@ is for Activism by Joss Hands

Author:Joss Hands [Hands, Joss]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783710515
Publisher: Pluto Press

THE QUASI-AUTONOMOUS RECOGNITION NETWORK

In order to theorise and define the possibility of such new radical, democratic forms it is necessary to engage with emerging practices and actions. One of the most notable were the events of 15 February 2003, mentioned above, which, rather than being seen as products of a public sphere, can be interpreted as the first instance of a massive new form of networked activism. This is a particularly useful place to start, given that Habermas interpreted these events using the language of public-sphere theory. It is therefore important to challenge this perception, and to reiterate what the marches were not: they were not the result of organisation by a specific political party, a union, an NGO, or a social movement – online or not; they were not the result of a Europe-wide renaissance of the public sphere. Rather, they were part of a coordinated movement of movements, an aggregation and a multiplicity of different groups, causes, individuals, and parties around the whole planet. The sheer diversity of participants across the globe self-evidently did not share a specific set of localised motivations for action; rather, the marches were coordinated on a global level, through an orchestration of aims that were loose enough to mobilise the common interests of all participants – peace, democracy and human rights – all made concrete by the injustice and illegality of the impending war. This was not an expression of ‘public opinion’ in any fully formed sense, but rather a giant ‘No!’ – an expression of the collective ‘scream’.

There is a certain resonance here with the ‘SPIN’ model developed by L.P. Gerlach and V.H. Hines – the acronym standing for a ‘segmented, polycentric, integrated network’ (Bennett, 2003: p. 22). Some of the key characteristics of such networks include the absence of hierarchical structures, fluidity of membership, a multiplicity of hubs, and non-formal ties. The centrality of the Internet is therefore fundamental; as Bennett argues, ‘networks of diverse groups could not be sustained without the presence of digital communication channels’ (p. 24). Such formations have been recognised in the global justice movement, in what Naomi Klein calls the hubs-and-spokes model (Klein, 2002: p. 17). Yet this takes no account of the distributed nature of the Internet, discussed in the previous chapter – in fact it describes a de-centred network, rather than a distributed one. The model also lacks a formal pragmatics for dissecting in detail how the actants connect together, and it contains no specifically normative aspect.

I have previously argued that dissent, resistance and rebellion are fundamentally dialogical and collective activities that are underpinned by communicative reason, mutual recognition and solidarity. I have also made the case that distributed, networked communications, in particular the Internet, have certain characteristics that can support these features, in that we can conceive of networks in certain circumstances as being ‘moral machines’. Given this set of characteristics, I believe it will be fruitful to develop an understanding of these features that extends this logic of recognition and distribution into the everyday realms of communication and action that they enable.

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