Izabella Kaminska’s recent article in the FT[1] on seasteading does have some genuine criticism’s of the Seasteading Institute’s more utopian goals, including its supposed desire to achieve full political independence from the modern world. No such project can ever truly do this, and despite the heady heights of some of seasteading’s advocates I’m sure most recognise that pragmatism and time are needed. However the rest of the article is a glorified diatribe against political competition and in support of our static status quo. The simplicity of Kaminska’s message underlies the simplistic worldview that defines it. Continue reading →

The supposed nationalist revolt encapsulated by Brexit and Trump have now been adequately shown to be elaborate exercises in pacification, further sweeping away questions of European and American White identity in the 21st century as populist insurgencies prove to be wholly conjunctural. They represent neither the beginning of a new order or the end of the old, instead showing a stopgap in the working orders of modernity. Trump nor Brexit will become harbingers, as both are mired in discourses and forms of mass. Mass in this case being a centralised totality of peoples, flows and governance. Alongside the mass of the Cathedral and the neoliberal economy, these new populist totalities are effectively vying in this centralised arena.

Modernity’s fascination with the depolitical continues to be seen even in the heady times of populist groundswells, secessionist movements and economic and climatic change which potentially necessitate new ways of thinking about wider economies and polities. Many dominant and even nascent ideologies implicitly rely upon this drive toward depoliticisation, separating public spheres, counter-publics and the everyday political from the wider governmentality of the macro-environment. In effect, the issue of governance as a multiplicity of issues is skirted by placing institutions and mechanisms into situations of automaticity. The surrounding environment of markets and regulatory agencies are ruled by this automaticity, with their innate laws dictating the movement of resources and assuming an implicit equality of power. This understanding then colours how things are to be seen, with politics as a critique of existing power and an arena for the debate and creation of alternatives sidelined in favour of a kind of expertise and independent knowledge that remains unquestionable except to those ‘in the know’. However this in itself is a political concept. Expertise as knowledge and the structuration of markets and regulatory laws as scientific and ethereal suggest a politics of resources and power that removes agency from the public sphere toward precast institutions that internalise governance.

The Catalan parliament’s declaration of independence is not a sea change in the way modern governance will work, particularly as the Spanish government has come down on this declaration of independence with an iron fist, allowing the Guardia Civil to abuse referendum voters and now removing the Catalan government from power. Instead it is a potentially catalytic moment that signals new possibilities in a world still largely (but only nominally) determined by the consensus of large, centralised nation-states controlling the main levers of political and socio-economic power. And judging by the reactions of the Spanish government and the EU, such potentiality worries the established governmental frameworks in Europe. Of course the Catalan independence movement is not a panacea, with many problems from the actors involved to the endgame vision envisioned by activists and politicians. Its strength lies in its innate ability to question received wisdom and the apodicticity of the state as the only means of legislation and decision-making, suggesting that Catalan independence can become a spear for further decentralisation and the move toward a multi-scalar, multi-institutional complex of governance and rule-making. Continue reading →

In this essay I argue that Brexit must be understood as a conjunctural event that has discohered the way politics is understood in Britain. The de-axiomatised explanations of the EU referendum so far present a fragmented socio-economic explanation for both the European Union referendum result and for the political attitudes that characterise the resultant Brexit. However, looking through a neoliberal axiomatic understanding and a range of polling data related to the EU referendum, we can see that many voters who voted leave can be seen to be the discontents of globalisation, those left behind economically. However this macro-level variable does not cohere to the micro-level processes of the voters, who voted overwhelmingly due to cultural and national issues such as immigration and national sovereignty. Due to the extent of neoliberal subjectivation in the UK which individualises economic activity and creates a politics of consensus, economic issues became difficult to articulate as they lack a collective socio-economic subject. Thus the referendum acted as a de-economised catalyst, where people’s grievances were funnelled through a culturation of politics. This culturation is continuing post-referendum, as voters’ cultural and national concerns come to the fore of politics, leading toward processes of trasformismo and co-optation where the governing elites, particularly in the Conservative Party, are adopting this cultural rhetoric and re-engineering it into a form of neoliberalism with Brexit characteristics. Brexit then is not a revolt of the masses against neoliberal globalisation, but an event that is being slowly reabsorbed into the prevailing modes of production and politics. (Key words: Brexit, EU referendum, modes of politics, neoliberalism, subjectivation, conjuncture, governance) Continue reading →

Charlottesville seems to have been the coming together of two groups who pine after political power and control. Both Antifa and the Alt-Right seem determined to control the cultural and societal apparatuses that inform the major narratives and discourses of the US, pushing their understandings to the forefront of media exposure. Thus both groups are trying to stake their own political power within the state structures of the US government and its subsidiaries, attempting to exist within the centralised organs of governmental control. With this we see the fundamental problem. Two completely opposed groups vying for socio-cultural recognition and fighting for scraps from the US government itself. The fact that both are trying to do this will inevitably lead to conflict like that seen in Charlottesville. There will never be a political system that will encompass both anti-fascists (and their narratives of white privilege, structural racism and anti-dialogic engagement) and the Alt-Right (and their narratives of White identity, ethnocentrism and cultural homogeneity). The violence of Charlottesville shows the innate tendencies of modern politics when there is no dialogic or deliberative arena in which to air grievances and construct debate. The views of both groups are so anathema that such an arena is not even theoretically possible. The simple reality is that these groups cannot co-exist, and will when possible chase after the illusive power of institutionalised governance and the control of social and industrial complexes. Continue reading →

In my previous essay I outline the conceptions of an idealised natural order of political and socio-economic authority[1] consisting of overlapping platoons of varying organisational modes and jurisdictional structures. While an idealised type, this concept of a natural order is not a fully prescriptive universality, that prescribes particular hierarchical forms of governance upon the multiplicity of governmental forms. Rather, it is a recognition of the non-egalitarian nature of social life, and thus pushes against utopian ideals that take on a universal quality. It is a meta concept with varying degrees of applicability that presents the potential for new governmental forms to emerge, moving beyond both neoliberalism and egalitarianism which are themselves overarching abstractions that aim at the assimilation of heterogeneity and variety.

Mass, the totality of people, goods and information, defines the modern world. Mass production, big data, the masses. Modern politics is focusing more on the masses than ever before, yet contradictorily polarisation increases and the masses become ever more fragmented and decentral. While production is nominally decentralised into global production networks, mass production continues in all facets, from material resources to consumer goods. Everything is total and categorisable, with any diminution seen as an aberration in the move to homogeneity.