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Theorizing Practice, Visualizing Theory, and Playing by the Rules Sally Gomaa continued . . .
Theorizing Practice To negotiate space in a power relationship is to theorize space. This negotiation has been absent from traditional theory both because of the latter's preference for temporality as dialectic, transformative, progressive, mobile (Soja, 1989), as, in short, "masculine" (Massey, 1994) and because of its contempt for the "material" or the "real" (in a Platonic way). Thus, theory has been divided from practice: as if one's gender, race, subject position, etc. mean nothing to what one "thinks," or as if action occurs in a vacuum by uninformed living forms who act without consideration of meaning or consequences. This dichotomy between theory/practice, action/reflection, time/place, far from being inherent in the act of theorizing, ends up annulling agency: one is either transfixed in an irrelevant theory or performing irrational actions. The creation of a technocratic elite in a (capitalist) society attests to the need to obliterate human agency. This is why when Gramsci argued that the notion of "the intellectuals" as "a distinct social category independent of class is a myth" and when he defined the intellectual-function in society as the expression of the wishes and the goals of the political party to which one organically belongs, he was sentenced 20 years in prison (he spent only five years there during which his health deteriorated rapidly). What was ultimately dangerous about Gramsci was not the fact that he harbored a naïve belief in revolutionary action, but that, to the contrary, he thought of hegemony as a constant state of flux which requires the co-existence of many political parties with varying degrees of power. Gramsci's action plan, much to the dismay of a growing fascism, required the integration of theory and practice by reconciling discourse (the organic intellectual) with class struggle (the political party), and specifically called for changes on the micro level: "The real development of the revolutionary process occurs below the surface, in the obscurity of the factory and in the obscurity of the consciousness of the numberless masses whom capitalism subjects to its laws" (xxxiv). This insight ties in the type of practice which Gramsci called for with space, not as an inconvenience or as an after-thought, but as specifically the stage for the play of dominations. To theorize an action plan, the present study of space deploys a specific definition of theory: (1) To theorize is not to study how one dimension of human agency influences another; to theorize is to ask what influence is. This insight derives from Sosnoski's study of "error" as the threshold between different critical registers, that is, "error is the recursive linking of any register to any other" (193). Sosnoski's study aims at interrupting the proliferation of disciplines by dwelling on the gaps or the fissures which alert the critic to the possibility of "error" in discourse. The recognition of errors shows up as "moments of self-reflexivity during which we 'leap' from one register to another" (187). What would hamper those "leaps" is the view of error as failure rather than difference. It is particularly this view, Sosnoski points out, which has been institutionalized so that we are made into "citizens of acculturation who are part-time agents of our own subversion" (193). In other words, what Sosnoski is de-theorizing is the institutionalization of error as a Foucauldian interior-surveillance where we keep on transgressing our own limits. This policing of error turns many theories into mere attempts at constructing new boundaries or at multiplying existing ones. Against this hegemonizing view of Theory, Sosnoski provides the following view:
To "make explicit" and to "bring to light" recall Gramsci's exploration of the "obscurity" of the factory and the "obscurity" of consciousness. This need for "making visible" and for "making tangible the previously unseen" is "an important discovery tool in rhetoric" (Miles et al. 6). Sosnoski's proposed technology for combating the hegemony of Theory is, in effect, an attempt at negotiating the spaces between different critical registers: "to develop critical concurrences that cut across various registers-theorizing composing, composing practices, and rhetoricizing history" (194). On the other hand, to practice theory is (2) to recognize "articulation" as "the primary ontological level of the constitution of the real" (Laclau, qtd in Massey, 227). Articulation is praxis: it is the point when thought is action. For example, Massey defines places as "articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings" (154). This definition paves the way for re-conceptualizing space as dynamic and open-ended (which, in turn, paves the way for re-conceptualizing gender roles). Similarly, Linda Brodkey relies on Stuart Hall's definition of articulation as "a way of understanding how ideological elements come, under certain conditions, to cohere together within a discourse, and a way of asking how they do and do not become articulated, as specific junctures, to certain political subjects" to reinsert "the possibility of human agency in poststructural theory" (91). This type of agency (articulation presumes a subject who articulates and "animates" a practice of power otherwise faceless and, hence, implacable) "distinguishes between a desire to be unified in a discourse and what happens in practice, namely, what do individuals do with the unified subject positions offered them by such recognizable institutional discourses as, say, science, art, education, law, and religion or ethics" (Brodkey 91). This emphasis on "what happens in practice" "animates" power by articulating its exercise on the micro level. Porter et al. warn specifically against "limiting one's analytic gaze to macro institutions" because this may encourage a level of abstraction "unhelpful if it leads to a view of institutions as static, glacial, or even unchangeable" and because by seeing institutions as "operating locally, we better situate ourselves in visible contexts within which we conduct our lives, and again, have our lives conducted for us" (12). Obscuring the practices of the individuals who live by the institutions may end up contributing to institutional power by rendering it impersonal and, therefore, indomitable. Not to believe in articulation (in the sense of making visible and making heard the stories of what actually happens) is to perpetuate the Platonic myth of the division between the real and the ideal (which, in turn, would perpetuate the state of irrational action and irrelevant theory). Only a rhetorical construction of the "real" (in the Sophistic sense) can render it negotiable. This view is a prerequisite for the institutional critique which defines institutions as "discursively constructed entities" and therefore as "subject to reading and revision" (Porter et al.1). Institutional critique also examines institutions as "rhetorical designs-mapping the conflicted frameworks in these heterogeneous and contested spaces, articulating the hidden and seemingly voiceless voices of those marginalized by the powerful, and observing how power operates in the zone-in order to expose and interrogate possibilities for institutional change through the practice of rhetoric" (Porter et al. 23). This belief in the potential of epistemic rhetoric to effect social change operates within Foucault's definition of power:
By looking at power as productive, and by placing the individual within this production, Foucault asserts the possibility of human agency. It is this agency which animates theory and informs practice. Ultimately, the study of how place influences action or how action "takes place" is enlightening but it would remain expository or descriptive unless it results in redesigning the space allocated for action and reflection. For example, it is not enough for Althusser to recognize that Marxism deploys a spatial metaphor to express the structure of every society. This "topographical language," Althusser contends, is secured by "the legal, political and ideological superstructure" (141). That is, the superimposition of the ideology and culture (the hegemony) of the ruling class is secured by a discourse which maintains and perpetuates the status quo:
This reciprocity provides a space for resistance. The ideology of the ruling class, following Althusser's logic, is rhetorically constructed because it represents "the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence" (153). This representation occurs in ideological state apparatuses, local places like trade unions, schools, family gatherings, where each mass "is practically provided with the ideology which suits the role it has to fulfill in class society" (147). Having criticized Marx for using a spatial metaphor which is metaphoric, (i.e., descriptive), Althusser concludes that "from within ideology we have to outline a discourse which tries to break with ideology, in order to dare to be the beginning of a scientific (i.e., subjectless) discourse on ideology" (163). Althusser's view that a counter-ideology has to come from within the dominant ideology is only hampered by his own belief in a "subjectless" ideology, (i.e., a faceless space, an inanimate agency, a discourse waiting to be uttered). 1 | 2 | Next Node | 4 | 5 | Works Cited
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