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The noisy majority: an analysis of the argentine crisis of December 2001 from the theoretical approach of Hardt & Negri, Laclau and žižek

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13569320601156753

1469-9575

Sebastián Carassai,

Marxism and Critical Theory

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 A preliminary version of this work was presented at the conference on the Writings of Slavoj Žižek, organized by the British Society for Phenomenology, St Hilda's College, Oxford, UK, on 7–9 April 2006. I am grateful to a Bernardo Mendel Award and to the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University whose support allowed me to participate in that conference. A generous invitation from Hernán Feldman, professor of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University, allowed me to discuss a Spanish version of this article in their conference cycle ‘2001, An Other Odyssey: Political Crisis and Argentine Film’, on 25 September 2006. I thank Professors Daniel James and Alejandro Mejías-López from Indiana University for their valuable comments and their critical inputs, and the anonymous readers at the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies for their perceptive reading of, and suggestions for this article. I also appreciate the inexhaustible patience of my friend Kevin Coleman, who carefully read previous versions of this work and made my writing more dynamic. 2 The piqueteros emerged in the 1990s, in the light of the growing unemployment brought about by the Menem–Cavallo policies (especially, the privatizations). Their name denotes a way of demonstrating: blocking roads, avenues or highways to make themselves heard when presenting their claims. 3 The three theoretical viewpoints are interesting to approach the Argentine case considering the debates opened up in recent years in the academy and also within political party groupings as well as organizations of non-political party militants. On the other hand, both Hardt & Negri and Laclau have made different statements on the meanings of the Argentine crisis, and they have attempted to interpret it in the light of their theoretical frameworks. Žižek's thoughts have been included mainly because his theoretical and political position in recent years (stimulating per se) has been defined to a great extent from a critical dialogue with Laclau's theory and, to a certain degree, with Hardt & Negri's works. 4 This theory is developed in: Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. London: Harvard University Press, and in ibid. 2004. Multitude.New York: Penguin Press. 5 H&N, Empire, op. cit., 56. 6 H&N, Multitude, op. cit., 216–17. 7 The almost 200 companies run by their employees and workers in 2001 had been reduced to less than 50% by 2004. 8 Strictly speaking, the Peronist party has ruled the country since De la Rúa's downfall up to the present time (first with Rodríguez Saá, then with Duhalde, and finally, with the current President Néstor Kirchner). However, in this paper I refer to the fact that only in December 2003 was Peronism confirmed in power by elections. Presidents Rodríguez Saá and Duhalde were not chosen through popular ballot but by the Legislative Assembly (formed by the two chambers in the Legislative Power plus the governors of the provinces). 9 H&N, Empire, op. cit., 210. 10 This last pair, i.e. bank debtors and creditors, even had its members objectively against each other. However, their ‘being against’ Minister Cavallo and the government made it possible for them to forget that, once the latter were overthrown, they would be placed on either side of the road by their opposing interests. 11 H&N, Empire, op. cit., 211. 12 H&N could argue that the enemy in sight was the wrong one, and that mistake brings to light the difficulty they mention. Truly enough, in their opinion, ‘the first question of political philosophy today is not if or even why there will be resistance and rebellion, but rather how to determine the enemy against which to rebel. Today the generalized being-against of the multitude must recognize imperial sovereignty as the enemy and discover the adequate means to subvert its power’ (idem, 210–12). It is obvious that the December 2001 Argentine multitude could carry out neither of them. 13 Vezzetti, Hugo. 2002. Scenes from the crisis. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 11 (2): 164. For a description of the process whereby politicians in general held the sole responsibility for all the ills that afflict the nation, see ‘Fourth Scene’ narrated by Vezzetti in this same issue. 14 H&N, Multitude, op. cit., 106–7. 15 Idem, 106. 16 Ibid. (emphasis added). 17 H&N, Multitude, op. cit., 242. 18 Idem, 236. 19 Idem, 240. 20 It is convenient to set aside the term ‘absolute’, since this would not be for Spinoza a peculiarity of the democratic form of government, as has been correctly pointed out by Balibar on remarking, with reference to the other two forms of government, that, for Spinoza, ‘in certain conditions, both monarchy and aristocracy may be “absolute”’. Balibar, Etienne. 1998. Spinoza and politics. London and New York: Verso: 56. If all three forms of government may be called absolute, this is not so much because of a peculiarity of democracy but because of Spinoza's idea of making right and power equal. Spinoza's grounds to explain the forms of government takes us back to the concept of State, and this in turn to that of the basis of natural law. It should be made clear that Spinoza certainly considered democracy as the best among all forms of government for being the ‘the most natural form of government’. But the difference between the natural state and democracy is that in democracy ‘everyone submits to the control of authority over his actions’. See Spinoza, Baruch. 1951. A theologico-political treatise included in The chief works of Benedict De Spinoza. New York: Dover: 263. The absolute about democracy does not lie, therefore in the fact that any kind of representation is excluded but, on the contrary, it is only in democracy that the conditions for general representation are given. 21 Thus, as women ‘have not by nature equal right with men … they necessarily give way to men’, they are, together with slaves, deprived of the right to vote in democratic assembly; the former for being ‘under men's authority’, the latter to that of their ‘masters’. Spinoza, A political treatise reprinted in The chief works of Benedict De Spinoza, op. cit., 386–7. These restrictions, unconceivable nowadays, should not lessen the value of a meditated political philosophy that deserves being understood while in dialogue (critical but at the same time conditioning) with their seventeenth century. However, it is absolutely necessary to bear in mind, especially when confronted by those who have written much about what Spinoza has written little, what he has written little about. 22 Spinoza, A theologico-political treatise, op. cit., 385. 23 H&N, Multitude, op. cit., 255. 24 It has been remarked, among others by Etienne Balibar and Gilles Deleuze, that between Theologico-political treatise (1670) and Political treatise (1677) restless years elapse in the Netherlands which change Spinoza's political viewpoint. The murder of the De Witt brothers, opposers to the House of Orange, would have caused in the philosopher a deep impression, drawing him away from any enthusiasm regarding the benefits of a liberal monarchy. Thus, the passage that took him from Theologico-political treatise to Political treatise would also lead from the possibility of a liberal monarchy to the need for a democracy guaranteeing free expression. However, not only can discontinuities be established between both treaties but there are also elements of continuity. Among these last mentioned, the need appears to formulate and give grounds to an order (a State) that should allow a maximum of liberty and a maximum of security at the expense of a minimum of resignation. Nothing seems to indicate that in his unfinished treatment of democracy in his Political treatise, Spinoza might have spoken about the exercise of sovereignty in a different way from that in Theologico-political treatise. 25 Spinoza, A Theologico-political treatise, op. cit., 260. 26 Casullo, Nicolás. 2002. Interview with Nicolás Casullo. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 11 (2): 153. In this respect, an intermediate vision between my proposed interpretation and Casullo's may be consulted in Grüner, Eduardo. 2002. Interview with Eduardo Grüner. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 11 (2): 158. Grüner declares that ‘society isn't irrational and knows that, being complex and composed of millions and millions of people, there must be some kind of representation’. For him, ‘what is really being discussed is not who to replace them with, but what is the logic of production of these representatives’. The history after the crisis seems to indicate that, as the economic situation started to recover, even the very logic of production of the representatives also gradually ceased to be questioned. 27 Laclau, Ernesto. 1994. Why do empty signifiers matter to politics? In The lesser evil and the greater good, edited by Jeffrey Weeks. London: Rivers Oram:167. 28 Laclau, Ernesto. 2005. On populist reason. London and New York: Verso: 70. 29 For Laclau, the excluded occupy the place of a strong notion of heterogeneity, more radical than the mere existence of different demands capable of being represented. ‘Heterogeneity, conceived in this way’, Laclau writes, ‘does not mean difference; two entities, in order to be different, need a space within which that difference is representable, while what I am now calling heterogeneity presupposes the absence of that common space’. Laclau, On Populist Reason, op. cit., 140. 30 A fragment of one of the essays included in his dialogue with Butler and Žižek clearly states the object of my criticism: ‘the more extended the chain of equivalences, the more the need for a general equivalent representing the chain as a whole. The means of representation are, however, only the existing particularities. So one of them has to assume the representation of the chain as a whole. This is the strictly hegemonic move: the body of one particularity assumes a function of universal representation.’ Laclau, Ernesto. 2000. Constructing universality. In Contingency, hegemony, universality: contemporary dialogues on the left, edited by Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek. London and New York: Verso: 302. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. It should be understood that what becomes impossible and at the same time necessary is the empty signifier that this claim would imply and not the claim itself. 33 This ‘emptiness’ is also presented by Laclau as a ‘tendency’. Anyway, if we consider ‘¡que se vayan todos!’ as a signifier with a tendency to emptiness, it is still valid to analyse its content. 34 Laclau, Ernesto. Megafón. Comunicación y Cultura (Interview, Buenos Aires, 4 August 2002). 35 Casullo, ‘Interview with Nicolás Casullo’, op. cit., 154–5. 36 For Laclau, the ‘people’ is not a social structure but ‘an act of institution that creates a new agency out of a plurality of heterogeneous elements’. Laclau, On populist reason, op. cit., 224. 37 That night did not turn the private into public but the public into private. The logics of private property extended to the public sphere. 38 The origin of this process may be found in the amazing impact that the hyperinflationary processes of 1989 and the beginning of the '90s had at a real and symbolic level on vast sectors of the population. It was due to these traumatic experiences that the economic forces started to be taken as unbeatable, on the one hand, and beyond the control of political will, on the other. Democracy itself, as a civil right and duty, was weakened. The uncontrolled devaluation of the peso in 1989 was followed by a devaluation of the idea of democracy as a value. In the following decade, democracy (and politics in general) would be a site clearly subject to economic forces. 39 Among them, Carlos Grosso, José Luis Manzano and Matilde Menéndez. 40 Žižek, Slavoj. 2001. The ticklish subject. London and New York: Verso: 186. 41 Idem, 187. 42 Žižek, Slavoj. 2000. Holding the place. In Contingency, hegemony, universality: contemporary dialogues on the left, 322. 43 Idem, 323. 44 Žižek himself acknowledges his agreement with H&N in a footnote to the mentioned article: ‘As a model of an analysis of capitalism close to what I have in mind, see Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire', idem, 329. 45 Idem, 322. 46 ‘Again’ because they had already done so massively in the 1970s, during Martínez De Hoz's time at the Ministry of Economy during the last military dictatorship. 47 In 1995, Bordón-Álvarez, from the FREPASO, was the presidential ticket that contended and lost the election against Menem. In the open internal party election summoned by them to decide who would run for the presidency and who for the vice-presidency, the urban middle-class sector was the voting majority. The candidate with the most moderate profile succeeded: José Bordón. 48 Twenty-eight years before evicting him from the Casa Rosada, the Buenos Aires middle class elected him Federal Senator. In 1996 he was elected Buenos Aires Governor. In 1997, when the ALIANZA decided he would run for president in open elections, it was the middle class who, again, cast 63.3% of the ballot that made him win over Graciela Fernández Meijide. And in 1999, as mentioned above, he was made the president of the nation. 49 In this alliance, the middle class also participated with popular sectors enticed by Menem's Peronist populism. 50 Right from the outset of the mobilization of the middle class, it could be sensed that the kind of dialogue it established with the piqueteros determined the scope of the protest both in terms of immediate effects and long-term consequences. Some months after those days of December, Horacio González made a clear diagnosis: ‘It is the case that there are piqueteros that accept being associated with the caceroleros, although the caceroleros have not spoken of the piqueteros – when they do we will all be closer to national history.’ ‘Interview with Horacio González’, in Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 11 (2) [2002]: 146. The dialogue between piqueteros and caceroleros was brief, fragile and easy to dissolve. The serious difficulties of finding a common language, interest and action plan prevented the existence of joint mid-term and long-term actions. The differences between their cultural traditions and, probably, their social horizons – hidden within the clamour of the events – surfaced again to the rhythm of improvements in the economic situation.