How groups and movements are formed that eventually transform balances of power and the field of discourse

Traxus, on the one hand I’m not certain that divisiveness is necessarily a bad thing. Over at I Cite I’ve occasionally made reference to Voltaire who was a divisive figure, yet ultimately that divisiveness and commitment to a set of principles produced profound results. There’s been a tendency in our current socio-political context to suggest that divisiveness should be avoided at all costs. Conservatives seemed to recognize that this was counter-productive and, up until more recently, have been fairly successful in their willingness to be divisive. I think the left could learn from this.

I am not willing to go all the way with Latour and suggest that truth claims should be entirely bracketed or that they’re entirely irrelevant, so I should moderate or soften my claims a bit. What I’m trying to do is draw attention to how group formations and movements are formed that eventually transform balances of power and the field of discourse. Consequently, I’m interested in any movement that’s managed to do this, positive or negative, true or false, to see what they did that was successful. As I said in the post, I’ve increasingly come to feel that ideology critique, while of value, is perhaps asking the wrong set of questions where concrete change is concerned. This is one of the reasons I think both Badiou and Deleuze and Guattari have been such a breath of fresh air: All three thinkers focus on how assemblages are formed rather than the critical evaluation of assemblages. larvalsubjects said this on March 26th, 2007 at 6:18 pm

Adam, as I see it these are distinct issues. On the one hand, there are my own ontological commitments or my commitment to materialism and immanence and what I believe this entails. On the other hand, there are those questions of how group formations or assemblages come to emerge and transform the social field. For instance, I’m very interested in how the early Christian church went from being a minority fringe bordering on a cult, to overturning dominant Rome.

• How did they organize? What communications did this involve?
• What were the material social conditions that fostered the attractiveness of this way of life, and so on?

These things can be evaluated, I think, without making judgments about the truth or falsity of these claims or where these questions are bracketed. And, I believe, such analyses are of value for both enhancing strategies in the present (clearly this is what Badiou is interested in with Paul) and understanding group dynamics. I find that there’s a sort of tragic tone in a lot of continental political theory, as if nothing can change. Yet when you look at history you discover that all sorts of things have changed that seemed impossible to change. How did they do it? I said the post was inspired by the discussion, not that it was necessarily about the exact themes of the discussion. larvalsubjects said this on March 26th, 2007 at 6:25 pm