disillusioned leftist intellectual?

I’m wondering whether I’d have to be seen as one of « the incoherent remains of a totally disillusioned generation of leftist, revolutionary intellectuals », as René Boomkens put it in 1988. Boomkens refers to the ‘disciples’ of Jean Baudrillard. The French sociologist has, since 1970, been one of the most radical and insightful proponents of the abolition of the autonomous subject as the carrier of history. His description of the world is characterised by the ‘vertiginous’, ‘ecstatic’ proliferation of objects and signs that constantly seduce people through the arousal of their desires. Even if relations between humans could exist, they would, according to Baudrillard, belong to an object-sphere of seduction and desire. 

While Baudrillard’s theory is compelling in its inescapability (is his entire body of work not dealing with the fatal seduction by the spectacle of the catastrophe?), it is questionable in its nihilism. If you reject the notion of human agency in the making of society or history (or you even deny these very concepts), can there be anything other than a random series of senseless/meaningless events? Can people then do anything else than render themselves as blindly as possible to the ecstasy of the seduction by the objects? When even humans have no telos and only live through sequences of seduction? And how can we expect justice to be founded when truth is not to be found in the essence or the order of things?

Back in the eighties, English philosophy saw the rise of a kind of ‘humanist socialism’, which was inspired by Marxism but eschewing Leninist influences. It was strongly against the nihilism it identified in the so-called French anti-humanism and anti-foundationalism. One of its proponents was Stuart Sim, who wrote in a review in Radical Philosophy 43 in 1988: « But is there a ‘crisis of knowledge’ as we are so glibly assured? We have become so inured to catchphrases like this in postmodernist writings that we might be failing to appreciate their ideological significance. There is less a crisis of knowledge in the world than a crisis of relating theory to practice, and empiricism, radical or otherwise, offers no solutions here. It becomes necessary to reveal the unacceptable face of anti-foundationalism: its commitment to an individualism which ignores the world of action and militates against the possibility of social change. Beneath all the talk about freedom and anti-authoritarianism lurks an intellectual élitism of a very traditional, and very sinister, kind. »  

Although I indeed felt the seductive force of Baudrillard’s theory, I could comprehend this severe critique.  Baudrillard is an extremist, though, and that’s exactly what he wants to be. He’s not exemplary for French ‘anti-humanism’ or ‘anti-foundationalism’. My problem with Baudrillard was not, as it was for Sim, in the moral presupposition that people have the obligation to strive for social change and progress. It was more in the personal experience that people do that, that people, sometimes at any price, commit themselves to what they believe is a better destiny for themselves and their neighbours. I do not deny that social action can sometimes be driven by the seduction of  pain, misery, suffering, sacrifice, the fatal catastrophe. But I felt that there was more to it than just the proliferation of simulacra and make-believes, that the old principle of Hegel (and Bakunin) was still valuable: I can only be free if the others are free – if it only were because they can only acknowledge my freedom, if they’re free themselves.

Kate Soper, Sim’s colleague, wrote in Humanism and Anti-Humanism (London, 1986, a caricature of a devilish Foucault on the cover):  « People are conscious agents whose political options could be other than they are, and whose actions have real impact upon their conditions of existence. But these conditions are not themselves freely chosen. »  Yeah, that came closer to what I had experienced as a journalist and activist. Moreover, someone like Michel Foucault, a source of inspiration to me and was accused of being the founder of contemporary French nihilism, has always been very clear about his political engagement and commitments. In 1978 he told Duccio Trombadori that he wanted to « understand the mechanisms by which dominion is effectively established; I do this so that those, who are captured and entangled in particular power relations, can escape through their actions, their resistance and rebellion, so they can reform these relations and no longer have to endure them ». 

Some centuries of Western culture have led many people to consider humans as responsible beings, rational (to some degree), capable of distinguishing between good and bad, rather independent, aiming at progress (whatever that may be), autonomous and with a sense of identity (be it personal, or in connection to a national or philosophical context). Their mutual relations are supposed to be in line with these characteristics – which are at the same time considered as values -, that constitute the quintessence of the modern view on wo/man and the world. In its ultimate form, this culture would lead – somewhere, sometime – to theories and practices that reflect a fundamental respect for complexity and diversity as principles and as social phenomena.

However, things are not that simple. You may teach children: ‘Don’t cross the street when the pedestrian traffic lights are red’. This comes down to the normative ‘You shall not do what the law has forbidden’. But in fact, experience shows that you will and you can do what the law has forbidden. At least, sometimes you can. Or, you can do some things that are prohibited, and others not.

The ‘why’-question of good and bad (why are people breaking the law, or simply doing bad things?) gradually turned into a ‘how’-question. How comes that some sorts of behaviour are illicit and others are not, and how comes that always the same kinds of people seem to be persecuted and others not? This meant more than just turning the material question into a procedural one; it also had to do with the definition and implementation of norms, and thus with matters of force and power, knowledge and truth, subjectivation and identity.

As a lawyer and journalist I had always been fascinated by the possibilities of penal law to mark the distinctions between the good and the bad, normal and abnormal, acceptable and unacceptable, decent people and criminals, citizens and outcasts. This wondering was of course seriously influenced by the spirit of time, since my generation was active in – or at least witnessed – the large emancipation movements around the three traditional ‘crimes without victims’ (Schur, 1965): drug use, homosexuality, abortion. More than ever, these movements not only made people wonder why this specific behaviour was criminalized, but they also showed how (and that) it was possible to influence and change the norms of the state and the practices of penal law.

Diversity, the right to be different, personal autonomy and the solving of problems by interpersonal respect and negotiations with other responsible citizens, it was not a new paradise on earth to be envisaged, but rather the positive view on wo/mankind that had to be behind the attempts at small-scale, continuously changing and responsible living together. And as far as criminal law was concerned: as a means of social control, that would have to disappear as much as possible, since its rigidity and binary organisation made it basically unfit to acknowledge diversity, personal responsibility and human respect.

In the early 1990s, I had completed about 250 pages of what would have been my doctoral thesis. The working title was ‘On the influence of interest groups on the formulation and implementation of local drug policy, Rotterdam 1985-1989’. The empirical material came mainly from my activities with the Rotterdamse Junkiebond (RJB – Rotterdam Junkie Union; link to article in Civil Rights, Public Opinion and the State, Working Papers in European Criminology N°8, 1987) and more or less related grassroots organisations. But in fact – heavily influenced by the work of Foucault, Deleuze, Julia Kristeva and Carol Smart – it was mainly about processes of power, truth and identity.

The above text is an excerpt from the Preface, slightly modified around the year 2000, and now superficially edited.