richard-day-gramsci-is-dead

18 Gramsci is Deadneed to guide our relations with other communities according tothe interlocking ethico-political commitments of groundless solidarityand infinite responsibility. In the simplest terms, groundless solidaritymeans seeing one’s own privilege and oppression in the context ofother privileges and oppressions, as so interlinked that no particularform of inequality—be it class, race, gender, sexuality or ability—canbe postulated as the central axis of struggle. This insight has beendeveloped most fully by postmodern/anti-racist feminist theorists,but is finding its way to other discourses and disciplines, and isgaining much currency in activist circles. The second principle,infinite responsibility, means always being open to the invitationand challenge of another Other, always being ready to hear a voicethat points out how one is not adequately in solidarity, despite one’sbest efforts. Here, too, there are complementary currents in academicand activist practices, which have seen some successes yet must stillface many obstacles. The main point I want to make in this chapteris that what we think can only be done via the state and corporateforms, through the politics of recognition and integration, can infact be done, and done more effectively, without passing throughthese mediating institutions.In the final chapter I condense the argument of the book intoa concise statement of my basic thesis, which is that marxistrevolutionism and liberal/postmarxist reformism have hit theirhistorical limit, that is, the limit of the logic of hegemony and itsassociated politics of representation, recognition, and integration.This is an argument that will undoubtedly be controversial to thosewho see hegemonic practices as the only way in which they can hopeto achieve the kind of social change they desire. However, as thenewest social movements so powerfully show, an orientation to directaction and the construction of alternatives to state and corporateforms opens up new possibilities for radical social change that cannotbe imagined from within existing paradigms. By reading the anarchisttradition critically, that is, in the light of poststructuralist, feminist,postcolonial, queer, and indigenous critiques, the value of a logic ofaffinity guided by groundless solidarity and infinite responsibilitybecomes apparent. It’s time to forget the ‘new’ social movements ofthe 1960s–1980s. There’s something even newer afoot, and it offersthe best chance we have to defend ourselves against, and ultimatelyrender redundant, the neoliberal societies of control.