Mutual Service and the Language of Domination

This book attempts to celebrate both community and difference. I want to discuss our serving and defending one another without pretending that these communitarian practices bring unity to the global village or any other habitat. Bringing unity seems always to require silencing the so-called parts that do not fit the holistic vision, and I want no part of that. But avoiding community ignores the problem of lives of quiet desperation" shut-in singles, suicidal teenagers, homeless people" lives which are perhaps more desperate now than they were in Thoreau's time. I wish to attempt a Wolin-like stance toward the world—"taking care of people and things instead of using them up"—without relying on unity for a foundation.

Thoreau, who uses community to name such mutual service and defense, fears its collectivistic consequences, and often prefers to be left alone. Bataille, who wants no part of unifying arguments, sees taking care of people as a form of dominating them and seeks that different kind of solitude—an "apotheosis of alcohol and flesh"—that celebrates a using up of people and things. My task is to show how overcoming the urge to say that human beings, or subsets of them, are all the same leads arguments neither back to the atomistic prejudice of nineteenth century individualism nor ahead to the solitary ecstasy of avant-garde eruptions.

Communitarian arguments pose a major threat to radical individualism, but many of these arguments illustrate how right Bataille, and perhaps Foucault, are to berate mutual service as a form of domination, or humiliation. The celebration of difference demands a rejection of what Connolly calls "attunement." Thus, contemporary political theory in the West seems to offer choices that range from a flat refusal to serve and defend other people to caring for people in ways that dominate and humiliate them.

Thoreau refuses to serve others; Bataille exposes the domination of those who do not so refuse. Most people seem to embody both extremes: refusing and caring. We are caught in a bind between having to be individuals and having, as individuals, to care for the collectivity, or union. In other words, the state, which protects individuals as individual rights-bearers, requires them occasionally to make personal sacrifices for the collectivity. Government consequently fluctuates between refusing to provide services and providing services in ways that dominate and humiliate the recipients.

To illustrate this unhappy situation, I quote from an editorial in a Christian magazine. The one-page article appears to be a straightforward comparison of a "cash merit system to reward citizens" for acts of social conscience—in this case, agreeing to live in a racially segregated, "woodsy Chicago suburb," Oak Park—and Habitat for Humanity, an organization whose volunteers build and sometimes live alongside houses for the marginally poor, in this case in segregated urban areas "where no one wants to live."

Serving the Poor

Habitat for Humanity grants no-interest loans to its new homeowners, who devote one thousand hours of labor to their houses and the houses of others (accumulating "sweat equity"). "People [who volunteer for Habitat for Humanity] don't receive cash bonuses; rather volunteers like Jimmy Carter work long hours without pay." In this particular project "committed Christian couples mostly from middle-class backgrounds move into the neighborhood [on Chicago's west side] offering role models for the poor and bringing a social stability to the area." This language seems to cast urban dwelling as a form of missionary work, if not as a mission for the National Guard.

The article is designed to underscore the difference between two news reports of a Carter visit to Chicago on behalf of Habitat for Humanity in 1986. One reports Carter swinging a hammer in the slums; the other reports him attending a "dress-up affair" in Oak Park, the suburb known for its cash merit system of integration. The following excerpt describes the two events in earthly and heavenly terms.

Oak Park hopes to "fix" its society with a carefully controlled plan to change the envirnoments, and ulimately, the value systems of various minority groups. To accomplish that goal they rely on a powerful motivation: human greed. Their plan is creative and rational—an ecample of the kingdom of this world at its best.

Habitat for Humanity, in contrast, is working to produce a far more radical change among a smaller group of people. They desire to change not only the human environment, but the human heart. They believe it is not enough for people with resources to invite in well-screened representatives of minority groups.

Rather, people of resources must go, voluntarily, to the places of need, and give their time, and their sweat, and their families, and their love. Even greed is not a strong enough motivator to accomplish that sacrifice. It requires instead the Christian commitment of people willing to take a risk with no prospect of reward in this life—in other words, the kingdom that is not of this world.

This "ironic juxtaposition" contains words that darken the illuminating distinction between the two kingdoms. One can sense Pauline traces of Rousseau or Augustine, for whom the two "kingdoms" commingle within us all, at least for the time being.

The surface distinction in these illuminating paragraphs draws a line between liberal reciprocity in a contracted universe (if you move in, then we will pay you fifteen hundred dollars) and the communion of saints in an expansive universe. These are the so-called two worlds of Jimmy Carter, a tension between greed and love. But notice that the greedy, rational side is described as "creative," a "plan to change the environment" toward racial integration. This is the power of greed on its best behavior, courting communitarian ends. And notice that the loving, committed side is a "risk" taken "voluntarily" with no prospect of "reward." This is the sacrifice of love couched in the language of liberalism. Given their attraction to one another, one might wonder if the relation of the two worlds is not rather like what Lewis Hyde calls a "lovers' quarrel."

This quarrel is problematic because, apart from the bickering over whether to pay bigots to change their habitats or to hope that zealots will live like missionaries out of the goodness of their hearts, the marginally poor remain in the margins and spaces of the text. In the passage just cited one might compare two movements: "people with resources ... invite in wellscreened representatives of minority groups." and "people of resources ... go [out] ... to places of need." This contrast of having goods ("with resources") and being good ("of resources") is supposed to make the worldly approach seem like mere "safe conscience," while suggesting that the heavenly approach involves the risk of dirty hands, smashed thumbnails, and so on. But there is a disguised contrast which signals a resemblance between these two approaches. Those inhabiting the world of greed invite marginal people "in"; those inhabiting the world of love go out to meet the marginal people, to minister to their needs. In both cases the marginal people are out there, ripe for domination because their needs must be met from without by the resources of greedy middle-class folks or loving middle-class folks. This article somehow cannot accommodate the obvious facts that marginally poor people have infinite "resources" and middle-class folks have crying "needs" of their own, facts with which the author of this editorial would certainly agree. But these facts are neglected by the quarrel over which way to help the marginally poor from a socially distant point of view. The author's case is subverted by the terms of discourse used to make it.

The familiar this world/other world distinction seems to fuel a tension between feeling selfish when individualistic and feeling unrealistic or naïve when collectivistic. The author can conclude only in cliche, wringing his hands, asking lame rhetorical questions:

As I watched the ironic juxtaposition of the news reports of Carter's visits, I could not help wondering which approach gave him the most personal satisfaction. One thing troubled me, though: Why is it that when a former President comes to town to build houses for the poor, hundreds of people will pay $50 to dress up and hear him talk about it, but only a handful will take their hammers and join him?

This is the kind of question that cannot be defended very far outside the narrow boundaries of a Christian magazine. Why do more people not find "personal satisfaction" in taking a "risk" which has no "prospect of reward" in their lifetime? Even if one avoids all of the obvious answers, it is difficult not to address the troubles of the author. If acts of mutual service are versed in the language of domination, they cannot be mutual. If the good works of Habitat For Humanity boil down to the personal satisfaction of the outside volunteers, is it really surprising that most people opt for the more hedonistic delights of contemporary society? What good reasons can be given for rubbing shoulders with the poor and righting wrongs with blisters, dirty hands, and tired muscles, when one can more easily appease one's collective conscience by writing a check and arriving at the "dress-up affair" in time for cocktails?

Ironically, Augustine makes the same two-kingdom distinction when he contrasts mutual service and domination. He writes, "In the city of the world both the rulers themselves and the people they dominate are dominated by the lust for domination; whereas in the City of God all citizens serve one another in charity, whether they serve by the responsibility of office or by the duties of obedience." From a postmodern perspective it is difficult to see the advantage of fighting the lust for domination only to win the duty of obedience. But that is a difficulty which cannot be addressed until one appreciates the irony of the article we have been reading. The author writes a story of citizens serving one another in charity, but his language tells a different story, a story of domination. My plan approaches the many good deeds performed each day in the name of community from a different perspective, one which draws attention to the give, or play, in the structures which underlie conventional thinking about political community.

My work might make a difference to current perspectives that are unable to avoid encouraging collective enterprises while leaving the question of such involvement up to each individual. Most political theorists make peace with either individualism or collectivism and then co-opt, rather than destroy, the enemy camp. For example, a theorist might stress the deeply rooted commonality that underlies the rightful diversity of each person, or s/he might stress the radical autonomy of persons, who are free to work out collective arrangements for their mutual benefit. There is also room, in conventional circles, for creative efforts to balance the interests of the autonomous person with the heteronomous demands of collective life. But these examples illustrate a stalemate faced by political theory: as people become collectivized they hunger for individualism and vice versa. The popular response to such situations, in which one cannot be right, is all too often apathy or a desperate effort to keep whatever order is at hand. Less popular, but more troublesome, are the efforts of critics, such as Bataille, to annihilate the stable subject of political discourse.

Postmodernism and Deconstruction

Deconstruction, as I use the word, is neither a method of analysis nor a synonym for dismantlement. Rather, deconstruction names what takes place during at least three overlapping ways of reading, or traversing, texts. One strategy notices how binary oppositions work to govern the sense that texts can make. These oppositions tend to produce hierarchies because it is difficult not to emphasize one side over the other. Another attempts to invert and dismantle the ruling oppositions. Mastering the negativity required to invert polarities must be attended by efforts to dismantle or neutralize the opposition altogether. All polar distinctions must be supplemented in the sense that they are shown not to be sovereign. And then there are strategies designed to preclude the emergence of new oppositions, of new hierarchies, of new synthetic ways of mutilating difference.

To articulate this difficult ban, I shall borrow the notion of excess from Derrida, who borrows it from Bataille. That is, by making use of excess, I shall study mutual service without domination. This will involve reversing the benefit of the doubt and asking rational thrifty philosophers to give reasons for having to have reasons to ease up in the fight against flux.

Political theories can be thought of as providing order for the world(s) they seek to encounter. This is not to say that political theories impose these forms on the world; it is more accurate to see any imposition involved as an attempt at self-governance. Political theories, then, do not impose order on the world in the way, for example, a sculptor might give shape and vitality to unformed clay. Rather, these theories govern themselves by giving themselves structure or orders. Ignoring any question of how the order of these theories is related to the world(s) they would encounter, there remains a question of how theories themselves are related to their order. That is, what do political theories do when they provide structure for the world(s) theorists seek to encounter? And what is the cost of their struggle?

To address these questions I shall use in the least orderly way possible the forms which political theories provide in the name of order. This means refusing the peace that lies within all understanding, turning my back on reassurance. To reject the reassurance political theory offers anyone who submits totally to the governance of its forms is to experiment with extravagance. An extravagant perspective uses reason and order in a provisional way while refusing to permit any form to become entrenched or to provide reassurance. This perspective is made possible by confessing that, in principle, the madness of not thinking along the lines of reason and order is never success- fully straitjacketed or neutralized. Madness resides even in the order-giving text.

Rehearsing the Argument

I am trying to look at the way in which political theories work: I am more concerned with what they do, than with their substantive content. I am not trying in this book to give yet another defense of community as a practice. Instead, I attempt to clear the way for my use of early Derridian texts and then to suggest that one can use community without teleology to supplement the liberal politics of our age. This is sufficient to remove community from the tired situation of being torn between individualism and collectivism.

I attempt to follow the political implications of some of Derrida's work. Briefly, Derrida's radical use of play can be used to supplement the double bind of individualism and collectivism. As long as this tension remains central to political theory, consequences will be as predictable as whether major parties win national elections in American politics. But if this tension were displaced in ways that permit an affirmative politics of community, some new consequences might follow. I shall try to show how Derrida's extravagant maneuvers can be used to displace the individual/collective tension.

First, I need to find some working space. I am not going to pretend to start my argument in the old-fashioned way of making a clearing, constructing a claim, and defending this claim against the outside threat of nonsense, illogic, ambiguity, and the like. Rather, I shall simply ask readers to admit that this romantic way of proceeding is now passe, if not embarrassing. Readers should join me in admitting that the clearing within which I will do my work is already infested with chance, accident, chaos; and in realizing that these silent, nonsensical forces help to constitute, by virtue of their difference, the sense one can make. This will take time. This part of the book is designed to distinguish between reassuring and extravagant—or radical—ways of thinking about subjectivity.

Part II shows why it is impossible to arrive at a radical notion of play without giving in to accident or chance. Chapter 4 develops a reassuring model of the development of order over time; this model shows how the breathtaking work of J. G. A. Pocock captures the structure and motion of most thinking about the creation and transmission of community. Traces of Pocock's model can be found even in the radical criticism of Michel Foucault, who has correctly diagnosed the problem I am addressing. I am not asking for a reversal of the priority of order over chaos. Rather, I want to encourage not choosing. Instead of asking why I bother with chaos, readers should grant me at least the benefit of the doubt. Allow me to ask: what is the cost of the old-fashioned way of building arguments, traditions and communities? What are the consequences of fighting the flux all the time?