richard-day-gramsci-is-dead

... and Now 159of control, through a creative application of modern marxist categoriesto postmodern social conditions. By taking up the anarchist critiqueof the party and state forms, they have pushed marxism to recognizeone of its longest-standing political and theoretical impasses, andhave opened this tradition up to the need for greater solidarity withother struggles that cannot be subsumed under the banner of anticapitalism.Perhaps most importantly of all, they have shown howmicropolitical struggles are not necessarily individualistic struggles;that is, they have shown how a Nietzschean (Foucauldian–Deleuzian)subject can in fact be ‘social’, if once the social is conceived in away that breaks with the Hegelian tradition. At the same time,however, it would seem that the most visible autonomist theoristsall maintain a basically class-centric approach. Just as Laclau andMouffe attempt to deconstruct marxist theories of hegemony onlyto land in firmly liberal—that is, still hegemonic—territory, theautonomists also attempt an overcoming that ultimately falters byreverting to a leninist conception of social change that is differently,but equally, problematic. Realizing the promise of the logic of affinityrequires, I have suggested, stepping out of hegemonic thinking andthe revolution/reform dichotomy. This is the path being exploredby postanarchism which, like autonomist marxism, also representsan attempt to rejuvenate a classical socialist tradition by passing itthrough the fires of poststructuralist critique.POSTANARCHISM: A BRIDGEABLE CHASMBefore embarking on a detailed analysis of postanarchism and thelogic of affinity, I want to acknowledge that many anarchists arebothered by the idea that their tradition might have anything atall in common with poststructuralist and/or postmodernist theory.John Zerzan is one prominent example of those who love to hatewhat they see as an ‘intersection of poststructuralist philosophy anda vastly wider condition of society’ (Zerzan n.d.: 1). Following a linecommon to many North American activists and ‘critical theory’-oriented academics, Zerzan conflates the philosophical-sociologicaltexts of Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze with the songs of Madonna,Eric Fischl’s paintings and mega-malls—that is, he fails to make thenecessary generic distinctions between academic theory and eliteart/popular cultural products. Zerzan holds that Jacques Derridais ‘the pivotal figure of the postmodern ethos’, the prophet of a‘narcissism and a cosmic “what’s the difference?”’ that mark ‘the end