[P2P-F] an important book on p2p politics

Mon Jun 4 11:25:28 CEST 2018

There are several things I find interesting here,

but especially, how we can avoid 'animalism' and naturalism
(anti-specie-ism) , i.e. keep recognizing the over-determining role of
consciousness in natural and human evolution, while not remaining stuck in
Enligthenment humanism,

'entangled humanism' looks a way forward,

the author's proposal for swarming-based political strategies are also of
interest:

see especially the last paragraph at the end of this review excerpt:

   - Book: Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of
   Swarming. William E. Connolly. Duke University Press. 2017.

URL =
Description[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Entangled_Humanism_and_the_Politics_of_Swarming&action=edit&section=1>
]

"addresses deepening planetary crises by exploring the creative potential
of a ‘politics of swarming’. In calling for an ‘entangled humanism’ to
construct a radical, pluralist assemblage able to tackle our present
ecological predicament" (
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/10/25/book-review-facing-the-planetary-entangled-humanism-and-the-politics-of-swarming-by-william-e-connolly/
)
Review[edit
<https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/index.php?title=Entangled_Humanism_and_the_Politics_of_Swarming&action=edit&section=2>
]

Nikhilendu Deb:

"In the first chapter, Connolly critically engages with many leading works
of ‘sociocentrism’, by which scholars display a penchant toward explaining
social processes solely through reference to other social processes. Even
the best sociocentric scholars do not attend to the ‘self-organizing
amplifiers and internal volatilities of planetary processes’ (16).
Sociocentrism is also associated with human exceptionalism, which deems
humans as the only capable agents in the world. Although a sociocentric
propensity is noticeable in the work of many Western scholars, Connolly
tours four key figures in this tradition: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Isaiah
Berlin, Friedrich Hayek and Karl Marx. To Connolly, all failed to underline
how Western capitalist states and imperial orders created, and would
continue creating, a world climate and ecological crisis that particularly
affects poor and minority populations across the world.

In Chapters Two and Three, Connolly extends his dialogues to recent
theories of species evolution and cultural theorists, respectively. In
Chapter Two, he underscores the need to exchange ideas between the work of
contemporary earth scientists and those in the social sciences and
humanities. He pursues this in the next chapter by inviting scholars to
engender a ‘critical politics’ necessary for dealing with the problems that
are staring the world in its face. In Chapter Four, Connolly presents a
history of how rapid changes in planetary forces, i.e. to glaciers, the
climate and oceans, proceeded in the past (91), and how unbridled
capitalist growth has triggered off a series of planetary-level,
environmental crises.

In Chapter Five on the politics of swarming, Connolly addresses the
democratic process and capitalism as they coexist today, emphasising the
dilemmas of electoral politics, especially in the United States. The
unchecked power of corporations, the media’s focus on insignificant or
scandalous issues, gerrymandering and filibustering of the state and
actions to disenfranchise minority populations all make electoral politics
dysfunctional. However, Connolly suggests that we partake in electoral
politics as well as break its ‘grid of intelligibility’ (123). Otherwise,
actors of the political Right will utilise yet another institution to
consolidate its agenda in this era replete with extremist potential.

Additionally, electoral politics render invisible the extractionist mission
of capitalism, which imposes sufferings on ‘those who cannot easily
publicize widely what is happening to them as they suffer effects of
corporate invasions in long slow time’ (123). The question is: do we just
stand idle in an epoch when problems are multiplying and solutions seem
ineffective? To answer this question, Connolly cites Thomas D. Seeley’s
metaphor of ‘honeybee democracy’. Here, female scouts check out possible
relocation sites in the search for a new hive site, and each returns and
suggests the attractiveness and feasibility of a new location. Other bees
scout the location, gradually building a quorum upon the negotiation of
multiple sites identified by secondary and tertiary scouts before the
decision to move is made (124). To Connolly, such types of assembly-based
swarming movements, having a variety of loci and foci of choices, may
provide a promising clue in our search for planetary solutions. Connolly
suggests that humans can also take experimental roles in numerous locations
with diverse foci to ‘swarm’ regular politics: therefore, the politics of
swarming ‘is composed of multiple constituencies, regions, levels, and
modes of action, each carrying some potential to augment and intensify the
others with which it becomes associated’ (125).

Connolly next discusses the potentiality of a ‘general strike’, drawing on
scholars and activists such as Georges Sorel and Mahatma Gandhi. Sorel, for
instance, discussed two different types of strikes: Local and General. The
former is specific to short-term objectives, such as better working
conditions, and the latter aims to demand a fundamental reordering of the
world. Connolly, however, raises the caveat that a slow-motion strike alone
may be insufficient. Thus, to affect the trajectory of contemporary
politics, we also need to mobilise a ‘militant pluralist assemblage’
drawing from different classes, religions, creeds, age cohorts and genders
(131). Moreover, although Connolly suggests the need for militant action,
it must be strategic enough to avoid violence, in the manner of Gandhi in
colonised India.

Connolly begins the last chapter with Rob Nixon’s notion of ‘slow
violence’, a notion that adequately captures capitalism’s violence against
the environment which takes place gradually and happens out of our sight.
The Bhopal disaster of 1984 would be an example of slow violence because it
is remembered only by its spectacle: thousands of casualties, whereas other
hundreds of thousands suffered many long-lasting consequences, and the soil
and groundwater remain contaminated to date.

Here, instead of being a passive nihilist, Connolly extols the notion of an
entangled humanism, which encourages us to:

1) see symbiotic relationships between human species and other beings and
forces;

2) revise the doctrines of human exceptionalism and sociocentrism and
become more aware of other modes of experiences;

3) forge relations of respect across societies such as towards the
traditions of indigenous groups; and

4) form a critical pluralist politics exceeding creedal differences which
‘pursues ecological actions at multiple sites’ and simultaneously seeks to
weaken its opponent in this perilous period. Finally, Connolly invites us
to engage in an energetic cross-regional pluralist assemblage consisting of
numerous minorities as opposed to decisions being taken from the centre." (
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/10/25/book-review-facing-the-planetary-entangled-humanism-and-the-politics-of-swarming-by-william-e-connolly/
)

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