A Nonfiction Work
Thoughts on the Underground Theory Anthology
Underground Theory is a tremendous anthology full of insight without which there is little hope we can save the human from its technological replacement, precisely because we won’t have the intellectual tools necessary so that we won’t find the human too hard to try. To save the human also requires us to “save the Social,” which is to say community, non-commoditized exchange, and common life that isn’t dominated by practical, system-based, political, technological, or economic concerns, but rather “human” matters. If we’re no longer fully human though, we also lack the resources needed to know we’re not fully human, but fortunately this anthology can help us realize something that we might have lost the capacity to see in ourselves.
Ultimately, we must decide if we want to defend the human or not, which requires in my view the choices to defend the Social, which is the choice to face the hard. Are we prepared for that? For most of history, perhaps not, but Theory Underground is working with and alongside other communities like Voicecraft and Philosophy Portal (to name a few) to create a new “medium condition” and what I would call “social coordination mechanism” that might make a little more possible today what yesterday was unimaginable. “A life of learning” and “life of the mind” seem central to this effort lest we not be able to think ourselves in our moment, hence why Theory Underground focuses so much on teaching, which is especially needed in a world where ‘the American university seems to reflect an overall anti-intellectual and pro-hustle culture in which human beings are reduced to employees’ — Ann Snelgrove put it well (pg 1). Karl Jaspers stressed ‘that humans have a ‘fundamental and primary thirst for knowledge,’ ’ and if this is so, then tapping into this condition of people that already exists could be a productive angle for motivating “new modes of consciousness” alternative to some simply practical calculus (48). We cannot hope to recover and sustain the Social if it isn’t done so by humans who have a drive to do so, and so if it is true that humans have an innate desire to learn, it is through teaching that drive could be cultivated toward maintaining the Social (thus the importance of understanding how ‘neoliberal university […] strayed from Jasper’s ideal’) (13).
A fight for the Social is also impossible without a deep understanding of ideology and the overlaps between labor and psychoanalysis, for if we don’t understand how say ‘[j]ouissance is an essential factor of the material conditions,’ we won’t think to address jouissance to favor the Social (31). Michael Downs is invaluable for this understanding, and he points out that ‘[j]ouissance is ‘too much pleasure,’ that is, enjoyment to the point of pain, suffering, or discomfort […] [it is] ‘beyond the pleasure principle,’ which can be remarkably useful if directed toward making possible the Social, but unfortunately it is often captured by wage labor to the benefit of Capital — a mistake that is especially if likely if we don’t understand how jouissance works (32). Also, communities entail ‘transgressive rituals which actually keep the community together,’ which is to say that what seems to be a rebellion is actually a glue, and so many efforts to “transgress Capital” actually benefit it if we are not careful (33). Aware of this, we can more wisely direct transgression toward “transgressing the System for the Social,” keeping in mind that not all transgressions are equal. Where Downs is not read, efforts to overcome will likely be efforts that reinforce.
‘It is not enough for the left today to expose how capitalist ideology (and the capitalist mode of production it celebrates) is undermining our material interests. A contemporary left critique must also attend to the psychic rewards it offers us’ — brilliantly stated by Downs, which is work Theory Underground is doing, and of which is work that I believe won’t be done if we are stuck simply defining and searching out enemies (47) We need to focus on taking back the ‘production of subjectivity’ that Michał Rams-Ługowski is right to note is necessary for any possibility of a “new commons” (49). Who knows what might open up if we actually work to ‘meditat[e] our working-class experience through theory?’ (60) Has there ever been a space where that was actually possible? As evident through the pages of this book, Theory Underground is charting the course of that possibility.
‘In the underground, knowledge is in the use of the thinking mind, not possessed’ — stunning from Bryan Weeks, and I completely agree that institutions train us to own and take control of thinking, versus train us to be spaces in and through which thinking runs its course and “unfolds” as itself (64). But this means we are not in a mode of “hunting for enemies” or something, but instead making ourselves into “spaces” in which thought might lead us into unpredictable directions, which defies quantification and prediction and hence the institution. On that point, there is good reason to believe universities today cannot provide the material conditions necessary for the Social, given the accounts of people like Cadell Last. What did Last find at the top of university life? ‘What [Cadell] had imagined as something that must resemble a philosophical symposium, where the greatest minds would joyfully gather to discuss the true, the good, and the beautiful, was replaced by the devastating real of bureaucratic social games and general indifference to the intellectual ideas external to defensively guarded disciplinary containers’ (69). Almost Puritan, due to institutional incentives, a lack of joy becomes good. And if we are infected by that notion subconsciously, then a presence of say drive and intrinsic motivation becomes a red flag, and yet I’m not sure we have save the human or thrive as human without drive.
If the place where intellectual work is champion incentives out of the drive we need to thrive, is intellectual life doomed? No, it has to move underground, but that means it must be supported through human relationship and interactions more than systems or bureaucracies, and it is hard to live and work with humans. ‘A community must confront its point of impossibility: communion,’ Philip Shinn tells us, and how likely are we to be ready for “the Social impossibility” without drive, energy, wit, fitness — the full spectrum of the human (83)? Not likely, hence why Theory Underground focuses on “the whole person” — nothing less will prove prepared for the complexities and surprises of life. ‘Truth-seekers acknowledge truth’s quantum entanglement with contingency,’ Shinn writes, and a reason we lost the Social is because we have in the name of truth ironically avoided contingency and so humanity in institutions for models, quantification, and systems, a move which has also made it difficult to think that fitness, the body, the material condition, the network, etc., impacting what truths we are able to access and experience (83). When it comes to truth, it really matters what kind of life we live, for the same doors are not found on every road. The paths found at Theory Underground are indeed found at Theory Underground.
Dr. Samuel Loncar makes a powerful case on how information technologies and mediums can change the human mind itself (I struggle to think of any revolutionary act which could be greater), and if any activity might make the now-impossible the possible, this strikes me as a good candidate. Loncar examines the profound connection between memory and technology, suggesting that literacy is a change in our relationship to memory which is a change in self-identity, social operation, and the like. ‘Literacy is not a technology or tool among others but a cultural and civilizational transformation: it is a radical revolution of human society and nature’ (106). For me, to speak of a regaining of the Social, seeing as today I think that requires a “medium condition” of a “social coordination mechanism” (like we see at Theory Underground), is to speak of a revolutionary act analogous to the revolution of Literacy as described by Loncar. Anything short of this, and it’s hard to imagine ‘the Human […] find[ing] a way to own itself’ (as Loncar put it) — our replacement versus extension seems guaranteed (119).
Our age is one where ‘[p]sychology and social science serv[e] Big Data’ to intensify ‘seduction’ against/“for” us, which means the work to regain the Social will not be easily and constantly under attacks of manipulation (147). Ideology is also a challenge, which Žižek is famous for studying, and if our revolution in favor of the Social is one that is essentially a change in a mode of consciousness, then ideology which favors the System against the Social is uniquely dangerous. Ideology benefiting the System is hard to spot though, and it is often lurking behind two options which seem opposed but ultimately make similar assumptions about reality. To offer a case study, Nick Castellucci discusses how ‘gender essentialism and gender fluidity,’ for example, both orbit ‘essence’ (154). Both assume the possibility of an ‘actualizable identity,’ and that assumption is what can ultimately benefit the System, for if identity can be completed, and a System is “completed,” we can move to align identity with Systemization (A = A) (150). Andrew Flores spots similar presuppositions in the background of much therapy, mainly the idea of “a complete and/or expressible self.” ‘The therapism narrative promises [to] bring out the[] best self,’ to help us gain authenticity (which will then seemingly work “automatically,” like a machine) (184). Notions like ‘individuation’ are also taught, which help us ‘go out and act within society,’ but what if this supposed “society” is actually a System in disguise (184)? Then in our healing we might prove part of the problem, but then have little notion of how to stop being part of the problem without going back to being ill. Are those the only options? Without a place like Theory Underground, maybe, for our unconscious and subconscious minds cannot prove “habituated” by any alternative ‘discourse of the Other’ than what characterizes the zeitgeist of the System, Karatani’s Capital-Nation-State (193).
Michael Gray is right, ‘[t]here is always [a] structuring principle that covers the void, which both prevents access to the Real and is the constitutive impetus for the symbolic fiction in the first place; the symbolic order is the always-presupposed ground zero for which the Real is its immanent dialectical effect’ (a stunning articulation) (202). This being the case, if we do the work of thinking and critique presupposition (as needed for changing conditions of possibilities) and see “nothing,” we will not simply be left to a vacuum that will suck us in; instead, we can glimpse the deep reality that there is always something humanely constituted at the heart of social and symbolic life, which is our way of meditating and working with the Real. If we don’t own this and see it for ourselves, we will by definition outsource this “constitution” to the System, and it will then only be humanly constituted to the degree the System is, which is increasingly less and less. The System will protect us from the Real, sure, but at a greater and greater cost, with greater and great “human flattening.” “Face the Face” (Levinas) or suffer reductionism — this is our choice.
In defending the Social, we do not seek a ‘harmony between the working class and bourgeoise’ or something — arguably a key function of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) — but an alternative from this way of organizing society, one that ultimately moves beyond similar divisions and labels (277). On this point, I should note that in Dave being the Founder of Theory Underground, I find it encouraging that McKerracher is not satisfied with political labels or the effort to be ‘lefter than thought” — such concerns impede us from the Face, without which the dynamics and trajectory of our Unembedding into Capital and AI will only continue (as Belonging Again discusses). The Master Signifiers we do not critique we will serve. This doesn’t mean “The Left” can’t be a label that unifies differences into an effective movement, but it does mean that “Left” shouldn’t be used to avoid or replace the Face. McKerracher speaks of ‘[r]adical responsibility’ as the idea that ‘those who want to change the world are more responsible for what they believe and how they go about it,’ which is a notion I strongly agree with and which suggests much (, and if speaking of “The Left” helps us align with this imperative, I hope it is employed; if not, I hope it is cast aside (319). Our commitment to responsibility must be greater than our commitment to identity: there is little hope for a new Social otherwise.
Much more can be said on the Underground Theory anthology, and I have not touched on all the essays, but work to do so in upcoming papers. As Tony Chamas put it, we need to ‘re-think some of the most basic premises of emancipatory politics,’ which is thinking I believe Theory Underground is doing. I hope I have said enough to encourage readers to go pick up the anthology, as I hope to have made the case that the book seeks to reclaim the Social from being eclipsed by the System, which is ultimately an effort to save the human. It is a testament to a new condition of possibility. And it’s happening now.
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