John Bloomberg-Rissman interviews Nina Power
“… I do have a lot of friends who are artists
and poets. Most of the poets are obsessed with the way in which capitalism
talks about itself, the language of the markets, the speeds and strangenesses
of financial activity. It’s interesting - as if contemporary experimental
poetry is the nearest thing to the critique of political economy that art has.
…”
JBR: As best I can tell,
over the last few years, you have morphed a bit from an academic / activist
into an activist / academic. In other words, your main focus these days seems
to be activism, rather than writing, translating, etc. If that is true, can you
tell us a bit about the transition? And about your activism? (this is where you
can talk about the trials, I think)
NP: I certainly shifted from being primarily
interested in politics as a theoretical object to it being a pressing daily
concern in 2010, but I would refuse the activist/academic division to some
extent. I mean, I wish more academics were explicitly politically, both in the
media and in political life, and there are many that are - but an awful lot are
content to remain within the often limited scope of their academic research,
and to go along with various management decisions, however detrimental these
might be. So you often end up with a few 'radicals' on campus who, often
alongside their students, are fighting to prevent departments being closed own,
fight against imposed registration (often used to check immigration status of
students), contest Vice Chancellor's pay-rises, fight fees, improve conditions
for non-academic staff and so on. In 2010, with the closure of the
undergraduate Philosophy department at Middlesex, the beginning of this long
round of attacks on Higher Education really kicked in. I had studied and worked
at Middlesex and feel a very strong connection to its aims and ambitions, so I
was part of the campaign to prevent its closure - the occupation was seen as a
kind of test-case for what would happen at universities over the next few
months as fee increases were debated in parliament, the Education Maintenance
Allowance was cut, and so on. The outcome (the graduate centre moved to
Kingston and the undergraduate programme was indeed cut) was ambiguous, but,
alongside the university occupations over Gaza the year before, the tone was
set for a certain kind of student and staff militancy between then and the end
of 2010, when the tripling of tuition fees and the funding cuts were finally
passed.
Over the course of the four main student
protests that took place between November and December that year - huge,
thrilling events which broke away from the main route and occupied Tory HQ in
one instance, and escaped police containment (kettling) in another - we saw a
series of arrests, as well as the increasing police violence that occurred on
every protest - horse charges into static crowds, baton use, use of shields as
weapons, and so on. This police desire for retribution culminated in the
extreme police violence witnessed on the day of the fees votes, where many
protesters suffered head injuries and, as is quite well known now because of
the subsequent criminal prosecution brought against him, one protester, Alfie
Meadows was so seriously injured he had to undergo life-saving brain surgery.
The Crown Prosecution Service then saw fit to charge him with Violent Disorder
(a charge used against many of the protesters arrested on the student protests
and others), which has a maximum life sentence of five years. Alfie and his
co-defendant Zak then had to suffer through three trials (the first jury
returned a hung verdict, the second trial collapsed due to multiple delays),
which finally culminated in their unanimous acquittal in March this year. Along
with a number of others, we set up a campaign (Defend the Right to Protest)
which focussed on helping defendants get the best legal advice, supporting them
during their trials, writing articles about the trials in order to raise
awareness about what was happening to the dozens of students who faced court
cases and prison and linking up with other campaigns that work on protest,
police violence and imprisonment. One of the links the campaign has worked on,
and continues to work on, is the broader question of police violence: deaths in
custody, daily police harassment and so on. While many of the people on the
protests did not necessarily have experience of police brutality before they
witnessed it in late 2010 (though many did), we wanted to try to make the link
between protest violence and the violence that many (particularly young black
and Asian men) suffer daily: in other words, to try to get people to think in a
more 360 degree way about the role of the state and the police, and the way in which
violence is meted out unevenly. We continue to attend inquests into deaths in
custody and to support families of those involved in the justice campaigns.
Because the scale and the extent of the cuts have been so brutal since the Tory
government has come to power, alongside the rise of extreme right-wing groups
like the English Defence League and the UK Independence Party, it has been hard
for those who oppose cuts and fascism to keep up with the extent of state
violence: opposition to austerity measures has been fierce but so too has the
state's response. One of the most significant things for me over the past few
years has been to meet up with criminal defence lawyers - these people are
truly extraordinary in their fight for justice for ordinary people: of course,
the legal aid that ensures people can get even the slightest hint of justice is
being dismantled as we speak.
Personally, I'm not sure if I write more or less
now than I did before 2010. The main thing I stopped doing was my blog I guess,
which just started to seem a bit frivolous: it was something set up as a
distraction during my PhD but I got tired of having all this word-junk hanging
around - also, I could see from searches to the blog that someone/some people
were looking for dirt on people who had been arrested or were heavily involved
in the protests. Needless to say there wasn't anything on the blog that could
do anyone any damage, but a lot of people were feeling exposed and anxious at
that point. As you know, there have been a few very high profile exposes of
police infiltration into protest movements in recent years, and I think
paranoia is sometimes a normal response: people were going to prison were
insanely minor things and newspapers and right-wing blogs were all-too-happy to
smear protesters when it suited them.
I think my writing has perhaps become more
fractured over the past few years, and I really am a terrible academic - if by
that I mean someone who focuses on one thing in a scholarly way and becomes an
expert on that one thing - because I write about so many different things all
the time in different contexts. But I get bored easily I think. Some of my more
recent work on notions of the 'public' tries to bring my interest in protest to
bear on larger philosophical and political questions - definitions of
collective subjectivity, for example, which I wrote about in my PhD. But I try
to mess about with different styles of writing - journalism, academic articles,
reviews, experimental stuff - so as not to get too ossified in one way of
thinking or doing.
JBR: "Are any of the
activists with whom you are colleagues, are any of your friends and
non-activist colleagues, artists? If so, do you discuss art with them? Which
arts? Are any of them poets? Do you have a connection to that aspect of their
work?"
NP: I’d like to start with a quote from an
interview given by Rachel Kushner (not with me though I did chair an evening
with her recently in London):
‘I think it’s unfair to compare the stakes of
art and the stakes of protest. The implication is that art is sillier, that the
stakes are about ego and money and hierarchies ... but we are not choosing
between a world without exploitation and a world without culture. They are not
in direct competition with each other.’
I was really struck by this quote as it
articulates something important about the way in which the relationship between
activism and art are often framed, as if they are opposed and mutually
exclusive or excluding. Clearly there is a way in which art sometimes appears
to be self-contained - in its own little world, the “art world” perhaps -
though obviously at the top end the links between this world and the world of
finance are very tight. A lot of what people mourn these days when they talk
about the disconnect between a lot of art and politics (or ask ‘why isn’t art
relevant?’) is based around a fundamental assumption that these two spheres are
somehow distinct. They might even be distinct, often, but it doesn’t mean that
they should be, or always were, or always will be.
Nor, though, do I think that art has a
‘responsibility’ to be political, to have a particular message etc. Practically
speaking, a lot of my friends who are artists are heavily involved in politics,
particularly since the events of 2010 that I described in my first answer.
Groups like Arts Against Cuts and The Precarious Workers’ Brigade look very
clearly at the material constraints and conditions for artists and for art’s
relation to politics in the UK context, and I have friends who work for both
groups. Here I think there the question is one of specificity: rather than
making generalisations like ‘all money is dirty money’ or ‘we are all
complicit’, these groups think about the context, funding and presentation of
art (and who gets paid, and who doesn’t). A couple of my friends, Dean Kenning
and Margareta Kern, wrote a recent piece for Art Monthly that I think addresses
these questions head-on. They write:
Knowledge as to how class
power operates through art, and how we are in various ways subject to its
forces, can inform artistic decisions. It may be exactly those points where art
brushes directly against neoliberal power that offer most potential for
effective resistance. In this respect, decisions made in specific art-world
situations, including acts of subversion or refusal, should not be interpreted
as points of individual morality or personal preference but as artistic acts
with the potential to affect the wider field of art.
Much of the time, when people refuse to work
with galleries etc. or pull out of events because of where the money comes from
the response is often to attack this as a ‘moral’ position, but really the
question has to be asked on a case-by-case basis with as much recognition of
the different positions people are in and are able to take (obviously someone
with a salary from a university job is better-placed to ‘refuse’ than a young
artist without a job or money)
To get back to your question, I do have a lot of
friends who are artists and poets. Most of the poets are obsessed with the way
in which capitalism talks about itself, the language of the markets, the speeds
and strangenesses of financial activity. It’s interesting - as if contemporary
experimental poetry is the nearest thing to the critique of political economy
that art has. Most of the visual artists I know are also engaged in kinds of
mapping, or political critique of one kind or another, and often critique of
the artworld itself.
In terms of cultural form, I spend most of my
time listening to music - I’m very, very keen on experimental electronic music
that has an interesting relation to gender - figures like Julia Holter, Laurel
Halo, Berangere Maximin, and I obviously write quite a few music reviews for
The Wire. I also watch quite a lot of films and have been asked to speak on a
few occasions about film-art - this weekend I’m speaking about the work of
Ericka Beckman, for example. I grew up reading a lot of novels and it’s still
the cultural form I probably feel most at home with (hence reading all of the
Booker shortlist this year! The prize is open to accusations of mainstream
conservatism, for sure, but an interesting project to attempt alongside work
and other writing).
It is difficult to untangle art in the British
context from its commercial elements, and certainly most of the artists I know
- Laura Oldfield Ford for example is a dear friend - find it difficult to earn
enough from art alone, even though their work is excellent, moving and
incisive. I think it’s interesting that so many discussions of so-called
immaterial labour begin and end with the artworld and the figure of the
contemporary artist as the paradigm examples of this tendency: art has perhaps
become dominant as a mode of existence, which of course makes it no easier for
those who describe themselves as ‘artists’ to make a living.
JBR: I’m guessing you know about the Militant
Politics and Poetry Conference held in London this past May. I’m also guessing
that you know a number of the people who presented there. I wasn’t there, but a
number of the talks and a number of responses subsequent to the conference have
been posted to the Militant Poetics forum http://militantpoetics.blogspot.com/
Among
many other things, there seems to have been a lot of – I don’t know if anxiety
is the right word – desire that poets think about “how to go forward, what we
might do etc.” (Chris Gutkind). I’ll quote a few illustrative comments:
“Is
there something we can actually do that might help, make a useful contribution?
But together, since we’ve come together, and what is together anyway, what do
we mean by that in our situation?” Chris Gutkind
“It's a
good sign that there's a conference on militant poetics raising explicitly
non-rhetorical questions, & a good starting point for poets to at least
think thru the implications of a shared poetic militancy. But what are the forms
this ought to take to make any fucking difference at all, to effect a reversal
in the seemingly endless parade of abhorrences & loss of common rights?”
Michael Tencer
“How do
we fight the corruption and greed of politics, and is the power of language alone
sufficient?” Selina Vuddamalay
I used
the word anxiety above, and then withdrew it, but would like to put it back on
the table. Because it seems to me that poets who are sure of what they are
doing don’t ask such questions. I would add that I don’t find the anxiety
unreasonable, in fact I share it; tho I don't find it unreasonable, I'm not
actually sure that it IS reasonable.
Since it
does not appear from your answer to question 2 that you find poets NOT doing
what they ought to do, to be falling short, failing somehow, what would you say
to me, what might you have said at this conference, to the poets (and other
artists) who express these kinds of doubts? (In a certain way your answer
already addresses this, I know, but I’m hoping to push you a little into a more
specific interaction with this “anxiety” …)
NP: Anxiety is this omnipresent cloud over
everything anyone does I think! It can and does tip over all the time into
fatalism, or panic, or despair. It’s not surprising that poets would feel this
particularly acutely as poetry as a cultural form seemed to be peculiarly
marginalised in some ways, and thought not to have the strength to make much
impact outside of a few small camps who will be extremely moved by it -
although it’s clear that in Iran, for example, poetry is still highly
privileged as a mode of political, spiritual and literary communication and
whose effects are deemed to be worrisome by the authorities. At the same time,
it won’t do to imagine cultural forms are more subversive or relevant than they
actually are.
There are several kinds of anxieties at work
here it seems to me: the anxiety that what one is doing is of any value or
makes any difference, for starters; the anxiety that the entire mode or form of
production has value or is still historically relevant; and an anxiety about
how individual or collective production links up to broader questions of
political struggle, or how to tie being a poet, for example, in with being
someone engaged in political work (anti-police protest, for example, of which
we have seen a lot lately in London). I have many friends for whom the question
of whether they concentrate on their work or whether they spend their time
organising (alongside everyday economic questions) is a daily, practical dilemma.
Of course the ambition is for there to be no gap between the work and the
politics. But these moments are rare and utopian. But they do exist.
Another option is to see the negativity all the
way through to the end, to analyse and categorise it, to pin it down and to
work out whether there is anything to be done with hate, revenge, pessimism
etc. I’m also interested in this option, as are many others (see http://radicalnegativity.com/).
JBR: To change topic a
little: How does global warming play into your "communist horizon"?’
NP: I think this is a difficult question, though
one as relevant as ever with the news today that 95% of scientists are now
convinced that global warming is the direct result of human influence. I think
one of the problems we have politically is to try to conceive of nature in a
dialectical way: one obvious fantasy (perhaps a primitivist one) would be to
imagine the world in a pre-capitalist state, with sustenance farming, commons,
and so on, where humankind lives harmoniously with the environment. Of course this
is in many ways a wonderful image - and I have nothing but admiration for
people who live in this way, wherever possible. But I think too that
realistically you have to think about the planet as it has been constructed and
changed by capitalism, by pollution, man-made disasters like Fukushima and so
on. Obviously some of these things can be ‘cleaned-up’ and behaviour changed,
but it is clear that there is significant damage done to the planet at this
point: and the mismatch of scale between an individual recycling glass bottles
and companies dumping waste quantities of crap into the oceans is hard to
conceptualise. Futility or a kind of nostalgia for the future of the kind that
Herzog sometimes engages in - wouldn’t the world be better off when all the humans
are gone and nature can return to its true beauty/horror? - seems tempting
sometimes. Most contemporary cultural explorations of this idea of ruin begin
or end in apocalypse (think of Children of Men etc.), and it is a
tempting position, to romanticise the destructive ruins left by a ruinous
species, but again it depends upon a concept of nature that is somehow pure and
doesn’t include humans, as if we are not also a part of the nature that we have
betrayed, and in doing so, have betrayed ourselves.
JBR: Let’s talk a little more about global warming and a communist response to it. I see that you rule out two possible responses: nostalgia for a golden age, and desire for our species’ extinction. I am fine with that; neither seem useful, both dodge the question of how humans are going to go on, and each is just too romantic for words. I have seen the capitalist response: either denial, and business as usual, or a reliance on geoengineering projects when the going gets bad (or a combination of both: for example ExxonMobil funds a great deal of denialism, AND is investing heavily in geoengineering – heads I win; tails you lose). And, when I look back on prior attempts at communism, e.g. the USSR and China, I find that each were dependent on the very same technologies as capitalism, i.e., those that are killing the planet. So, while it’s all very well to remember Marx’s “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”, now it’s not just the tradition of the dead generations, it’s also the CO2, etc. I don’t see that the communist (or any other truly left) tradition has theorized this kind of thing well [this kind of thing = changing the modes of production, the energy and other technologies upon which we depend, at the same time as consolidating the revolution itself] (please tell me that I’m wrong about this!). How does a communist think this crisis [the crisis of capitalism AND energy technology] (it feels to me to be a crisis) now? Or, perhaps better, how do you?
NP: I think there is a very long tradition that relates to ideas of “the commons” that precisely relates to this problem of capitalism and energy technology/access to resources/sustainability. The work of the Midnight Notes Collective (http://www.midnightnotes.org/) points to exactly this kind of thinking. I don’t have much to add here except to say that every time I read what they write I can’t help but agree with them.
Nina goes on to add, “John:
I realise this isn’t a very satisfactory answer! Feel free to maybe cut this
response or maybe you could incorporate it back into the earlier question about
global warming?” Instead of cutting or incorporating I am going to leave this
as-is, to point to the fact that I believe that what I call just above “the crisis of capitalism AND energy technology”
is undertheorized, which is not to
take away from the work of those who are attempting to deal with it in the
least, it’s just to note that this crisis needs to be at the top of the agenda,
or perhaps the rest of the agenda will find itself irrelevant before too much
more time passes … Do I need to add that theorizing this (trying to think it through) is just a first tho necessary step? Again, this is just my opinion …
