>Kelley,
>
>We have a completely different conception about
the nature of
>solidarity.
I know, I know Chuck. :-) Though, it may actually only be an artefact of using different languages--and all disciplines are about learning how to interpret words in certain sorts of ways. You say you aren't speaking from theory, but you are.
>Solidarity has nothing to do with norms or
enforcement, and since
>political action is a social act,
Firstly, all actions are social actions. Even a painter, working in the priavacy of his/her studio who never shows his/her work to anyone, is acting socially. You depend on socially created tools specific to that art that other people invented and produced. Perhaps someone else takes away the trash that you bag up and drag to the dumpster. Others produce most of the food you eat to sustain yourself. Etc. So, political action isn't special because it's *social* Political action is a certain kind of social activity
>that social solidarity arrives
>without any collective coercion, enforcement or
conceptualization of
>what is or isn't a norm. But I am coming at this
from experience, not
>theory.
Experience doesn't exist in a vacuum somehow without theory. One needs theoretical frames in order to have any experience whatsoever. Liberal individualism is a theoretical framework that is hegemonic in the US. Everything we do is interpreted through this theoretical framework--whether we adhere to it OR even reject it because you can't reject something unless it exists in the first place. So you need lib ind in order to reject it.
Now, if what you mean is the disciplinary language thing, then yeah you're on to something. But, to some extent, because we can talk to one another, we share a meta-theoretical frame that enables us to understand one another for the most part.
>There are a lot of different names for
solidarity, and one that is in
>the American and French tradition is fraternity.
I suppose musicians
>work toward this feeling all the time as do
dancers and any collective
>art form.
I think that--whatever you call it--solidarity/frat--in art is not necessarily crucial to group-produced art. I know several musician groups who think fraternity is bad for their music. They, instead think that tension, discord, hate, disgust works best.
>In that manifestation, then social solidarity
>aybe all about
>creating norms, perhaps. But solidarity also
>rrives in political
>action and it is an astonishing phenomenon. Of
course the authorities
>call it mob rule, and it is that also. It can be
criminal,
>anti-social, and pathological.
It's also been called spiritual and less generously religious fanaticism, cult-like. But in order to be called mob rule, criminal, anti-social, pathological it *needs* social norms which define what is non-mob rule, not criminal, pro-social, normal. Durkheim and his followers argue, for ex, that societies *need* these sorts of activities precisely in order to create social solidarity in the wider society. That is, deviance (and punishment) is required in order for us to recognize and become aware of social norms of right and wrong. Most of the time we have no klew what norms are operative, they're so completely taken for granted. They also argue that society needs this deviance in order to change. One theorist, Havlachs (sp? it's been years since I read him, since I don't go for this theory) argues that societies *need* occassional experience of group based "collective effervescence" because it is under those conditions that new ideas and possibilities might emerge and might, then, be disseminated in the wider society. This is the underlying frame that the author of _Freedom Summer_ is using I think, though I don't recall if he references it specifically. But, he does go on to delineate other social movment experiences that you also describe later in this post.
>But of all the things it is, it isn't a
>norm and it doesn't function as if it were an
ordinary social norm, as
>in say, acceptable hair cuts or appropriate
dress.
Surely you must understand that norms aren't such frivolous things. You can also think about them in terms of norms of freedom and democracy, for ex. This doesn't mean that within a society there is only one understanding of freedom and democracy--as Marx ably demonstrated.
>Solidary in this
>other form can evaporate in a heart beat, where
>as norms evolve but
>are never absent.
Yes. So? Can you base a sustained social movment on it then if it does evaporate all too quickly. No. So while you need "collective effervescence" or fraternity perhaps, it isn't enough to sustain a revolution--even a quick and bloodless one. We can draw on the rather banal distinction between lust and love that is often invoked in US society. It's a hueristic device, so take it with a grain of salt, as I'm well aware that it's a distinction specific to the West.
>But you are speaking of solidarity as a long term
phenomenon, more
>like a political movement with a collective
agenda, which then becomes
>legalistic, a proto-state, subject to all the
tools of guilt and
>shame, managed but dead, a corpse so to speak.
Yes. So I think your point is probably that you fear that norms and all this enforcement are 'bad' things that impede the beautiful, wonderous experience of collective eff or fraternity. Yes, that's all true, true, true. But I think there's some truth to the idea that you need these, as Nathan points out, AND that these rules can NEVER entirely supress the phenom to which you refer. If you're a Durkheimian theorists, then you'd say societies are like organisms and operate according to what biologists call homeostatis: bodies get chilled and then shiver in order to warm things up. Societies have norms in order to maintain order (cool too much social change), but in order to heat things up when it gets too chilled, societies have processes like collective effervesence. Sounds corny, ey? But, then you draw on the organism metaphor so maybe you're a Durkheimian? Of course that idea of organism wouldn't be an accident, some individual response that you devised on your own experience absent theory. The idea that societies are like organisms has been around at least since Aristotle and they reached a politically scary peak with Durkheim, Herbert Spencer, Malthus, and oh yeah some economists what with all their talk of business cycles, booms and busts, etc. Some have even gone so far as to say that some variants of Marxist theory are rather similar to the classical econs. I think Proyect or Doug said something to this effect recently
In any event, so what if norms impede fraternity and, conversely, if fraternity impedes norms? Maybe that's good and we aren't necessarily speaking past one another.
>I don't think of solidarity as that kind of
phenomenon at all. I think
>of it as a kind collective passion of imminent
intensity, a
>rapture. There is something like it in sports
events, but that is a
>manufactured, managed, and manipulated,
externally control
>phenomenon.
Yah. Concerts are said to be like this. John Wallace, a bball player and former student, once rhapsodized quite poetically about the fraternity he felt with his body and mind and and other players when things clicked just right on the court.
> That form is something like a staged and
commodified
>imitation: promised, often delivered on time,
plenty of norms and
>enforcement, and of course costs money--buy your
ticket and
>participate--bah, humbug.
Yah.
>What I think of is externally unmanageable and
completely internal to
>the collective itself, as if a mass were alive,
autonomous as a public
>body. It is spontaneous, like life, it just
happens for no reason, or
>for so many reasons there is no rational
accounting for them all. It
>is also the preamble to revolution that can
degrade at anytime into
>mass criminality or random insurrections.
Maybe. But there's too much research out there about social movments to suggest that fraternity is necessary but not sufficient to successful movements. Again, you need something more to sustain you through the struggle. The memory of that experience is one source of sustenance. It's not enough, though. As _Freedom Summer_ demonstrates a social movement *needs* some organization, it needs resources, it can't be spontaneous and survive long. What _Freedom Summer_ demonstrates is that, compared to people who did not participate in that experience, those who did were much more capable of sticking to their ideals for social change and were thus able to sustain their commitment in the face of a society that impeded their efforts on many fronts. But they couldn't effect social change without organization and resources--and thus norms and the like. Also, when they felt that they weren't living up the the ideals that they'd come to hold for themselves after _FS_, they often experienced a sense of shame--an internalized feeling about right and wrong. So, they carried the norm around in their head and enforced the norm themselves And they hadn't seen their FS friends in decades and they certainly weren't benefiting in any way by sticking to their ideals.
>But it can also cohere, not
>as a norm, but as a unified direction, not
through enforcement, but
>through the very thing that it is--through
solidarity in action.
But not for long.
>In any event, the State disappears. Suddenly it
is gone, because no
>one is sitting at their desk administering it and
there is nothing to
>be found of its normal presumption, except the
police and the
>military. But even they start to dissolve without
an external
>authority, because that very authority has
evaporated and been replace
>with this looming and autonomous body, this
collective cohering in
>solidarity. In this form then, class and most
other constructed
>divisions disappear as part of the cohesion--I
mean that is the
>cohesion, the solidarity.
Well this is a long-standing argument between you and I. See you've gone from norms to laws, which though they operate similarly, they are not reducible to one another. Norms aren't absolute, but then neither are laws because you need an entire society operating both in terms of direct police action penalizing deviance as well as indirectly and complexly through everyday, ordinary interactions and assumptions that all conspire to uphold those laws. Norms operate in the same sort of way, but there is never any organized authority to uphold and maintain them, no bureaucratic offices, no nothing. Do you see the difference?
Norms are actually worse in the Foucauldian sense because it's so very difficult to see how they operate through capillaries of power that twist and turn and befuddle attempts to disentangle them.
>I think of it on that scale, rather than the
refined nuances of
>acceptable social conduct, petty monitors at pick
lines and whether
>intellectuals and workers have anything in
common. I mean, I think you
>have to have seen this other thing about
solidarity in order to even
>believe it can exist.
I think you may well be right. I think it explains why students today can't believe in anything, because they've never experienced it directly. Those that do in comparatively smaller ways than you've described are better about this, but still.
But, then, my iconoclasm or contrarianism sets in at this point because I don't like to romanticize this and I always feel that you do -- romanticize this experience of fraternity.
>It is probable that Marx had these same sorts of
experiences and
>dreamed of them becoming communism--that is
transformed them into
>theory, making them concrete, and attempting to
define how to turn
>them into the means of social cohesion, as
opposed to the the tyranny
>of the police and the grueling control exercised
on waged slaves
>though the medium of mere paper.
But in order to do that you have to somehow get people to think that police and governments as they've been understood until now aren't necessary and are bad things. How do you do that Chuck. Does it come about magically? Do people naturally gravitate toward desire for this world of no state, no laws, no control, no norms, no nothing.
To take a more banal example, people have to learn what 'property' is as we understand it in the US. In order to live under more marxist visions of society they'd need to learn something quite different. How do you get them from here to there? The Frat might be the spark that ignites the fire, but it'll burn out quickly without oxygen and fuel
>But, I promise to brush my teeth, comb my hair,
tie my shoes, and get
>to K-mart on time--in solidarity with most known
norms.
You also love, respect, honor, challenge, argue, fight the system, and write posts to me in order to uphold a different vision of the good society, one you think I don't share. You think I'm in need of a little spanking (so to speak) in that regard. You are trying to uphold me to some ideal that you have and you think I should have--the experience of fraternity which you define as good. Hence, "the rhetorical and dogmatic tone" as you put it.
SnitgrrRl