Stuck In Left vs. Right Thinking (And Politics More Generally)
A quick reply to Owen Cox, The Dark Renaissance, and "The Paglia Right"
It was brought to my attention that Owen Cox of
recently dropped a manifesto called The Paglian Right.The reason I was alerted to its existence was that my name was mentioned at the very end. Both myself and
were named in a way that quilted the whole piece — which I will take some issue with, and I don’t just mean comparing us to underground mumble rappers (which he did do, and I take issue with as well, though that’s more fun and I’m not going to get into it here).I hope this piece will not be taken as anything more than an invitation to thought towards a convivial contradiction, but we’ll get into that a bit later. First, what’s it all about?
The manifesto argues that there is no room on the Left for serious political change, universality, or gay/orgiastic psychedelic fun. The Left is inherently impotent now, caught up in too many deadlocks, and when not eating itself, is reifying its own conditions of stultification.
All of that is true, as far as it goes. So what is Cox’s solution? Work with the populist right. Show the populist right that, taking Camille Paglia as a shining example, there is room for an alliance between right-wing populism and psychedelic gay orgiastic aesthetes.
At the end, Cox says,
“On the Left, I’m looking to Cadell Last and Dave McKerracher, who I have termed, at least temporarily, the Street Left.”
This would all be fine and dandy if I, or what I am doing, could be rendered intelligible within this framework that gets taken for granted in today’s scene. But what I’m doing cannot be be made sense of within that framework. The goal is to work through and transcend the scene, in its old deadlocks and stultifying terms.
Left vs. Right means very different things to different people. I’m not exactly sure what Cox means by it, but I know that most of the people I still associate with, the ones who identify strongly as Left, do not even consider any existing “left” movements or parties to be “genuinely Left.”
This gets complicated for so many reasons. At least, I cannot help but see massive coplicaitons. My friends who insist on saying they’re “REALLY Left,” as opposed to “the left” in its lowercase sense, which are all liberals, do not see it as complicated as I do.
That is because the concepts they think through belong to the 18th and 19th Centuries, which gives them some unique abilities to see certain things, but makes it hard to see what’s really going on, much less the 20th Century that closed a previous kind of history and made a radical rupture that inaugurates where we are writing from, thinking in, and responding to now.
Perfect example: Saying that Democrats in the United States are, just like Republicans, “just liberals” because they ultimately agree on all the fundamentals of liberalism (give or take a couple tenets here or there in rare cases) reveals less than it conceals.
It’s not just that these old categories cover over more than they illuminate though. Terms like “liberal” and “Left” do not simply exist as signifiers with definite referents in the real world—even if they sorta did at the time when they were relevant (that practical well has run dry).
No, these signifiers are loaded, and their surplus signification is supercharged by identarian categories that are tools of managerial statecraft in the service of capital. When professional leftists, i.e. media personnel or activists, use these words to identify themselves, they do so in order to speak to predetermined populations, i.e. consumer demographics, that are not just captured; people who come alive for these old master signifiers are taking up positions in the aftermath of old wars that have long since been settled (and lost).
There is an industry selling people on how the old struggles all carry on. The worldview salesmen are spinning a story about how they are the proper continuation of some historical lineage that has been fighting a good fight, they’re underdogs who fight for underdogs, and by the way, they are the deserving representatives of those underdogs (just watch them perform their proof of this—it’s very impressive!).
Those old battles wage on, but the war has long since been lost. What does that mean? Well, you’d have to study theory at Theory Underground if you really want to get into it, because that’s what it’s all about. I didn’t start TU because I was bored, or I thought it would be fun, but because I feel that there is a huge lack and I am responding to it. Like
says, real construction has to respond to real lack.Well, the lack I am responding to is the lack of educational resources I needed for my PhD. I knew the questions I was asking did not have well established fields, disciplines, or schools of thought, nor anywhere I could go to get a crash course in the ones I was realizing I would need to study if I wanted to understand how the situation has changed since the Old Left failed.
The response to the Old Left was the New Left, but it was hardly coherent or unified, and though its diagnoses were, at times, onto something, its solutions were usually not very good. I know I’m being very assertional in this piece, and not really laying out my logic or what I take to be the relevant facts for the position I’m inhabiting, but I’m trying to be quick and am aware that this piece is going to go over its limits if I’m not careful.
[I also need to get to sleep tonight and it’s very late, but I have to get this out before Owen arrives at the event tomorrow. I want him to have a chance to read this before we meet in real life—since I know Cadell alerted him to its existence a few days ago. I had shown Cadell an early draft, and he sent a screenshot to Owen, who said it looks juicy. I hope it doesn’t let him down haha]
For now, suffice it to say, the worldview salesmen are selling tired old solutions to new problems, or they miss the new problems by focusing on old ones that are never going to go away so long as we stay distracted from those aspects of the situation that are new and, for our purposes, most essential, or most pressing. To go in depth into how I have come to my conclusions would require unpacking hundreds of hours of research, which is still ongoing and, in large part, in its infancy at Theory Underground.
Back to the idea of the “Left” used in its uppercase way so that people can differentiate themselves from the overwhelming majority of people who use the term in a normal way to mean progressive liberal. People who say this are trying to use “lefter than thou” rhetoric to influence people who think “Left” means Good. Influence them towards what end?
Well, that’s where you get into all the different sects within and between the major strains of radical leftism, but we’ll leave those people aside for now.
Uppercase vs. lower case pedantry drives me crazy. I would much prefer to just say that if you hold to enough progressive beliefs or commitments that makes you left, whereas if you hold enough of what are genuinely considered traditional, then you’re on the right. But this is nonetheless inherently complicated and problematic—perhaps equally so, but I have my reasons for using this more normal and loose way of speaking.
One issue, though, with using “left” and “right” in their normal ways to mean more or less progressive or traditional, there are of course different kinds of progress or orientations to tradition. But putting that aside, there is also the fact that most people are not one or the other. I am sympathetic here, because when it comes to values, priorities, assumptions, and preferred policies, I’ll just piss off most people who identify strongly with either side. Some might see me as some kind of cultural centrist, but that’s not really accurate either.
The issue is that the categories are incoherent for most people, and they’re only useful for some people, towards very specific and largely inhumane ends.
I see Left vs. Right as belonging to one of two things:
Two-party dominated (duopolistic) “parliamentary” or “democratic” systems, on the one hand (like Democrats vs. Republicans), or
something that means nothing without a bunch of history lessons from guys like Chris Cutrone, Spencer Leonard, Douglas Lain, and Daniel Tutt.
As already laid out, for the latter “Left” is a word that has a specific historical lineage that must be defended against all the other definitions being advanced by professional leftists who are trying to push people who think the word “Left” means “good” towards supporting their project. But I am NOT saying they don’t believe in the lineage or historical narrative they defend.
In the case of Cutrone, Leonard, Lain, and Tutt, their “Left” basically means Marxism, or at least a class-based political struggle that sets itself against Capital. In this case, they are not satisfied with culture war, identity politics, or voting, though they all are more or less sympathetic towards people who do get caught up in such activities. From their standpoint, “the Left” is something that seeks to institute a worker’s party, either by seizing the state by force, or via militant organizing that seeks to transform the conditions and relations of production.
To guys like that, Owen Cox is merely a culture warrior who has realized the fun has left the Left side of the aisle. The Left is lame, or boring, so let’s go hang with the people having more fun. Maybe that’s not entirely fair, because it’s more than just boring, it is wrong about a lot—but so is “the right” if we’re going to use these terms.
But that gets us to the real point. I’m not sure what it’s like on his side of the ocean, but it’s not the Left that is lame and boring. It’s the Left vs. Right and politics more generally. It’s not just that both sides are backwards, they’re wrong, and rely on one another. It’s not that both sides have half the truth contained in them either, but both are, instead, two different ways of being blind to and obfuscating the situation!
I don’t bring up Cutrone, Lain, Tutt, etc., as a way to say they are the authorities of what Left is, but to share concrete examples of people who really insist that “Left” is a meaningful category and that they know what it means—now listen to their history lesson. But that’s done by anarchists too, I just don’t associate with as many anarchists because I’ve been more focused on capital than the state (not that a focus on the state, or technology even, is somehow less important).
I bring up their approach to the Left to clarify the position that I take to be normal online, which is very different from the way normies use the term. I think Owen is using the term a lot more how normies use the word anyway, which I respect—I just have to say everything I’ve said so far because I have a lot of people who do use these terms in the more historo-radical way, and also for those of you who don’t know anything about that, now you do.
But with that said, I don’t want to get caught up in the endless history lessons and purity testing over who is or is not authentically “Left.” I couldn’t care less about whether someone is “Lefter than Thou.” I hope everyone who cares too much about such things proves to be lefter than me—and then leaves me alone or engages with me in good faith knowing full well I’m on some other shit!
I think Theory Underground is doing is way cooler than politics, or tantric orgies on shrooms, or whatever Cox is talking about. TBH it sounds fun, if I was 22 still. But I realized that stuff has a short-fuse. It left me spiritually barren and ultimately embarrassed to have been swept up into the world of conspirituality. These last 12 years have, for me, been a journey of getting more serious about cutting out the bullshit and doing what I take to be real shit.
I caught a whiff of the Paglia right and I smell bullshit.
What Owen Cox is packaging as fun and full of opportunities sounds like Bill Clinton era (neo)liberalism getting repackaged as transgressive and exciting. Honestly, I’m a lot more interested in what we are doing.
Theory Underground is neither Left or Right. It is not revolutionary or radical, either. We’re not super into democracy or authoritarianism, wokeness or anti-wokeness. These are just crippled remainders of a bygone era. There’s something new that has been growing underground for the last century. It wants to break through, to reach for the light, and burst into something epic. And it needs to, if civilization and the human, as projects, are to get going. A new kind of understanding, intelligence, spirit, technology, and ultimately consciousness is flowering, but it must be conceptually (theoretically via philosophy) mediated.
I’m not talking about a cheap kind of consciousness raising that will be for freaks and fringes to try to impress upon the masses. Not a cheap kind of awokening that makes the images swim and meld together for a while—just long enough to leave you with the impression that We Are All One, brother. No. We’ve already seen where cheap epiphanies and the inevitable burnout of sex, drugs, and the aesthetic sphere will get us.
Transgression is worthless on its own. Perversion only feels radical. Sure, say slurs and fuck bitches. Who gives a shit? Close borders and do conservative social democracy, I couldn’t care less. It’s not boring because it’s not sexy. It’s not not sexy, either. Anything that has been prohibited has some potential allure (and also, the populist right is, in some cases, the lesser evil—if we’re going to stay stuck in a back and forth between the two sides of the duopolistic spectacle forever).
The issue is that Bill Clinton, AKA Left-Reaganism, won already. If your idea of transforming society towards some kind of universalism is to turn right populist movements into Left-Reaganism, or Clinton era throwbacks, then cool. I would never get in the way of that. I’ve never tried to. Politics makes me yawn.
Politics today is just pseudo activity that drives mass passivity. Fringes cannot normalize anything more than the opposite of their express goals. This is Critical Media Theory 101. Changing sides within the duopoly is performance art.
All I want to see is something new with a genuine potential to challenge Capital, State, and Church via the transformation of the education system. If we can get education right, the correct politics will follow. But teachers today are politically a-political (liberals) or radical activists (lame). What we need is real teaching.
What we need is to go from being a mere theory scene to an actual intellectual milieu built around key concepts, questions, and contradictions, for the sake of building a multi-generational project. Only that could ever give birth to something with a hope of leaving any lasting impact on the Situation.
Marxists and the “Old Left” (workerist labor-first) types understand the problem of Capital, but they rarely get the critique of the old Left from the standpoint of libidinal economy or being-in-the-world. Neither do they understand the ways that material conditions in the 20th Century forever altered class composition and the media environment. Their maps no longer track with the territory.
The issue is no longer anarchism vs. Marxism, Old Left vs. New Left, traditionalist vs. progressive, or Left vs. Right. These oppositions are short-term distractions from the fact that politics can only be a fourth order simulacrum when the map has lost all relation to any territory. All the arguments are over which maps to use, but they’ve all lost it.
No amount of shrooms, art, or sex will bring us into touch with the territory-in-itself without a prolonged moratorium on easy answers and a sustained effort directed to the task of rethinking the Situation. The territory is not self-standing, but only exists through mediation. We can only approximate the Situation by working through the most essential tracings along its genesis.
Dialectics today means reading the Old and New Left, traditionalists and transhumanists, and not simply asking “Which side is right?” or “What’s the Next Left?” or “How shall we have egalitarianism that surpasses all this particularism and returns us to something universal?” Particular vs. universal is also a false opposition. The contradictions between such terms constitute the conditions of possible mediation and interpretation implied by sight.
Only new forms of organizing educational programs to do theory for real in our time will get us there. Only challenging our presuppositions via concepts and tarrying with the negative inherent to all perception and intention will pave a way forward. I don’t care what your position on something is, tell me what contradictions constitute you!
If your answer is a litany of more or less based positions on one or the other side of tired oppositions, instead of genuine contradictions related to Capital, State, and Church, with serious potential for transforming the education system so that we can develop a multigenerational project dedicated to getting everyone (in their particularist-universal singularities) the freedom of timenergy, then ok, well… have fun with that — but it sounds like drinking or gaming, i.e. fun in the moment, but easily forgettable.
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