Thoughts on Jameson's 'American Utopia'

[Rafiq]

The idea, which I have dedicated a past thread to discussing, traces its origins - as everyone knows - to Frederic Jameson's long anticipated book American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army.

Today this book was released, and the level of disappointment inspired by this book is unspeakable. The book is not without merit - but two thirds into Jameson's essay things take a turn for the tragic.

What is this tragedy? Jameson gets close to something. He touches upon something. He gets so close that up until two-thirds into the book I could not believe a mere academic could be as brave as he was to be discussing and positing matters in the way he was. It suffices to say that up until two-thirds into the book one would think the words would escape from their pages and bring about the end of the world. Truly one is and was left with the impression that this idea - is world historical. Perhaps Jameson's proposal is so revolutionary as it concerns the existing order, not simply in the tactical-concrete sense but also in a deeply ideologically and spiritual sense that its inertia must be self-contained so as to not - by merely existing alone - like a black hole suck the world out of existence, i.e. that Jameson's proposal at its essential level is literally impossible, in the sense that truly marching on to its full conclusions would lead one to the immediate path to concrete-practical action, i.e. that as it concerns ones ethical duty it would be impossible to upon its revelation continue in ones idleness and complacency with the existing order.

It is the greatness of Jameson's idea, his book, which is responsible for the greatness of ones disappointment with it. Jameson self-contains and self-limits his proposal by falling into what we might characterize the Lacanian tragedy, experienced also by Zizek, which more generally is an inability to articulate the revolutionary-communist implications of psychoanalysis and align them with Marx's. Which I claim, and I believe have claimed, Lacan himself, and all those who come after him (including Zizek, who gets close) have failed to do owing to their misinterpretation of the real implications of their own profound insights. The charge of perversity (in the Lacanian sense of knowing-otherwise-but-doing-anyway) has been leveled against Zizek before, but this charge holds true for the entire Lacanian-academic tradition. It is here where Jameson fails. It is here where Jameson fails to locate the real, actual psychoanalytic cure as he asserts cures are impossible to it.

Where Jameson fails is his inability to translate Communism to psychoanlaysis. What do I mean by this? Jameson fails because he abstracts, perhaps I say this in the spirit of Debord's famous critique of psychoanalysis (not without its limitations), the symptom of present society from present society and assumes the symptom to be eternal. The perversity is identifying the symptom and then asserting that, with full knowledge of this symptom, that it is inevitable (even though you are aware of it). The problem of psychoanalysis (which is only a problem that can be resolved by presupposing it) is as follows: there is an inability to maintain or distinguish the symptom from its structured, methedological, etc. means of identification. In other words, in psychoanalysis something ontological is approached (i.e. the symbolic), but the prevailing, existing, historical conditions of the Lacanian symptom, are taken to be the only means by which it is accessed. L

Let me put it this way: Without the symptom, for the entire Lacanian-academic tradition, there is no access to knowledge of the symbolic, the real, the imaginary, i.e. all of the categories of psychoanalysis that are meant to withstand and persist the intricacies of their actual expression as they encircle the general symptom. But this is the EXACT SAME problem of the riddle of history: How to maintain the critique of capitalism, as put forward by Marx, how to maintain a historical-materialist understanding of all human societies when the object of your critique, and the object of your consciousness (all past history, and capitalism) doesn't exist? It is no wonder that Zizek claims Communism is nothing more than a capitalist fantasy - the entire point for him is that capitalism sustains Communism's possibility insofar as Communism is its living critque, it 'depends' on capitalism.

The hard question is this one: What actually is Communism? What actually is psychoanalysis? What are these when they take flight? What is Communism when it takes flight from the critique of capitalism specifically, and what is psychoanalysis when it takes flight from its identification of the symptom of capitalist society? The problem is this one: It is the problem of the negation of the negation. If it is impossible to make the passage between the identification of the symptom to a future society without this symptom, then it is also and equally impossible to make the passage between a critique of capitalism and a post-capitalist society.

Herein lies the deadlock that Jameson so keenly is willing to show us, the deadlock of why there are 'no utopias' today, of why mere assertions that we need to 're-think' society are in so great abundance but produce nothing. The academics prolong confrontation with this hard and fundamental question whose actual answer is right under their noses.

The failure of Lacanians to locate the psychoanalytic cure is more generally and equally the exact same failure of so-called Marxists to locate the riddle of history itself in their failure to locate the practical implications of their critique of not only capitalism but all history in general. Without an identification of these two as necessarily the same: Without an identification of the Lacanian-psychoanalytic symptom as the individualized expression of the social antagonism, both Marxism and psychoanalysis are finished and deserve to be finished. For Jameson to assert that there is no psychoanalytic cure, just as Lacan himself, and Zizek have, he is equally asserting that there is no solution to the riddle of history. But the psychoanalytic cure and the solution to the riddle of history is right under the noses of those who identify the symptom and the riddle in the first place.

I will not elaborate upon that here, where it has not already been identified in Our Materialism, but this elaboration will come, I assure you. That is not the purpose of this thread. I made a thread encouraging everyone to read Jameson when his book came out a while back, and I assured everyone that there is indeed something new and revolutionary here. I stand by this - but I must also, in the same vein and in the same spirit, and out of obligation, point out the fact that there are real limitations here.

The function of most of the critiques of Jameson have basically been to go further to blow-back this revolutionary inertia. And that is not the intention here. If Jameson has set something moving, all I want to do is to keep it moving, to build on this momentum and to keep it moving so it will trample and treat mercilessly all those 'cynics', those propagators of 'cold-hard-truths', those pseudo-leftist intellectuals whose function is above all to assure that anything real, authentic and world-shaking is asserted as impossible. I tell everyone: read this book. But read it, as one reads everything, critically.

Let the book set something in motion for you. But make sure, against the conclusion of this book, that you keep this motion going. Jameson's first two thirds lead sets something in motion. He puts something extraordinary from those first two thirds to a halt as he confronts them with what he perceives to be a limitation.

Finally: If you have interpreted this thread as an insistence that one should "Move along, nothing to see here" of Jameson's work, then you are drawing the wrong conclusion and the wrong message from this. Do not take away that conclusion. Do not see it as an excuse to be complacent. Jameson may have failed, but he is infinitely closer than 99.9% of Leftists are to overcoming this failure.

[Rafiq]

I should also add, from thinking: An even crazier idea. One I should hope to further develop in the far future.

Perhaps, as part of their basic minimal program, Socialists should be fighting for - increased, giant investments into NASA. And not only in the vein of the Cosmism of the Russian socialists of the past.

As part of a minimal program, alongside the living wage, and free public education - a program that calls for an acceleration of funding not only for research but for large-scale ecological projects on NASA's part, i.e. gigantic and long term investments into it, and the dismantlement, or seizure of assets (if necessary) of SpaceX and other private-space corporations.

Why NASA? I believe NASA as an institution, even of a proletarian dictatorship - is just as important alongside the military and could perhaps even perform the same function, or - even - both could be combined (where they are already not) as the same kind of institution as outlined by Jameson. The reason for this is not simply that it is immediately necessary to colonize space, rather, the reason why NASA is of such political importance is because it is one of the only institutions in the United States which concerns the planet as a whole, as a planet, in the context of space.

That is to say, while we may be far enough off from projects for the colonization of space just yet, it is necessary, as a start and as a basic necessity, to start conceiving the planet which we reside in a Cosmist way, i.e. to treat the planet more like a planet (i.e. to recognize that it must be managed and engineered as a whole ecologically).

Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a joke. It sounds a bit silly, but I am quite serious. NASA must be politicized - and Socialists should even start thinking about the establishment of a similar all European institution (And I only cannot speak for China and South America, or Australia, because I believe people living there can speak better about how this applies to their predicament). The function of such institutions would be as follows:

1. Replacing reactionary ecologism with Earth-centric cosmism, which explores geo-engineering and artificial climate change (one that is favorable) against the current climate change, approaching and dealing with the planet as a contingent formation that must be engineered and managed as one as a whole, as well as it in the context of its place in space.

2. Provide an institutional means by which NATURAL SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE - access to it as well as the process of acquiring it - is democratized, rendered a public, political controversy that MUST concern everyone, i.e. provide a formation which treats the natural-scientific concerns of the future, from bio-engineering, geo-engineering, even computer technologies, and so on, AS STRICTLY democratic concerns, ones subject to democratic control and accountability through a centralized institution. The draft-based model should not only apply to the military but also to NASA as an institution, the function of this draft will be the mass education of people into specialists, also to perform necessary menial work, among others.

3. Something far more ambitious and over-reaching than the New Deal that can not only deal with the consequences of automation in relation to the increased precarity, but also be the institution for the orientation of these new technologies toward wider, holistic planetary concerns.

4. And finally, to lay the groundwork for space exploration and colonization by, through means of politicization, reinvigorating a sense of universal enthusiasm for space exploration in the spirit of shared solidarity and struggle. Laying this groundwork begins by soberly recognizing we have a lot of work to do before we can expand into our solar system, but the first and most important step? Treat the Earth like a contingent space station, treat it not as the world but as the planet which with we reside. To treat the Earth like a space station, is only possible by means of mass-ecological, geo-engineering projects and so on.

[Antiochus]

There will almost certainly need to be a world-wide organization that coordinates and manages the mitigation and response to AGW. Whether it simply be moving people from the coastal plains further inland or releasing agents that neutralize the warming effects of carbon etc... This would be of paramount importance for highly populated areas of the planet that are seeing rapid changes as we speak: China, Europe and parts of Latin America. Not to mention the fact that areas with terribly backwards economies (much of Sub-Saharan Africa) must be integrated into this approach or they risk being literally wiped out.