I am still jet-lagged, or is it a cold? I can’t tell. Whatever it is, I have not been up to par for the past few weeks. The trip to Europe, including visits with my daughter and her family in Paris and the seminar in Wroclaw, was more challenging than expected. Naomi, my wife and Deliberately Considered’s Art and Design Editor, and I slowed down in our posting. But now, we are back. I expect to regain my strength, and you, dear Deliberately Considered readers, can expect in the coming weeks more posts on Wroclaw and on American and global politics and culture. Here, today and tomorrow, my thoughts on OWS responding to the discussions at the Wroclaw seminar. -Jeff
The starting point of the Wroclaw Seminar was Occupy Wall Street. It then served as our primary case for comparative investigation throughout and informed our final conclusions. Seminar participants Pamela Brown and Sidney Rose suggested additional readings for the seminar when we focused on OWS — Rose on the link between Anonymous and OWS. She was particularly interested in the online pre-history of OWS. Brown, an Occupy activist, was focused on the present challenges and recent accomplishments of the movement.
Rose suggested a piece describing an embrace between Cornell West, the philosopher, social critic and activist, and Gregg Housh, a leading figure in the shadowy group, Anonymous, at an occupy demonstration in Boston. This informed our discussion about the virtual infrastructure that supported the embodied occupations. As we tried to understand what is special about the new “new social movements,” the interaction between virtual and the embodied was a topic we knew we needed to explore.
We discussed how events in the Middle East and North Africa, combined with virtual actions, led to Occupy Wall Street, and sparked a global social movement wildfire. Following the Arab Spring, OWS developed with an Adbusters initial proposal to occupy wall street on September 17, 2011 , supported by politicized hackers such as those associated with Anonymous. Suddenly, with a minimum of organizational planning, things changed. Thousands quickly made global connections. Governments fell. The economic order was challenged. A new power seemed to have emerged. Through the new and old media solid authority melted. The inevitable seemed vulnerable (Al Jazeera was crucial in the Middle East). Traditional autocrats were no longer secure. Economic plutocrats were fat targets for social outrage. Clearly the new media order contributed to this. Something very new had been brought into the world (i.e. Hannah Arendt’s idea of what politics can do).
While I think it is a mistake to consider these movements as having been created by the new media (“the Facebook revolutions”), it is hard to imagine their rapidly formed links and the coordination and organization of the movements without new media. Hierarchical organization, a command structure, a disciplined party organization and the like were no longer necessary. The “iron law of oligarchy” which Robert Michels analyzed in his classic study of social democratic parties , was made obsolete. Coordination could be and was more horizontally achieved. And many of the movements, OWS in particular, made this capacity a matter of principle. Decision through consensus promised to be not only an ideal: it was becoming also an operating reality.
Yet, this promise is not without peril, apparent in OWS and in many of the new “new social movements.” Without clear leadership, it is hard to know who actually speaks for the new “new social movements” and what their goals are. Those who live by the sword of new media may die by it. This is a primary challenge for the movements as they have attempted to go beyond their initial successes. Brown led us in our discussion of this issue.
It is one thing to observe that OWS changed the conversation. It is quite another to know what its enduring impact might be and to work for this. For activists such as Brown, the challenge is to figure out what is to be done once major media attention is no longer there. She has been very engaged on the issue of student debt, a major American problem, and she is part of a group of OWS activists who believe that the debt issue is the one that will bring the movement forward, to make sure that OWS activists address the concerns of the 99% as they speak in its name. She suggested that the group read a piece on a recent demonstration in N.Y. on this theme. The article includes a link to an important article by Brown explaining the dimensions of the crisis: no less than the end of the American dream of upward social mobility.
I think this direction is quite promising. Deep debt is the tie that holds much of the 99% together, from usurious payday advances, to credit card debt, to mortgage foreclosures, to impossible student loans. I think this is a theme that can carry OWS forward. Our seminar participants were quite intrigued by the details, especially concerning the prohibitive costs of American higher education and the consequences of this. They found it particularly surprising when I revealed that I, as a full professor, was not at all confident that my children would be able to attend the universities of their own choosing because of the threat of deep debt. Somehow, we managed, but that was because of some good luck, including the good fortune of timing. It was ten years ago when things were bad, but not quite as bad as they are now.
Yet, there has been sharp criticism within OWS of the recent moves to focus on debt as the central issue of OWS. Tomorrow I will report on this and its implications for the public in the movement and for the broader public, and how both work on the broader task of reinventing American political culture. The challenge is that the mediated capacity that first led to the formation of the movement may be an obstacle to future concerted action.
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