This has the effect of making one feel as though they belong to a collective project, united in a common utopian bond for a better world and new possibilities beyond capitalism, even if they disagree with Jameson at times. In that sense, the use of plural pronouns simulates or performatively enacts the very goal of bringing about such a collective project or, one might say, a collective subjectivity, en concreto (without, obviously, being a substitute for real concrete action). Furthermore, it seems opposed, in my mind, to our contemporary ideological situation in which the fragmentation and dispersal of a unified subject under postmodernism has led to new, hyper-mediated and reified forms of “selfhood” engendered vis-a-vis contemporary “communicative capitalism.”¹

Perhaps what we need instead, and which certain modes of communication or ontologies fail to provide, is an authentic sense of collectivity, a “wishful participation that borders on enthusiasm” (as Kant said of the French Revolution) for a new form of collective praxis, in which possibilities of rupture and change suddenly erupt out of our flat, gray, atonal, and thoroughly globalized network of late capitalism. Such a project, of course, would be something like a new way of thinking the unity of theory and praxis for our ideological present.

1. To some degree, one might further identify the recent trends of “home-brewed” ontologies in our corner of the blogosphere in just this light: the fragmentation of a unified subject finds its full realization in the self-construction of entire universes, without any of these Weltanschauungen necessarily coming into direct contact or out-and-out contradiction with one another. Instead, they are referred to as “my” ontology, “my” toys, “my” ideas, and “my” project. Although they intend to describe being qua being, they are meant to be understood more in terms of individuation, drawing on highly localized networks, while even the loosely collective monikers themselves are of a dubious status, “under erasure.”

Drawing on scenarios from around the globe and elucidating the themes that unite them, Hardt and Negri focus on the logic of institutions and the models of governance adequate to our understanding of a global commonwealth. They argue for the idea of the “common” to replace the opposition of private and public and the politics predicated on that opposition. Ultimately, they articulate the theoretical bases for what they call “governing the revolution.”

As Aristide himself puts it: “It is better to be wrong with the people than to be right against the people.” Despite some all-too-obvious mistakes, the Lavalas regime was in effect one of the figures of how “dictatorship of the proletariat” might look today: while pragmatically engaging in some externally imposed compromises, it always remained faithful to its “base”, to the crowd of ordinary dispossessed people, speaking on their behalf, not “representing” them but directly relying on their local self-organisations. Although respecting the democratic rules, Lavalas made it clear that the electoral struggle is not where things are decided: what is much more crucial is the effort to supplement democracy with the direct political self-organisation of the oppressed. Or, to put it in our “postmodern” terms: the struggle between Lavalas and the capitalist-military elite in Haiti is a case of genuine antagonism, an antagonism which cannot be contained within the frame of parliamentary-democratic “agonistic pluralism”.

This is why Hallward’s outstanding book is not just about Haiti, but about what it means to be a “leftist” today: ask a leftist how he stands towards Aristide, and it will be immediately clear if he is a partisan of radical emancipation or merely a humanitarian liberal who wants “globalisation with a human face”.

(Via I cite.)