Structured Totalities in
Althusserian Overdeterminist Ontology
The conception of class and class
structure introduced above alludes to a broader understanding, embodied in
Althusser’s conception of ontological overdetermination, that class
exists as one process among an infinity of mutually constitutive processes,
which, together, define the totality of material existence (i.e. the universe
of processes and substances/relationships/practices). By concentrating on processes, this ontological framework
emphasizes the centrality of transformative change to Marxian theory. It asserts, moreover, that a seamless
connection exists between all processes defining material existence.[9] In this sense, the transformative effects of
any process must be manifest as an effect on all other processes, rendering all
processes, including class, loci for determination by all other processes.
Understood
in these terms, material existence, as a single structured totality in
continuous transformation, is constituted by the processual transformation of
all its parts, and such transformations are structured by the positionality of
every process relative to every other process as loci for
overdetermination. Such an ontological
imagery is holistic, in the sense that it encompasses material existence
as a seamless whole, and structuralist, in the sense that the
transformation of each process is completely determined by its positionality relative
to other processes.[10] On the other hand, as Althusser’s conception
of ontological overdetermination will be understood in this project, the
structured totality exists as a piecewise construct of processes, each with its
own overdetermined trajectory in which no single process can explain the
continuous transformation of the totality.
No process manifests autonomy, relative or otherwise, in relation to
other processes contained by the totality.
Such a totality cannot, therefore, approximate an expressive totality
of the Hegelian type (Althusser, 1970: 203-204) in which the evolution of the
totality manifests the effects of a single, overpowering dynamic, amenable to
relatively simple analyses through which the essence of the totality, expressed
in all of its parts, can be revealed either by theory or by empirical
analysis. It should be clear, in this
manner, that there can be no question of rigid determination of social
processes by the economic in the last instance (Althusser, 1970:
111-113).[11]
More
importantly, the irresolvable complexity embodied in the overdetermination of
each process ensures that no theory or analysis can produce objectively true
accounts on any process. This assertion
of ontological overdetermination necessitates a reconsideration of criteria on
the efficacy of theory beyond the criteria of objective validity. In place of validity criteria, this
conception of Marxian theory accepts, as principle, that theory and analysis
can only present partial and partisan accounts on material
existence.[12] This understanding of the relationship
between structured totality and theoretic processes implies that Althusserian
Marxist ontology overlays two fields: the holistic, closed, determinate field
of the structured totality, and the partial, open, and contingent field
constructed through the theoretic articulation of processes.[13]
Approaching
theory with the greater degree of modesty compelled by this dualistic ontology,
Marxian theory advances a standard of efficacy properly labeled performative,
in a sense similar to that applied by Callon (2007). That is to say, as material processes contained by the structured
totality, theoretic processes actively shape their objects in reference to the
perceived goals embodied in the theorist’s perspective. Such a position concedes the role of the
theorist as agent, participating in the processual transformation of
material existence, and acknowledges the role of theory as a constituent
process in material existence and, hence, a processual over-determinant of
agency.
Recognizing
this understanding of the performative nature of the Marxian theory of class
advanced in this section in relation to the complexity of Althusser’s
conception of structured totality, certain implications need to be highlighted. First, Marxian class theory denies the
centrality of the class processes as an essential cause of social reality. In this sense, notwithstanding its grounding
within a holistic and structuralist ontology, the Marxian theory of class is anti-essentialist. Rather than asserting the ultimate
centrality of class processes as an explanation for the importance of this
project, the purpose for prioritizing class in a Marxist theory of cities in
globalization pertains to the perceived impact such a theorization might have
in performing a different reality, closer to the partisan goals of Marxian
theory. Further, in proceeding, my
approach to cities in relation to class processes must also recognize the
theoretic character of spatiality and spatial forms, like the city, implying
that all aspects of this theorization seek to perform a reality, articulating
connections between class and non-class processes to produce a complex ensemble
of spatial forms defined as the city or, more concretely, the city in the present
period of globalization. As such,
neither the city nor globalization can be taken for granted as
realities existing prior to theoretic processes, like this one, that seek to
define them in order to transform them.
Among the tasks of chapter 2 will, therefore, be defining the city and
globalization in relation to this Marxian theory of class.
Comparing the Effects of
Alternative Class Concepts in Theorizing Cities[14]
Reflecting a differentiation
within Marxian theory, writ large, the approaches to theorization of the city
introduced in the previous section generally acknowledge the importance of
class but advance divergent conceptions of class, reflecting, in turn,
ontological differences in the prioritization of structure and agency. These differences draw distinctions between
the various aforementioned approaches to the city in Marxian theory, but they
are most apparent in the approach identifying cities as milieux for the
development of urban social movements.
For example,
Castells, in his writings of the late 1970s and early 1980s (1977; 1978; 1983),
and Katznelson (1981; 1992) prioritize the role of agency in class conflict,
examining, in this regard, the importance of agency by class-defined
organizations in the development and outcomes of urban social movements. For both of these theorists, class describes
a social grouping, defined in reference to property ownership or income or
skill differentiation and at least potentially capable of organizing in defense
of common interests. Class analysis,
therefore, concerns examination of the processes through which individuals,
unified by common working class characteristics, construct organizations and
act in support of class-defined goals, within or outside of commodity
production processes in capitalist workplaces.
In this respect, Castells’ work published after The Urban Question
seeks to identify working class-based movements contesting the conditions for
collective consumption as a component in the reproduction of labor power. Katznelson’s approach goes farther in
attempting to link structural determinants of class identity through four
separate levels to class-based agency in urban social movements (1986;
1992). In both cases, at stake is the
linking of structural characteristics and structurally defined “class
interests” to personal, individual identification with class and activity on
the behalf of class interests. For his
part, Katznelson asserts most strongly, in concurrence with other theorists
writing in the Marxian tradition (e.g. Aronowitz, 1992), that the perennial
absence of a revolutionary collective agent in the history of Western
capitalism suggests that Marxism should assume a more modest position in
assessing the revolutionary potential of the industrial working class and,
further, its capacity to support the development of class conscious urban
social movements.
The
characteristic determinants of individual embodiment within the working class
and of working class interests in these approaches prioritizing agency appear
to be objective (i.e. class in itself) while identification by
individuals with these characteristics, or those of gender, ethnicity, race,
nation, or any other categorization, appears to be subjective (i.e. class
for itself) and individual self-identification represents an open space to
be filled by class or by any other discursive source of
self-identification. The contingent
nature of working class self-identification and collective organization on the
behalf of working class interests, for these theorists, implies that the
capacity of Marxian theory to make useful statements about agency by urban
residents is strictly limited. Castells
(1983: 296-300), for his part, goes as far as to conclude that Marxism,
interpreted as a body of structuralist theory on the development of the forces
of production through which working class movements enjoy no liberty to
demonstrate actual agency, has nothing meaningful to say about the development
of urban social movements.
For Harvey, by contrast,
urban analyses remain continuously at a more abstract level in which classes,
understood as representative of structurally defined roles, follow structural
imperatives. Thus, fractions of the
capitalist class pursue the de-valorization of urban infrastructures as a means
of reproducing the possibilities for profit through investment in the secondary
circuit. Other fractions of the
capitalist class (e.g. landlords) may possess an interest in maintaining the
values of older urban infrastructure, but such contradictory individual interests
are resolved on the behalf of the larger class interest through the exercise of
power by dominant class fractions (e.g. finance capitalists), possibly with the
assistance of the state. In this
respect, Harvey does not espouse a need to link structural imperatives to
individual identifications because, for purposes of his analyses, structurally
defined capitalist class interests drive urban economic processes, irrespective
of any conscious identification by individual capitalists of a collective capitalist
class interest. A class analysis of
cities, thus, implies the articulation of an account on how capital
accumulation, driven by the efforts of the capitalist class, as a whole, to
ameliorate falling rates of profit in commodity production, shapes the built
environments of cities. Again, for
Harvey, the characteristics of the working and capitalist classes and their
respective class interests are objective, but the theorization of an open space
for self-identification in reference to class interests is, in itself,
irrelevant because structurally defined imperatives, particularly those of capital
(i.e. the anthropomorphized embodiment of the capitalist class as a whole),
prevail. Further, in contexts where
self-identification of workers with the working class and its collective
interests is impeded by alternative self-identifications (i.e. identity
politics), Harvey (1996) interprets such alternative self-identifications as
ideological, confused, and, ultimately, irrational products of postmodern culture.
A comparison of
these agency oriented and structurally oriented approaches to class and that of
the overdeterminist definition of class introduced in this section, again,
returns, in part, to the problem of the structure-agency binary in Marxian theory. In relation to the agency-oriented
approaches to urban social movements identified above, my overdeterminist
approach shares a rejection of any axiomatic linkage between objective class
characteristics (class-in-itself) and subjective recognition/self-identification
and organization around class interests (class-for-itself). My approach, further, recognizes the
multiplicity of cross cutting, contradictory sources of self-identification,
like class, gender, race, ethnicity, adding to these sources those emanating
from contradictory class-positions held simultaneously by particular
individuals. Finally, this project
rejects, with the agency theorists, simple determination of human agency by
essential macro-level social causes (e.g. simple determination of human agency
by technological change). Among the
more structurally oriented accounts to the city, this project accepts the
larger implication of Harvey’s analysis that the multiplicity of effects from
social processes, including but not excluded to the effects of capital
accumulation, constitute structural determinants of the agency of
individuals.
On
the other hand, this project most emphatically rejects conceptions of class as
a social grouping, central to the aforementioned accounts on both sides of the
agency-structure divide. It affirms a
conception of class positionality relative to the organization of surplus
labor. The reasons for this position
are multifold. First, by identifying
class in reference to surplus labor, the range of conflictual relations between
holders of class positions expands to encompass conflicts over both labor power
compensation/rates of exploitation and surplus labor distribution to secure
non-class conditions of existence. The
range of potential groupings defined in relation to shared class
positionalities and the potentiality for individuals to occupy multiple,
contradictory class positionalities produces an imagery irreducible
theoretically to a binary conflict between unitary, aggregate working and
capitalist classes.
By contrast, in
defining class as a social grouping, the agency and structurally oriented
approaches engage in a constricted, yet polarizing, debate over whether the
working class manifests the freedom to act as an intentional collective agent
or whether its agency is rigorously determined by economic processes against
which any deviations constitute irrational behavior. The presumptive existence of classes as groups, in general, and
of a working class, in particular, with a particular, defined revolutionary
role against a capitalist ruling class, thus, completely determines the terms
of the debate and its contradictory tensions for theorists, like Katznelson,
who seek to maintain the relevance of structural determinants while likewise
prioritizing the autonomy of working class agents in urban contexts to act on
them. By denying class this meaning
and, consequently, denying an axiomatic revolutionary role to a presumptively
existent entity called the working class, my approach means to avoid such an
ontological debate by reframing the larger transformative purposes of a Marxian
theory of the city around the organization of surplus labor.
Moreover, by
insisting on the epistemological performativity of Marxian class analytic
interventions into the city, my approach seeks to reframe the role of theory,
per se, relative to what appears to both the agency and structurally oriented
theorists. Both sets of theorists
accept a realist epistemological position (Gibson-Graham, 2006A),
implying that theories and empirical analyses exist in neutral separation from
their objects from which they can advance objective accounts of the reality of
their objects. This identification of
the role of theory and analysis, in turn, shapes the ontological approaches
embodied by diverse theorists. For the
agency-oriented theorists, Marxian theory represents a tool to elucidate the
capacity and/or will of the working class to engage in revolutionary struggle
against capitalism in reference to objective historical/empirical evidence. Beyond its capacity to explain the
agency of collective urban working class agents as a class, Marxian theory has
no other functional utility. The
centrality accorded to empirical evidence, in this regard, prompts Castells to
reject the theoretic insights of Marxism with respect to urban social
movements. By contrast, structurally
oriented theorists like Harvey and Jameson represent Marxian theory as an
objective body of rationally constructed insights against which the actions of
working class agents can be adjudged for irrational nonconformity with
structurally determined working class interests. Such a position shapes the rejection of alternative sources of
gender, racial, or locality-based self-identifications by Harvey as instances
of ideological postmodernism.
In contrast to
both these realist perspectives on the role of Marxian theory, my approach
understands Marxian theory and class analysis, in particular, as active
participants in the overdetermination of the realities it theorizes. In this sense, class analysis neither
consists of a set of hypothetical assumptions to be verified against empirical
evidence for validation nor does it consist of an a priori body of
universal, rationally conceived truths asserting primacy against other merely
partial and subjective bodies of social knowledge. Rather, I understand the position of Marxian theory, together
with that of every body of theoretic/analytic knowledge, as intensely practical
in shaping the way its object is lived and resolutely partisan in acknowledging
its political character in contesting particular other theoretic understandings
of its object. Marxian theory, as a
body of knowledge, thus, constitutes itself as a performative argument, oriented
toward the elucidation of class and engaged in a political struggle to shape
reality by shaping the way its audience understands reality. By affirming an active and socially engaged
role for theory as agency and as structural/processual
over-determinant of agency (e.g. the agency of individuals occupying
multiple contradictory class and non-class positions), this approach rejects
the existence of the irresolvable structure-agency binary shaped by realist
epistemological approaches.
Acknowledging,
at a relatively high level of abstraction, that the understanding of Marxian
theory and class analysis embodied in this project rejects the identification
of class as a social grouping, the binary alternatives of structural and
agency-oriented theories, and the varieties of epistemological realism accepted
broadly by the theorists discussed in the previous section, with the possible
exception of Lefebvre, a more concrete assertion of a unique agenda,
differentiating this approach from its theoretic predecessors as a Marxist
theorization of the city, remains to be advanced in the concluding section of
this chapter.
[9] This
assertion of a seamless connectedness between processes conflicts, in part,
with Massey’s (2005:40-42) reading of Althusser’s critique of Hegelian totality
and, in particular, the capacity to isolate “essential sections” in the
Hegelian conception of time (Althusser and Balibar, 2009: 105). Massey’s purpose is to demonstrate how
Althusser’s critique facilitates, to some degree, a politics of space, relative
to historical time, by asserting the relative autonomy and historical
development of levels within a Marxian totality, implying heterogeneous
ontological development of processes across space. Massey contrasts this with the closed systems of structuralist
synchrony and the Hegelian essential cross-section. In contrast to Massey’s reading, my interpretation of
overdetermination precludes both the relative autonomy of structural levels and
the ontological openness of the totality while emphasizing, on the other hand,
the decentered, irreducibly complex nature of the structured totality.
[10] Following
Althusser (1976: 126-131), the intention in labeling theorization of a Marxist
structured totality as “structuralist” is not to confer on Marxian theory any
claim to analyze the formal trajectory of processes. On the contrary, Marxist
ontology presupposes the existence of a totality within which every process
exists in contradictory relation to every other process and that Marxism
“affirms the primacy of contradiction over the process” (Ibid, 1976: 130). The complexity implied by overdetermined
contradiction makes any pure theoretic structuralism, defined in reference to
objective formal analyses of processual relations, impossible. The critical issue that separates
Althusserian Marxism from structuralisms is, thus, the relationship between a
holistic ontological background and the necessarily anti-essentialist theoretic
argumentation that approaches it.
[11] In this
respect, this project accepts the critique of Althusser’s conception of
structure “articulated in dominance” offered by Resnick and Wolff (1987: 93-94)
arguing that Althusser failed to definitively break with the economic
determinism implied by determination “in the last instance.” The conception of ontological
overdetermination employed in this project conforms more closely to Resnick and
Wolff’s revision of Althusserian Marxist ontology to incorporate a more
thoroughly anti-essentialist meaning.
[12] By
implication, the epistemological standpoint of Marxist theory is relativist in
the sense that theory embodies a particular, overdetermined perspective on its
object and engages in struggle against alternative theoretic perspectives in
order to effect the reality that it theorizes (Resnick and Wolff, 1987: 33-37).
[13] This
assertion of a dualistic ontology constitutes an attempt to come to terms with
the particular relationship of overdeterminist ontology and epistemology. Overdetermination, in this interpretation,
precludes the existence of an outside to material existence (i.e.
processes existing outside mutually constitutive relations), implying
ontological closure/holism. The
irreducible complexity of totality implies, however, that theoretic processes
produce constitutive outsides (Laclau, 1997), through which processual
overdeterminants elude theoretic integration.
The anti-essentialism of Marxian ontology arises, thus, from its
theorization of a totality characterized by overdetermination and its
incapacity to achieve closure in theoretic examination of the processual parts
of totality.
[14] This
subsection addresses arguments about class and the city also directly addressed
by Tajbakhsh (2001), relative to Harvey, Castells, and Katznelson, in a manner
that references the overdetermination of the social identity of individuals
(2001: 169). Acknowledging the
relevance of this account, I want to emphasize that my approach and, in
particular, my prioritization of class as process and, hence, my conclusions
are at variance with Tajbakhsh’s position.
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