Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos ...

stones of the enlightenment national bourgeois public sphere – and the right
to civil disobedience (Habermas 1985) – become increasingly problematic
and multi-vocal raising issues of inter-subjectivity and identity as central
concerns for social theory.
Deleuze asserts the centrality of difference for the social and philosophical
understanding of both social relations and social forms as the universalism
associated with science increasingly confronts difference. Einstein’s universal
constant, the speed of light, is now in question given recent evidence
suggesting that the speed of light must have changed if current models of
the universe are correct. The debate extends into questioning how many
parallel universes exist if quantum theory is to hold. Whilst there is
disagreement about the number of universes there is a reasonable consensus
that the laws of physics operating in each universe are different, and
possibly contradictory. The universe continues to exist while science enters
a renewed phase of becoming as sense making is renewed. Metaphorically,
we would liken the AGM to a universe within which different and
sometimes contradictory rule bound social universes coexist.
Deleuze as ‘difference engineer’ (Pearson 1997) formalises issues of
difference in terms of the ontological primacy in knowledge formation and
the significance of minute biological variances which make every organism
unique. This is timely in a century where universal truths, universal values
and universal economics are increasingly recognised as contested and
problematic. As Thomas Khun (1996) and before him Susan Stebbing
(1937) argued paradigms shift when the accumulated exceptions to
prevailing theories/laws can no longer be ignored. In Deleuze’s words: ‘No
theory can develop without eventually encountering a wall, and practice is
necessary for piercing this wall’ (Foucault 1977b: 206).
The practices of science will advance scientific agendas in the face of difference
just as social practices will advance social agendas in the face of difference.
In Deleuzian terms these result in ‘machinic’ and ‘social’ assemblages –
movements are playing their historic role as ‘agents of innovation’ once more
and complexity theory is one way of theorising the global movement milieu
independent of the teleogical assumptions of modernist approaches. For this
reason Deleuze emphasises the potentiality of ‘teleologies’ (1977b: 206) as
entirely consistent with an emphasis on ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’. This
emphasis is implicit in the AGM slogan ‘One no. Many Yeses’.
Conclusions
Prefiguration and emergence 41
These examples of prefigurative emergence are included here for several
reasons. Methodologically we would emphasise the importance of ‘latency
periods’ in reconfiguring movement dynamics and declaratory objectives.
For social movement studies and social theory more generally, currents of
critical public engagement typically ‘disappear’ with the resolution of a
dominant focus. Such disappearance has been incorporated in terms of
‘mobilisation cycles’, here we are arguing that this diverts attention away