The Schizoid Dialectic

Abstract

Bringing together Anderson's work as a cultural activist in performance (the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home (www.twoaddthree.org)) and his role as Branch Chair of his institution's union for teaching staff (University and College Union), this performative paper will argue that a dialectical, agonistic blurring of boundaries across the borders of conflicting identities and interests is not only productive and desirable, but also liberatory and could constitute a small act of social justice. From lived experience the paper stages a series of arguments - in dialogue form - between Gary the anarchist art-activist and Gary the reformist trade unionist branch chair. Whilst both would agree that social justice is the 'bottom line' neither would agree that the task of institutional transformation is in part to recognise the dialectical flux inherent in their (Gary's) conflicting identities. Yet, this is what emerges when these identities are juxtaposed to engage in agonistic debate. The dialogues focus on the institutional context of higher education in particular, and suggests that agonistically robust debate produces not a winner and a loser, but a dialectical schizoid (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004) who occupies both positions, more or less, simultaneously. The dialogues deploys two texts: Karl Marx's Theses on Feuerbach (1845) - of which the union chair is enamoured - and the rewritten Theses on Winning the Union Back - which the art-activist performance artist has vandalised. The paper contains the full text of the rewritten Theses on Winning the Union Back.

Notes

1 The Trade Union Bill 2015–16 is the accumulation of a series of legislative procedures against the right to organize and freedom of assembly. For an outstanding ‘timeline’ on the topic see The Institute for Employment Rights (IER) based in Liverpool. They write ‘THE CONDEMS’ IDEOLOGICAL ATTACK ON WORKERS. Since they took power in May 2010, the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government has consistently undermined the employment rights of UK workers. Explore our interactive timeline to find out how.’ http://www.ier.org.uk/resources/coalition-timeline

2 ‘How much easier it would be to say that there is a multitude now, that there is no more labor [sic] class … But if we really want simplicity at all costs, all we have to do is drink up a bottle of red wine’ (Virno, Paolo, 2001)

3 For an excellent account see Gill 2009. Also see Cedestrom and Fleming 2012.

4 Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) in Ethics (1677) poses the question about what a body is capable of after Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Deleuze puts the point usefully in his series of Spinoza lectures at Vincennes from 1978 to 1981: ‘the only question is that we don’t even know what a body is capable of, we prattle on about the soul and the mind and we don’t know what a body can do’ (Deleuze, Gilles, 1978).