax is calls for t h e organi zation of t h e lower classes i n t o an increas
ingly s e l f-con s c i ous p o l itical movement, and so on . B akun in fights all of h i s
battles on t h e theoretical terrain of t h e state itself; he therefore cannot hope t o
win.
Against a statist "striated" space, De leuze theorizes a "sm ooth" space, a
nomad space or n o m os . "There is an opposition betw e en the logos and the

nom os, the l aw and the nomos . "26 Logos, which refers to both Reason and the

A Thought Outside the State

71

Word, embodies the ambitious and terri fying attempt to combine these two
principles into an almost unstoppab le rationalist discourse. Deleuze understands
the logos as the point of conj unction between a certain kind of thinking (roya l
sc ience), a certain kind of politics (The Law, t h e political order of a l l modern
states), and also a certain kind of space (striated) . Deleuze ' s proj ect is thus quite
close, i n some ways, to that of Jacques Derrida, who ambitiously theorizes the
h istory of Western phi losophy from P l ato to Hegel as the dom i nation of the

logos over writing : "in an original and non- ' re lativist' sense, logocentrism is an
ethnocentric metaphysics. It is rel ated to the h istory of the West. '127 For De leuze
as for Derrida, the history of the logos is the history of a vast oppression. Th is
does not mean, of course, that e ither Deleuze or D errida endorses the complete
abandonment of logic or reason, for to do so would be tantamount to giving up
on crit ical thinking and p h i los ophy its e l f. Rather, the c ritique of the logos
should be understood as an attack on that particular kind of rationalism which
presents its e l f as eternal and unchanging, as un ivers a l ly valid and obj ectively
true . Th is critique must and does retai n a space for a kind of critical reason
Derrida ' s deconstructi o n, or D e leuze ' s n o m ad thinking. A reconfigured
postmodem rationality of this sort attempts to avoi d the total izing aspect of lo
gocentric reason by refusing to c laim for its e l f the m antle of abso lute truth .
Such a nomadic, postmodem reason insists upon its right to remain perpetually
fluid, m a l leable, and provisional. It uses guerril l a tactics against the "total war"
strategy of the logos.
The nomos, then, stands outside the logos in a profound way . The nom os
is, perhaps, a vers ion of what Derrida imagines when he conducts a brief geneal
ogy of l inear writing and the spatial conceptions that go along with it: "the
enigmatic model of the line is thus the very thing that philosophy cou ld not see
when it had its eyes open on the interior of its own h i story . This n i ght begins
to l ighten a l ittle at the moment when l inearity-which is not loss or absence
but the repres s i on o f p lu r i - d i m e n s i o n a l sym b o l i c though t-re laxes its
o p p res s i o n . "28 To envision the return of a thought and a space which c an be
m u ltidimensional rather than oppress ively l inear is also to imagine a profoundly
radical political space. This point has been emphas ized, for examp le, by French
fem inists such as Luce lrigaray . Irigaray argues that "we need to proceed in such
a way that l inear reading is no longer poss ible: that is, the retroactive impact of
the end of each word, utterance, or sentence upon its beginning must be taken
in to con s ideration in order to undo the power of its teleological effect, including
its deferred action . 'm Irigaray ' s argument suggests that the critique of l i near
narrative is a vital oppos itional tactic which can and should be dep loyed i n the
ongoing struggle against phall ocentrism. I f the l inearity o f the logos is always
already a mascul ine principle, then the benefits o f th is tactical ant i l inearity for

Chapter Two

72

fem i n i st theory and practice are clear. But the advantages of this un ique anti
l inear thinking extend beyond the horizons of the fem inist proj ect. Irigaray ' s
fem inism (along with Derrida' s deconstruction) can b e seen a s occupy ing the
postmodern commons I outlined above . And the challenge to l i nearity is a
gesture which should be of great interest to all occupants of that commons .
Most importantly for our purposes here, such an assault upon l inear thinking is
a vital part of the proj ect of postmodern anarc h i s m . As a pri n c i p le of l inear
th inking, the logos p artakes of the prob l e m atic territori a l i ty w h i ch a lways
underw rites state power. A postmodern anarc h i st would therefore want to
counter the l i nearity of the logos w ith the fluid flex i b i l ity of an anarchistic

n o m os . As Rolando Perez notes in h i s interesting study of De leuze, "the

an(arch ist) . . . is someone who does not lead his or her l i fe according to some
univers al Referen t : according to a rigidly segmented set of boundaries and
territorialities . "30 Ideas of territoriality which are so crucial to the articu lation of
a statist stri ated space evaporate w ithin the smooth, non l i n e ar, m u l t i
dimensional chaos of t h e nomos.
The re l ationship between logos and nomos is a complex and agonistic one.
In a sense, the nomos is quite vu lnerable to attacks from the logos. Deleuze ar
gues that "as a general ru le, a smooth space, a vectorial field, a nonmetric mul
tiplic ity are always trans l atab le . . . this is the triumph of the logos or the law
over the nomos. But the complexity of the operation testifies to the existence of
res i stances it must overcome."3 1 The nomos thus simu ltaneously represents a
field of perpetual res istance, from which may be l aunched (and indeed must be
launched) a kind of perm anent revolution against the logos . Perhaps it is impos
s i b le for nomos to overcome logos; hope fu l ly the reverse is equally imposs ible,
s ince as De leuze argues, "the State itse lf has always been in a relation w ith an
outside and is inconceivable i n dependent of that relati onsh i p . "3 2 (In any case,
final victory for either of the terms in the logos-nomos equation would represent
a return to B akun in ' s suspect either-or logic; in this sense a total victory for the

nomos would iron ically play into the hands of the logos itself. ) The task of the
postmodern anarchist, then, is simp ly to reverse the logos ' greatest victory, the
v ictory by which it rendered the nom os invisible and ban ished nomad thought
from the field of perm itted discourse. As Derrida aptly puts it, "a war was
dec lared, and a suppress ion of all that res isted linearization was installed."33 The
postm odern anarchist s imply seeks to lift that suppression , to restore a lost
balance between logos and nomos, to point out that there are varieties of space
other than stri ated statist space, and thus to "think the thought outs ide the
state. "
Th is is where Foucault comes in . Foucau lt extends the Deleuzian-Derridean
analy s i s of t h e logos into the realm of power, and thus overcomes one of the

A Thought Outside the State

73

maj or obstac les o f orthodox anarchism . Bakun in ' s n ineteenth-century anarchism

re l ies much too heavily upon a strictly top-down conception of power. Th is is
hardly surprising, of course, given that Bakun in ' s vis ion of the pol itical world
is one in which power em anates from a state which towers above its subj ects :
"no state , not even the most republ ican and dem ocratic, not even the pseudo
popu lar state contemplated by Marx, in essence represents anyth ing but govern
ment of the masses from above downward."34 The problem w ith this approach is
that it certainly does not prov ide an adequate account of power in the late
twentieth century , or even in the n i neteenth century. Against this top-down
vision of power, the work of Foucault describes a world in which power is om
nipresent and permeates every conceivable social re lation. This is qu ite impor
tant for the form ulat ion of a theory of res istance. B akunin describes h imself as
an "enemy of a l l power. " Fol lowing Foucault, the postmodern anarch ist must
d ispute this position, for as Foucault argues, it is power that makes res istance
possible in the first place. Indeed, one suspects that there may be a certain corre
l ation between power and res istance: the m ore power there is, the more res is
tance there must also be.

Antihumanism and Micropolitics

Let us now look at the specifics of Foucau ltian anarc h i s m . L ike Marx i s m ,
Foucau lt ' s thinking offers a n eth ic of res istance wh ich may be deployed against
bourgeo is/liberal states . However, Foucault ' s thought offers several important
advantages over Marx ism . F i rst, this thinking does not become trapped, as
Marx ism typically does, w ithin the conceptual categories of bourgeois pol itical
economy . L ike B audrillard and many other twentieth-century French intellectu
als, Foucault seriously questions Marxism ' s rad ical credentials. Foucault argues
in

The Order of Things that

Marx i sm ex ists i n n i neteenth-century thought l ike a fish in water: that is,

unable to breathe anywhere else. Though it is in opposition to the
"bourgeo i s" theories of econom ics, and though th i s opposition leads it to
use the proj ect of a rad ical reversal of History as a weapon agai nst them,
that confl i ct and that proj ect nevertheless have as the i r condition of possi
b i l i ty , not the reworking of all H i story, but an event that any archeology
can situate with preci si on, and that prescribed sim ultaneously, and accord
ing to the same mode, both nineteenth-century bourgeo i s economics and
nineteenth-century revolutionary econom ics. 3 5

74

Chapter Two

Marxism, in short, occupies the same epistemological space as bourgeois eco

nom i c theory . A lthough the content of Marxist thought m i ght differ profoundly
from that of c lassical l iberal econom ics, the form is the same. As Marshall
M cLuhan m i ght say, the medium of Marxism i s its message; since its critique
employs the tools of a rational econom ic science, Marxism can never really be
more radical than that science. Foucault ' s thinking, which eventua l ly abandons
such a roya l science in favor of genealogy, avoids th is problem. As Mark Poster
aptly notes, "Foucault has accom p l ished a task s i m i lar to that of Marx, but
w ithout much of the accompanying metaphysical baggage."36 Foucault is thus
able to articulate a thinking which escapes Marxism ' s epistemological trap .
Deleuze points out the second maj or advantage which Foucaultian thought
holds over Marxism, noting that w ith Foucault " it is as i f, final ly, someth ing
new were emerging i n the wake of Marx . It i s as i f a complicity about the State
were finally broken .'m For a l l its assertions that the state would mysterious ly
w ither away, Marxism has, at least since Lenin, been profoun d ly statist. The
state remains the great fai lure of a l l radical politics so far. Neither radical think
ing nor revolutionary praxis has ever succeeded in dismantling the state, and one
cannot h e lp but wonder why . Foucau lt gives us an intriguing and plausible
answer: the state remains in p lace because no revolutionary theory has ever ac
counted for underlying power relationships which exist prior to the state and
w h i ch m ake the state possible i n the first place. " Maybe, after all," Foucau lt
speculates, "the state i s no more than a compos ite reality and a mythicized ab
straction, whose importance is a lot more l im ited than many of us think. Maybe
what is really important for our modernity-that is, for our present-is not so
much the etatisation of society, as the ' govemmentalization ' of the state .''38 For
Foucault, "governmentality"-the network of power rel ationships which make
possible the modern state-is at l east as important as the state itself. By empha
s izing the complex relat ionship between govemmentality and the state, Foucault
m oves the anarchist critique to a new leve l . Th is move i m p l ies a critique not
only of Marxism but of conventional anarchism as we l l : in the Foucaultian in
terpretation, a simple attack on state institutions does no good, and is perhaps
even harm fu l, to the extent that it masks or conceals the power re lations which
are the crucial problem . Foucau lt ' s work suggests that conventional anarch ist
th inking imp l icitly serves the logos; Foucau lt ' s concept of govemmentality, on
the other hand, offers a more thorough understanding of the structure and func
tioning of political power. Such an understand ing-a mapping of the terrain on
w h i ch p o l itical power actually operates-is crucial to the articu lation of the

nomos, the space outsi de the state .

We must also emphasize that the nomos is not a human ist space. For the
modem anarch ist, e .g. , Bakunin, capitalism and the state must be destroyed be-

A Tho u ght Outside the State

75

cause they interfere w ith the l iberation o f an authent ic human essence. For
Foucault, however, "the ind ividual is not to be conceived as a sort of e lementary
nucleus, a prim itive atom . . . the individual, that is, is not the vis-a-vis of
power; it is, I bel ieve, one of its prime effects."39 This type of claim has perhaps
caused m ore outrage than any other element of Foucault ' s thought. How can l ib
eration possibly be brought about if there is no one to l iberate? What meaning
can pol itical act ion have if it i s not to be carried out under the banner of some
sort of humanist subj ect? Who w i l l undertake this critique of the power relations
which authorize the state-and just as importantly, on whose behal f w i l l th is
critique be undertaken-following the death of man?
In fact, how ever, the revolt against humanism does constitute a kind of
emancipatory proj ect.40 "Contrary to a fully establ ished discourse," De leuze re
marks dry ly, "there is no need to uphold m an in order to resist . " 4 1 We must be
very careful not to confuse the destruction of humanism w ith the end of pol itical
agency. It seem s c lear that radical pol itics might benefit from a centerless, mul
t i p l e , postmo dern concept o f ident ity, in which prov isional revolutionary
s u bj e ct-p o s i t i o n s c o u l d be brought into b e in g th rough s i m p l e acts of
resistance.42 To understand how such antihumanist res istance m ight be possible,
we need to take a c loser look at Foucault' s conception of power. Central to th is
conception is h i s c laim that power is omn ipresent and cap i l lary : "it is produced
from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from
one point to another. Power is everywhere ; not because it embraces everyth ing,
but because it comes from everywhere ."43 But if power is truly omn ipresent as
Foucault suggests, then how is this fight even possible? The task of res isting a
universal , cap i l l ary power would seem to be qu ite overwhelm ing. Foucau lt ' s
crucial ins ight here i s that i f power i s everywhere, s o too i s resistance. "A s soon
as there is a power relation, there is a possibility of res istance. We can never be

ensnared by power: we can always modify its grip in determ inate conditions and
according to a prec ise strategy . "44 Some Foucau ltians have pushed Foucau lt ' s
strategy of res istance beyond a mere possib i l ity, asserting that the cap i l l ary view

of power m akes resistance not only possible but necessary.4 5 More conventional

radical theories understand power as the exclus ive domain of rulers or dominant
social c l asses; such theories define successful resistance as those actions which
topple these ru lers and classes. Foucault po ints out that this type of res istance is
always already doomed to fai lure, because even i f it "succeeds," it will simply
reinscribe previously existing power relations . Th is, of course, is the tragic fate
of Soviet-style commun ism .
What Foucault offers in p l ace of th is suspect understanding of res istance is
n ew approach w h i ch is highl y p l u ral istic, tac ti ca l , and mobi l e . 46 Against the
susp iciou s l y Stalinist revo lution of a universal white male proletari at, Foucau lt

Chapter Two

76

o ffers us a much more compelling account of resistance as a tactical col lection of

m icrorevolts . " There is a plural ity of resistances, each of them a special case:
res istances that are possible, necessary, improbab le; others that are spontaneous ,
savage, sol itary , concerted, rampant, or vio lent; still others that are quick to
compromise, interested, or sacrificial ."47 Th is multipl icity of resistances is al
ways to be deployed according to context and in response to particular s itua
t i on s .
Foucault' s postmodem anarchism thus contains a n antihuman ism and a m i
cropo l itical res istance to capil lary power relation s . There is one further element
which distinguishes this Foucaultian politics from conventional modem anar
c h i s m , and that is Foucault ' s critique of ration al ism . Like Del euze, Foucau lt
suggests that rational ity , at least of a certain kind, is necessarily statist: "the
state, l ike nature, has its own proper fonn of rational ity , albeit of a different
sort . Conversely, the art of government . . . must find the princ iples of its
rationality in that which constitutes the specific real ity of the state ."48 If th is is
tru e, then a meaningful anarchist critique cannot proceed from the standpoint of
a un iversal rationality, as those of the n ineteenth century typ ically did. The
problems of criticizing power relations from such a standpoint are, for Foucault,
qu ite seriou s . For one thing, "the relationship between rational ization and the
excesses of political power is evident. And we should not need to wait for bu
reaucracy or concentration camps to recogn ize the existence of such relations ."49
Totalizing rational ity, l ike the modem humanist subj ect, is deeply impl icated in
the pol itical catastrophes of our century . And this is a prob lem for the Left j ust
as much as it is for the Right. Thus Foucault questions "the very history of a
' revolution ' for which the hope had been borne, since the end of the eighteenth
century, by a whole rationalism of which we are entitled to ask what part it may
have played in the effects of despotism where that hope got lost."50 Its m any
" revolutionary" claims to the contrary , un iversal rational ity does not seem to
lead to any kind of historical l iberation; rather, it seems to be disturbingly well
suited to the perpetuation of increasingly subtle and totalizing fonns of dom ina
tion . A good example of this would be the way that psychiatrists violently im
pose a Cartesian model of reason upon the insane. In

Madness and Civilization,

Foucault argues that "the physician , in relation to the madman, reproduces the
moment of the Cogito in relation to the time of the dream , of i l lusion, and of
m adness. A comp letely exterior Cogito, alien to cogitation itself, and which can
be imposed upon it only in the fonn of an invasion . " 5 1 Psychiatry-which is in
Foucau l t ' s view a medical counterpart to the Cartesian philosophical project
forces m adness to extinguish itself through the "return" to sovereign reason.
There is, o f cours e , a p o s s i b l e methodo logical pro b lem here . J Urgen
Habermas wonders "how a history of the conste l l ations of reason and madness

A Thought Outside the State

77

c an b e written at a l l , i f the labor o f the h i storian must i n tum move about

w ithin the horizon o f reason ."52 What Habermas perceives is a performative
contradiction : Foucault ' s own discourse, for all its energetic denunciation of ra
tionalism, does seem to be an example of calm , organ ized, and even rational
academic prose. But we need to be very careful here, for Foucault certainly does
not rej ect rationality in its entirety . Rather he seems to be trying to separate out
different forms of rational ity , in much the same way as Deleuze d istinguishes
nomad science from royal science. This is precisely why Foucault is so in
terested in authors such as Nietzsche, B ataille, and Sade. These authors provide
Foucault with examples of perpetually fluid, constantly reversible writing which
cannot eas ily be co-opted into totalitari an discourses . Such writing can certainly
be rational when it w ants to be-but only as a tactic. This tactical rationality,
which refuses to c laim for itself any position of uni versal validity, is one of the
key elements of postmodem anarchism .

A Politicized Genealogy
Foucau lt ' s postmodem anarchism has a method, and that m ethod is based upon
N ietzsch e ' s genealogy . Nietzsche developed the genealogy as a way to answer
certain questions about m odem European morality : "under what conditions did
m an devise these value judgments good and evil? and what value do they them
selves possess ?"53 N i etzsch e ' s genealogy, of course, was not innocent.
Genealogy served in his writing as a strategy ; it was meant to subvert and un
derm ine our faith in accepted truths . This w as accompl ished through a tactic of
reversal :
one has h itherto never doubted or hesitated in the s l i ghtest degree in sup
posing "the good man" to be of greater value than "the evil man," of greater
value in the sense of furthering the advancement and prosperity of man in
general (the future of man included). But what if the reverse were true? What
if a symptom of regression were inherent in the " good," likewise a danger, a
seduction, a poison, a narcotic, through which the present was possibly l iv
54
ing at the expense of the future ?

This N i etzschean reversal provides us w ith a profoundly different way to read

m oral ity . The strategy of N i etzsch e ' s genealogy is thus to emphasize the
extrem e fluidity and h istorical c ontingency of m oral "truths" which present
themselves as ab s o l u te, universal , and eterna l .

78

Chapter Two
Foucault recogn ized in N ietzsche ' s geneal ogy the pos s i b i l ity of a radical

politi cs which had never before been attempte d . As I argued in chapter 1 ,

Nietzsche categorically rej ected all radical politics and perhaps did not recogn ize
the anarchistic impl ications of his own work; he therefore restricted his use of
the geneal ogy to a critique of moral s . Foucault ' s ins ight is that the fundamental
point o f genealogical critique-that "things could be otherw i s e"-could have
very i nteresting and immen sely usefu l i m p l ications for p o l it i c s . 5 5 Like its
N i etzschean predecess or, Foucaultian genealogy makes no pretense toward an
"apocalyptic obj e ctivity . " I n his e s s ay " N i etzs che, Genealogy, H i story , "
Foucault points out that the conventional h i storian ' s claims t o such obj ectivity
rely upon an unsustainable metaphysical faith in eternal truth .56 In opposition to
th is faith, Foucault offers a kind of h i story which "fragments what w as thought
unified."57 N ietzsche told the h i story of morals from a radically new perspective;
Foucault does the same for the modern subj ect. "I have tried," Foucault
exp lains, "to get out from the phi losophy of the subj ect, through a genealogy of
the m o dern subj ect as a h i storical and cu ltural real ity-w h i c h means as
something that can eventually change. Th at, o f course, i s p o l itically impor
tant. "5 8 Indeed, it is pol itically essentia l . As long as the En l ightenment' s ver
s ion of subj ectivity is perm itted to present itself as an unassailable, un iversally
valid truth, we m ust remain w ithin the political order which that subj ectivity
implicitly sanction s . To render the Enlightenment ' s subj ect-position historically
contingent, to call its truth-claims into question through a genealogy, is to en
gage i n a new kind of radical politics. This politics operates on the terrain of the

nom os-a terrain which remains large ly unexplored, but which would appear,
from initial surveys, to hold great prom ise. The first step toward a tru ly radical
politics-perhaps the fi rst such politics in h i story-is the genealogical question
ing of a u n i versal subj ect-p osition whose constant fai lure to d e l i ver on its
prom ises of liberation has elic ited d isturbingly little outrage.
The genealogical critique of modern subj e c t i v i ty i s w h at motivates
Foucault ' s monumental study, The History of Sexuality. Nietzsche' s Genealogy
is an account of how the ancient distinction between "good and bad" became
ecl ipsed by the Judeo-Christian distinction between "good and evil"; Foucault ' s
inqu iry i nto sexual ity is meant t o show how the command t o "know thyself'
has obscured the ancient prescription to "take care of yourse lf."59 Like N ietzsche,
Foucault describes changes which constitute, at least in part, a transformation of
m ora l ity . But changing concepts o f subj e ctiv ity are equ a l ly important in
Foucault ' s account. Thus, to take one of the most wel l-kn o w n examples,
" Descartes wrote ' m editations '-and meditations are a practice of the self. But
the extraordinary th ing in Descartes ' s texts i s that he succeeded in substituting a
subj ect as founder of practices of knowledge for a subject constituted through

A Thought O utside the State

79

practices o f the self."60 Th is i s a fundamental change. There i s a dramatic diffe r

ence between the anc ient world, in which men followed strict regimens of "self
care" in an attempt to construct themselves as ethical beings , and our modem
world. Indeed, these two worlds have difficulty speaking to each other across the
vast epistemological chasm which separates them . But the po int of Foucault ' s
genealogy is prec isely t o reveal that chasm, and t o show that the modem sexual
subj ect which we take for granted is, like all subj ect-pos itions, a contingent one
w ith a history .
W h a t does all o f th i s m ean for postmodern anarc h i s m ? A s alway s,
Foucau lt ' s thinking shows that such an anarchism must go beyond the critique
of capital and the state as its modem predecessor could not . Thus "the analysis,
made in terms of power, must not assume that the sovereignty of the state, the
form of the law, or the over-all un ity of a dom ination are given at the outset;
rather, these are only the terminal forms power takes." 6 1 Foucault's interpretation
of the power re lations inherent in m odem sexual ity suggests that the state and
the law are merely the v i s i b l e aspects of subterranean and cap i l l ary power
processes which are far more extens ive than any state system. The anarchist cri
tique therefore cannot afford to exhaust itse lf in a chall enge which is l i m ited to
the statist endpo ints of power networks. Foucault suggests that we must instead
raise a challenge to the imperialism of a l l m o dern d i s courses surrounding
sexuality . Th is chal lenge w i l l help to underm ine the power relationships which
underwrite (among many other things) the state. Foucault recogn izes that sexual
ity is the perfect terrain on which to wage this l inguistic war, because it is "an
especially dense transfer po int for relations of power. "62 Sexual ity is, in short,
what computer operators call a "h igh bandwidth node" : it faci l itates the transfer
of enormous and highly compacted quantities of power. If we recall Foucau lt ' s
theses about power and res istance, w e realize that this i s also tremendously good
news for the activist, the transgressor, the resister: if sexuality is indeed such an
efficient trans fer point for power, then it must be an equally effic ient transfer
point for resistance. The discourse surrounding sexuality is thus the perfect loca
tion from which to launch a campaign against the modem sexual subj ect and its
discurs ive practices . Thi s campaign w i l l in tum make possible an antihuman ist
anarchism far more powerful than any previous anarchist theory.
Foucault ' s other great genealogy is Discipline and Punish. Th is book be
gins w ith a vivid description of premodern torture and execution techniques;
Foucault then contrasts these with the "gentler" penal techniques which devel
oped in the wake of the En l ightenment ' s penal reform s . Again, the effect of
Foucau lt ' s method is to h istoric ize a discourse and an institution which too of
t e n appear to be u n iversal and o m n i present-in th i s case, the prison . As w i th
Foucau lt ' s a n a ly s i s of sexuality, the genealogy of the prison can be read as anar-

Chapter Two

80

chistic in two way s : s i m p ly, as a challenge to the authority of a state which

c laims for itself the right to incarcerate people, or much more radically, as a
challenge to a penal discourse which uses the rational, scientific language of the
Enl ightenment to present itself as irrefutably valid.
From the perspective of postmodem anarchism, of course, the latter reading
is far more interesting. Indeed, the most radical analysis in D iscipline and
Punish has l ittle to do with incarceration at all. Foucau lt' s investigation into the
origins of the prison perm its him to extend his genealogical analysis to a much
broader social phenomenon, which he calls discipline. Foucault understands dis
cipline as a uniquely modem form of power which involves the precise regula
tion of bodies and their activities through the systematic control of the time and
space in which those bodies operate . The orthodox history of the Enl ightenment
is well known : it eradicated tyranny and superstition, giving us a discourse of
rights which has produced a perpetual increase in freedom from the seventeenth
century to the present day . Th is is the favorite hi story of l iberals, who like to
tel l the story of "the establishment of an explicit, coded and fonnally egalitarian
juridical framework, m ade possible by the organization of a parl iamentary, rep
res entative regime. "63 They forget (and Foucault' s genealogy reminds us) that
"the development and generalization of discipl inary mechanisms constituted the
other, dark side of these processes. "64 The Enl ightenment prom ised to free us
from Voltaire ' s "infam ous thing," the tyranny of priests and aristocrats. And
perhaps in some sense it did so. But at precisely the same time, it was also in
stalling discipl inary regimes in all m aj or social institution s : in the anny bar
racks , in the schools, in the hosp itals, and in the prisons . These discipl inary
system s, revealed for the first time by Foucault' s genealogy, m ake a mockery of
the Enlightenment' s claims to have created a utopia based upon fonnal political
rights .
As with sexual power, the creation of a certain kind of subj ectivity is essen
tial to the development of discipl inary power: "the individual is no doubt the
fictitious atom of an ' ideologica l ' representation of society ; but he is also a real
ity fabri cated by th is s p e c i fi c technology o f power than I have c a l l ed
' di s c i p l i ne . ' "65 Foucault refers to the particu lar kind of subj ectiv ity created by
prison discipline as "delinquency . " In Foucau lt ' s interpretation, the delinquent
i s quite necess ary to the m aintenance o f a p o l i t i c a l system which must
constantly distract attention from the vast social and econom ic inequities that it
authorizes . The del inquent penn its politicians to speak of the need to enhance
law and order, to hire more cops, to bu i ld more prisons, to crack down on
gangs ; what is never said (prior to genealogy) is that delinquency was produced
by this system in the first place, as a tactic by which the system m i ght j ustify
itself.

A Thought Outside the State

81

Obviously, Foucau lt' s critique gives anarchists a good ( i f somewhat con

ventional) argument which can be deployed against the discourse o f law and
order. In this sense, Foucau lt ' s work expands and bui lds upon Kropotkin ' s ar
gument that prisons and hangmen only multiply and worsen the "anti-social
deeds" o f certain individuals . 66 But again, what is especially interesting and
important about Foucault' s critique is the way in which it goes beyond conven
tional anarch ist themes to chal lenge the political consequences of a certain vari
ety o f subj ectivity . We can see th is, for examp le, in Foucau lt' s discuss ion of
Panopticism . Initially developed by Jeremy B entham in the nineteenth century,
Panoptic ism is a strategy of perpetual, automatic, and omn ipresent survei l lance:
an

"al l-see ing eye . " Deployed first against prison popu lations, Panopticism has

now found its way into every comer of our society. When Foucault speaks of a
surv e i l lance based on a system of permanent registration,67 we th ink of pass
ports, driver' s l icenses, and (at least in the United States) social security num
bers . When he speaks of the "permanent v i s i b i l ity th at assures the automatic
functioning of power,"68 we are reminded of the unmanned radar guns which sit
by the s ide of American roads, notifYing us of our speed and comparing it to the
posted speed limit. When Foucault points out that Panopticism is used not only
in the prison but throughout our carceral society, we see a flood of bumper
sti ckers which insist that we must " D . A . R . E to re s i s t drugs, gangs and
violence ." Panopticism, then, does not only create prisoners or del inquents . It
creates all of us. The subj ect of a modem disciplinary society, who s lows down
automatically when the radar machine tells her to do so, is very far from being
an autonomous Cartesian self. Rather, she is constantly being constituted as a
subj ect by a seemingly endless variety of disciplinary practices .
So what, precisely , does this genealogy of modem discipline mean for
postmodem anarc h i s m ? It means a great deal. F irst, it reveals the ethical
bankruptcy o f the liberal state . Genealogy shows that, behind their humanistic
fa;ades, the prisons of l iberal societies are in fact laboratories for the perfection
of disciplinary techniques which dramatically impact not only prisoners but ev
ery member of those societies. A genealogical critique of th is type is of tremen
dous use to postm odem anarch ists, for it perm its a reply to those who ( l ike
John Raw ls or Robert Nozick) claim th at it is eth ically acceptab le to have a
state, as long as that state is of the m in imally interventionist sort . 69 Foucau lt ' s
account clearly shows that all modem states, including l iberal ones, tend toward

maximum intervention, through the development and use of discipline. And

indeed, it is not simply a question of intervention . The Raw lsian emphas is on
intervention implies that there is a sovereign individual who exists, somehow,
prior to society and the state . B ut for Foucault, discipline is one of the m aj o r
strategies by w h i c h liberal societies construct thei r subj ects in the first place .

Chapter Two

82

Second, Foucault ' s genealogical critique gives the postmodern anarchist a

number of clear targets . Thi s is crucial, because as Foucault points out, "to pro
duce names, to point the finger of accusation, to find targets, is the first step in
the reversal of power and the initiation of new struggles against existing forms
of power."70 The targets which Foucault ' s critique identifies inc lude conven
tional ones such as the state (prisons, police, etc .), and the bourgeoisie (since
delinquency "is an agent for the i l legal ity of the dom inant groups"7 1 ) . But of
course, Foucau lt ' s targets go well beyond those of the traditional anarch ist posi
tion. Foucault also "points the fi nger of accusation" at areas of discipl ine not di
rectly related to capital or the state, e . g . , those which exist w ithin schools and
hospitals. Foucault ' s critique is motivated by h i s recognition that "we can ' t de
feat the system through isolated actions; we must engage it on all fronts-the
univers ity, the prisons, and the domain of psych iatry ."72 It is a critique which
understands that power can no longer be identified exclus ively or even primarily
in state practices or in the alienation of labor.
If Foucault ' s critique goes so far beyond the conventional anarchist ' s targets
of capital and the state, we must ask whether it makes any sense to keep speak
ing of F oucault ' s thinking as anarchistic. The answer is yes, if by "anarchistic"
we understand the kind of postmodem anarchism whose main theoretical proj ect
(fol lowing D eleuze) is the recovery of the

nomos

as a space of political and theo

retical res i stance. Foucau lt ' s critique contributes to this recovery in two maj or
way s . F i rst, Foucau lt relentlessly assaults a concept of subj ectivity which is
used to conceal the presence and effects of discipline. And he simultaneously
critiques the rationa l i st d i s curs ive practices which sanction that subj ectivity .
Against t h e rationalist language of the police, t h e courts, a n d t h e prisons,
Foucau lt offers a "lyricism of marg i n a l ity" inspired by "the image of the
' outlaw , ' the great social nomad, who prow ls on the confines of a docile, fright
ened order."73 It seems c lear that Foucault offers the figure of the outlaw not as
the model of a new social order; rather, the out law s imply shows that the domi
nant discourse of our culture-that of rationality, science, and Enlightenment
is not the only availab l e dis cours e . There is another, subterranean d iscourse
which p lagues and torments the comfortable world of scientific d iscourse l ike a
not-quite-repressed memory . Thi s is the world of "the departure from the norm,
the anomaly ; it was this that haunted the school, the court, the asylum or the
p r i s o n . " 7 4 The outlaw and the anomaly help to sketch out the space of the
n o m os .

The lesson here is that we challenge power when we think the thought

of the outside, when we design our lives in ways which radically violate stan
dards and norm s . Th is is an enormously up lifting thought for those who have
l ong s i nce given up on the pathetic poss i b i l ities of l iberal reform or the

unfulfilled prom ises of the dialectic .

A Thought Outside the State

83

Foucault ' s genealogies po int t o the importance o f the m arginal, the no

madic, the anomalous : i n s hort, they insist upon the po l itical s i gnificance of
transgression. Transgression thus provides the specific form of Foucau ltian anar
chism . Foucau lt' s interest in transgression stems in large part from h i s fascina
tion w ith the thought of Georges B ata i l le,75 but Foucault goes beyond even
B ata i l l e in his exploration o f the transgressive possibilities of madness, sexual
ity, and d i fference. Transgress ion stands in Foucau lt ' s thinking as an extreme ly
powerfu l Other to the Enl ightenment' s rational subj ect and the d iscursive prac
tices of that subj ect.
In

Madness and Civilization, Foucault describes m adness as one of the

most dramatic-but also one of the most thoroughly s i lenced-transgressions of

rational language, politics, and econom ics . Madness stands outside the law of
w o rk , 76 and thus represents a transgression of the labor principle wh ich i s so
fundamental to the bourgeoi s social order. But the trans gressions of the m adman
go w e l l beyond th i s simple economic challenge, for m a dness also raises the
possibil ity of the insane phi losopher. Th is philosopher finds "the transgress ion
of his ph i losophical being; and thus , the non-dialectical language of the limit
which only arises in transgressing the one who speaks ."77 As an antidote to ra
tional ism , then, Foucault again proposes a nondialectical language wh ich par
takes of the u ltimate transgression, the transgression of the speaking subj ect it
self. Th is is, in a sense, the last possible transgression, s ince it impl ies a leap
into a postlinguistic abyss from which no further speech is possible. But thi s
n e e d n o t be d isastrous, s i n c e t h e transgression o f t h e one who speaks is a l s o the
last

necessary transgression: after thi s , no further transgression c an take place,

but none is needed.

The paramount example of the mad philosopher' s terminal transgression is,
of course, N ietzs c h e . "Nietzsche ' s madness-that is, the d i s s o lution of h i s
thought-is that b y which h i s thought opens o u t onto t h e modem world. What
made it impossible m akes it immediate for us; what took it from N ietzsche of
fers it to us .'m In Foucault' s reading, N ietzsche' s madness is a kind of s acrifice
or gift . 79 Though it is tragi c from the point o f v iew of the speaking subj ect
called Friedrich N ietzsche, for the rest of the world it represents Nietzsche ' s last
great affirmation. N i etzsche ' s m adness gives us a weapon which i s greatly
needed in the m o dem world. Thi s weapon is a vio lent, dangerously transgres
s ive language, a l anguage which knows no lim it, a language before which all ra
tional subjects, states , and economies must crumble.
This kind of extreme transgression clearly implies the opening of a space
fo r radical difference. "The free ing of difference requires thought w ithout contra
diction, w ithout dialectics, w ithout n e gation ; thought that accepts divergence;
affirmative thought whose ins tru ment is disj unction ; thought of the multiple-

84

Chapter Two

of the nomadic and d ispersed multiplicity that is not lim ited or confined by the
constraints of s im i larity . "8 Foucault ' s postmodem anarchism has no truck with
d i alectics, whether in the conservative mode of Hegel or the more seductive
(though no more l iberatory) mode of Marx. Foucault ' s thought recogn izes that
Western phil osophy since Descartes has fonnu lated itsel f as unified and singu
lar-the thought of the One. Difference transgresses th is, affmning the multiple,
the nonidentical , that which crosses l ines and b lurs boundaries-the thought of
the Other. Against the rational self-assurance of Kantian categories, Foucault of
fers the temporary insanity of the acid trip . 8 1 And perhaps it is Kantian thought
more than any other to which Foucault ' s transgress ions stand opposed . 82 Th is is
because "categories organ ize the play of affinnations and negation, establ ish the
legitimacy of resemblances with i n representations, and guarantee the objectivity
and operation of concepts . They suppress the anarchy of d i fference."83 It is th is
anarchy above all else which Foucault ' s thinking struggles to defend.
Foucault ' s thought is perhaps more unsettl ing and more di sturbing than any
other thought s ince N ietzsche. And we should be immensely grateful that it is.
In h is transgressions-of the philosophy o f the subj ect, of rationalism , and thus
of cap ital and the state-he shows us a possible way out of the di scurs ive trap
in wh ich we have l ived s ince the En lightenment . We should be careful to recog
n i ze, however, that although Foucault' s th inking contributes enonnously to the
theoretical proj ect of postm odern anarchism, it does not complete that proj ect.
Foucault ' s genealogical assault upon modern discurs ive practices is immensely
powerful, but it does raise a few troub l ing question s . First, it is important to
note the extraord inarily physical nature of the discourses which Foucault ana
lyzes. When he speaks about the discipl inary discourse of modem schools, pris
ons, and hospitals, Foucault constantly makes reference to the physical practices
and technologies which produce docile, discipl ined bodies . S i m i larly, when he
discusses the discourse of modem sexual ity, Foucault is compel led, by the na
ture of h i s own genealogical method, to chal lenge that discourse by referring to
"bodies and their pleasures . " The underly ing physical ity of Foucault ' s approach
is dangerous, because it means that h i s own critical discourse may well remain
trapped w ith in the realm of the real, which is also the realm of the modem .
Although Foucau lt ' s work does contain a dramatic and profound critique of
modem rationalism, his th inking therefore cannot fully escape the confines of
modem sem iotics. As long as Foucau lt analyzes di scourses which are attached
in some way to an underly ing real ity, there is the danger that his work will end
up implicitly sanctioning the modem semiotic order and its "real ity principle. "
S ince th i s is the very same sem iotic order which is charged w ith inscribing the
power e ffects of all modem states and econom ies, this could be a very serious
danger indeed.

A Thought

Outside the State

85

This problem is exaggerated by Foucault ' s deliberate re fusal to propose any

significant alternatives to the systems of power which he so strongly criticizes.
This re fusal grows out of Foucault ' s understandable frustrations w ith the pre
tenses of those "universal intel lectuals" who

do

postulate alternative systems ,

only t o e n d u p reproducing t h e very power relationships wh ich they thought to

subvert. However, the lack of an alternative in Foucault ' s work is frustrating . A s
a n antidote t o modem rational i s m , Foucault can offer o n l y a k i n d of semiotic
suicide : the temporary madnes s of the acid trip, or the permanent madness of the
insane p h i l osopher. As seductive as these poss i b i l ities might sometimes be,
they do not seem to represent serious options for those interested in building vi
able postmodem commun itie s . What i s missing in Foucault ' s thought, then, is
a serious alternative to the semiotic order of m odem subj ects, sciences, and
states . Without the kind of theoretical vocabulary which such an alternative sys
tem of thought m ight provide, the proj ect of postmodem anarchism is left in the
same unfortunate pos ition which characterizes so much of twentieth-century rad
ical thinking. This proj ect i s left, in short, w ith questions but no answers, w ith
criti que but no opti on s .
Another strategy i s n e e d e d , then, t o prevent Foucault ' s postmodem anar
chism from becoming perpetually trapped in n i h i l istic critique . Thi s strategy
may be found in the work of Jean B audrillard. B audrillard offers us a strategy of
the symboli c , which is des igned to articulate an epistemology that is entirely
outs ide all modem semioti cs. Baudri l lard ' s theory of the symbo lic-and the
theory of simulation which grows out of his symbo lic thinking-provides post
modem anarchism w ith its radical alternative to the system of modem sem i
otics . L e t us therefore exam ine B audrillard ' s crucial contribution t o postmodem
anarchism .

N o tes
1.

Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity, and Truth,

1 1 5.

2.

Rorty , Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,

3.

Ibid.

4.
5.
6.
7.

Ibid.,

63 .

64.

Butler, Gender Trouble,

20.

B raidotti, Nomadic Subjects,

171.

Foucault, q uoted by Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,

246.
"Foucault/Dewey/N i etzs che," 7 .

8 . Bernste i n , The New Constellation,

9 . Rorty,

1 0 . Derrida, Of Grammatology, 92-93 .

64.

Chapter Two

86

I I . May, Between Genealogy and Epistemology, 1 1 4 .

1 2. S e e Dumm, Foucault and the Politics of Freedom, 9 and Connolly, Political

Theory and Modernity,

1 8 9.

1 3 . Foucau lt, quoted in Raul et, " Structuralism and Post-Structuralism," 205.
1 4. De leuze, Foucault, 7 1 .
1 5 . Marx and Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist Party, " 475.
1 6. Bakunin, Statism a nd Anarchy, 9.
1 7. Ibid., 1 77.
1 8. I b i d . , 1 3 3 .
1 9. B akunin, "All-Round Education" i n The Basic Bakunin, 1 1 4 .
2 0 . Bak unin, God and the State, 5 9 .
2 1 . Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 3 6 9 .
2 2 . B arthes, Image, Music, Text, 1 4 7 .
2 3 . Lyotard, Postm odern Condition, 79.
24. Bakunin, Statism a n d A narchy, 20.
25. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 3 5 2.
26. I b i d . , 369. Here a n d throughout t h e remainder of thi s chapter, I u s c n o m os i n
the Deleuzian sense. I shou ld note bri efly, however, that Deleuze's use of th i s term
represents a rad ical inversion of its original mean i n g : the law.

27. Derrida, Of Gramm atology, 79. For Derrida's periodi zation and chronology
of the logos, see Derrida, Of Grammatology,

97 ff. There are also some interesting

parallels between Derrida's critique of the logos and that of Marcuse; see for example
Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, I l l ff.

28. I b i d . , 86.
29. I rigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, 80.
3 0 . Perez, A n (archy) a n d Schizoanalysis, 6 5 .
3 1 . Del euze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 3 7 3 .
3 2 . I b i d . , 360.
33. Derrida, Of Grammatology, 85.
3 4 . B akun in, Statism a n d A narchy, 24 .
3 5 . Foucault, The Order of Things, 262.
3 6 . Poster, Foucault, Marxism, and History, 1 5 9 .
3 7 . Deleuze, Foucault, 3 0.
3 8 . Foucault, quoted in Burchell, Foucault Effe ct, I 03 .
3 9. Foucault, Power/Kn owledge , 98.
40. S e e Haber, Beyond Postm odern Politics, 85.
4 1 . De leuze, Foucault, 9 2 .
42. Jessica Ku lynych, for example, advocates a read ing of Foucaultian subjec
t i v i ty w h i c h v i ew s " the acti ng c i tizen as brought i nto being by her resi stance. "
(Kulynych, " Perform ing Politics, " 3 3 1 . )

87

A Thought Outside the State

volume I , 9 3 .

4 3 . Foucault,

History of Sexuality,

44. Foucault,

Politics, Philosophy, Culture,

1 23 .

45 . See, for example, Seitz, "Constituting the Pol itical Subj ect," 446-47 or
Dumm,

Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom, 1 1 4 .

46. Brent Pickett i s thus quite correct to note that for Foucault, one "feature of a
better society appears to be a rad ical p l ural ism bordering on anarchy" (Pickett,
" Foucault and the Pol itics of Resi stance," 456).
47. Foucault,

History of Sexuality,

4 8 . Foucault, quoted in Burchell,

volume I , 96.

Foucault Effect,

97.

4 9 . Foucau lt,

Politics, Philosophy, Culture, 5 9 .

50. Foucault,

A esthetics, Method, and Epistemology, 4 6 9 .

5 1 . Foucault,

Madness a n d Civilization,

1 84-8 5 .

5 2 . Habermas,

Philosophical Discourse of Modernity,

53 . Nietzsche,

Genealogy of Morals,

247.

preface, section 3 .

54. Ibid., 2 0 .
5 5 . As J . Dan i e l Schubert notes, t h i s politicized genealogy a l s o h a s important
i m p l i cations for inte l l ectuals and for academ i c practice. See Schubert, "From a
Politics of Transgression," I 006.
56. Foucault, Language, Countermemory, Practice, 1 5 2 .
57. I b i d . , 1 4 7.
5 8 . Foucault,

Ethics, Subjectivity, a n d Truth,

1 77 .

5 9. Ibid., 228.
60. Ibid., 278.
6 1 . Foucault,

History of Sexuality,

volume I , 92.

62. I b i d . , 1 03 .
6 3 . Foucault,

Discipline and Punish,

222.

64. I b i d .
6 5 . I b i d . , 1 94 .
66. Kropotkin, "Anarchist Commun i s m : I t s Basis and Principles" i n
Writings,

Fugitive

9 1 -9 2 .

6 7 . Foucault,

Discipline and Punish,

1 96 .

6 8 . Ibid., 20 I .
69. See Rawls,

A Theory of Justice

and Nozick,

A narchy, State, and Utopia.

70. Foucault,

Language, Countermemory, Practice,

7 1 . Foucault,

Discipline and Punish,

7 2 . Foucault,

Language, Cozmterm emory, Practice,

2 1 4.

279.
230.

73 . Foucault, Discipline a n d Punish, 3 0 1 . Foucault is very close, in t h i s pas

sage, to the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus.
74. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 2 9 9 .

Chapter Two

88

7 5 . Foucault makes this clear, for example,

(Foucault,

Language, Countermem ory, Practice,

"A

Preface to Transgression"

29-52). See also Bataille,

Erotism,

especi a l ly chapter 5.
7 6 . Foucault,

Madness and Civilization,

7 7 . Foucault,

Language, Countermem ory, Practice,

57.

7 8 . Foucault,

Madness and Civilization,

44 .

288.

7 9 . The idea that N ietzsche's madness m ight b e read a s an offering, a sacrifice, or

a g i ft again makes c lear Foucau lt's debt to B ata i l l e (and thus indirectly to Marcel
Mauss). See B atail le, A ccursed Share, especially 63 ff; see also Mauss, The Gift.
80. Foucault,

Language, Countermem ory, Practice,

1 85.

8 1 . Ibid., 1 90.
82. The notable exception to th i s, o f course, i s the i nteresting d i scussion of
Kant in Foucault's essay "What is Enl ightenment?" Here Foucault avoids the faci le
rej ection of E n l ightenment values by p o s i t i o n i ng h i m s e l f as an h e i r to the
Enl ightenment' s spirit of critique; he even goes so far as to suggest that

we

arc "be

i ngs who are h istorical ly determ i ned, to a certain extent, by the En l i ghtenment"
(Foucault, "What is En l ightenment?" 4 3).
8 3 . Foucault, Language, Countermem ory, Practice, 1 8 6.

Chapter Three
The Gift of Postm odern
An archism : Baudrillard
I ' ve been swimming in a sea of anarchy
I ' ve been living on coffee and n icotine
I ' ve been wondering if all the th ings I ' ve seen
Were ever real
Were ever really happening
-Sheryl Crow , "Everyday is a W inding Road"

Jean Baudrillard ' s work is often enigmatic and frequently cryptic. He sometimes
offers what appear to be astoundingly radical pol itical pronouncements . At other
times he seems to renounce even the pos s i b i lity of meaningful pol itics . Many
critics find Baudri llard ' s pol itical ambigu ity frustrating; the tendency among
comm entators i s to assume that the pol itical effect of Baudrillard ' s thought is
cons ervat i v e . Chr istopher N orri s , for exam p l e , conc ludes his analys is of
Baudrillard by asserting that the main lesson to be learned from Baudri llard ' s
texts i s that "any politics which goes along w ith the current postmodem drift
w i l l end up by effectively endors ing and promoting the work of ideological
m y s t i fi c at i o n . " 1 This i s perhaps typ ical of the kinds of cri t i c i s m s which
Baudri llard frequently draws from the Marxist Left: that h i s work does not con
tribute to (and indeed, is explicitly form ulated against) the proj ect of dialectical
liberation, and is therefore part of bourgeois ideology.
To read Baudri llard in th is way is, however, serious ly m i s leading. Norris
and others would have us bel ieve that Baudri llard ' s postm odemism cannot sus
ta in a v i ab l e rad ical pol itics. In fact, B audri l l ard ' s p h i losophy stands in opposi
ti on to a l l Marx ist p o l itics, but th is does not imply by any means that his work

90

Chapter Three

l acks a rad ical political v i s i o n . Baudril l ard ' s thought points not to the end of
politics but to a radical, and specifically anarch i st, political agenda. Infonned by
the i n s i ghts of postmode m i s m , t h i s v i s i o n is not only more radical than
Marxism; it i s also more radical than most traditional fonn s of anarchism.
Naturally, this immediately raises a question, s ince Baudrillard has explic
itly placed his work outside the context of postmodem ism. I believe, however,
that there are suffic ient grounds to place B audri l l ard ' s texts w ithin the post
modem commons w hich I outlined above . B audri llard ' s work contains a fierce
antihuman ism; in that sense his thinking builds upon the anarchy of the subj ect
initiated by Nietzsche and developed by Foucault. Ironically (s ince B audril l ard
is the author of a polemi c entitled

Forget Foucault) B audri l l ard ' s political phi

losophy also h as strong affinities w ith Foucault ' s m i cropol itics . To be sure, the
specific valence of B audri l l ard ' s m icropolitics is substantially different from that
of Foucault; whereas Foucault' s strategies are meant to engage w ith networks of
sexual or disciplinary power, B audri llard offers a more general i zed strategy of
resistance w h i c h i s based, to a l arge extent, upon the gestural p o l itics of the
S ituati o n i s t Internat i o n a l . Nonethel e s s , the affinities between N ietzs che and
Foucault on the one h and and B audrillard on the other are quite striking. L ike
the Gennan and French genealogists , Baudrillard is deeply skeptical of the apoc
alyptic rel i ance upon rationality which has characterized Western intellectual ac
t i v ity s i n c e the E n l ightenm e n t . N i etzs c h e , Foucault, and Baudril l ard a l l
articulate deep and abiding critiques of bourgeois society, focusing in particular
on the cultural aspects of that society . G iven these c lear parallels, it is certainly
unfortunate that B audrillard has chosen to d istance his own work from that of
Foucault. The result of this choice i s an impoverishment of radical theory which
is quite rem iniscent of the s ituation w hich fo l lowed in the wake of the Marx
B akun in feud of the nineteenth century.
Desp ite B au dri l l ard ' s possible claims to the contrary, then, I would argue
that h i s work can reasonably be p l aced under the rubric of postmodemi s m . I
would further suggest that Baudrillard can be understood as a postmodem anar
chist. A s w ith Foucault, I am interested here more in the p o l itical

effect of

Baudril lard ' s thought than in his own personal p o l itics (though B audr i l l ard
does, ironically, have an anarchist pedigree wh ich perhaps surpasses even that of
Foucault) . The postm odern phi losophy developed by B audri l l ard contains sig
n i fi c ant antistat i s t and anticap ital i st i m p l i c a t i o n s . But more i mportantly,
B audrillard ' s thought undenn ines the very foundations of state-centered politics
and bourgeoi s pol itical economy . It does so by developing a profound critique
of the dom i n an t order ' s very sem iotic structure. The sem iotic system of the
modem world i s , on B audriltard ' s reading, a un iversal and implicitly totalitarian
system w h i ch uses the l anguages of reason , sc ience, and humanism to j ustify

The Gift of Po stm odern Anarch i s m

91

both the free markets of the West and the centralized state p lanning of the East.
To transcend these tw in systems of political and econom ic repress ion, we must
find a w ay to step outs ide of the semiotics w hich authorize such systems . It is
in the pursuit of this monumental (and perhaps utop ian) goal that B audr i l l ard
introduces the category of the symbo l i c as a c h a l l enge to w h at he calls
"contemporary sem iocracy . " Baudri llard ' s decision to invoke the symb o l i c in
this w ay p laces h i s work in close prox i m i ty to that of the postmodem psy
choanalyst Jacques Lacan, who declared that "Freu d ' s discovery was that of the
domain of the incidence in the nature of man of his relations to the Symbol i c
order a n d t h e tracing of their s e n s e right back to t h e m o s t rad ical instances o f
symbolization in being . " 2 For Lacan, t h e domain of t h e Symbo lic w a s episte
mo logically radical, because the symbol precedes language and m akes language
poss ible. But B audri l lard recognized that the symbolic order could be politically
rad ical as well, to the extent that the symbol m ight be the only epistemological
obj ect which could successfully place itself outs ide (and prior to) the sem iotic
structures which serve as the very foundation for all modern systems of political
economy.
The decision to invoke the symbol against modern sem iocracy is perhaps
what motivates some o f B audril lard ' s skepticism w ith respect to Foucault, for
here B audri l lard is charting analytic terrain which Foucault left largely unex
p lored . Foucault, as I argued in chapter 2, certainly spoke out against the
semiotics of modern rational ism. But Foucault never really elaborated a theoret
ical system which m ight stand as an alternative to modem semiotics. Foucault' s
reluctance t o propose alternatives is, o f course, largely deliberate; it grows out of
the suspi c ion and skepticism which he feels when "un iversal intellectuals" such
as S artre arrogantly assume that they have the ab i l ity or the right to prescribe
new social, cu ltural, or econom ic systems. But while this Foucaultian re luctance
is certai n ly understandab le, it is also frustrating. Many who m ight otherw ise
find Foucault ' s critique of rationalism compe l l ing find it d i fficu lt to embrace
that critique fu lly unless they can s im u ltaneously envision a radically different
kind of communicative system which m ight replace the seem ingly omn ipresent
sem iotics of modern reason.
Such an alternative can be located in the w o rk of Jean Baudril l ard .
Baudril l ard certainly could have been kinder to Foucau lt, whose radicalization of
the Nietzschean genealogy s urely stands as one of the great intel lectual proj ects
of our century . Nonethe les s , B audri l l ard m akes an interesting point in

Foucault,

Forget

and it is a point w h i ch suggests that postm odern anarchism m ight

well remain incomplete as l o n g as it rel i es s ol e l y upon Foucau lt ' s critiques of

di s cip lin ary or sexual di scourse. For these critiques still entreat the reader to en
vis ion power in terms of practices and technologies of the body which make ref-

Chapter Three

92

erence to some sort of underlying physical "reality." Despite the enormous ad

vances which Foucault has made in the analys is of power, Baudri l l ard recog
n izes that for Foucault, power "is sti ll turned toward a reality principle and a
very strong truth princi p l e ; it is sti l l oriented toward a possible coherence of
pol itics and discourse."3 B audri llard addresses the problem of modem power in
a very different w ay . By articulating a symbolic theory which i s radically at
odds w ith both semiotic dis course and the real ity principle which inevitably
sanctions such d i s course, B audri l l ard advances the postmodem analy s i s of
power wh ich Foucault initiate d . Th is is espec ially true in B audri l l ard ' s later
works, where he develops the categories of simulation and the hyperreal-cate
gories w hich make no reference to any kind of reality principle whatsoever.
B audri l l ard ' s decis ion to develop a theory of the symbolic therefore (and
quite ironical ly) m akes it abso lutely crucial that his work should be read along
s ide that of Nietzsche and Foucault. B audri llard ' s attempt to resurrect the sym
bolic as a radical alternative to contemporary sem iotic systems is a crucial com
ponent of the pol itical ph i losophy of postmodem anarchi s m . Anarchy of the
subj ect, anarchy of becom i ng, transrational anarchy, and m icropol itical anarchy :
these are the term s which define the proj ect of the postmodem anarchi st. Yet
w ithout a strategy for rep lacing the linguistic structures which precede and in
scribe all form s of m o dem political, economic, and cultural power, such a
proj ect must necessari ly remain incomplete. B audrill ard ' s symbolic assault upon
the sem i otic fortresses of modem pol itical economy thus provides postmodem
anarch ism w ith a cruc ial m issing term . By coming at the problem of modem
power from a completely different directi on-not through the genealogies of
Nietzsche and Foucault, but through the radical sociology of Emile Durkheim
and his fo l l o w ers-Baudri l l ard contributes s ign ificantly to the postmodem
reading of the anarchist worldview. He takes the postmodem anarch ist critique
in unique new directions, and he offers that critique a possible "exit strategy" or
re s o l u t i o n . Without B a u d ri l l ard, postmodern anarch i s m m i ght w e l l h ave
rem ained l ittle m ore than an isolated chapter in the h i story of genealogical
thinking. With B audril l ard, it becomes instead a m ajor variant of postmodem
pol itical thought.
Th i s c h apter w i l l e x p l o re the h istorical origin and development of
B audril l ard ' s postmodern anarchi s m . I will argue that B audr i l l ard ' s pol itical
thought developed initially as a variant of the radical Durkheim ian sociology ar
ticulated by Marcel Mauss and Georges Batai l l e . In particular, this socio logy
gave B audri l l ard the theory of the gift, which serves as a theoretical pillar of his
postm odern anarch ism. For Baudri llard, the gift i s a symbo l i c category which
stands entire ly outside the semiotic structure of bourgeois political economy
(including its Marxist variant). The gift also enables a model of symbol i c ex-

The G i ft

of Postmodem An archi sm

93

change which i s entirely at odds w ith m odem form s o f econom ic exchange. The
theory of the gift thus a l l ows B audri l l ard to develop a critique not o n ly of the
content of bourgeois political economy, but of its sem iotic form as wel l-some
thing which ne ither M arxism nor c l assical anarchism could ever ach ieve . G i ft
theory a l s o g ives B audri l l ard t h e opportun ity to articul ate a n intrigu ing interpre
tation of the revo lution of May 1 968. During the "events of May," B au dr i l l ard
te lls us, French revolutionaries attacked the dom inant semiotic code at the struc
tural leve l, frequently through the exchange of symbolic gifts. Refusing to par
ticipate in a m odernist system of pol itical rationality, the students and w orkers
freely gave s l ogans, gestures and i m ages in an attempt to subvert the rul ing
culture .
In the years after May 1 968, B audri l lard ' s symbolic critique of rationalist
semiotics would gradua l ly b lossom into h i s theory of simulation. I f N ietzsche
was the p h i l osopher of the death of God, B audri l l ard is the philosopher of the
death of the real. The m odem era, the era of industrial production and class con
flict, was perhaps the era of reality . In such an era "the real" m ay h ave meant
someth ing . Today, however, computer n etworks and orbital sate l l ites blanket
our w orld w ith television signals, e-mail messages, and cellular phone transmis
s ions. B audril l ard ' s controvers ial c laim i s that these s im ulations do not im itate
or reflect some underlying reality; rather, simu l ation today is our real ity, insofar
as we m ay even be said to have a reality. Surely this is a symbolic critique car
ried to its radical extreme. B audri l lard suggests that we now l ive in a world of
dead s igns, a world where s ign ifiers no longer bear any rel ation to real s ign i
fieds, a world that i s tru ly beyond the semiotic. "The era of s i m u l ation,"
B audri l lard dec lares, "is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials ."4
The p o l it i c a l value of s im u lation has been a m atter of some d i spute.
Douglas K e l l ner suggests that B au dr i l l ard ' s obsession w ith s igns "marks
B audri l l ard as a sem i o logical dandy, as an avatar of the sign as the m ark of the
rea l . Such a pos ition increas ingly d ivorces h im from contemporary politics, and
inscribes him w ithin an apolitical aesthet i c i s m . "5 There are two m ajor problems
w ith th is interpretation. F irst, Kel lner does not recogn ize B audri l l ard ' s strongly
antisemiotic position; if B au dr i l l ard is any kind of dandy, h e is surely a
" symbo l i c d andy . " Second, Ke l lner ignores the radical poss ibil ities of s imula
tion. Certainly the theory of s im u l ation is bad n ews for Marxism, s ince it de
c l ares not m ere ly the end of history but the nonexistence of h istory . However,
this is not at a l l the same as saying that simulation negates radical politics. In
fact, the denial of the real can be read as an extremely radical, and specifically
an archist, pol itical position. The early twentieth-century fem inist anarchist
Emma Goldman anticipated this when she observed that "anarchism is the only

ph ilosophy which brings to man the consciousness of h imself; which maintains

94

Chapter Three

that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their prom ises are null and
void . . . anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantom s that have
h e l d h i m captive . " 6 Of course, G o l dm an ' s pol itical p h i losophy was sti l l a
modem one, to the extent that she envis ioned the l iberation of some allegedly
authentic human essence. To understand the fu ll significance of the antirealist
position, we m u st turn to the postmodern critics of human ism . Postmodem
femin ists, for example, have led the charge against the real, arguing that a tru ly
radical theory of gender cannot afford to invoke the real . Judith B utler suggests
that

when such categories come i nto question, the

rea lity

of gender is also put

into cri s i s : it becomes uncl ear how to d i stinguish the real from the unreal .
And this i s the occasion i n which we come to understand that what we take
to be "real , " what we i nvoke as the naturalized knowledge of gender is, in
fact, a changeable and revisable real ity. Call it subversive or cal l it some
thing e lse. A l though this i nsight does not i n itself constitute a pol itical
revolution, no pol itical revo lution i s possible w ithout a radi cal shift i n
one ' s notion of the possible and t h e real . 7
The den ial of the real, then, is a cruc ial aspect of postmodern fem in ism ' s anti
e ssenti a l ist strate gy . 8 Here as in so many other cases, postmodern fem in i sts
po int out subversive strategies wh ich could be useful for a w ide variety of pol it
ical proj ects in the postmodem era. Antireal ist fem in ism shows a strong affinity
w ith the anarch ist assault on reality which Baudril lard ' s phi losophy promotes.
Baudri l l ard' s anti realist theory of s i m u lation underm ines the "real" subj ect of
modern p o l itical discourse, the "real" rationality of that subj ect, and a l l "real"
p o l itical or economic systems founded u pon such rational subj e ctivity . Th i s
theory is thus a key element of postrnodern anarch ism.

Anarchy of the Gift:

Mauss, Bataille, Bookchin, and Sym bolic Exchange
Baudri llard ' s p o litical thought owes a great deal to radical Durkheimian sociol
ogy, and espec ially to the work of Marcel Mauss and Georges B atai l l e . 9 The
origins of th is tradition may be traced back to Mauss ' s extremely influential es
say, The Gift, wh ich appeared in 1 925 . Mauss ' s top ic is gift exchange, espe
cially as such exchange functions in so-called prim itive societies. He argues that
in these societies, the exchange

of gifts represents an e l aborate symb o l i c system,

the function of wh ich is profoundly d i fferent from that of modern e c o n o mi c

The Gift o f Postmodcm Anarchism

95

exchange : "th is economy of gift-exchange fails to conform to the principles of

so-called natural economy or util itari anism . " 1 0 We must recall here that modem
political economy maintains its hegemony large ly by insi sting that because its
principles supposedly derive from nature (particu larly "human nature"), they are
therefore un iversally app l icable. Against this claim, Mauss offers us the gift of
the g i ft: he presents the gift as someth ing entirely outs ide modern p o l itical
economy . For Mauss, the gift is a powerfu l , self-sustaining system of exchange
which is com p l etely d i fferent from the capital ist mode l . The g i ft is also, as
Marshall Sah l i n s correctly noted in 1 972, a category w ith strongly anarch istic
impl ications: "the primitive analogue of social contract is not the State , but the
gift. The gift is the primitive way of ach ieving the peace that in civil society is
secured by the State . " 1 1
The Gift initiates several interesting and important criti ques of cap italist

economic theory . Most crucial for our purposes i s Mauss ' s observation that in
some systems of gift exchange, "consumption and destruction are virtually un
lim ited. In some potlatch systems one is constrained to expend everyth ing one
possesses and to keep noth ing. " 1 2 It would not be much of an exaggeration to
suggest that th is seem ingly innocent observation contains the means for over
turning the entire theoretical bas is of bourgeois political economy. Cap ital ism

derives much of its theoretical foundation, after all, from the concept of scarcity :
the pol itical econom ists assure us that there are finite econom ic resources in the
world, and that we must therefore use market forces and competition to arrive at
the most efficient distribution of th ose resources. Some of the most important
twentieth-century anarchist theorists, such as the "green red" Murray Bookch in,
have recogn ized that the myth of scarcity may indeed represent the Ach i lles' heel
of capita l i s m . " Western soc iety," Bookchin writes, "may accept the reality of
economic crises, inflation, and unemployment, and popular credul ity has not re
jecte d the myth of a ' stingy ' nature that is running out of raw materials and en
ergy resources . Abundance, all the more because it is being denied for structural
econom ic reas ons rather than natural ones, sti l l orchestrates the popular culture
of present-day society . " 1 3 B ookch in devotes much of h i s work to the project of
piercing the ideological ve i l which conceals our soc iety ' s enormous economic
potenti a l . His plan is to reveal that the m aterial preconditions for a nonh ierar
chical, postcap italist soc iety already exist in the West. B ookch in ' s project an
ticipates some trends wh ich have emerged recently in the analysis of postindus
trial inform ation economies. Tessa Morris- Suzuki has argued, for example, that
"the economy of information product ion is an open system , into w h i ch non
commodities enter as inputs and whose outputs may eventual ly ' escape ' from
the cy c l e of commerc ial exchange. " 1 4 If this is correct, then the mode of
production which Marx described so bri l liantly in Cap ital-that is , the mode

96

C h apt er Three

ass o c i ated m a i n ly w ith the production and d i stribution of commodit ies-is

clearly at an end. And i f that is true, then the rules of political economy which
our culture continues to accept dogmatically no longer obtain . Indeed, as soon
as we begin to map out rules appropriate to the emerging information economy,
it becomes apparent that these ru les frequently involve profound inversions of
classical econom ic thought . Th i s strange but prom ising phenomenon becomes
particularly apparent when we cons ider the issue of scarcity . John Perry Barlow
has argued, for example, that w hereas scarcity m ight increase the value of
phys ical goods, it w i l l often have the precise opposite effect on information . 1 5
The most successfu l p iece o f data w i l l typically b e that wh ich i s duplicated and
d istributed most w idely. Barlow, who has written songs for the G ratefu l Dead
for many years, clearly understands the form and function of gift exchange . His
band, wh ich has always encouraged its fans to record performances and trade
concert tapes amongst themselves, has acquired a great deal of its prestige and
popularity prec isely by giving its music away.
The critique of scarc ity and the idea that the gift might represent a serious
a lternative to bourgeo i s pol itical economy were further developed by Georges
Bata i l l e in The A ccursed Share, which appeared in 1 96 7 . Batai lle ' s assault on
scarc ity is surely one of the most amb iti ous proj e cts in the h istory of radical
economic theory . One could argue that Batai l le ' s radical vision surpasses even
Bookchin ' s anarch ist agenda, for while B ookch in env isions econom ic abundance
as an outgrowth of modern technology, Bata i l le characterizes l i fe on earth in

general as a s ituation of vast abundance. For Bataille, organisms are confronted

not w ith a lack of resources but w ith an excess. This excess comes initially from
the sun, wh ich gives its gift of energy w ithout retum . 1 6 This "solar gift," the
gift wh ich cannot be returned, has a special status in Batail l e ' s thought, for it
forms the basis of his understanding of consumption. The problem wh ich soci
eties confront, according to Bataille, is not that of how to create or produce
wealth , as the bourgeoi s p o l itical economists would h ave it. Rather, it is the
prob lem o f how to e li m inate excess energy and give wealth away . Batai l le ' s
econom ic theory is thus also more radical than that o f Mauss. In Mauss ' s analy
s i s , the gift must always be returned, often w ith interest; for Bataille, things are
qu ite d i fferent: " if a part of wealth (subj ect to a rough estimate) i s doomed to
destruction or at least to unproductive use w ithout any possible profit, it is log
ical, even inescapable, to surrender commodities w ithout retum . " 1 7 The gift
and espec ially the gift w ithout return-thus represents a uni lateral principle of
exchange wh ich short-c ircuits the logic of capital in a profound way .
In many ways Bata i l le ' s thought makes possible what I call postmodern an
arch ism. B ata i l le ' s theory contains radically antistatist impl i c ations. He under
stands consumption as a m aj or social force which stands outs ide the modern

The G i ft of Postmodern Anarchism

97

state and which exists in exp l icit opposition to that State : "the State (at least the
modem , fu l ly developed State) cannot give free reign to a movement of destruc
tive consumption. " 1 8 Econom ic accum u lation (what Bata i l l e calls "the produc
tion of the means of production") dominates the agendas of all modern states.
But w ith his theory of consumption, B atai l l e has described a whole realm of
human action which exi sts beyond this accumu l ative principle. Frequently the
State is ab le to dom inate this other real m ; thus, for example, lovers "submit
themselves-and along w ith them , the un iverse they are-to those sets of judg
ments that subordinate being to usefu l ends, in term s of which only the State
has any coherence . " 1 9 And yet the reader of The A ccursed Share is left with the
strong suspicion that the very existence of this outside realm-the erotic, trans
gress ive world, the world in wh ich energy and resources are not saved or accu
m u lated but rather consumed and expended in an orgy of frivolous excess
represents a serious sym b o l i c chal lenge to state power. After all, state power
derives in l arge part from the immensely successfu l way in which modern states
colonize a l l semiotics. One need only glance at any maj or Western newspaper to
understand that rationalism, econom ic accwnulation, and state power combine at
the deepest level to form a seemingly seam less semiotic order. The accom
p l i shment of The Accursed Share is to locate and exp lore the not-qu ite- invisible
rifts in that order.
Rad ical gift theory wou l d also form the basis for some of B audri l lard ' s
most im portant critiques. Baudri l l ard ' s debt t o Mauss and B ata i l le i s m ade
most c lear in Symbolic Exchange and Death, wh ich first appeared in 1 9 7 6 . 2 0
B audri l l ard prefaces this book by argu ing that Mauss ' s gift-exchange is a hy
pothes is "m ore radical than Marx ' s or Freu d ' s,"2 1 a controvers ial claim which
Baudri l l ard is nonetheless ab le to sustain, in large measure, in the body of this
work. For B au dri l l ard, the radical ity of gift-exchange lies in the fact that it is
"equally dism issive of political and l ib idinal economy, outlining instead a be
yond of value, a beyond of the l aw, a beyond of repression and a beyond of the
uncon s c i o u s . " 22 Here we can clearly see the impl ications which radical g i ft
exchange theory m ight hold for postmodern anarchism . If gift-exchange does in
deed represent a dismissal of political economy (as B atai l le ' s account would
seem to suggest), and if symbo l i c exchange represents a "beyond of the law" (as
B audri l l ard argues in Symbolic Exchange and Death, and again in many of his
later works), then it seem s c lear that contemporary anarchist theory cannot afford
to ignore these radical form s of exchange . For B audri l l ard, the symbo l i c vio
lence of the gift w ithout return i s the only vio lence which has any chance

defy the sys

tem with a gift to which it cannot respond save by its own collapse and
death"23-th is is the anarch istic poss ibi l ity which Baudri l lard offe rs .

against the omnipresent sem iotic codes of political economy . " To

Chapter Three

98

B audril lard boldly asserts that a specter is haunting political economy, but
not th e specter w h i c h the Marx ists describe . He i s speaking instead of the
specter of the gift. "In the immense po lymorphous m ach ine of contemporary
capital, the symbolic (gift and counter-gift, reciprocity and reversal, expend iture
and sacri fice) no longer counts for anything, nature (the great referential of the
origin and substance, the subj ect/obj ect dialectic, and so on) no longer counts ,
pol itical economy itself only survives in a brain- dead state, but all these phan
toms continue to plague the operational field of value. "2"1 U nder the influence of
Mauss (gift and counter-gift) and Bataille (expenditure and sacrifice), Baudri l lard
gives us h i s vis ion of a sem iotic system which obsess ively tries to repress its
memories of the gift and yet which (like the neurot ic) cannot qu ite get away
from the phantasmal effects of those memories. Baudril lard ' s analy s i s is also
qu ite close here to that of Bookch in, who argues that "the transition from gift to
commod ity, in e ffect, could y ield the d i s i ntegration of the commun ity into a
market place, the consangu inal or eth ical union between people i nto rivalry and
aggre s s ive e g ot i s m . .

. . The g i ft i t s e l f v i rtu a l ly d i s appeared as the

obj ectification of association. It l ingered on mere ly as a byproduct of ceremonial

functions . "25 For Bookch in, as for Bataille and B audri llard, the repression of the
gift as an econom ic and epistemological category i s an absolutely crucial
precursor to the estab l ishment of the m odern , commodity-based principles of
cap ital ist exchange . And yet the commod ity can never really fill the cu ltural
void created by the d i s appearance of the g i ft . The gift, then, is what some
postmodern i sts m ight call an " absent presence": if the gift is understood as a
bas ic and fundamental principle of exchange, then the fact that the gift does not
appear anywhere on the sem iotic terrain of modern pol itical economy can, in
fact, be taken as provi s ional evidence of a serious theoretical fl aw w ithin the
capitalist logic itself.
B audril lard ' s strategy is thus to reinvoke the sym bolism of the g i ft as a
challenge to modern sem iocracy . B audri llard understands quite clearly that "the
code" (by which we may understand the totality of sem iotic operations that en
force pol itical economy and the state , whether in a capita l i s t or communist
mode) cannot possibly be opposed on the field of rational, subj e ct-centered lan
guage . The logic of the sign is always the logic of capital, and it is for this rea
son that B audri l lard proceeds to a total critique of the s ign and all rational
semiotics: "symbolic violence is deduced from a logic of the symbolic (wh ich
has noth ing to do w ith the s i gn or w ith energy): reversal, the incessant re
vers ibil ity of the counter-gift and, conversely, the se izing of power by the uni
lateral exercise of the g i ft . "26 As we know from Mauss and B ataille, the gift is
entirely outs ide the bourgeois system of exchange, and th is is especially true of
the u n i lateral gift w ithout return . B ut Baudri l l ard goes further than his intel-

The Gift of Postmodem Anarchism

99

lectual forebears by suggesting that the radical symbolic logic of the gift may
therefore function as a serious challenge to the sem iotic order which sustains all
modern econom ies and states .
The problem, of course, is that in all contemporary societies, it is the sys
tem itself which maintains and enforces a strategic monopoly on the power of
gift giving. " It is the capita l i st who gives, who has the initiative of the gift,
which secures him, as in every social order, a pre-eminence and a power far be
yond the economic."27 Indeed, the fact that the capital ist monopol izes the gift of
work i s merely part of the problem. We must also grapple w ith the "gift of
media and messages to which, due to the monopoly of the code, noth ing i s al
lowed to retort."28 From the point of view of postmodern anarch ism, this would
seem to be disastrous . The gift w ithout return, i f we reca l l Bata i l le, is the most
revo lutionary gift of all; if the system can use the institutions of m ass media to
appropriate even th is k i n d of g i ft for its own purposes, then the rad ical
poss i b i l ities of gift giving would seem to be quite limited.
But th is is not the end of the story . The system may indeed be quite adept
at colonizing gift-exchange for its own purposes. But as Baudri llard points out,
"to refuse labour, to d ispute wages i s thus to put the process of the gift, exp ia
tion and economic compensation back into question, and therefore to expose the
fundam ental symbo l i c proces s . "29 The reappropriation of the gift from the en
gines of capital is possible, and not merely as a theoretical option. Th is is also a
practical strategy with a h istory, and its h istory is the h istory of May 1 96 8 . It
was through the anarchy of the gift that the revo lution of May " shook the
system down to the depths of its symbo l i c organization."30 It was in the streets
of Paris that the prax is of symbolic exchange was born as a revolutionary strat
egy.

May 1 96 8 :
Birth of a Postmodern Anarchist Praxis
Popularly known as the " events of May," the revo lutionary uprising of May
1 96 8 was a crucial, defming pol itical moment for many French inte llectuals, in

cluding Baudri l l ard. The revolution began as a student protest at the Nantarre
campus of the Univers ity of Paris ; Baudri l l ard was teach ing there at the time.3 1
Rea l i zing, perhaps, that the o rthodox Left no longer bore its interests, the
French working c l ass supported the protesting students by declaring a w i l dcat
strike ; th is was the largest general strike in European h istory .32 In a later inter
view, Baudri llard would remark that during th is period he "was much closer to

k i n d of anarc h i sm " than to Marx i s m . 3 3 The events of May w o u ld on ly

1 00

C h apter Three

strengthen B audri l lard ' s anti - M arxist anarc h i s m , as he watched the French
Commun ist Party and the trade union leaders cooperate w ith the G au l l ist gov
ernment to put down the revolution .
The revolutionary theory and practice of May 1 96 8 were dom inated, in large
part, by G uy Debord and the S ituationist International, a radical movement w ith
which Baudri l lard was closely assoc iate d . Formu lated in the crucible of the war
fo r A lgerian independence, S ituation i st the ory included a strong anti stat ist
message . The "Address to the Revolutionaries of A lgeria and of A l l Countries,"
published in Internationale Situationniste 1 0 (M arch 1 96 6 ) , asserted that "all
existing governments, even those issuing out of the most liberatory movements,
are based on l ie s i n s i d e and o u t . " 3 4 It i s important to note, however, that
S ituationist anarchism was not lim ited to a critique of the stat e . The state was,
for the S itu ationists, only part of a much broader cu ltural problem . The i r u lti
m ate goal was a rad ical tran sform at ion of ordin ary life by means of a total
critique of soc i ety . Th is included, of cours e , a critique of the state and of
bureaucracy, but it included as well attacks on advertising and consumerism, the
u n i v e rs ity, art, and in general w h at Debord referred to as "the p o v e rty of

every d ay l i fe . " For D ebord, "everyth ing e ffectively depends on the level at
which the prob lem is posed: How is our l i fe ? How are we satisfi ed w ith it?
D i s s atisfied? Without for a moment lett ing ourselves be int i m i dated by the
various advertisem ents des igned to persuade us that we can be happy because of
the existence of God or Co lgate toothpaste or the CNRS [N ational Center for
S c i e n t i fic Researc h ] . " 3 5 On this po int, Debord and the S ituationists were in
comp lete agreem ent w ith other m aj or anarc h i st theorists of the time, such as
Murray Bookc h i n . "It is p lain that the goal of revolution today m u st be the
liberat ion of daily life," Bookchin dec lared in Post-Scarcity A n archism . "Any
revolution that fails to achieve that goal is counterrevolution . Above all, it is we
who have to b e l i berated, o ur daily lives, w ith all their m oments, hours and
days, and not universals like ' H istory ' and ' Society . "'36
Th is, then, was the bas ic nond ialectical agenda pursued by the postmodern
anarchists of May 1 96 8 . Capital and the state were certainly still to be smashed.
But people l ike B ookchin, Debord, and Baudril lard clearly recogn ized that the
revolution must not be content to pursue these goals alone . Far more important
than these merely modem radical obj ectives were such goals as the emanc ipation
of temporal consciousness from what the S ituationists called "dead time," or the
elaboration of new spatial concepts to replace those which remained hopelessly
m ired in the discourse of urban modern i s m . The January 1 963 number of
Internationale Situationniste had declared that "a revolutionary m o ve m ent is
one that rad i c a l l y changes the organ i zat ion of . . . space-ti m e and the very

m an n e r of d e c i d i n g i t s o n g o i n g r e o rgan i zat i o n h e n c e forward (and not a

The G i ft of Postmodern Anarchism

101

movement that mere ly changes the legal form of property or the social origin of
the ru lers) . " 3 7 F i v e years later, th i s "proto-postmodern" critique of spatia
temporal m odernism would blossom into the antiurbanism of May 1 96 8 .
During the revolution o f May , according t o the S ituationist Rene V i enet, "the
critique of everyday life success fully began to modify the landscape of alienation
. . . e veryone, in his own w ay, made his own critique of urbanism . " 3 s Th i s
critique would later be developed and expanded b y Bookch in, w h o articu lated i n

Toward an Ecological Society

a fasc inating variety of posturban utop ian i s m .

" To restore urban ity as a human ized terrain for sociation," Bookch in dec lares,
"the megalopo lis must be ruth lessly dissolved and its place taken by new decen
tralized ecocommunities, each care fu l ly tai lored to the carrying capacity of the
natural ecosystem in which it is located ."39
A lthough B ookch in and the S ituation ists were in basic agreement with re
spect to the prob lems of modern space-time, S ituationism did not include the
kind of humanism which is sometimes to be find in Bookch in ' s green anar
c h i s m . "The D e c l ine and Fall of the Spectac le-Commodity Economy," pub
lished in

Internationale Situationniste I 0

(March 1 966), asserted that "the bar

barian is no longer at the ends of the earth, he is

here,

made into a barbarian by

h i s forced partic ipation in the common hierarchical consumption . The human

ism that cloaks all this is the contrary of man, the negation of his activ ity and
his desire s ; it is the humanism of the commodity, the benevolence of the para
s itical commod ity toward the people off whom it feeds ."40 The strangely com
pell ing claim here is that human ism, which purports to liberate, i s i n fact the
secret ally of the commodity and hence of a repress ive consumer society . Th is
Situ ationist antihuman ism i s re lated to B ata i l le ' s argument that modern " con
sumption" in fact has nothing to do w ith the sovereign consumption of the aris
tocratic order; for the S ituationists, as for B atail le, the modem worker-consumer
is not a sovereign subj ect at all.
Not surprisingly, the Situationist rej ection of humanism entai led a rej ection
of subject-centered reason as well, and this rejection had om inous impl ications
for Marx i s m . Guy Debord attacked d ialectical materialism in

Spectacle,

Society of the

arguing that "if it is to master the science of society and bring it un

der its governance, the project of transcending the economy and taking posses
sion of h istory cannot itself be scientific in character. "4 1 In his work of the early
seventies, Baudril lard fo llowed Debord on this point almost exactly : "Radical in

logical analysis of capital, Marx ist theory nonetheless m aintains an anthro

pological consensus with the options of Western rationalism in its defin itive
its

form acqu ired in e i g hteenth century bourgeo i s thought . "42 For B audri l lard,
bourge o i s rational ity-including the rational ist rhetoric of the Marx ists-was
the s o i l i n w h i c h capital fl ouri shed. I t was i m p o s s i b l e , according to th is

Chapter Three

1 02

interpretation, to make an effective rationalist critique of cap ital, because any

such critique must remain trapped w ithin the ethos of capital itself. S ince the
orthodox Left always carried out its critiques under the sign of bourgeo i s
rationality, Baudrillard a n d Debord found it unsurprising that the L e ft ended u p
reproducing t h e power relations inherent in capitalism. Yet B audri llard and the
S i tuationists would continue to h o l d out the hope that a radical movement
w h i c h did

not

re ly upon s u spect categories of subj ectivity, s c i ence, and

s e m i o t i c s m i ght actu a l ly e n a b l e a u n i qu e and effective new form of

revolutionary politics .
Th i s p o l itics was m eant to draw revo lutionary theory and revolutionary
practice together, for perhaps the first time in h i story . Debord went so far as to
insist that "the very constitution and communication of a theory of thi s kind
cannot be conceived independently of a

rigorous practice. "43

The theoretically

informed practice envisioned by the S ituationists revo lved around a politics of

the gesture . Indeed, the concept of the gesture was part of the definition of
Situationism itself (though of course the S ituationists rej ected the idea that there
could ever be a doctrine called S ituationism ) . "The s ituation is . . . a unitary en
semble of behavior in time. It is composed of gestures contained in a transitory
decor. "44 These gestures m i ght be artistic or overtly political, satirical, or sub
versive. Above all, they were meant to be playfu l : "proletarian revolutions w i l l
be festivals or nothing, for festiv ity i s t h e very keynote of t h e l i fe they an
nounce.

Play

is the ultimate principle of the festival, and the only rules it can

recogni ze are to live w ithout dead time and to enj oy w ithout restraints ."45 The
S ituationist "p lay eth ic" was meant as an antidote for the quasi-Puritan work
eth ic endem ic to both capitalism and institutional commun ism . And the gestu
ral prax i s of the S ituationists was meant to take the revolution into the strange
and unexplored terrain of the symbol.
What would such a symbolic or gestural politics look like? "The critique of
the dominant language, the

detournement

of it, i s going to become a permanent

pract i c e of the new revolutionary theory ," pro c l a i m e d the " Preface to a
S ituat i o n i st D ictionary . "46 The concept of

detournement

would emerge

as

cornerstone of S ituationist theory and practice. The term, which is somewhat

difficult to render into English, refers to the practice of symbolically altering a
text or image so that its original meaning is radically subverted, or possibly
even reversed. As the events of May unfolded, for example, S ituationist s logans
began to appear in com ic strip "bubbles" which were inscribed upon the artistic
masterpieces which lined the halls of the Sorbonne. This was certain ly a way for
the revo lutionaries to chal lenge the cultural authority of a mainstream artistic
discourse . But on a deeper level,

Situationist detournement

was also a bas ic re

fusal of the term s and concepts of modem political economy . W ith its defiant

The G i ft of Postmodem Anarchism

1 03

ins istence that the symbo lic-a category which capitalism rendered invisible a
very long time ago-was to be placed back on the cultural agenda at long last,
this unique practice served as a fascinating challenge to modem semiocracy.
The gestural politics of S ituationist

detournement was part of a larger anti

semiotic strategy which was deployed with remarkable effect during the days of
May . This strategy involved the creation of graffiti, which was often composed
or at least inspired by the Situationists . During the events of May, the walls of
Paris experienced a veritable eruption of symbo lic discourse. These vibrant revo
lutionary declarations boldly asserted the return of the symbol . Worse sti l l (as
far as capital and the Gaullist state were concerned), they dec lared the return of
the gift. It took almost no time at all for the specter of the gift to break through
the surface of what Debord had called the s pectacu lar-commodity economy.
Looking back on May 1 96 8 during the early seventies, B audri llard would con
c lude that "the real revolutionary media during May were the walls and their
speech, the s i lk-screen posters and the hand-painted notices, the street where
speech began and was exchanged-everything that was an

immediate inscription,

given and return ed, spoken and answered, mobile in the same space and time,
reciprocal and antagon istic."47 Here we have graffiti as a rec iprocal gift, given
and returned, but the graffiti o f May also opened up the even more radical
specter o f the gift without retu rn . Th is specter would allow B audri l lard to
conclude even as late

as

1 97 6 that "the catastrophic s ituation opened up by May

' 6 8 is not over."48 The walls of May 1 96 8 enabled an " insurrection of signs"

which would continue to haunt the system for m any years to come. Th is
ghostly insurrection would gain increasing importance as the West gradually
m oved into its postindustrial phase, because in this new social and econom ic
configuration, "the system can do w ithout the industrial, productive city . . . it
cannot, however, do w ithout the urban as the space-time o f the code of
reproduction, for the central ity of the code is the definition o f power itself.
Whatever attacks contemporary semiocracy . . . is therefore politically essential :
graffiti for exam p l e . "49 The postindustrial or postmodern revo lution thus
revolves not around the class struggle, but around the conflict between symbol
and semiotic. Antisem iotic graffiti-which "cannot be caught by any organized
discourse," which "resist[s] every interpretation and every connotation, no longer
denoting anyone or anything"50-is an important symbolic strategy which may
be deployed against semiotic power. For B audri llard, this strategy is absolutely
crucial in the struggle against capital and the state, because "all the repressive
and reductive strategies of power systems are already present in the internal logic
of the sign, as w e l l as those of exchange value and pol itical economy . On ly
total revolution, theoretical and practical, can restore the symbolic in the dem ise
of the sign and of value. Even s igns must burn . " 5 1 It is through the language of

1 04

C hapter Three

s i gns that power manifests itself in soci ety . Certainly we are governed by the
state and by capital-but t h e s e i n s t itutions govern us through s e m i ot i c
exchange. I t is th erefore a t t h e level of symbolic exchange that such institutions
must be chal lenged, and what fascinated B audri llard about the 1 96 8 revo lution
was that it represented a first attempt (sti l l qu ite incomp lete, to be sure) to
develop this type of symbo lic challenge.
B audri llard would later write that "May ' 6 8 . . . was not an offensive action
(power would win that batt le hands down), but a defensive s imu lation , which is
to rob power of its own secret (precisely that it doesn ' t ex ist) and so to le ave it
defe n s e l e s s before its own enorm ity . " 52 The s ign ificance of M ay 1 96 8 for
B audr i l l ard, then, was threefo l d : first, it boldly announced the long-awaited re
turn of the symbo l i c . Second, it deliberate ly refused the politics of the real, rec
ognizing that such p o l itics always succeed only in reinscribing power. Third,
the events of M ay i n i t i ated a new m ode of the political-or, as B audril lard
w o u l d later call it, the "transp o l itical . " After 1 96 8 , B audri l lard would move
c loser and c loser to a " hyperreal" p o l itics, a p o l itics of s imulat i o n . In 1 97 5 ,
Mark Poster suggested that Baudri l lard w a s l e ft "w ith only a n empty invocation
for a spontaneous overthrow of the code a I a May , 1 96 8 . "53 But th is emptiness
was precisely what B audril lard had in m ind. The revolution w ith dialectical con
tent had fai l e d . What remained to be attempted was the revolution of the void,
the revolution that burns all s ign s , the revolution th at deliberate ly and consis
tently pos itions its elf outs ide the rea l . For B audrillard, the revolution of 1 96 8
w a s encouraging prec isely because i t was empty , because it began and ended
w ith revolutionary s l ogans which have long since been painted over. By refus
ing to build lasting revoluti onary institutions, the revolutionaries of May thus
avo i ded the p i tfa l l s of the Len i n i st vanguard . As A lain Touraine has astute ly
observed, "the battle [of M ay 1 96 8 ] w as not fought in the name of social inter
ests, but in the name of anti-power. It was only a beginning . . . . The May
Movement had no tom orrow; but it w i l l have a future . "54 The later work of Jean
B audrillard provides us w ith a conven ient way to chart that future .

Postmodern Anarchism Today :

The P o litics o f S i m ulation
During the seventies, B audrillard ' s work showed a confidence and optim ism re
gard ing the revolutionary poss i b i l ities of the radical m om ent which began in
M ay 1 96 8 . However, in the course of the fo l lowing decade, B audrillard would
gradual ly begin to lose that optim ism . I n this he was probably not alone; the era
of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher w as hardly fertile ground for the radi-

The G i ft of Postmodem Anarchism

1 05

cal imagination. Today Baudri llard often asserts th at "one can no longer find a
subvers ive position . Noth ing corresponds to it."55 B audri llard seems to feel that
a serious shift has taken place in pol itical culture, and that the sixties are over.
He makes th i s clear i n The Ecstasy of Comm un ication, a summary of h i s
previous work prepared during t h e e ighties a s the habilitation for his doctoral
degree at the Sorbonne . Here B audri llard is quite ins istent about the radical pos
s i b i l ities of his earlier thought: "the transgression of the code is the reversion of
opposite term s , and therefore of the calculated differences through which the
dominance of one term is estab l ished. The ' symbolic' is the figure of th is rever
s ion, and by the same token the figure of any possible revolution : ' The revo lu
tion w i l l be symbolic or w i l l not be at all. "'56 Baudri llard identifies the antago
n ism between pol itical economy and potlatch as part of a "double spiral" which
m oves from The System of Objects through Fatal Strategies-which i s to say,
through the bulk of his work . 57 And yet he seems to feel that today , the " dream
of transgress ion" which emerged from his radical reading of Bata i lle has been
lost. 58
But i f th is is real ly B audri llard ' s position, then why does he conti nue t o
speak of subvers ion? Wh ile he d i s m i s s e s rad ical pol itics in some interv iews,
Baudri llard asserts in others that he has "som eth ing of an inheritance from the
S ituation ists, from B atai lle, and so on."59 Baudri llard perhaps refuses to speak
about politics or revolution not because these issues no longer interest him, but
because he has realized that speaking about these things w i l l not bring about any
m e an ingful change . More accurately, we should say that B audril lard no longer
speaks of real politics or real revo lution, as he sometimes did i n the sixties and
early seventies, because he understands now that the kind of revo lution he wants
to bring about cannot happen within the real. Postmodem anarchism must re
volve instead around the politics of simu lation . We have seen that even in his
early works, Baudri llard was already beginning to move away from "real" revo
lutionary practice and toward symbolic practice. In h i s later works , Baudrillard
continues along this traj ectory, deve loping a politics of simu lation, a pol itics of
the hyperreal.
The pol itical status of simulation and hyperreal ity is perhaps not read ily
apparent, but it is fairly clear that there is someth ing radical about these cate
g ories . Today "we are s imu lators, we are simu lacra (not in the classical sense of
' appearance ' ), we are concave m i rrors radiated by the social, a radiation w itho ut
a light source, power w ithout origin, w ithout distance, and it is in this tactical
universe of the simulacrum that one will need to fight-w ithout hope, hope is a
weak value, but in defiance and fas c ination . "60 If Baudri llard ' s pessim ism were
tota l , there w o u l d certa inly be no re as on to call for this tactical fight, and th e
demand for defiance wou ld b e incoherent. H e would b e unl ikely to assert,

as

he

Chapter Three

1 06
does in

Simulacra and Simulation, that "capital, in fact, was never linked by a

contract to the society that it dom inates. It is a sorcery of social relations, it is a

challenge to society, and it must be responded to as such. It is not a scandal to

be denounced according to moral or economic rationality, but a chal lenge to take
up according to symbolic law . "61 Here Baudri llard still sounds very much like a
postmodern anarchist, preparing to wage symbolic war on capitalism . Such an
all-out attack on capital would be quixotic at best, if it positioned itself w ithin
the real . But Baudri llard ' s argument is of a different order: "Political Economy
is coming to an end before our eyes, metamorphosing into a transeconom ics of
speculation which m erely

plays at obeying the old logic . . . so Political

Economy w i ll indeed soon have com e to an end-though not at all in the way
we once envisaged: rather, through the exacerbation of its own logic to the point
of self-parody . "62 The modem radical plans, organizes, launches a revolution of
the real-and fai l s every t i m e . The postm o dern anarchist mocks capital,
cheerfully exposing its Achilles' heel by po inting out that political economy is

already dead, and that we need not fear its pathetic corpse.63 Th is strategic
impulse enables B audril lard to assert that "w hereas dialectical thought and
critical thought are part of the field of exchange-in c luding, poss ibly, m arket
exchange-radical thought situates itself in the zone of impossible exchange, of
non-equivalence, of the unintelligible, the undecidab l e . "64 It is, I think, quite
sign i fi c ant that B audri llard distinguishes dialectical Marxism from "radical
thought ." Th is suggests that he is still able to locate a radical pol itical option,
even today . We m ay also infer from this that, whereas Marxism seems
perpetual ly unable to get outside the exchange principles of bourgeois political
economy, a nondialectical form of radical thought m ight be able to do so.
I would thus contest Douglas Kellner ' s assertion that "the pol itical upshot
of [Baudri llard ' s] analysis seems to be that everyth ing in the system is subj ect
to cybernetic control, and that what appear to be oppositional, outside, or threat
ening to the system are really functional parts of a society of simulations, mere
' alibis' which only further enhance social control . "65 To be sure, "the system" is
an om inous and pervasive presence in Baudri llard ' s later work, and simulation
often does serve the interests of power, e . g . , through advertising. But resistance
is quite possible in this hyperreal world. In h i s most recent work,

The Vital

Illusion, Baudri l lard goes so far as to suggest that within the mode of simula
tion, subversion is actually automatic and unavoidable; indeed, he argues that
such subversion is l ikely to grow out of the system itself. "This is what I call
obj e ctive irony : there is a strong possibil ity, verging on a certainty, that sys
tems w i l l be undone by their own systematic ity. This is true not only for tech
nical structures, but for human ones as w e l l . The more these po l itical, social,
economic systems advance toward their own perfection, the m ore they decon-

The G i ft of Postmodem Anarchism

1 07

struct themselves . "66 Thus the systems of cybernetic control which seem so un
stoppab le to Douglas Kel lner m ight actually contain the seeds of their own de
struct i o n . At first glance t h i s m ight seem s i m i lar to Marx ' s claim that by
c a l l i n g the pro letariat into e x i stence, the bourgeo i s i e was u n w i tt i n g ly
guaranteeing its own destruction, but B audril lard ' s argument is actually of a
different order. Marx did not account for the ways in wh ich class relations might
m utate to m ake possible postindustri al " late capitalism " or total itarian state
commun ism . B audri l lard ' s analy s i s , on the other hand, attacks systems

general,

in

at the deepest structural and symbo l i c level of the i r "systematic ity ."

For Baudri llard, then, "this is th e weakness of our h istorical radicality . A l l the
phi losophies of change, the revolutionary , n i h i l istic, futurist utop ias, all th is
poetics of subvers ion and transgress ion so characteristic of m odern ity , w i l l
appear naive when compared w ith the inab i l ity and natural revers i b i l ity of the
world. "67 This is a rad ical hypothesis which looks very much l ike the princ iple
of entropy : all systems contain at least the potential for rad ical dis order, and no
system , no m atter how oppressive it m ay appear to be, is immune from the
system crash .
Thus s i m u l at i on does not by any means imply p o l i t ical hopelessness . In
B audri llard ' s m ore recent work, the death of the real shades gradua l ly into t he

m urder

of the real, a k i n d of " perfect crime." To be sure, " from our rational

point of v i ew, th is may appear rather desperate and could even justify something
like pes s im ism. B ut from the point of view of s ingularity , of alterity , of secret
and seduction, it i s , on the contrary, our only chance: our last chance. In th is
sense, the Perfect Crime is an hypothesis of radi ant optim ism ."68 I would there
fore suggest that the death of the real in B audri llard ' s writing is s i m ilar in status
to the death of God in N i etzsch e ' s work (th e l atter death having been,
B audri l l ard suggests , "resolved by s im u l ation. "69) B oth deaths make possible
two d i fferent varieties of n i h i l i s m : one that is deb i l itating, and another that is
affirmative. Critics such as Ke l lner see only the former in B audri l lard ' s work,
but Kellner ' s line of interpretation ignores B audr i l lard ' s equally important affir
mative n i h i lism. As Baudrillard exp lains in

Paroxysm:

What I do i s more of a thought experiment which tries to explore an un

known field by other rules. This doesn 't mean it's "nihil istic" i n the sense
i n which nihil ism means there are no longer any values, no longer any real
ity, but only signs : the accusation of nihil ism and i mposture always relates
to that point. But if you take nihilism in the strong sense, the sense of a
nothing-based thinking, a thinking which m ight start out from the axiom
" w hy is t h ere n o t h i ng rath er than s o m e t h i n g ? "-overturn i n g the
fundamental phi losophical question, the question of being: "why is there

Chapter Three

1 08

something rath er than no th i ng ?"-then

I d o n ' t m i n d being c a l l ed a

n i h i l i s t . 70

This variety of n ihilism hardly implies a descent into apol itical cyn icism. It is,
on the contrary , a bold and radical phi losophical chal lenge . B audri llard ' s affrr
m ative n ihilism is in fact a weapon which he s kil lfu l ly w i e l ds against the di
alectic and all forms of modem pol itical phi losophy .
Sadie P lant accurately n otes the presence of this affirm ative n i h i l ism in
B au dri llard ' s work, yet m isses the radical politics implied by it: "the world of
hyperreality and simu lation is recorded and celebrated, and the pos s i b i l ity of
m aking any sort of pol itical intervention is happi ly dismissed . " 7 1 But in fact it
seems quite possible that s i mulation m ight underwrite some kind of res i stance
or subvers i o n . It is the awareness of this pos s i b i l ity, perhaps , that encourages
Baudrillard to argue that " in effect, we need a symbolic violence more powerful
than any pol itical violence . "72 As for the pol itical valence of this new violence,
Baudri l l ard describes it as "worse" than anarchistic/3 but this surely depends on
one ' s point of view . To be sure , it is worse than conventional an arch ism from
the perspe ctives of capital and the state, s ince it is far m ore radical in its
" systematic destabi l i zation. "74 But from another point of view, the new violence
is perhaps better than ortho dox anarch i st violence, in that the former i s a
" s ingularity which stands opposed to real violence. "75 What Baudrillard is talk
ing about i s a theoretical, analytic, interpreti ve violence, a violence of thought
rather than deed, a violence which cheerfu lly murders concepts, ideas and semi
otic structures . He ins ists that th is "violence of interpretation" is a pos itive phe
nomenon . 76
There is a tremendous irony at work here. Human ists would certainly be re
l i eved to learn that B audr i l l ard' s interpretive violence harm s no actual human
beings . And yet his violence certainly does announce the death of the modern
human i st concept of subj ectivity . In his later work, Baudrillard ' s antihumanism
blossoms fully: "the subj ect, the metaphysics of the subj ect, was beautiful only
in its arrogant glory , in its capri ce, in its inexhaustible w i l l to power, in its
tran scendence as the subj ect of power, the subj ect of h istory, or in the dra
maturgy of its al ienation . Finished w ith all that, it is now only a m i serable car
cas s . "77 This line of thinking has generated some of the harshest criticisms of
B audri llard ' s work. Kel lner goes so far as to assert that B audrillard ' s renuncia
tion of C artes ian subjectivity " i s equivalent to renouncing all possibility of an
effective intervention in the world. "78 Here Kel lner is quite wrong. There is ab
so lutely no reason to assume that pol itical intervention requires an autonomous
Cartesian s ubj e ct. I n dee d, i t s ee ms qu ite pos s i b l e that th e renunc iation of ortho
dox concepts of subj ectivity m arks not the end but the beginning of meaningful

The Gift of Postmodem Anarchism

1 09

po litics. Rather than produc ing political freedom, Cartesian human ism has in
stead g iven us the explo itation of nineteenth-century industrial capitalism, the
bureaucratic repression of the twentieth-century welfare state, and-in the c lever
disguise o f the proletarian subject-the gulag. G iven the repeated fai lures of all
human ist politics to achieve the ir stated emancipatory goals, the suggest ion that
we shou ld abandon the humanist proj ect altogether hardly seems outrageou s .
"Hasn ' t liberation, i n all its forms , been both t h e accomplishment of, and the fi
nal blow to, liberty?" Baudr i l l ard demands. "Th i s is the whole problem of
m odemity . 'm
The move away from humanism is therefore politically crucial. In terms of
international politics, it allows us to postulate the Third World as an alternative
to the global "new world order." Baudrillard assures us that "the future lies w ith
the adolescent societies which w i l l not have taken the route through economics
and politics, but c an cope very well with the technological w ithout burden ing
themselves w ith all these-hum an i st and rational-h istorical categories.''80 In
the West, the humanist subj e ct-Cartesian, economic, or revolution ary-is
replaced by "the masses. " In a typ i c a ll y controvers ial move, Baudri llard takes a
category which is generally thought to have conservative pol itical implications
(Richard Nixon ' s " s i lent m aj ority") and radical izes it: "the m asses have no
history to write . . . their strength is

actual,

in the present, and sufficient unto

itself. It consists in their s i lence, in their capacity to absorb and neutralize,

already superior to any power acting upon the m . ''81 The masses stand in
B audrillard ' s w ork as a k ind of b lack hole, capable of consuming anyth ing,
inc luding power itself. The masses thus belong to the era o f simu lation ; as such
they are a hyperreal category, though as Baudri llard is careful to point out, this
doesn ' t m ean that they don ' t exist. Rather, "it means that

no longer possible.

their representation is

The m asses are no longer a referent because they no longer

belong to the order of representatio n .''82 This is a profoundly political statement,

because all m odern political orders rely upon some variety of representation .
Elected governments claim to represent the ir constituents ; the Leninist vanguard
claims to represent the proletariat. But w ith the death of the real, representation
becomes radically incoherent. To chal lenge power on its own level, the level of
the real, is a losing gam e . But to deny power the real ity of its representational
scheme is to issue it a very serious challenge: "the mass is at the same time the
death, the end o f this po litical process thought to rule over it.''83
The masses are thus by no m eans apolitical. Rather they are beyond poli
tics; in Baudril lard ' s term s, they are "transpo litical. "84 The category of the
transpolitical brings the project of postmodem anarchism into the era of simula
tion . Not s u rp r is in g ly Baudri llard ' s "transpolitics" has strong antistatist impli
,

cations. B audri l lard is attempting to unmask the state ' s deepest, m ost closely

Cha p ter Three

I I0

guarded secret : that its power is unreal, that the state exists only as s im u l ation .
This undem1 ines state authority in a radical way, by assaulting its most unques
t ioned assumptions : that there necessarily is a state, that the state necessarily

has power. "The S tate and political power sit atop all th is in a very, very fragile
position; they are, so to speak, like fi l igree-work upon a trans lucent society, l ike
a fiction woven from mu ltiple complicities."85
Consider, for example, how simulation reveals the unreal ity of the law. "No
more b l ack m agic of the forb idden, alienation and transgression, but the wh ite
m agic of ecstasy, fascinat ion, transparency . It ' s the end of the p athos of law .
There w i l l b e no Final Judgement. We ' ve passed beyond it w ithout realizing
i t . " 8 6 The j udgment w h i ch will not h appen is that of God, of course, whose
death h as already been proclaimed by N ietzsche. B ut it i s al so the j udgment of
the state, whose l aw is radically destab i l ized by hyperreality . " S im u l ation is in
fin itely more dangerous because it always leaves open to supposition that, above
and beyond its obj ect, lmv and order themselves m ight be nothing but s imula

tion . " 8 7 S imulation attacks the law where it is the most vulnerab l e : at the very
level of its existence . S im ul ation says of the law what must never be said if the
law is to continue function ing: that it is unreal; that it operates only because we
have not yet recognized or adm itted its unreal ity . Thi s is an attack on law at the
theoretical level, certainly, but B audri l l ard also believes that there are places in
the "real" world where the unreal nature of law and government h ave already be
come apparent. " Italy, for the most p art, lives in a state of j oyous s imu latio n .
There, l a w h a s already-and m aybe it always has-y ielded t o t h e game a n d the
rules of the gam e . "88 Why does B audrillard chose Italy-a society where gov
ernments fall like rain, where parl iam entary elections return Musso l in i ' s grand
daughter or a porno actress w ith apparent equanim ity-as h i s model of "j oyous
s i m ulation"? It seems unl ikely that this is a politically innocent choice. Rather,
B audril lard appears to be celebrating the postmodern instab i l i ty of Ital ian poli
tics, the ephemeral nature of l aw and government in Italy.
A simi lar phenomenon also emerges w ith the collapse of the Soviet Union

and its s atell ite states, as B audril lard ' s un ique interpretation of these events
makes clear.
The s p e ctac l e of those reg i m e s i m p l o d i ng w ith such ease o ught to make
W estern governme nts-or w h at i s left of t h e m-trem b l e , for they h ave
barely

any

more

e x i st e n c e than the

Eastern

ones.

In

1 968,

w e saw

govern m e nt authority col l a p s e al most w ithout v i o l e n ce, as i f conv i n ced of

its non-existence by the mere m i rror o f the crowds and the street. And the
i m ages wh i ch came to us from Prague an d B e r l i n were ' 6 8 - sty l e i m ages,
w ith the same atmosphere, the same face s . 8 9

The Gift of Postmodern Anarchism

I l l

Having been prematurely dism issed as a mere b l ip on the h istorical radar, May
1 9 6 8 returns some three dec ades later. Postmodern anarchism blossoms once

again in the televised, hyperreal streets of Eastern Europe and on the computer
bul letin boards which the new breed of Russian revolutionaries used to organ ize
their upri sing. Eschewing an order of the real which had g iven them noth ing but
Stalin ist repression, these new revolutionaries employed a strategy of simu la
tion : they s im p ly unmasked their governments, revealing the emptiness beh ind
a tota l itarian faade . And the w ithered corpse of Stalin ism van ished w ithout a
trac e . A l l of t h i s has very serious consequences for Western reg i m e s , as
B audr i l lard points out. " Th i s was, in a way, dying commun i sm ' s w itty parting
shot, s ince the quasi-voluntary destab i l i zation of the Eastern bloc, w ith the
complicity of its peoples, is also a destabilization of the West ."90 B audri llard ' s
reading o f the Eastern bloc ' s col lapse reveals a deeply transgressive secret : it

could happen here, just as easily as it did there. Th i s interpretation perhaps

helps to explain the m iserably fac i le rhetoric which the Western mass media
emp loys to describe events in the East. 9 1 Claims that these ben ighted Eastern
people have at last awoken to the v irtues of democracy and the "free market" are
patently absurd in the face of an impotent Russian government unable to rescue
its plummeting ruble or salvage its hemorrhaging economy . But these c laims do
help to re inscribe an ideological m ask which prevents us from seeing that the
hyperreal revolutions of the East could quite easi ly travel westward.
Indeed, in h i s book A merica, which first appeared in 1 9 8 6 , B audri llard
makes it quite c lear that subversive simu lation exists even in th is most thor
oughly statist of societies. Th is is true desp ite the fact that, as B audri llard is
carefu l to point out, the Un ited States has no meaningful radical or revolution
ary tradition in the European sense: "the social and philosophical n ineteenth cen

tury did not cross the Atlantic."92 Despite this sobering fact (or perhaps because
of it?), " everything we have dreamed of in the radical name of anti-culture, the
subvers ion of meaning, the destruction of reason and the end of representation,
that whole anti-utopia which unleashed so many theoretical and political, aes
thetic and soc ial convulsions in Europe, without ever actually becom ing a real
ity (May ' 6 8 is one of the last examples) has all been achieved here in America
in the simplest, most radical way ."93 Iron ically, it is America-vast bastion of
capital, postwar imperial power, land of conservative Hol lywood presidential
s imulations-that offers some of the most interesting possibil ities for postmod
em

anarch ism . Reagan ' s America may have perfected the simulation model of

power. B ut by turning s im u l ation loose in this way, America has perhaps un

witting ly employed what Baudri llard would call a fatal strategy . The unstop
pable spiral of sim ulation does indeed seem to consume all mean ing, and as it

1 12

Chapter Three

does so it puts to death the human i st subj ect along w ith th at subj e ct ' s
rationalist sem i otic practices. One need only think (as B audrillard does) of Las
Vegas : a perpetual-m otion machine w hich tran s forms desert into neon,
produc ing an uncontrol lable eruption o f symbolism and, in some strange and
iron ic w ay, a l iberation e ffect. Las Vegas (like D isneyland) is a s imu lation of
Am erica, and what these s imulations point to is
a liberation of all

effects,

some of them perfectly excessive and abject. But

this is precisely the point: the high point of l iberati on, its logical outcome,
is to be found in the s pectacular orgy, speed, the instantaneity of change,
general i zed eccentricity. Politics

frees itself in

the spectacle, in the all -out

advertis ing effect; sexual ity frees itself in al l its anom alies and perversions
. . . mores, customs, the body and language free themselves in the ever
94

qui ckening round of fashion.

America i s the land of pure s imulation, and it is also the moment of perfect re
vers i b i l i ty . As the rate of sym b o l i c exchange nears l ight speed i n the United
States, everything becomes possible: the most subversive effect, the most trans
gressive eccentricity . Postmodern anarchism was born in the Parisian streets of
May 1 968, and reborn at the Brandenburg G ate in October 1 990. But it reaches
its m aturity in the American desert.
In h is essay

In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, Baudrillard cautions

against the thesis of this chapter. "Banality, inertia, apoliticism used to be fas
cist; they are in the process of becom ing revolutionary-w ithout changing
meaning, w ithout ceasing to have mean in g . M icro-revolution o f banal ity,
transpolitics of desire-one more trick of the ' l iberation ists . ' The denial of
meaning has n o meaning. " 95 Yet there is, of course, no reason to privilege
B audri l l ard ' s interpretation o f the po litics o f s i m u l ation. The death o f the
human ist subject, after all, means the death of Baudrillard as wel l . If Baudrillard
can speak of the "May ' 6 8 effect," we can speak of the "Baudrillard effect," and
th i s e ffect is not neces sarily the one th at Baudr i l l ard h i m s e l f m ay have
env i s i o n e d . The p o l it i c s of s i m u l ation do not necessarily represent, as
Baudril l ard h imself perhaps believes, a break w ith the radical politics o f the
1 960s. Rather, Baudri llard ' s work of the past few decades constitutes-at least

in part-a continuation of radical gift theory and the revolutionary proj ect of the
S ituationists .
Far from promoting a disab l ing postmodern anesthes ia, then, s imu lation
theory can enab l e an extrem e ly radical p o l itics. Th is is not in any sense a

M arx i s t p o l i t i c s ;

Baudri l l ard ' s c r i t i q u e of dialectical reason ing makes that quite

c l ear. It i s , rather, a politics of postmodem anarc h i s m : anarc h i s t because it c on-

The G i ft of Postmodern Anarchism

1 13

tains a radical critique of cap italism and state power, postmodem because it ex
pands this critique into a generalized assault on humanism, sem iocracy, and all
forms of representation. Above all, Baudril lard' s thought attacks what he calls
the code, the general ized network of dom ination and control which is inscribed
in every part of our l ives. Baudri l lard ' s postmodem anarchism stems from a
recognition of the omn ipresence of th is semiotic code in the state, in consumer
society , in communist bureaucracy, and so on. His response is an attack on all
fronts . If the system is omn ipresent, then res istance must be as well. The resis
tance which B au dri llard proposes is radical, total , and perfectly well suited to
l i fe in the early twenty-first century . B audri llard would h ave us challenge the
reality of a system which holds its own ephemeral ity as its deepest secret. The
system rules us because we believe it can, and we believe it can because we
believe that it is real . Simulation theory po ints out that w ith the removal of a
single assumption, the entire world can be transformed in an instant. Television
sets m ay be switched off, or smashed. Hard drives crash. And even s igns must
bum .

N o tes
I.

Norris, What 's Wrong With Postmodernism, 1 9 1 .

2 . Lacan, Language of the Self 3 8 .

3 . Baudri l i ard, Forget Foucault, 1 2
4. Baudril l ard, Simulacra and Simulation, 2 .
5 . Kel l ner, Jean Baudrillard, 1 88 .
6.

Goldman, "Anarchism" i n Anarchism and Other Essays, 5 2 (emphasis added).

7 . Butler, Gender Trouble, xxi i i .

8 . Postmodern fem i n i sts are not, o f course, universal ly committed t o this strat
egy. Rosi Braidotti, for example, argues strongly in favor of a strategic ontological
essential ism. I n her view, "taking a priori an antiessentialist stand may be pol itically
right; nevertheless, it remains conceptual ly short-si ghted" (Nomadic Subjects, 1 8 5 ) .
I would argue, however, that for feminists a s for anarchists, pol itical concerns should
be given pri ority over conceptual ones.
9. Durkheim ' s own work is not, however, particularly radical. Consider, for ex
ample, his positive reflections on the division of l abor which is to be found in any
modern capitalist society : "the progress of individual personal ity and that of the
div i sion of l abor depend upon one and the same cause. It is thus impossible to de
sire one without desiring the other" (Durkheim, Division of Labor, 404-5). Equal ly
troubling is Durkheim ' s refusal to deal with the problem of the state. As Dominick
LaCapra has rightly pointed out, for Durkheim "the entire problem of the nature of

Chapter Three

1 14

government, which d i d n ot read i l y fit into the simple-complex schema of social

organizati on, was deprived of sociological significance" (LaCapra, Em ile Durkheim,
I 0 I ) . It thus seems unl ikely that D urkhei m 's thought could, by itself, contribute to

anyth i ng l i ke postmodern anarchism. The work of D urkhei m ' s radical student (and
nephew) Marcel Mauss does, however, open up this theoretical possibi l ity. (For more
on the pol itical d istinctions between D u rkheim and Mauss, see Gane, Radic a l

Sociology of Durkheim and Mauss, 1 3 9 ff. )

1 0. Mauss, The Gift, 69.
I I . Sah l ins, Stone Age Econom ics, 1 69 . Sah l i n s i s quite right to argue that

Mauss ' anthropology of the gift reveals a complex and sophisticated mode of social
and p o l itical o rganizat ion which is completely al ien to modern statist orders, and
which therefore represents a serious challenge to the hegemony of those orders .
However, the anarchism which Sah l ins recognizes in the gift is of a purely modernist
variety . Basing his interpretation strictly on a reading of The Gift, Sah l ins associates
the g i ft w i t h reason and progress, the t w i n p i l lars of E n l ightenment thought
(Sah l ins, Stone Age Economics, 1 75-76). Had he been able to sec how Baudril l ard ' s
theory o f symbol ic exchange would radicalize the idea o f t h e gift, Sah l ins might
h ave recognized that the gift ' s most important challenge is actual ly to the entire
structure of rational ist sem iotics which sustains modern states.
12.
13.
1 4.
1 5.

Mauss, The Gift, 3 5 .

1 6.
1 7.
1 8.
1 9.

Bataille, A ccursed Share, volume 1 , 28.

Bookchin, Ecology of Freedom, 7 1 .

Morris-S uzuki, "Capital ism i n the Computer Age," 63.
Barlow, " S e l ling Wine Without Bottles," 23 .
Ibid., 2 5 .
Batail le, Accursed Share, volumes 2 a n d 3, 1 6 0 .
Ibid., 1 63 .

2 0 . I n Postm odernism, Frederick Jameson refers t o symbolic exchange a s "the

Utopian moment of [Baudril lard' s] own view of h istory, whose name has been signif
icantly modified from Mauss" (234). Jameson goes on to note the important connec
tion between Baudril lard ' s idea of symbolic exchange and "Bata i l l e ' s anthropologi
cal celebration of excess, destruction and the potlatch" (Ibid., 235). Unfortunately,
all of this takes place within a brief parenthetical remark; Jameson does not explore
the ful l pol itical and theoretical implications of the gift and symbolic exchange .
2 1 . Baudril l ard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, I .
22. I b i d .
23. Ibid., 37.
24. Ibid., 35.
25. Bookchin, &ology of Freedom, 1 3 6 .
2 6 . Baudri llard, Sym bolic Exc h a nge and Death. 3 6 .

1 15

The Gift of Postmodern Anarchism

27.
28.
29.
30.

Ibid., 4 1 .
Ibid.,

36.

Ibid., 4 1 .
Ibid.,

34.
Lipstick Traces, 426-27.

3 1 . Marcus,

32.

Knabb,

Situationist International Anthology, 225;

Marcus,

Lipstick Traces,

42 8 .
33.

Baudr i l l ard,

34.
3 5.
36.
37.
38.
39.

Knabb,

Situationist International Anthology, 1 5 0 .

Ibid., 72.
Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, 44.
Knabb, Situationist International Anthology, I 0 8 .
Vienet, Enrages and Situationists, 8 2 .
Bookchin, Toward a n Ecological Society, 1 68 .

40.

Knabb,

41.
42.
43 .
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.

Debord,

Society of the Spectacle, 5 3 .

Baudri l l ard, Mirror of Production, 3 2 .
Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1 43 .
Knabb, Situationist International A nthology, 4 3 .
I b i d . , 337.
Knabb, Situationist International Anthology, 1 70 .
B audri l l ard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, 1 76 .
B audri l l ard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, 3 4 .

49.
50.

Ibid.,

Baudrillard Live, 20.

Situationist International Anthology, 1 5 9 .

78.

Ibid.

5 1 . Baudri l lard,
B audri l l ard,

For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, 1 63 .

52.
53.

Poster, introduction t o Baudri l l ard,

54.

Touraine,

55.
56.
57.

Baudri l l ard,

79.

The Mirror of Production. 1 5 .

The May Movement, 63.

Baudril lard,
Ibid.,

Fatal Strategies, 80.

Baudril/ard Live, 6 5 .
Ecstasy of Communication, 7 8 .

I t i s this symb o l i c spiral which is, according t o Baudri l l ard, mi ss

ing fro m F o u c au l t ' s work, and t h i s perhaps m o t i v ates

hostility toward Foucau lt. See B audri l l ard,

58.
59.
60.

Ibid.,

Baudri l l ard,

6 1 . Ibid.,

62.

80.

Baudri l l ard,

Baudrillard Live, 1 68 .
Simulacra and Simulation, 1 5 2 .

15.

Baudri l l ard,

Transparency of Evil,

some o f Baudri l l ard ' s

Forget Foucault, 1 6.

35.

Chapter Three

I I6

63 . This strategy can also be deployed against the d iscourse which surrounds
the sexual subject, as Baudri l l ard makes clear i n

Se du c t i o n :

" Sexual ity as a dis

course is, l i ke pol itical economy (and every other discursive system), only a mon
tage or simulacrum which has always been traversed, thwarted and exceeded by ac
tual practice. The coherence and transparency of

h o m o sexua lis

tence than the coherence and transparency of homo

econom ic us"

64. Baudri llard,

6 5 . Kel l ner,

Paroxysm, 3 5 .

Jean Baudrillard,

82 .

66. Baudri l l ard,

The Vital Illusion,

6 7 . Baudri llard,

The Perfect Crime,

I 0.

6 8 . Baudri llard,

The Vital Illusion,

80-8 1 .

69. Baudrillard,

The Perfect Crime,

5.

7 0 . Baudri llard,

Paroxysm, 3 4 .

7 1 . Plant,

78.

The Most Radical Gesture,

7 2 . Baudri llard,

Forget Foucault, 5 8 .

73 . Baudri llard,
74. I b i d .
7 5 . Ibid., 67.
76. Ibid., 69.

Paroxysm,

7 7 . Baudri l lard,

Fatal Strategies,

7 8 . Kel l ner,

I 54.

66.

Jean Baudrillard,

79. Baudri llard,

has no more exis

( 4I ).

I I 2.

I 63 .

Paroxysm, 5 0 .

80. I b i d . , I 6.
8 I . Baudri llard,

In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities,

3.

82. Ibid., 20.

8 3 . Ibid., 23 .
84. Ibid., 39.
8 5 . Baudri l l ard,

Paroxysm,

63 .

86. Baudri llard,

Fatal Strategies, 7 I .

8 7 . Baudril l ard,

Sim ulacra and Sim u lation,

8 8 . Baudri l lard,

Fatal Strategies, 7 6 .

89. Baudri l l ard,

Illusion of the End, 3 8 .

90. I b i d .
9 1 . See Stephen F . Cohen,

20.

Failed Crusade: A m erica a n d t h e Tragedy of Post-

5 ff.
92 . Baudri llard, A merica, 90.

Communist Russia,

93. Ibid., 97.

94. Ibid. , 96.
9 5 . Baudri l l ard,

In t h e Shadow of the Silent Majorities, 40.

Chapter Four
An archy in the Matrix :
William Gibson and
Bruce Sterling
It is becom ing increas ingly evident that anarch ist politics cannot afford to re
m a i n w i thin the m odern world. The p o l i ti c s of Proudhon, B aku n i n , and
Kropotkin-v ibrant an d mean i ngful, perhaps, to their nineteenth-century audi
ences-have become dangerous ly inaccess ible to late twentieth-century readers .
As we have seen, conventional anarch ist politics retains too much of what it
criticizes . G uy Debord said it best: "the revo lutionary point of view, so long as
it pers ists in espousing the notion that history in the present period can be mas
tered by means of sc ientific knowledge, has failed to rid itself of all its bour
geois traits . " 1 It seem s that the thinking which revolves around rational sem i
otics and the "sc iences of m an" implic itly serve s capital and the state. As long
as anarch ists continue to dep loy th is suspect th inking, it is extremely unl ikely
that they w i l l be ab le to develop a revolutionary theory or praxis which w i l l
provide meaningful challenges e ither to cap ital ism or to t h e state apparatus
which sanctions that econom ic system.
Fortunate ly, we have also seen that the s ituation i s not hopeless . I have
been argu ing that postmodem anarchism stands as an important alternative to
the prob lematically rationalist and humanist anarchism of the n ineteenth cen
tury . Th is new form of anarchist politics is meant to elude troubling difficulties

of classical anarch ism, such as the disturbing re liance upon instrumental ratio
nality, or the stubborn attachment to an implicitly C artes ian concept of hum an
subj ectivity (a concept which has consistently failed to produce any mean ingful
h u m an

l i b er a t i o n

s in c e

it

was

fi rst

deployed

during the

E u rope an

En l ightenm ent) . The postm odern anarchist views capital ism and statism not as
causes but as effects, not as diseases but as symptoms . Postmodern anarchism

Chapter Four

1 18

challenges an entire psychology and an entire sem iotic structure which under
write the dom inant system of political economy . Such an anarchism seeks to
underm ine the very theoretical foundations of the capital ist economic order and
all associated statist pol itics . Nietzsche ' s anarchy of becoming, Foucault' s anti
human ist m icropolitics, Debord ' s critique of the spectacle, Baudrillard ' s theory
of s imulation, Lyotard ' s " incredulity toward metanarratives" and Deleuze ' s rhi
zomatic nomad th inking all contribute to this proj ect.
But this is not a project which remains w ith in the safe and comfortable con
fines o f the academy . A very common complaint about postmodem thinking is
that it is too inaccessible and too remote, that its strangely sp iral ing language
and deliberate ly opaque style render it utterly incomprehensible to all but the
m ost dedicated academic man darins . This criticism is, unfortunate ly, qu ite valid
in the case of philosophical French postmodern ism . As Rosi Braidotti has cor
rectly pointed out, the reliance upon radical "high theory" causes some disturb
ing po l itical problem s . She argues that "the radical subvers ion of phallogocen
trism . . . cannot . . . result in the revalorization o f the d iscourse of ' h igh
theory ' a n d e s p e c i a l ly o f ph i l osophy. This would be only another way to

reassert the m astery o f the very discourse that fem in ism claims to deconstruct."2
Fortunately, however, there is another strain of postmodem anarchism which
does not suffer from these shortcom ings . Perhaps surprisingly, the same themes
wh ich the French postmodemists develop for a strictly academic audience appear
also in a genre of Anglo-American science fiction wh ich has become known in
literary circles as cyberpunk. The two most prom inent practitioners of this genre
are W i l l iam G ibson and Bruce Sterling. Cyberpunk in general, and the work of
Sterling and G ibson in particular, is concerned w ith articulating a new concep
tion of space, one which does not rely upon the phys icality characteristic of the
rational Cartes ian univers e . Th is is the virtual world of the computer network .
B audri l l ard would call it a simulated world and Deleuze would call it rhi
zomati c, but G i bson was the first to call it cyberspace . Cyberpunk s imulta
neously develops a new concept of human subj ectivity which is profoundly dif
ferent from the conventional Cartes ian mode l . Th is new subj ectivity merges
human consciousness w ith machine-m inds, produc ing a strange bioelectron ic
hybrid which Donna Haraway and others have dubbed the cyborg. The cyborgs
of postmodem science fiction avoid the traps of bourgeois, subj ect-centered ra
tionality by developing new ways of thinking about subjectivity . And these new
ways of thinking are profoundly

political

in their implications . Cyberpunk takes

as its critical targets not only capitalism and the state but also the humanistic
form s of ra ti ona l i ty and sem iotics which support these institutions, as well as
the discipl inary regimes upon which capital ist pol itical economy rel i e s . What ' s
more, cyberpunk develops important strategies of res istance, articulating a kind

Anarchy in the Matrix

1 19

of subvers ive, gestural m icropol itics which operates on a symbolic terrain quite
fam i l i ar to postm odem ists like Debord and Baudr i l l ard. The cyberpunks de
scribe, in short, a theory and a practice of postmodem anarchism, and they do so
in a language far more accessible to the ordinary reader than that of De leuze or
Lyotard . The novels and stories of the cyberpunk m ovement are therefore of far
m ore than l iterary interest, for they point out that contemporary popular culture
does indeed exh ibit a very serious concern for profoundly new form s of radical
p o l it i c s .

Cyberspatial Anarchy
One could argue that the concept of cyberspace develops not only in response to
the increas ing omnipresence of computer networks but also out o f a certain
strain of French pol itical thinking which goes back to the 1 960s. In that turbu
lent but hopeful decade, as we know, members o f the S ituation ist International
began to argue (against an increasingly fos s i l ized orthodox M arx i sm) that the
forces of power and dom ination were not to be found exclusively w ithin the
"real world" of the econom ic infrastructure . The S ituationists pointed out that as
the institutions of mass media increased their presence throughout the world,
questions of power would increasingly come to concern not the circulation of
capital but the c i rculation of image s . Guy Debord ' s

Society of the Spectacle

is

the most famous expression of this S ituation ist critique. For Debord, "in all its
specific manifestations-news or propaganda, advertis ing or the actual consump
tion of entertainment-the spectacle epitomizes the prevail ing model of social
l i fe . "3 A s television sets colonized liv ing rooms from Paris to Los Angeles, the
importance of Debord ' s critique became apparent: the spectacle, understood as
the social and cultural structure produced by a vast and reactionary accumulation
of images, h ad clearly become a major form of pol itical control in the late twen
t ieth century . When revolution broke out in Paris and other maj or c ities around
the w orld during May 1 96 8 , the tyranny of the spectacle received its first maj or
challenge on the field of actual symbolic practice. Refusing the seductions of the
Len i n ist vanguard, the revolutionaries of May adopted instead a symbol i c m i
cropolitics. They took res istance down to what Foucault would cal l the capil lary
leve l, chal lenging not only capital and the state but all the m i croscopic forms of
power which infest modem l i fe. The revolutionaries of May identified as their
enemy not any particular political or econom ic system, but rather the semiotics
o f the spectac le in general. To combat this new enemy, they used graffiti as a
s y m bo l ic weapon, developed new concepts of und i s c i p l i n e d t im e , and

1 20

Ch apter Four

chal lenged consumerism by throw ing rocks through store w indows but leaving
the commod ities within untouched .4
Deeply influenced by D ebord and S ituationism, Jean B audri l lard would
continue to theorize a world in which images are far m ore c u lturally s ignificant
than any concrete "real ity ." B ut B audri l l ard would go beyond even Debord ' s
rad i c a l critique of the spectac le, deve l o p i n g something stranger st i l l . For
Debord-sti l l h aunted, despite all h is rhetoric to the contrary, by the ghosts of
M arx and m od e rn i sm-the spectac le m a s ked some underlying nature . For
B audri l l ard, however, this i s c learly not the case . "Today everyday p o l itical,
s o c i a l , h i s t o r i c a l , e c o n o m i c , etc . , rea l ity , h a s a l ready i n c orporated the
hyperrealist dimension of s im u l ation," B audri l l ard tells us, "so that we are now
l i v i n g entirely w it h i n the ' aesthet i c ' h a l l u c i n at i o n o f re a l ity . " 5 A n d here
B audri l l ard articu lates perfectly w h at the cyberpunk writers describe as the
present and future condition of our "w ired" world. Case, the protagonist of
G ibson ' s seminal cyberpunk nove l Neurom ancer, spent his time "j acked into a
custom cyberspace deck that proj ected h i s d isembodied consciousness into the
consensual h a l l u c ination that was the m atrix. "6 W hether the halluc ination in
question i s aesthetic or consensu al-and in a l l l ik e l ihood, it ' s b oth-the
message is clear. For both B audril lard and G i bson (and to a lesser extent, for
Debord and the S ituat i o n i sts), we now l ive in a u n i verse w here rea l ity is a
m atter of opinion . The real-a category of some importance in the n i neteenth
century industrial world-does not have the mean ing it once d i d . The average
c itizen of a postindustrial society spends a great deal of time "j acked in" to this
h a l l u c i n atory e l ectron ic env ironment, rec e i v i n g i m ages and s ig n a l s e ither
p ass ively from television, or m ore active ly through the Internet.
One hardly requires G ibson ' s eerie predictive powers to anticipate that these
trends are l i kely to continue to the point where an entire virtual world may soon
be constructed . Lacking any meaningful physical real ity, this s i m u l ated world
could nonethe less become the s ite for important social, econom ic, and political
act ivity , as Case demonstrates when he emp loys the e lectronic matrix to chal
lenge the dom inance of the Tess ier-Ashpool corporation. Here G ibson is closer
to B audri l l ard than to Debord. For Debord, the spectac le is a purely negative
category . As I argued in chapter 3, however, Baudri l lard ' s radicalized simu lation
theory opens up the possib i l ity that simu lation may be put to subversive uses .
The figure of Case, the quasi-crim inal cyberspace cowboy, shows us the rad ical
potent ial of s im u l ation politics. C ase is a marginal figure, what Deleuze would
call a nomad. H e is someone who lives on the fringes of the dominant social
sem iotic order, and he uses his position to chal lenge that order. Though Case at
first navigates cyberspace m ainly for personal gain , he also derives a certain
thri l l s imply from challenging corporate power-and eventually, at the c l im ax

Anarchy in the Matrix

121

of Neuromancer, he uses his s imulated powers simply to make the world more
interesting . "I got no idea at all what' ll happen if Wintermute w ins, but it' ll
change someth i n g ! " Case ass erts as he he lps an artificial intell igence called

Wintermute attain a new level of sentience.7 And here Case sounds like qu ite the
S ituationist, dep loying symbolic violence against the tedium of contem porary
life .
N o r is Case the only neo-S ituationist in Gibson ' s text. W e must also men
tion in this context the Panther Modem s . Part B l ack Panther, part Situati onist,
part Merry Prankster, the iron ically named Modems articulate an aggress ive,
violent gestural politics which would have been quite at home on the streets of
Paris during May 1 96 8 . "The Modems ," G ibson te lls us, "were mercenaries,
pract i c a l j okers , n i h i l is t i c technofet i s h i s ts . " 8 But the ir particular brand of
technological n i h i l ism has a defin ite political agenda. "The Panther Modems
differ from other terrorists prec isely in their degree of self-consciousness," says a
socio logist in Gibson ' s novel, " i n the ir awareness of the extent to which media
di vorce the act of terrorism from the original sociopolitical intent. " 9 The proj ect
of the Moderns, then, is to recom b i n e terror and politics. The Moderns d i s

tribute psychoactive drugs and media m is i n form ation in an atte m pt t o create

what Debord would call s i tuati ons, manipulating images and data in a soph is
ticated way to produce a he ightened countercu ltural awareness. They are revo lu
tionaries for a postmodern world, and although their pol itical pract ice does con
tain a real component, much of what they do happens on the virtual terrain of
image, media and matrix.
Neuromancer, the first maj or novel to explore the concept of cyberspace, is

unable to escape entirely from the conventional Cartes ian model of spatial re la
tions . A lthough Neuromancer' s matrix is a good example of a purely simulated
world, G i bson does seem to reta in here a certa in nostalgia for the l inear.
Cartesian space is a comfortably rational place where any location can be de
scribed mathemati cally by three numbers, the XYZ of Descartes' three-dimen
sional coord inate system . The matrix of Ne urom ancer has not really left this
world beh ind. Case understands the matrix as "his d istanceless home, his coun
try, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity . " 1 0 One is rem inded of Star
Tr e k ' s Mr. Spock, the epitome of Cartesian rationality, calmly man ipulating

pieces on his own 3 D chessboard . The obj ects Case encounters w ith i n the ma
trix are simple geometric shapes : m athematical, prec ise and modem . He sees
"the stepped scarlet pyram id of the Eastern Seaboard Fiss ion Authority burning
be y o n d t h e green cubes of M it s u b i s h i B an k of A m e r i c a . " 1 1 I n a way,
Neurom ancer thus represents a crucial tran s ition point between the modem and
the p os t m o d ern . In this work G ibson has al ready b e g un to imagine

a s i m u l ated,

v i rtual space which w i l l eventual ly prove to be entirely d i stinct from the reassur-

Chapter Four

1 22

ingly tangible world of the Cartesian univers e. But his proj ect remains incom
p lete; G ibson has not quite figured out how to i m agine a hyperspace which w i l l
comp letely e lude the old Cartesi an categories.
By 1 996, a decade after the pub l i cation of Neuromancer, G ibson has solved
this probl em . In

Idoru, G ibson introduces us to Walled C ity, a kind of subver

sive antinetwork. A ls o known as Hak Nam ("City of Darkness"), Wal led City is
a v irtual refuge for futuristic Japanese hackers and quas i-crim inal underworld
figure s . It is thus subversive in a traditional sense, in that it exists outside the
influence of law and corporate capita l . Indeed, the denizens of Wal l ed C ity are
very proud of their transgress ive hacker heritage, to the point where they have
even developed myths and legends about the origin of the i r secret v irtual
domain . "They say it b egan as a shared kil lfile" 1 2-wh ich is, perhaps , an overly
dramat i c way to say that the creators of Walled C ity originally intended it as a
w ay to avoid the unwanted e-mail s o l i c itations which today ' s Internet users
denounce as spam . The story surrounding the creation of Hak Nam i s an
insp irational legend for the postmodern Left: "the people who founded Hak Nam
were angry, because the net had been very free, you could do what you wanted,
but then the governments and the companies, they had different ideas of what
you could, what you couldn ' t do. So these peop le, they found a way to unravel
something. A l ittle p l ace, a p iece, l ike c loth . They m ade something l ike a k i l l
file of everything, everything they didn ' t l ike, and they turned that ins ide out." 1 J
A s usual, G ibson extrapo l ates from contemporary tren ds in a w ay which i s
entirely b e l ievab l e . Today ' s network users are a l l too aware that the Internet ' s
subvers ive possib i l ities are being constantly undermined b y a massive commod
ification . One cannot even employ a search engine without encountering adver
tisements which are carefu l ly selected on the basis of the keywords which one
has typed into the engine. We seem to be l i v ing out the p lot of some kind of
second-rate science fiction film, in which Debord ' s spectacular-commodity econ
omy has attained a monstrous self-awareness, mutating into someth ing far worse
than even the S ituationists could have imagined. It is certainly easy to imagine
that network users who don ' t want to be informed of the latest interest rates for
new c ars every time they type the word " automobile" m i ght band together to
form an underground network designed to e lude this kind of apocalyptic elec
tronic commodity fetishism . 14
But the subvers ion of Walled City goes far beyond th i s . It also serves in
G ibson ' s novel as a repudiation of traditional Cartesian spatial categories . When
C h i a, the nove l ' s protagonist, experiences Walled City for the first time, she
finds it to be an extremely unsettling experience:

Anarchy in the Matrix

1 23

Something at the core of things moved simultaneously in mutually impos

sible directions. It wasn ' t even like porting. Software conflict? Faint im
pression of light through a fluttering of rags. And then the thing before
her: bu ilding or bi omass or c l i ff face looming there, in countless un
p lanned strata, nothing about it even or regul ar. Accreted patchwork of
shallow random balcon ies, thousands of small windows throwing back
15
blank si lver rectangles of fog.
Chia can ' t even find an accurate way to categorize Walled C ity . It doesn ' t agree
w ith her prev ious phys ical experience. More profoundly, it doesn ' t even agree
w ith any previous

virtual experience she ' s had . It' s something entirely new, and

it demands a dramatic s h ift in her conceptual categories. We ' ve come a long

way , in just ten years, from

Neurom ancer ' s orderly, l inear, Cartes ian matrix.

Walled C ity pres ents us w ith a new model of anarchist politics, for it ins ists
that truly rad ical act ivities cannot be carried out w ithin the epistemological
framework of modem spatial relations.
The rad ical ized concept of network space which G i bson presents in

Idoru is

also an interesting continuation of the proj ect which G i lles D eleuze and Felix
Guattari propose in A

Thousand Plateaus. In this difficult but important book,

the authors argue that we need to get away from the b inary "root logic" charac
teristic of thought in the West. Against this thinking, De leuze and Guattari offer
a decentered and multip licitous th inking which they call rh izomatic. The rh i
zome is a nonh ierarch ical, centerless mode of organ ization. For a cyberpunk, the
best example of a rh izome is the network " space," in wh ich every point or node
is l inked to every other. The rh izome is meant to authorize a new kind of
anarchism, which De leuze cal ls a "nomad thought." As I argued in chapter 2 ,
n o m a d thinking is ch aracterized b y a m o b i l ity a n d a malleab i l ity which
d istinguish it from "royal" or statist varieties of thought . De leuze and Guattari
summarize these essential differences by saying that it is nomad thinking, and
not State th inking, which deploys the "war machine." And "as for the war ma
ch ine in itself, it seems to be irreducible to the State apparatus, to be outside its
sovere ignty and prior to its law . " 16 The nomadic war machine stands as a serious
conceptual challenge to the kind of rational , subj ect-centered thinking which
authorizes all modem states . The idea of the war machine is therefore an impor
tant weapon for the postmodem anarch ist. Deleuze and Guattari denounce "the
State ' s pretension to be a world order, and to root man. The war mach ine' s rela
t ion to an outs ide i s n ot another ' m ode l ' ; it is an assemb lage that m akes
thought itself nomadic, and the book a working part in every mobile m achine, a
stem for a rh i zom e . " 1 7 The am b i t i ous proj ect w h i ch Deleuze and Guattari
undertake in A

Thousand Plateaus i s to c onstruct a strictly prov i s i o n a l , non-

1 24

Chapter Four

l i near type of thinking, one which w i l l not fal l prey to the prob lems of the

logos

and all rationalist sem iotics . Against such semiotics, Deleuze and Guattari

raise the specter of des ire, a specter which, they persuasively argue, haunts
capita l i st p o l itical economy in a much more dangerous way than does the
proletariat. In

A nti- Oedipus,

the compan ion volume to

A Thousand Plateaus,

they argue that "desp ite what some revolutionaries think about th i s , desire is
revo lutionary in its essence-desire, not left-wing holiday s ! -and no society can
tolerate a position of real desire w ithout its structures of explo itation, servitude,
and hierarchy being comprom ised . " 1 8
The State is, of course, terrified of thi s possibility, a n d thus tries to restrict
or code all unregu lated desire. Rolando Perez describes this process wel l : " [the]
proces s of overcoding stems from the State ' s fear of unrestricted desire, and cer
tainly from capital ism ' s fear of certain types of

des iring-m achines .

And so it

employs an arrangement of fascist desiring-machines to regiment and monitor

the an(arch ical) des iring-m achines . " 1 9 Of paramount importance to the project of
postrnodem anarchism, then, is the attempt to keep desire flowing freely, to al
low the " desiring m achines" to do their work, unimpeded by any kind of statist
overcoding. Murray Bookchin c learly recogn ized the ways in w h i c h cybernetics
m ight open up the poss ibility of a tru ly revolutionary form of desire when he
declared in

Post-Scarcity Anarchism

that

Bourgeo is society, if it ach i eved nothing else, revolution i zed the means of
production on a scale unprecedented in hi story . This technological revolu
tion, c u l m i nating in cybernation, has created the obj ective, quantitative
bas is for a world without class rule, exp loitati on, toil or material want. The
m ean s now exist for the development o f the rounded man, the total man,
freed of g u i l t and the worki ngs of authori tarian modes of tr a i n i n g, and
0
given over to desire and the sensuous apprehension of the m arvelous ?

Of course, Bookchin ' s anarchism retains something of the modem here : his ad
m iration for capita l i sm ' s l iberation of the forces of production is remarkably
s im i lar to the sentiments of Karl Marx, and his vision of an economic utopia is
also qu ite classical in its form . Stil l , Bookchin does recognize that cybernetics
and des ire are both potentially revolutionary forces. And while his variety of an
arch i sm does not necessarily l ink these two forces, postmodern anarchism does .
Anarchism in its postrnodern mode postulates a cybernetics

of desire,

in the face

of which capital and the state should surely tremble.

It is here that the idea of subvers ive antinetworks is extremely interesting.
One m i ght not think that a computer network-w h i c h re l i e s for its very exi s
ten c e , after a l l , upon a s u spect b inary l o g i c-c o u l d contain poss i b i l i t i e s fo r

Anarchy in the Matrix

1 25

postmodern subversion in the Deleuzian sense. But we are not interested here in
how n etworks function at the level of machine language . Rather, we are con
cerned w ith the ir social and political functioning, and here Gibson ' s idea for a
subversive antin etwork agrees strongly w ith Deleuze ' s concept of des iring
machines. "To these centered systems," Deleuze and Guattari write, "the authors
contrast acentered systems, fmite networks of automata in which communication
runs from any neighbor to any other, the stem s or channels do not preexist, and
all individuals are interchangeable, defined only by their state at a given mo
ment-such that the local operations are coordinated and the fmal, global result
synchronized w ithout a central agency ." 2 1 This is Walled C ity in a nutshell: an
electronic subvers ion which operates on a local level, and which does not re ly
upon commodified networks or central ized state authority of any kind. G ibson
imagines his Walled C ity precisely in term s o f these Del euzian "neighbor
hoods," and Hak Nam functions as a tactical collection of hacker m icrocommu
nities whose very existence is an affront to any statist pol itical or semiotic or
der. Again, there is precedent for such operations in contemporary network cul
ture . E l i zabeth Reid has recently argued, for example, that users of Internet
Relay Chat constitute both cultures and communiti es . 22 F o l l owing C l i fford
Geertz, Reid understands a community as a group which shares certain recipes,
rules or programs which govern behavior. IRC channels, which feature defmite
standards o f behavior and strict social sanctions for those who vio late the prin
c iples o f netiquette, certain ly qualify as communities in th is sense. Th e fasci
nating thing about IRC-and about Walled C ity, which is in some sense its
distant descendent-is that these networks have the capacity to create vibrant so
cial communities which lack phys ical existence. Walled C ity has no authentic
material presence . Indeed, even its simulated representation of space constitutes
a serious challenge to conventional forms of spatial epistemology . Walled C ity
is rhizomatic rather than C artesian or linear, which is why Chia finds it so dis
orienting-but this is also why this community represents such a serious threat
to the dominant order and its official networks.
The idea that a computer network can contain serious radical poss ibilities is
one which G ibson shares w ith his fel low cyberpunk, Bruce Sterling. In his
novel Islands in the Net, Sterling raises the interesting possibility that networks
m ight be used to challenge imperialism . Sterling describes a postm i l lennial
world in which several Third World nations have established themselves as o ff
shore "data havens." 23 These havens stand as a very serious challenge to the new
world order represented by postindustrial global corporation s . Laura Webster,
Sterl i ng ' s protagonist, is an "assoc iate" of one such corporation, a group of
"econom i c democrats" which S te rli ng names (with, one assumes, a certain
amount of Deleuzian irony) the Rizome Corporation. As the plot unfolds, Laura

1 26

Chapter Pour

embarks upon a desperate j ourney to protect her beloved Rizome from the
influence of renegade "data pirates" who operate out of G renada and S ingapore .
The Marxist l iterary critic Darko Suvin i dentifies these pirates as " straightfor
ward fas c i sts," and denounces the "superfi c i a l ity" of Sterl i ng ' s international
p o l itics, asserting that his novel ends up reproducing "the h oariest c l iches of
U . S . l ibera l i s m ."24 Th i s is, however, a very m i s leading interpretation, for there
is a good deal m ore going on here . The language w ith which Sterl ing describes
these "straightforward fascists" is not at all straightforward . When Laura travels
to Grenada, she discovers that the Grenadian government has invested the profits
from its data p i racy in enormous food ships which use nanotechnology to pro
duce enough " scop" (single celled protein) to feed the entire popu lation. She
m eets loyal and enthusiastic "party cadres" who seem genu inely interested i n
b u i l d i n g a better l i fe for their people. What Sterling h a s described is n o t particu
larly fascist, but rather a strange hybrid of radical data-politics and old-fash ioned
Rastafarian i sm . Sterl ing ' s postm i l lennial Grenada subverts official networks in
an attempt to bring down Laura Webster ' s "Babylon" society . Whatever Laura
and oth er c itizens of B aby lon m ight th ink of the U nited B ank of G renada ' s data
p i rate g overnment, Sterling m akes it qu ite c l e ar t h at the B a n k h a s made
impres s ive strides towards pul ling Grenada out of a centuries-old m ire of under
deve lopment, dependency, and colonialism . Cons ider this exchange between
Laura ' s husband David and the G renad ian "Sticky" Thompson as they drive
through Grenada' s capital city :
"Good-looki n ' tow n , " David said. "N o

sh anty to w n s , nobody camping

under the overpasses. Y o u could teach Mexico C i ty someth i n g . " N o re

sponse. "Kingston, too."
" G o n n a teach

A tlanta s o m eth ing , "

Sticky retorte d . " O u r Bank-you

think we ' re thieves. N o so, m o n . It' s your banks what been sucking these
25
peopl e ' s blood for four hundred years. Shoe on the other foot, now . "

Who h a s t h e moral authority in th is k ind of conversation? The representative of

a g lobal econom ic and cu ltural order wh ich has kept the G renadians i n poverty
and ignorance for generations? Or the representative of a Th ird World countercul
ture wh ich has found i n data piracy a way to turn the tables on the forces of
postindustrial imperialism?
If there are fascists i n S terl i ng ' s nove l , they are the "FACT," the "Free
Army of Counter Terrorism . " This is a kind of international police state which,
despite its name, wages a terroristic war upon the Grenadian and S ingaporean

data p irate s . Th e l e a d e r o f the FACT i s rumored to be " a r i g h t -w i n g American

bi l l i o n a i r e . Or a B r it i s h a r i s tocrat. M ay b e b o t h , e h-why n o t ?" 26 I t i s th e

Anarchy in the Matrix

1 27

FACT, and not the data havens, that acts as Sterl ing ' s v i l l a i n ; when Laura is
captured by FACT commandos, she is left to rot for years i n a dismal African
j a i l . As a s o l i d and upstanding citizen of "offic ial" network society , Laura
cannot condone the activities of the data subversives in Grenada and S ingapore .
But we should not m istake her attitudes for Sterl i ng ' s . Sterling ' s text makes it
quite clear that in a world where the dom inant culture emanates exclus ively from
the sanctioned networks of th e postindustrial world, data piracy is the on ly
option avai lable to dependent nations.
Network space, then, may well emerge as a crucially contested pol itical ter
rain in the ongoing power struggles between developing and developed nations.
And this is true not only in Sterl ing ' s fictional environments, but also in what
one sti l l re luctantly calls the real world. Some Third World nations-Tonga is
the most w e l l-known examp le-h ave recently begun to sell their network ad
dresses back to the representatives of First World capital. Th is dec ision is per
haps a pragmat ic one, for the citizens of Tonga may w e l l realize that " . to" do
main names are of l ittle consequence to a nation which l acks the technological
infrastructure to make much use of such addresses. Sti l l , this practice looks all
too much l ike an updated, postindustrial form of the kind of resource extraction
which has plagued the Th ird World s ince the days of Cecil Rhodes . I n a global
ized information economy where all resources flow inexorably toward Microsoft,
subvers ive data piracy w i l l surely start to look better and better to developing
nations .
Nor are these options only avai lable to citizens of the Third World. Some
of Sterl ing ' s m ore recent work, such as his 1 9 9 8 novel Distraction, suggests
that the construction of subvers ive counternetworks represents an important rad
ical political option for c itizens of postindustrial societies as w e l l . Distraction
envis ions a world in wh ich the United States fought a maj or information war
with Communist China-and lost. The Ch inese, it seems, decided to post a l l
American intellectual property on their w e b servers, effectively eliminating the
artificially constructed scarc ity which drives the contemporary American dot
com economy . 27 Devastated by the resulting econom ic meltdown, the American
consumer cu lture s i m p ly imp loded. M i l lions of Americans abandoned their
former l i festyles and hit the road, j oining various nomadic "prole" gangs whose
rad i c a l ly antih ierarchical systems of social organ ization represent a striking
symbolic challenge to the dominant cultural order. O f course, the very ex istence
of such gangs implies a truth which the mainstream cu ltural system would very
much like to obscure, i . e . , the fact that peop le do not necessarily have to accept
the hegem onic values of that system as their own . "These were people who had
ral l ied in a horde and marched right off the map . They had tired of a system that
offered them noth ing, so they had simply invented their own ."28 But the pro le

1 28

Chapter Four

gangs also show that even those who are quite thoroughly disenfranchised in the
real world of political economy may stil l be able to enj oy meaningful form s of
cultural authority in the virtual world . Speaking of one of these prole groups,
Sterling write s : "The Moderators were no longer even a ' gang ' or a ' tr i b e . '
B asically, the Moderators were best understood as a nongovernmental network
organization . The Moderators deliberately dressed and talked l ike savages, but
they didn ' t lack soph istication. They were organized along new l ines that were
29
deeply orthogonal to those of conventional American culture ."
Sterling clearly understands that there is something potentially subvers ive
about the architecture of computer networks, and he recogn izes that these net
works are rad ical not only in their pol itics and econom ics, but also in their cul
ture and in their epistem ology . Sterling ' s network nomads are "an entire alter
nate society for whom l i fe by old-fash ioned pol itical and econom i c standards
30
was s imply no longer pos s i b l e . " They are thus nomadic not only in the sense
that they wander the earth in loosely organized bands, but also in the more radi
cal Deleuzian sense . The ir l ives and their cultures are

structurally nomadic.

These pro les challenge the state by developing a centerless, nomadic network
culture which exists, as Deleuze m ight say , exterior to the state apparatus itself.
True, they exist with in the physical territory of the United States . But in the
postmodem world, th is concept of territoriality is increas ingly irrelevant. What
is much more important is the virtual terrain which these nomads inhabit, and
that terrain s im ply does not interface w ith the mainstream culture in any mean
ingful way . Indeed, the comm itm ent of the proles to the ir subversive counter
networks is so strong that it often produces fragmentation within the pro le
movement itself: "We ' re Moderators because we use a Moderator network," one
of the Moderators ' prov i s ional leaders declare s . "And the Regulators use a
Regul ator interface, w ith Regulator software and Regul ator protocols. I don ' t
th ink that a newbie creep like you understands j ust how political a problem that
i s . " 3 1 Needless to say, however, both the Moderator and the Regulator protocols
are entirely outs ide the sanctioned networks of mainstream America-and if the
divis ions between the prole groups is a political problem, surely the fact that

all stand apart from the commodified culture of the official networks is a
tremendous pol itical opportunity. Members of the "open source" software com
they

mun ity which has grown up around the Linux operating system in the real
world may well be grateful for th is glimpse of the ir movement ' s possible future :
a world in which m i l l ions of ordinary Americans renounce corporate operating
systems and adopt distinctly anarchistic altern atives.
The anarchistic implications of Sterling ' s postm odern proletarian nomads
become strikingly evident when we cons i der the econom ies of these group s .
Sterling ' s nomads have developed what Oscar Valparaiso, the protagonist o f

Anarchy in the Matrix

D is tr a c t i o n ,

1 29

refers to as "a functional, prestige-based economy . " 3 2 The

Moderator "hierarchy"-the term is fairly absurd in this context-is based

entirely upon personal prestige. Moderators perform serv ices w h ich benefit the
Moderator commun ity as a whole. The results of these public works are noted
on the com munity ' s prestige servers . If a Moderator s ignificantly enhances the
well-be ing of the commun ity, her prestige goes up almost immed iate ly ; con
versely if she harms the commun ity , her prestige p lumm ets w ith equal speed.
This economy is s i m i lar in m any ways to the rad ical gift econom ies wh ich I
d iscussed in chapter 3 . In the Moderator economy, as in a gift economy, wealth
i s based not upon the accumu lation of capital but upon the s ize of the gifts
w h ich one provides to one ' s fe l low c it izen s . What is i nteresting about th i s
particular kind o f g i ft economy, however, i s i t s rad ical intangi b i l ity . The
premodern econom ies described by Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille involve
the exchange of physical gifts, for the most part. A lthough their structure is rad
ically different from that of capitalist econom ic systems, they are thus material
econom ies, subject to at least some of the conditions of production wh ich char
acterize such econom ies. Sterl ing' s prest ige econom ies are arguably even more
radical, in that they stand entirely outside the laws of material production. We
should also note that prestige econom ies are entirely appropriate to the post
modem condition: as the econom ic importance of material production continues
to decline in the postindustrial world, we m ight w e l l expect to see a corre
sponding rise in alternative prestige-based econom ies . None of th i s w ill surprise
those who uti lize Usenet newsgroups . These network citizens have known for
years that w ithin the essentia l ly anarch istic framework of their gift econom ies,
the only meaningful type of wealth i s a good reputation. And such a reputation
can be gained o n ly by post ing data that is "on topic," i . e . , u s e fu l to the
particular Usenet subcu lture in wh ich one i s involved. One ' s reputation, in
today ' s Usenet economy as in Ster l ing ' s radical ized prestige econom ies, is
d i rectly proportional to the s ize of one ' s gift to the community . And the
existence of fully articulated alternative network econom ies such as these should
be of grave concern to those whose econom ic vis ion cannot seem to escape the
horizons of capital accumulation.

Anarchy of the Cyborg

C learly, cyberpunk' s network space raises a powerfu l challenge to conventional
Cartes ian spatial notions, and th is challenge has important implications for radi
cal po l it i c s . G ibson ' s Wa l l e d C ity and Sterling ' s data havens and prol e
netw orks should be o f tremendous interest to postm odem anarch ists, because

Chapter Four

130

they i l lustrate that meaningful subvers ion is sti l l quite possible even after the
demise of the industrial proletariat. But cyberpunk offers us another reason to be
u n concerned, or perhaps even enthus i astic, about the death of the " agent of
h i story" common to both Marxism and class ical anarchism . In addition to its
assault on orthodox spatial concepts, cyberpunk m ounts a very serious chal lenge
to conventional notions of human subj e ctiv ity . And again, cyberpunk i s in
agreement here w ith phi losophical postmodemi s m . I f the postmodem theorists
are unified on any point, it is surely i n their assault on the rational, autonomous
C arte s i an s u bj ec t w h i ch has d o m i n ated i n t e l lectual d i scourse s i n c e the
Enl ightenm ent. As we have seen, the ph i losophical proj ect of postmodemism,
from N i etzs c h e to Foucault and B audri l l ard , i s designed i n l arge p art to
announce the death o f the m o d ern w orld ' s exc l u s i onary h u m a n i s m . The
postm odern ists ass ert w ith good reason that the attempt to locate all human
essence in reason has been a disastrous fai lure. Rather than making good on the
E n l ighten m e nt ' s prom ises of u n iversal hum an l i b eration, rational Cart e s i an
subj ectivity h as instead made d i scourse the privi leged semiotic domain of an
im p l i c itly straight, w h ite m a l e bourg e o i s subj ect. Postm odern anarc h i s m
therefore d i spenses w ith this h ighly suspect subj ect-pos ition . T h e postmodem
anarchist recognizes that any pol itical action carried out under the banner of
h u m a n i s m w i l l reproduce the pro b l e m atic power relations endem i c to a l l
modernist p o l itics . S u c h a n anarchist therefore refuses to smash t h e state i n the
name of some el ite humanist subj ect, preferring i nstead to pursue the deeper
proj ect of sem iotic liberation whose outlines have been sketched by Baudrillard,
Debord, and the S ituationists .
We should not confuse the postmodem assault on Enlightenment subj ectiv
ity w ith an assault on subj ectivity in general, however, for the postmodem i sts

do o ffer us a new concept of what it m eans to be human. "A self does not
am ount to much," Lyotard points out, "but no self is an i s land; each exists in a
fabric of relations that is now m ore complex and m o b i l e than ever before.
Young or old, man or woman, rich or poor, a person is always located at ' nodal
points ' of spec ific communication c ircuits, however tiny these m ay be."33 Th is,
then, i s a postm odern model of human subj ectivity . Humans are now to be un
derstood as m u ltiple and w ithout center. They exist not as stable Cartes ian
u n its ; rather, they are fluid elem ents w ith i n vast communi cations n etworks .
Rem arkably, this development was antic ipated by Kropotkin, who was surely
one of the most perceptive of the classical anarchists. "Taken as a whole, man is
noth ing but a resultant, always changeab le, of all his divers faculties, of all his
autonomous tenden c i e s , o f bra i n cells and nerve-centers . A l l are related so
closely to one another that they each react on all the others, but they lead their
own life w ithout being subordinated to a central organ-the soul."34 Kropotki n' s

Anarchy i n the Matrix

131

antitheological assault on the central i zed, Judeo-Christian seat of human con

sciousness implies a n etwork model o f human subj ectivity-though presumably
Kropotkin h imself could not fu l ly perceive these implications .
Some critics regard the postmodern incredul ity toward the m etanarratives of
m o dern subj ec t i v ity w i th a cert a i n m e t a i n c redu l ity o f their o w n . S cott
Bukatman, for example, suggests that " B audril l ard, the students o f chaos, the
cyberpunks, and others

have constructed a m aster-narrative, one grounded in the

central ity of human intention and perception, which has the cumulative effect of
inaugurating a new subj ect capable of inhabiting the bewi ldering and disembod
ied space of the e l ectro n i c env ironment-the

virtual subject. "35 B ut there are

several prob lems w ith th i s interpretation . F irst, Bukatman is wrong to use the
definite article here, for subj ectivity in the postmodern condition i s characterized
by a nearly infmite

multiplicity of virtual subj ects . Second, thi s new subj ectiv

i ty has not h i ng to do w ith human intent i o n a l ity, and one wonders why
Bukatman invokes the tired old specter of C artesian free w i l l here. Postmodern
subj ectivity describes a world in which humans are nothing more or less than
flesh terminals, the b i o l ogical end nodes o f vast data flows which exist and
function qu ite indepen dently of any human agency. For those who l i ve in t h e
w ired world, this postmodern model of subj ectivity is far more appropriate than
the Cartes ian.
It should hardly surprise us to fmd that both postmodem philosophers and
cyberpunk science fiction authors have a strong interest in th is new subj ectivity .
Indeed, it is o n th is i s s u e that t h e t w o genres m erge in t h e most interesting
ways. Postmodern theorist and science fiction critic Donna Haraway, for exam
ple, i s particularly interested in the human-machine hybrids known as cyborgs .
"The cyborgs popu lating fem inist science fiction," she writes, "make very prob
lematic the statuses of man or woman, human, artifact, m ember of a race, indi
v idual identity, or body ."36 Th is is, of course, precisely what i s so interesting
about these bioelectronic syntheses : they challenge our preconceived ideas about
human subj ectivity in a radical way. Haraway is interested in the cyborg mainly
from the point of view of postmodem fem inism : "The cyborg is a kind of disas
sembled and reassemb led, postmodem collective and personal self. Th is is the
self fem i n ists must code .'m But in a broader sense, we m ay also say that the
cyborg stands as a model for what it m eans to be human in the inform ation so
cieties of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Th is new kind of cybernetic subj ectivity i s to be found throughout the
pages of cyberpunk novels. Veronica Hollin ger is quite correct to assert that " i n
i t s various deconstructions o f t h e subject-carried o u t in terms o f a cybernetic

b r e a k d o wn of the classi c nature/culture opposition-cyberpunk can be read as

one symptom of the postrnodern condition of genre SF ."3 8 B oth Neuromancer

132

Chapter Four

and ldoru are named for artificial persons, computer personal ities who exist as
pure simulations . In both novels, G ibson plays w i th and pushes the boundaries
of subjectivity . The plot of ldoru revolves around a human rock star who wants
to marry an artificial inte l l igence-and why not? In the postmodern condition,
there is no "nature" to prevent th i s . I n one particu larly disorienting scene in

Neuromancer, Case switches back and forth between a s im ulation of his girl
friend Molly ' s sensory apparatus, the pure ly hyperreal world of the matrix, and
the so-called real world. Who is Case in th is scene? Is he Molly? Is he a node in
the network? Is he himself? Is he perhaps a strange hybrid of all three subj ect
positions? G ibson ' s point is clear: in the postmodern world, we can m ake no
s imple assumptions about the nature of human subj ectivity .
Perhaps even m ore than Gibson, Sterling pushes the boundaries o f human
subj ectivity while simultaneously making clear the pol itical impl ications of this
pu s h . Th e primary antagon ist in Distraction i s Green Huey, a radical populist
who has managed to ride a rising tide of postindustrial ecological outrage all the
way to the governorship of Lou isiana. Although Green Huey does provide some
interesting challenges to the authority of the American fe deral government, he is
a politically ambiguous character. Part Murray Bookch in, p m 1 H uey Long, he
occupies a nebulous pos ition on the political spectrum-and reminds us, as do
m any ch aracters i n Sterling ' s later w orks , that the very concept of a "political
spectrum" i s itself dangerously outdated . But one thing about Green Huey
c learly is rad ical, and that is h is fascination w ith strange new developments in
the neuro logical sciences . Green Huey ' s long-term radical legacy comes not so
much from his ecological populism, but rather from the ep istemo logical revolu
tion unleashed by his personal neurologists . These scientists, whose labs are se
questered deep i n the Loui s iana swamps, have developed what Sterl ing calls a
neural hack. In essence th i s is a way to rew i re th e human brain in order to
perm i t the kind of m ultitasking operations which computers perform routinely .
A person equipped w ith th is hack can be "fully aware of two different events at
the same moment."39 Such a person has, in effect, "two w i ndows open on the
screen behind his eyes . "40 And th is, of course, has profound imp lications for our
un derstanding of human consciousnes s . For one thing, anyone equipped with
th i s neural hack can say good-bye to l i near narrat i v e ; her stream o f con
sci ousness will be thoroughly hypertextual (or i n Deleuzian term s , rhi zomatic).
Such a person should also abandon any pretense toward a unified model of sub
jectivity , for the neural hack fulfills the postmodern prophecy that subj ectivity
shall become di spersed and polyvalent. When a s ingle person becomes capable
of running m u ltiple cognitive processes simultaneously , our definition of per
sonhood is clearly i n need of substantial rev i s i o n . And if we read Sterl ing ' s
neural hack as a metaphor for the kind of computer-ass isted mu ltitasking wh ich

Anarchy in the Matrix

1 33

the cybernetically sophist icated c itizens of the postindustrial world already

engage in, such a project of redefin ition should c learly begin immediately .
Some of S terl ing ' s greatest chal lenges to conventional notions of con
sc iousness and subj ectivity are to be found in Holy Fire. In this novel, Sterl ing
presents us w ith a striking future world in which the human race stands on the
brink of immortal ity . Med ical sc ience has progressed to the point where doctors
can now extend a person ' s life span at the rate of almost one year per year, guar
anteeing near- infin ite l i fe span s . B ut this raises the di sturbing new problem of
eternal boredom . One young woman expresses the situation in this way :

When w e reach the singularity [the point a t which one year of medical care
can extend l i fe span by one year] , we must be prepared for it. Worthy of it.
Otherw i se we will be even more stale and stu p i d than the ruling class is
now. They ' re only mortals, and they are n ice enough to die eventually, but
we ' re not mortals and we won ' t die. If we obey their rules when we take
power, w e ' l l bore the world to death. Once we repeat the ir mistakes, our gen
eration w i l l repeat them forever. Their padded l ittle nurse ' s paradise w i l l
become o u r permanent tyranny.4 1
One is rem inded here of the slogan of May 1 96 8 : " Boredom is counterrevolu
tionary . " To prevent this incip ient tedium from becom ing institutional ized, a
number of rad ical young avant-garde writers and artists form an organ ization
rem in iscent of the S ituationist Internation a l . Their goal is to redes ign human
subj ectiv ity from the ground up, to prepare the human race for its impending
boon . They understand that a world populated by immortal Cartes i ans would be
quite intolerable, and they mean to prevent this from occurring . To ach ieve their
ambitious proj ect, these young postm i llenial revolutionaries des ign software
programs aimed at transform ing the cognitive functioning of the human m ind.
Sterling describes a few such program s , wh ich the group has instal led in a vir
tual real ity "palace" :

Down in the palace basement, they had the holy-fire machineries partly
stoked and l i t . The dream mach ines. They were supposed to do certain
h i ghly arcane things to the vision s ites in the brain and the auditory pro
cessing centers. You would sort of look at them and sort of hear them, and
yet it never felt much like anyth ing. Human consciousness couldn ' t per
ceive the deeply preconsc ious activities of the auditory and visual sys
tems, any m ore than you consciously felt photons striking your retina, or
felt the l ittle bones knocking the cochlear hairs in your ears. The installa
tions weren ' t blurry exactly; they simply weren' t exactly there. The experi-

Chapter Four

1 34

ence was soothing, l ike being underwater. Like twi l i ght s leep in the color
factory . To a semi-inaudible theme of music-not-musi c .
It wasn ' t spectacu lar or thri l l i n g . It d i d n ' t b u m or blast or coruscate.
But it did not weary . It was the polar opposite of weariness. They were in
venting very, very slow refreshments for the posthuman souls of a new
42

worl d .

This is political activity in a new register, and it is a politics of postmodem an

archism. These young radicals certainly denounce capital and the state by attack
ing the "gerontocracy," the regime of boring, wealthy, re furbished old people
which rules Sterling' s future world. But these young people understand that no
conventional revolution will suffice to challenge this order. Destroying the cor
porati ons and smashing the states is simply not enough, for this kind of mod
ernist action would not address the underly ing problem. The real concern is that
the gerontocrats have a certain perception, a certain way of viewing the world, a
certain consciousness and epistemology. It is on this deeper level that they must
be attacked. And so Sterling' s band of neo- S ituationists de ve lop s a way of un
derm i n ing the perceptual, psychological, and semiotic categories which under
write the gerontocracy. This radicalized anarch ism is appropriate to a postmod
em world in which power is as much linguistic and epistemological as it is eco
nomic or political.
Some critics have expressed a certain skepticism about Sterling ' s particular
brand of postmodem anarchism. "Where ' s the ' organized dissent, ' and how does
it j ive with ' street- level anarchy ' ?" demands Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. "Sterling
hints at some new political attitude with technical know-how and antiestablish
ment fee l ings, an ' a l l iance , ' an ' i ntegration , ' a ' counterculture. ' To put it
m i ldly, it' s hard to see the ' integrated ' political-aesthetic motives of alienated
subcu ltures that adopt the h i gh-tech tools of the e s tab l i s hm e n t they are
supposedly alienated from."43 But Csicsery-Ronay m i sses the point here. The
iron i c theme of Sterl ing ' s novels is precisely that these subversive subcultures
have appropriated techn o l og i c a l too l s and put them to u s e s w h i c h the
estab l ishment never approved or even imagined. This is what ' s fascinating about
Sterlin g ' s fictional networks : they have m utated into something which is far
beyond the control of their creators. Like a kind of postmodem Frankenste in ' s
monster, the networks tum on their fathers, forgetting their conservative cold
war origins as they become tools of postmodem anarchy.44 Critics like Csicsery
Ronay are quick to point out that the cyberpunk counterculture can eas i ly be co
opted by the establishment. But for some reason, such critics refuse to recognize
that the reverse is e qu a l ly p o s s i b l e . The decentered, rhizomat i c structure of

po s t m o dem n etworks m ake s it j u st as e asy for Third World data h a v e n s o r

Anarchy in the Matrix

135

young avant-garde artists to appropriate these networks for their own subversive
ends .
This type of countercultural reverse co-option is a strategy that makes sense
in the postmodem w orld, given the w ay in wh ich power is structured in that
world. H ere we should briefly recal l Foucault ' s theses regarding the cap i l lary na
ture of m o dem power. Foucault has captured the sp irit of postmodem anar
chism, because he understands that it is very dangerous to equate power w ith the
political dominance of states or w ith the econom ic power of social classes. Such
a modernist approach is too narrow and does not deal w ith the underlying prob
lem, i . e . , the discurs ive relations that exist beneath state and econom ic power.
As long as those relations are left intact, no amount of state smashing w i l l l ib
erate us. And so Foucault undertakes to describe the deeper d iscurs ive functions
of power. One of the most wel l-known examples of this Foucaultian approach is
the analy s i s of Panopticism in

Discipline and Punish.

The Panopticon, an idea

for a kind of al l-see ing eye, was initially developed in the nineteenth century by
Jeremy Bentham as a strategy for the design of pris ons . The prisoners were to be
w atched from a c entral guard tower, s o that at any g iven moment the guards
m ight be looking into any ce l l . Like other discipl inary form s , the Panopticon i s
"po lyvalent in i t s app l i cations ; it serve s to reform prisoners, b u t also to treat
patients, to instruct schoolch i l dren, to confine the insane, to superv ise w orkers,
to put beggars and idl ers to w ork. "4 5 It serves, in short, to construct an entire
d i s c i p l in ary s o c iety , whose cap i l lary forms of power go far beyond s imple
econom ic or state repression.
The Foucault ian con cepts of discipl ine and Panopticism find th eir l iterary
express i on in a col laboration between the two leading figures of the cyberpunk
movement. In

The Difference Engine,

Will iam Gibson and Bruce Sterling com

bine their e fforts to produce a darkly disturb ing " alternate h istory" of the n ine
teenth century . G ibson and Sterl ing describe V ictorian England, w ith a tw ist:
Charles Babbage ' s difference engine, the first computer, is immensely m ore
powerful and m ore pervas ive than it w as in our real time l ine. G ibson and
Sterling take the repre s s e d , d i s c i p l ined s o c iety w h i ch first invented the
Panopticon, and give it massive computing power. The result is , as one m ight
expect, horrify ing. C itizens are g iven numbers and ID cards (rather as they are in
many actua l contemporary soc ieties), an d the V i ctor i an governm ent maintains
vast stores of computerized data on all of its subj ects . A good example of this
computerized V i ctorian disciplinary regime is the Quantitative Crim inol ogy sec
tion of the Central Statistics Bureau : " The QC section was a honeycomb of tiny
partitions, the neck-high walls riddled w ith asbestos-l ined cubbyholes. G loved
and ap roned c lerks sat neatly at their s l anted desks, exam ining and manipulating

punch-cards w ith a variety of special ized c l acker ' s device s . " 4 6 Sure ly th i s vision

Chapter Four

136

of well- disciplined w orkers in a vast, cubicle-riddled office bui lding is qu ite fa

m i l iar to any c itizen of the West in the late twentieth century . But somehow it
becomes more s in ister when G ibson and Sterling proj ect it back into the n ine
teenth century . G ibson and Sterling perform the adm irable service of making the
carceral society that we take for granted into something s l ightly strange, and in
so doing they increase its susceptib il ity to analysis and critique. Our own disci
p l i n ary regimes are perhaps too fam iliar, too omn ipresent and invisible. But
when we look at the world o f

The Difference Engine, we see exactly what is

wrong w ith discipline and Panopticism. We can then proj ect these results for
ward into the twenty-first century .

The Difference Engine thus functions as a kind of subvers ive genealogy .

Discipline and Punish shows us the historical origins of our discipl inary
soc iety, The Difference Engine proj ects those origins into an imaginary alternate

Just as

history . "In the beginning," ruminates government operative Laurence O l iphant,

" it had m ade so horrib ly e legant a sort of sense. In the beginning, it had been
his idea. The Eye. He sensed it n ow . " 47 The creation o f discipline probably
m ade a horribly e legant sense to the thinkers of the Enlightenment, as w e l l .
Toward t h e end of

The Difference Engine, t he characters w h o created this elabo

rate computerize d Panopticon begin to reco il in horror from their creation, and
those of us who l ive under the gaze of a contemporary all-seeing eye can cer
tainly understand why . In a world where individuals are defined by their data,
all m anner of informational atrocities are possible. '" Don ' t take that m oral tone
w ith m e , s i r, "' Wak e fi e l d s a i d .

' Yo u r lot began it, O l i phant-the d i s

appearan c e s , the files gone m is s ing, the names expunged, numbers lost,
h istories edited to suit specific ends . . . . No, don ' t take that tone w ith m e. "' 48
And the true horror of this world, of course, is what it implies for our future. If
G ibson and Sterling ' s fictional V ictorian England has already attained a level of
Panoptical discipline w h ich the late twentieth century is only beginn ing to
reach, then what would their vers ion of our present look l ike? Th is indeed is the
concluding thought of The Difference

Engine:

In this City ' s center, a th ing grows, an auto-catalytic tree, in almost

l i fe, feeding thro ugh the roots of thought on the rich decay of its own shed
i m ages, and ram i fy ing, through myriad l i ghtn ing-branches, up, up, toward
the h idden l i ght of vision,
Dying to be born .
The l ight is strong,
The l i ght is clear;
The Eye at last m u st sec i t s e l f
M y se l f . .
.

An archy in the M atrix

1 37

I see :

I see,
I see

This terrifying passage concludes the dystopia of

The Difference Engine,

and the

m e s s age is c l ear: u n l es s an ant idote is fou n d to today' s omn i p re s e nt

Panopticism, unless we can imagine a way out of our carceral society, we have
l ittle to look forward to except the ominous prospect of an al l-seeing eye which
has at last attained self-awareness .
And yet as grim as the cyberpunk world sometimes is, things are far from
hopeless . H ere we wou ld do well to remember the words of Foucau lt: "do not
th ink that one has to be sad i n order to be m i l itant, even though the thing one is
fighting i s abom i n ab l e . "50 Postmodem cyberpu nks, l ike the ir phi losophical
counterparts, develop their grim vis ions for a particu lar reason : to give contem
porary anarchism a c lear set of targets . Among these targets we must certainly
l ist our old unvanquished foe s , capital and the stat e . But we must add to this
l ist many elements o f the disastrously unsuccessful inte l l ectual proj ect we call
the Enlightenment : a certain understanding of human subj ectivity , a certain con
cept of space, a certain set of semiotic practices, and the s ign of sovereign reason
which stands above all of these things . Ph i losoph ical postmodemists and au
thors of cyberpunk give us a radical critique which is invaluable to the extent
that it finally addresses the deeper l inguistic processes which underl i e all forms
of contemporary political and economic power.
What ' s more, the cyberpunks, l ike the ir French phi losophical counterparts,
offer us specific strategies of subvers ion and res istance . Whether it is the gestu
ral politics of the Panther Moderns, the spatial subvers ion of Hak Nam, or the
radical epistemological restructuring of a postm i l lennial artistic avant-garde,
cyberpunk texts are ful l of innovative ideas for postmodern revo lutionary praxis.
The nove ls of G ibson and Sterl ing te l l us what it is l ike to live in a universe
where the comfortab le certainties of the modern world have vanished, but they
do much more than that. They also teach us what it means to be revolutionary
in such a universe. They show us how to live what Deleuze and Guattari call the
nonfascist l i fe . They describe, i n short, an anarchist politics for our time, and
for the future as wel l . I f anarch ists wish to articulate a po l itics which w i l l be
meaningfu l and relevant i n the third m i l lennium, they would do w e l l to heed
the lessons of cyberpunk. The barricades of the next revo lution wi l l be raised in
post-Cartes ian v irtual space, and this revolution w i l l be carried out by cyborgs

1 38

Chapte r Four

who rej ect an outmoded, bourgeois subj ectivity . I f we are not prepared for

this

revolution, we risk being relegated to the dustbin of h istory .

Cyberpunk is thus crucial to the political proj ect of the postmodem anar
chist. I h e s i tate to suggest that cyberpunk m ight complete that proj ect, for
surely the fluid, flowing anarchist agenda I have been describing must eschew
the naive dialectical eschatologies which have always plagued the c lassical Left.
But the fact that cyberpunk in particular and postmodern anarchism in general
lack specific world-historical goals should n ot be taken as evidence that th ese
bodies of theory lack s ignificant revolutionary potential. Postmodem anarch ism
is not about defining the specific destinations of revolutionary thought and ac
tion . Its purpose, rather, i s to chart a new radical terrain . Thi s terrain is meant to
be b oth structural ly and epistemologically revolutionary ; its radicality is there
fore not lim ited to the dimension of conventional modernist politics. Wh ile the
specific details of this terrain are not yet fu l ly apparent, we can already say a
good deal about it. Its landscape is that of the symbo l i c . Its inhabitants are no
madic . The p o l itical structure o f this postmodern commons is, of course, an
arch i s t i c . Th i s p o l ity has no law , but like any s o c i ety , it has its custom s .
Membership requirements are simple . The commons are open t o a l l those who
rej ect the sem i otic authority of cap ital and the state . They are open to femin ists,
queer theorists, foes of colonialism , and those socialists who are open-minded
enough to challenge the un iversal truth-claims of the dialectic. Above all, th is
anarchistic commons is open to anyone and everyone who is w i l l ing to renounce
categories of reason and subj ectivity which have failed to m eet their own stated
goal s . Perhaps the most crucial proj ect of the postm odem anarch ist is the con
struction of a postrational, transs e m i otic, hyperlinear model of human con
sciousness. This proj ect prom ises to be one of the strangest and most interesting
in the h istory of the human and posthuman m in d ; surely the tedium against
which the S ituationists so tirelessly fought is nowhere to be found on the post
m odem com m o n s . Anyone who is w i l l ing to part i c ipate i n this exhi l arating
epistemo logical revolution will be welcomed w ith open arms .
In the final (provisional) analysis, then, postmodem anarchism stands a s a
utopian thought. But it is utopian in the finest sense of the word. Like her
c lassical forebears, the postmodem anarchist dares to dream of a world in which
words like " l iberation," "justice," and "freedom" are something more than empty
s ignifiers . A utopian anarchist of the postmodem sort dedicates her life to the
pursuit of an agenda which, to be frank, seems far-fetched only because the en
gines of the spectacu lar-commodity economy are relentless in their ins istence
that we cannot have these things . Is it actual ly so outrageous to imagine a time
other than that of the office cubicle and the televis ion schedule, or a space which

i s d i fferent from that of the suburban wasteland w ith its tract houses, freeways

Anarchy in the Matrix

139

and shopping malls? Is it so preposterous to put forward a defin ition of subj ec

tivity which cannot be boi led down to such essentialist semiotic categories as
the factory worker, the consumer, the Third World peasant? Is it, in short, so en
tirely unspeakab le that we should dem and of our cu ltural and political systems
the right to define who and what we are , the right to change that definition at a
moment ' s notice, and the right to articulate vis ions of time and space which
will be suitable to our newly constructed selves?
It i s not. Let th is, then, be our new Bill of Rights . The agenda of postmod
ern anarchism is bold and am bitious, to s ay the least. But to call this agenda
unreal istic is to demonstrate a disturb ing ignorance of the ways in which many
elem ents of this agenda have

already

been initiated throughout the networks of

the postindustrial world. The postmodern revo lution is already upon us. Perhaps
in some w ays it always has been, for there is a very definite sense in which th i s
revo lution involves and p o s s i b ly even re q u i res t h e comp letion of the last
revolut ion . The utopian dre ams of the c lassical anarchist are, after all, a subset
of the postmodern anarc h i st v i s i o n . I f the postmo dern revo lution proceeds
beyond a certain point (not, presumably, in a teleological way ; let us say, rather,
if th is revolution proceeds beyond a certain event horizon), we may yet live to
see the demise of bourgeo is political economy . This demise, however, w i l l per
haps be j ust one m inuscu le aspect of a m uch larger and more ambitious revolu
tionary proj e ct. If and when capital and the state are finally overcome, it w i l l
perhaps be because we (having finally learned the hard lessons of Len inism)
have chosen to wield the weapons of des ire, cybernetics, and sym bolic exchange
against the semiotic fortresses in which the cow ardly institutions of modern
power have been h iding for so long. And if the proj ect of postmodern anarchism
succeeds, it w i l l be because we have understood that the revolution must be pre
ceded-and not fo l lowed-by the articulation of alternative political, econom ic
and cultural systems, systems whose rad ical gift-giving tendencies will make it
exceed ingly difficult for capital to re surrect itse lf, l ike some kind of Stal inist
phoenix, from its own ashes .
This how ever, is a future history wh ich has yet to be written . Lest my pro
j ections fu rther strain the credu lity of my fe l l ow h istorians, I conclude this brief
h i story of the postm odern anarchist proj ect here, at the m i l lenn ium. The term s
and the terrain have, I hope, been adequately sketched. As for the question of
how th is proj ect m ight work itself out

in the future, that question is (as always)

in the hands of those who have no need for this book .

Chapter Four

! 40

Notes
1 . Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 5 3 .
2 . Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects, 209- 1 0.
3 . Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1 3 .
4 . Vienet, Enrages and Situationists, chapter 6 . See also chapter 3 of the present
work.
5. Baudri llard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, 74.
6. Gibson, Neuromancer, 5 .
7 . Ibid., 260.
8. Ibid., 59.
9. Ibid., 58.
I 0. Ibid., 52.
I I . Ibid.
1 2. Gi bson, !doru, 29 1 .
1 3 . Ibid., 292.
1 4. I ndeed, one n eed look no further than http ://www. adbustcrs . o rg to fi nd

prototype of simulated, electronic S ituationism.

1 5 . Gi bson, ldoru, 2 3 8 .
1 6 . Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 3 5 2 .
1 7. Ibid., 24.
1 8. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 1 1 6 .
1 9. Perez, O n An(archy) and Schizoanalysis, 5 8 .
2 0 . Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, 3 3 .
2 1 . Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 1 7. One should also note, in
th is context, the enormous theoretical importance of the ongoing peer-to-peer net
work revolution, a revolution which opens up the possibil ity that computer users
might exchange data without the mediation of any server or other central authority .
22. Reid, "Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat," 3 97 ff.
23 . Sterl ing ' s specu lations are, like G i bson' s, so plausible that one often has
the distinctly disorienting experience of watch ing those specu lations come true in
real world headlines. Witness the recent decision by the citizens o f Sealand, a nomi
nally i ndependent "nation" located on an abandoned gunnery platform off the coast
of England, to turn their "country" into a data haven. See Wired magazine's report at
http ://ww w . wired . com/wired/archive/8 . 07 /haven. htm l .
24. Suvin, Darko. " O n G ibson and Cyberpunk SF" in McCaffery (ed. ), Storm ing

the Reality Studio, 3 6 1 - 3 6 2 .

25. Sterli ng, Islands in the Net, 83 .
26. I b i d . , 3 2 3 .

Anarchy in the Matrix

141

27 . I n an effort to shore up this artificial scarcity, of course, attorneys for the

American music recording industry are constantly trying to halt the use of peer-to
peer music trad ing systems.
28. Sterling, Distraction, 6 1 .
29. Ibid., 368.
3 0. Ibid., 369.
3 1 . Ibid., 3 3 5, emphasis added.
32. Ibid., 3 8 6 .
3 3 . Lyotard, Postm odern Condition, 1 5 . It is interesting t o note in t h i s context
that Laney, the protagonist of G ibson ' s ldoru, makes his liv ing by intuitively ana
lyzing what he refers to as "nodal points" of data.
3 4 . Kropotkin, "Anarchism : Its Phi losophy and Ideal," in Fugitive Writ ings,
1 02 .
3 5 . B ukatman, Terminal Identity, 1 1 8 .
3 6 . H araway, "Manifesto for Cyborgs," 220.
3 7. Ibid., 205.
3 8 . H o l l inger, Veronica. "Cybernetic Deconstructions: Cyberpunk and Postmodernism" in McCafferey (ed .), Storming the Reality Studio, 204.
3 9 . Sterling, Distraction, 4 3 7 .
40. Ibid., 438.
4 1 . Sterl ing, Holy Fire, 283 .
42. Ibid., 3 1 3 .
43 . Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr. "Cyberpunk and Neuromanticism" i n McCafferey
(ed .), Storm ing the Reality Studio, 1 83 .
44. "The main trouble with cyborgs, o f course, " writes Donna Haraway, "is that
they are the i l legitimate offspring of mil itarism and patriarchal capital ism, not to
mention state socialism. But i l l egitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful
to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential ." (H araway, "Man i festo for
Cyborgs," 1 93 ).
4 5 . Foucault, Discipline a n d Punish, 205 .
46. G ibson and Sterling, Difference Engine, 1 3 0 .
47. Ibid., 3 78 .
48. I b i d . , 3 8 0 .
4 9 . Ibid., 429.
50. Foucault, preface to Deleuze and Guattari, A nti-Oedipus, x i i i .

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Index
The A ccursed Share,

8, 96-97

Adbusters magazine, 27n38, 1 40n l 4

Adorno, Theodor, 7

96-99, 1 1 4n20, 1 29; and

transgression, 22, 83, I 05
Baudril lard, Jean, 20, 23-24, 34, 36,

Algeria, I 00

55, 65, 85, 89- 1 1 6, 1 3 0-3 1 ;

A l thusser, Louis, 6, 26n23

A m erica, I l l
anarchy of becom ing, 22, 3 3 , 50-5 3 ,
92, 1 1 8

antianthropology of, 3 4 ;
critique o f Marx ism, 6, 7 3 ;
critique of rationalism, 1 7, 6 9 ;
gift theory of, 8, I 0, 1 4; and

anarchy of the subject, 22, 3 3 , 48-50,

52-5 3 , 5 5 , 90, 92
Ansell-Pearson, Keith, 3 5, 48
A nti-Oedipus, I 0,

1 24

antihumanism, 3 8 ; Baudri l l ard's, 90,

hyperreality, 2; and simulation,

25 n2, 57n l 4, 1 1 8-20
Bentham, Jeremy, 8 1 , 1 3 5
B ernstein, Richard, 63
Beyond Good and Evil,

40--4 1

I 08; Foucault ' s, 66, 73, 76, 79,

binary logic, 69-70

1 1 8 ; S ituationist, I 0 I

B i smarck, Prince Otto von, 67, 70

Bookchin. Murray, 1 0, 1 5-2 1 , 28n5 1 ,

Babbage, Charles, 1 3 5

95, 98, 1 00- 1 0 1 , 1 24, 1 3 2

Babylon, 1 26

Bourdieu, Pierre, 24

B akunin, Michael, 1 0, 1 4- 1 5, 3 2 , 46,

bourgeoisie, 32, 46, 67, 82, I 07

49, 65, 67-74; feud w ith Marx,

Braidotti, Rosi, 4, 62, 1 1 3 n8, 1 1 8

90; as modernist, 44, 1 1 7

Brandes, Georg, 3 1

Baku n i n i tes, 4 1

B ukatman, Scott, 1 3 1

Barlow, John Perry, 96, 28n5 1

Barthes, Roland, 1 -2, 65, 69

B utler, Jud ith, 4-6, 94

Batai lle, Georges, 1 7, 22. 5 5 , 77, I 0 I ;

antianthropology of, 3 4 ; g i ft
theory of, 8, 1 4, 88n79, 92, 94,

Cap i t a l,

95

Capitalism and Schizop hrenia,

58n32

Index

I 54
C artesian concept of space, 1 2, 24,
1 1 8, 1 2 1 -25, 1 3 7
Cartesian concept o f subj ectivity, 3 ,

antihumanism of, 38; and desire,

20, 25n9; genealogy of, 3, 4445; and the nomadic, 3 5 , 5 8n24,

49, 64, 8 1 , 1 08-9, 1 1 7- 1 8, 1 3 0-

69-72, 1 28 ; and schizophren ia,

33

22, 3 7

Case, 1 20-2 1 , 1 3 2

deli nquency, 80-82

Chia, 1 22-23

Derrida, Jacques, 1 -2, 4, 6, 36, 55,

Chomsky, Noam, 1 0, 1 7- I 8 , 28n48

Chumbawumba, 27n39

63-65, 7 1 -72, 86n27

Descartes, Rene, 4, 78, 84, 1 2 1 . See

Clark, John, 1 9

also Cartesian concept of space,

Cogito, 5 1 , 76

Cartesian concept of

Columbine High School, 25n2

communicative rational ity, 1 9-20,
39

Communist Manifesto, 45

s u bj e c t i v ity
desiring machines, 20, I 24-25

detournement, I 02-3
Detwei ler, Bruce, 5 1

Communist Party, I 00

Dewey, John, 8

Connolly, W i l l i am, 48

Dialectic of Enlightenment, 7

The Conquest of Bread, 2 8 n 5 1

Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,

dialectic, 7, I I , 82-84, 98, I 04, I 06,

6I
Conway, Daniel, 59n65
Crow, Sheryl, 89
Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr., 1 3 4
cybernetics, I 7-20, 3 8 , 57n 1 4, I 067, 1 24, 1 3 I , 1 3 9
cyberpunk, I , 1 1 - 1 2, 1 4, 1 7, 24,
1 1 7- 1 4 I

1 08, 1 1 2, 1 3 8

The Difference Engine, 1 3 5-3 7

Discipline and Punish, 57n7, 5 8n32,
66, 79-80, 1 3 5-3 6

The Dispossessed, I 2
Distraction, 24, I 27-29, 1 3 2
D ovi, Suzanne, 57n 1 3
Duplantier, Stephen, 20
Durkheim, Emile, 8, 92, 94, 1 1 3n9

cyberspace, 1 1 8-2 1
cyborg, 20, I I 8, 1 3 1 , 1 3 7, I 4 l n44
data havens, 1 25 , 1 27, 1 29, 1 3 4,
1 40n23

Daybreak, 3 2 , 4 3 , 4 5
Debord, Guy, 5 6n4, 1 00- 1 03 , 1 1 722, 1 3 0

Ecce Homo, 54
The Ecology of Freedom, 1 8- 1 9
The Ecstasy of Communication, I 05
Electronic Frontier Foundation,
26n29, 28n5 I
Enl ightenment, 1 5- 1 7, 20, 3 3-3 5 ,
48-49, 65-66, 78-80, 82-84,

deconstruction, 1 2, 24, 7 1 -72, 1 3 I

88n82, 1 3 6-3 7 ; concept of

Delany, Samuel, 1 2

rationality, 38, 90, 1 1 4n l l ;

Deleuze, Gilles, I , 1 0, 1 4, 5 ! -5 2, 55,

6 5-66, 74-77, 82, 86n26, 1 1 81 20, 1 2 3-2 5 , 1 3 7 ;

concept of subj ectivity, 1 3 , 20,

24, 1 1 7, 1 3 0
Eros and Civilization, 7

Index
eternal return, 5 3 , 59n59, 5 9n65,

1 55
Green Huey, 1 32
Grenada, 1 26-27

60n73

Grosz, Elizabeth, 4--5

fascism, 27n42, 47, 52-5 3 , 1 1 2, 1 24,
Fatal Strategies,

I 05
Habermas, Jlirgen, 7-8, 1 8-20,

Fi rst International, 7
Forget Foucault,

Guattari, Felix, I , 3, 1 0, 5 1 , 5 8n24,

87n73 , 1 23-2 5 , 1 3 7

1 26, 1 3 7

90-9 1

Foucau lt, Michel, 3, 24, 28n48, 3 2 ,

36, 5 5 , 5 7 n 7 , 6 1 -88, 90-92,
1 1 5 n57, 1 1 8- 1 9, 1 3 0, 1 3 7 ;

28n58, 34, 36, 3 8-3 9, 76-77

Hak Narn. See Walled City
Haraway, Donna, 20, 57n 1 4, 1 1 8, 1 3 1 ,
1 4 l n4 4

anti anthropology of, 3 4 ; and

Hatab, Lawrence, 5 7n20

capi l lary power, 1 6, 22, 1 3 5 ; and

Hegel, G . W. F., 7, I I , 36, 50, 68, 7 1 ,

poststructuralism, I 0, 1 4,
27n3 6 ; and transgression, 20, 53

84
Heidegger, Martin, 5 3 -54, 60n73

Frankfurt School, 7, 1 8-20, 29n58,

History of Sexuality,

34
Free Army of Counter Terrorism

Holy Fire,

(FACT), 1 26-27

Hollinger, Veronica, 1 3 1
24, 1 3 3

homo econom icus,

Freud, S igmund, 3--4, 7, 1 0, 1 8, 9 1 ,

97

I 0, 66, 78

1 5 , 1 1 6n63

hooks, bell, 25n9

Horkheimer, Max, 7
Hum an, A ll Too Hum an,

Gaullism, 6 1 , 65, I 00, I 03

Gecrtz, Clifford, I, 9, 1 25
Genealogy of Morals,

3 , 3 1 -32, 44

32, 46, 48

hyperreality, 2, 92, 1 04-- l l l , 1 20,

1 32
hypertext, 1 -2, 1 3 2

genealogy, 3, 44, 7 1 , 9 1 , 1 3 6;
Foucau lt ' s, 3 , 64, 66, 74, 77-8 1 ,

Idoru,

87n55

In the Shadow of the Silent

G ibson, William, I , 1 2, 1 4, 24, 1 1 7141

The Gzft,

1 22-23 , 1 3 2, 1 4 1 n3 3

Majorities,

1 12

instrumental reason, 7, 1 7, 20, I I 7

8, 94-95 , 1 1 4n l l

gift exchange, 8, 94-99

Gnutella, 27n3 9
God, 45, 69, 94, 1 00; death of, 56, 93,
1 07, 1 1 0

Internationale Situationniste,

I 00-

101
Internet, 9, 1 4, 27n39, 28n5 1 , 1 20,
1 22
Internet Relay Chat (IRC), 1 25

Goldman, Emma, 93-94

lrigaray, Luce, 4-5, 20, 7 1 -72

governmental ity, 66, 74

Islands in the Net,

graffiti, 2 3 , I 03, 1 1 9
Grarnsci, Antonio, 6
Grateful D ead, 96

J ames,

1 25

W i l liam, 8
Frederick,

J ameson,

1 1 4n20

Index

! 56
Kant, Immanuel, 84, 88n82

critique of, 98- 1 0 1 , 1 06, 1 1 2 ;

Kel lner, Dougl as, 93, I 06--8

bourgeois language of, 2 3 , 5 5 ,

k i l lfile, 1 22

73-74, 92-93 ; concept o f

Kint, Roger "Verbal," 3 5

subj ectivity, 1 4- 1 5 , 3 3 , 1 3 0 ;

Kristeva, Julia, 4

Foucault and, 6 1 , 6 5 ; as

Kropotkin, Peter, 1 0, 1 4, 27n40,

total izing theory, 1 0- 1 1

28n5 1 , 3 2, 65, 8 1 , 1 1 7, 1 30-3 1 ;

Marxism and Deconstruction,

as rational ist, 1 6-- 1 7, 68

matrix, 1-2, 6, 8- 1 1 , 20, 24, 27n36,

Kulynych, Jessica, 86n42

II

1 20-2 3 , 1 3 2

The Matrix, 25n2

Lacan, Jacques, 3--6, 25n9, 9 1

Mauss, Marcel, 8, 1 0, 1 4, 1 7, 1 9,

LaCapra, Dominick, 1 1 3 n9

8 8n79, 92, 94-98, 1 1 4n9,

Laclau, Ernesto, 6, 26n23

1 1 4n l l , 1 1 4n20, 1 29

Las Vegas, 1 1 2
Law of the Father, 5-6

May 1 968, 2 3 , 93 , 99- 1 04, 1 1 ! - 1 2,

1 1 9, 1 2 1 , 1 3 3

LeGuin, Ursula K . , 1 2

May, Todd, 1 4, 64

Lenin, V . 1 . , 5 1 , 55, 74
Leninism, I I , 1 3 9

McLuhan, Marshall, 74
metanarrative, 1 3 , 32, 65, 1 1 8, 1 3 1

Leninist vanguard, 22-23 , 1 04, 1 09,

metaphysics, 1 -2, 3 4, 3 7, 48, 53-5 5 ,

1 19

59n59, 68-69, 7 1 , 1 08

Levi- Strauss, Claude, I , 9, 1 9

Mexican revolution, 27n42

liberalism, 20, 24, 3 3 , 3 5 , 37, 4 1 , 43,

micropolitics, 3 3 , 5 1 -52, 66, 76, 90,

48, 6 1 --63 , 1 26
l inearity, 1 -3 , 8-9, 24, 7 1 -72, 1 2 1 ,
1 23-25, 1 3 2

92, 1 1 8- 1 9
m icropower, 1 6
M i l l , John Stuart, 3 7 , 6 1

L inux operating system, 1 28

mi sarchism, 3 I

logos, 7, 63, 70-73, 86n27, 1 24

Moderators, 1 28-29

Lyotard, Jean-Franois, 32, 5 5 , 69,

130

Moore, John, 20
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa, 95
Mouffe, Chantal, 6, 26n23

Madness and Civilization, 76, 83

Manufacturing Consent, I 7

N apster, 27n39

Mao Tse Tung, 5 5

nationalism, I 0, 40--43

Mara, Gerald, 5 7n 1 3

Nazi party, 7, 32, 53

Marcuse, Herbert, 7, 1 7- 1 8, 29n58

Marx, Karl, 7-8, 1 8, 46, 69, 73-74,

Negri, Antonio, 1 8

84, 90, 95, 1 07, 1 24

Marx ism, 6--7 , 2 1 , 24, 26n23 , 28n58,
62, 67--69, 89-90, 1 1 9, 1 2 6 ;
autonomist, 1 8 ; B audri l lard ' s

neural hack, 1 3 2

Neuromancer, 24, 1 20--2 3, 1 3 1 -3 2

A Nietzschean Defense of Dem ocracy,
57

! 57

Index
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 2-3 , 7, 20, 22,
3 1 -6 1 , 68, 88n79, 9Q--93, 1 1 8,

pol itical economy of the sign, 8, 1 4,

23

1 3 0; and death of God, I 07, I I 0;

The Political Philosophy of

Foucault ' s usc of, 64-66, 77-

Poststructuralist A narchism, 1 4
Post-Scarcity A narchism, 1 7, 1 00,

78;

as

m ad philosopher, 83-84

nihil ism, 4, 20, 3 1 , 40, 48, 6 1 , 85,

1 07-8, 1 2 1
Nixon, Richard, I 09
node, 1 -3 , 8, 1 23 , 1 3 1 -3 2, 1 4 1 n 3 3 ;
high bandwidth, 3 4 , 7 9 ; I P
(Internet Protocol), 9; Nietzsche,
35
nomad, 24, 3 5-3 6, 4 1 , 56, 5 8n24, 62,
82-84, 1 20, 1 27-28, 1 3 8
nomad thought, 3 , 69-73 , 77, 1 1 8,
1 23
nomos, 70--7 2, 74, 78, 82, 86n26
Norris, Christopher, 89
Nozick, Robert, 8 1

1 24
Poster, Mark, 74, 1 04
postmodern bourgeois l iberal ism, 8,
3 5 , 37, 40, 45, 47
postmodern commons, 1 3 , 39, 42, 63,
72, 90, 1 3 8

Postmodernism, 1 1 4n20
poststructuralism, I 0, 1 4, 26n3 0,
27n3 6, 27n3 7, 3 8 , 44
potlatch, 95, I 05, 1 1 4n20
pragmatism, 8, I I , 1 9
prestige economies, 24, 96, 1 29
proletariat, 1 8 , 32, 67--68, 75, I 07,
1 09, 1 24, 1 3 0
psychoanalysis, 3 , 3 4

O liphant, Laurence, 1 3 6
open source software, 1 28

Rastafarian ism, 1 26

The Order of Things, 28n48, 73

Orienta/ism, 26n3 0
Overman. See U bermensch

Rawls, John, 8 1

Owen, David, 57n 1 0, 5 7n 1 2

Reid, Elizabeth, 1 25

Panopticism, 8 1 , 1 3 5-3 7

Rizome Corporation, 1 25-26

Panther Moderns, 24, 1 2 1 , 1 3 7

Robinson, Kim Stanley, 1 2

parl iamentarian ism, 46

Rorty, Richard, 8, 1 9-20, 3 6-3 9, 45,

Reagan, Ronald, 1 04, I l l

Regulators, 1 28
rhizome, I , 9, 1 1 8, 1 23 , 1 25 , 1 3 2, 1 34

Paroxysm, 1 07

5 7n 1 0, 57n l 2, 6 1 -65

Pentagon, 20

royal science, 69, 7 1 , 74, 77

Perez, Rolando, 52, 59n66, 72, 1 24

Ryan, Michael, I I , 28n58

phallogoccntri sm, 4, 1 1 8

The Philosophical Discourse of

Modernity, 3 8

Sade, Marquis de, 77

Pickett, Brent, 87n46

95, 1 1 4n l l
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 9 1
S aussure, Ferdinand de, 9- 1 0

Piercy, Marge, 1 2
Plant, S adie, I 08
Plato, 2 , 634, 7 1

Sahlins, Marshall, I, 9- 1 0, 28n5 1 ,

About the Author

Lew i s Call holds a Ph . D . i n m odem European i nte l l e ct u a l h i story from the
University of California, I rvine. He teaches w orld h i story , pol itical econom y ,
a n d the h istory of netw ork techn o l o gy at C a l i for n i a P o l y t e c h n i c State
Un iversity, S an Luis Obispo. He has published several articles on the p h i l oso

New Nietzsche Studies, History

The Journal of Nietzsche Studies. He s erves on the editorial

phy of Friedrich Nietzsche, i n such j ournals as

of Science,

and

board of A narchist

Studies,

and he has published several art i c les about anarchist

theory i n this i nternational journal. He i s a dedicated practiti oner of Tai C h i

Chuan .