[P2P-F] Anonymous Hacktivism and the Discourse of Human Rights

Thu Feb 3 15:01:09 CET 2011

In what sense are "the radical politics of Hardt and Negri or Agamben
(for instance) are inimical to traditional human rights"?

http://www.humanrights.ie/index.php/2011/02/03/anonymous-hacktivism-the-discourse-of-human-rights/

Article by Illan rua Wall http://ssl.brookes.ac.uk/about/staff/prof.asp?ID=423

In the last months, we have seen the emergence of ‘Anonymous’. In
particular, in the days after the widespread attack on Wikileaks
(following their publication of leaked US diplomatic memos) they
emerged with a fairly credible threat to take down major global
internet presences (belonging to both states and corporations). They
have continued to post a variety of curious videos to YouTube that
threaten corporations and regimes alike (see for general information
here and here, on Operation Payback see here, on Algeria; here, and on
Egypt; here). In general, these messages seem to coalesce around the
demand to stop attacks on free speech particularly through the
internet. This ‘movement’ is strange to the ears of those associated
with human rights as it seems to mix postmodern cosmopolitan demands
for human rights with a radical political philosophy of the multitude.
This is an uncomfortable mix on the face of it because the radical
politics of Hardt and Negri or Agamben (for instance) are inimical to
traditional human rights. I want to argue that this is not such a
fundamental contradiction. What Anonymous seem to see is the radical
democratic potential of human rights – this would be a potential quite
distinct from the conventional renderings.

The first point to note is that while Anonymous make statements and
undertake actions they are not a unity. As Jean-Luc Nancy might say
they are always instatu nascendi (always in the state of being born,
always becoming, but never closed, finished or completed). They are a
multitude in the sense that they lack a sovereign power that gathers
them into a unified entity. They are certainly not an institution, or
for that matter an organization in the sense of an IGO or NGO. They
are not a ‘community’ in the traditional human rights language because
they do not share the common bonds of place, ethnicity, or however we
are defining

community – if they are a community you can be sure that it is
entirely inoperative. They appear much closer to the civil
disobedients of civil rights movements than the Amnesty letter writing
campaigns whose action is the raising of a pen and the licking of a
stamp. However, they are also distinctive from traditional human
rights characters. What is distinctive seems to be the lack of a
leadership responsible for tactics or strategy and the lack of
founding documents that would constitute an authoritative
pre-constituted guide and identity. Some from within this multitude
assert ‘founding values’ but none are authorized, precisely because
such an authorisation would be a nonsense. The irony of this lies in
many of their ‘communications’, not least the letter to Glenn Beck.
There ‘they’ say;

You see, Mr. Beck, we are not an organization. We have no leaders. We
have no official spokesperson. We have no age, race, ethnicity, color,
nationality, or gender. Anyone who claims to speak for all of us is,
quite frankly, a liar. To be clear, the gentleman known as Coldblood
was not sanctioned by anyone but himself to speak on our behalf.

Of course the signature – Anonymous – that ends the letter is itself
undercut, it is by its very signature demonstrating its own
impossibility (think of Derrida’s Declarations of Independence). If no
one is authorized to speak for the group – if they are legion and
multitudinous – then there could be no hand entitled to sign. But this
is all a little academic, let me get back to the human rights
question.

A fairly traditional rendering of human rights posits a utopia where
every state respects and protects its properly constituted juridical
subjects (see the preambles of the UDHR or ICCPR/ICESCR). Those who
subscribe to this idea of human rights imagine Anonymous’s
(impossible) declarations along the lines of Thomas Clarkson, Martin
Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, albeit on a less significant scale.
Anonymous say ‘We will take sides. We will support people who strive
for freedom of speech, assembly and communication,’ and in this the
human rights lawyer hears a human rights defender. However, Anonymous
does not simply fit such a characterisation precisely because of the
simple multiplicity at their heart.

I suggest that to understand Anonymous we should look to the idea of
singularity as discussed by Jean-Luc Nancy and Giorgio Agamben. I’m
not saying that this is the only way of approaching the question,
however, it does put their statements in a different light. Nancy and
Agamben use singularity in various ways, but one of the most important
ideas is as an attack on the concept of the individual. The problem
with the individual is that it posits a possessive subject, distinct
from each other individual. The properties of this possessive subject
must be protected by the state (See Locke Second Treatise). To this
enclosed subject it is

then necessary to add context, history and relation. However, a
singularity is always both common and unique – I share language, for
instance, but at the same time craft it on my own tongue. Singularity
is unique, but not absolutely unique (to be absolutely unique would be
to be unique in being unique). Rather each singularity ‘cannot exist
through consisting by itself and in itself alone’ (Nancy The Sense of
the World p71). The uniqueness of singularity is constituted by its
very being-with-others. It is a differential uniqueness. This
interrupts any reduction to the individual. Singularity ‘is not a
matter of adding to a postulation of individuality or autonomy a
certain number of relations and interdependencies, no matter what
importance one may attach to such an addenda’ (Ibid. p71). The
singular is always a play of the unique and the common, but this
‘play’ is itself different each time. Each singularity is different
from the next, while maintaining the sharing of the in-common.

Perhaps most importantly for my purposes here, singularity is not
reducible to an identity, nor is capable of being represented (be that
politically or juridically). A singularity is singular, it is not
defined by a common property, by its ‘being red, being French, being
Muslim… but only in its being such as it is’ (Agamben The Coming
Community p1, see also p85-7). If a singularity cannot be represented
then it resists the reduction to its functions (eating, talking,
associating, living, drinking). However, this is precisely the
reduction necessary in human rights, which claim an authority because
they represent the essence, nature, dignity or function the human. The
human speaks, eats, lives, sleeps, drinks, associates and so has right
to these which must be protected by an overarching state. The politics
of singularity resist traditional human rights methods of representing
the victimhood of an individual to a ‘higher authority’ in order to
seek redress.

This brings me back to Anonymous, because, most of the time, they  do
not seek to represent either themselves or others. They talk about
human rights, but theirs is a much more radical action. As multitude
they are not good juridical subjects dutifully applying (or helping
others to apply) to a state’s tribunal to vindicate its rights. There
is no half-hearted request to consider the case before a toothless
international tribunal. Anonymous seem to see themselves as protector
of ‘the people’ from the intensive state power of surveillance,
censorship and discipline. They demand the right to speech and
association of others,

they seem to want to facilitate resistant democratic action rather
than patriarchically protect the possessive individual. This is direct
action for human rights, certainly, but it is also anti-statist and
even anti-sovereign, in the sense that it strikes against any state or
corporation that it sees infringing on free speech or association.
What is more, it seems to me that the human rights they claim are not
the end of the story, they are a strategy. If association and speech
can be facilitated, Anonymous seem to hope that people will overturn
the existing political relations. This is why they attacked so
spectacularly those who targeted Wikileaks. This is why they have
since supported the Algerians and Egyptians. It seems to me that
Anonymous understand their role as facilitating political action by
generating and defending spaces of contestation and organisation.

With this, they go beyond the traditional radical political critique
of human rights. Many have argued that the danger of human rights is
that they evacuate extensive demands for social justice and replace
them with demands for minimal reform (see for instance Brown States of
Injury or my interview with her here). Take for instance the rights to
food, shelter or health. These were once the very stuff of socialist
utopia. In human rights, at most, they become the possibility of
irregular bread or flour, the prohibition of the demolition of a slum
or the freedom from toxic sludge being dumped in your back garden.
While these are indeed laudable goals, the critique continues that
they cannot be substituted for extensive demands for social justice.
When these demands are translated into rights they are pacified by
being brought within the gift of the government and judiciary.
However, this is precisely what Anonymous seem to avoid. It is in
their multiplicity, their inability to be represented, their refusal
to just become another neatly organised NGO, and their refusal to
evacuate the political through rights that makes them interesting. The
rights they claim are traditional, however, through their a-legal
actions they seem to generate a different sense for human rights.
Theirs seems to be an interest in rights for world-creation: ‘whereas
it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse… to
rebellion…’.