Private, individual resistance

Writing of the political potential of queer S/M practices, which, he argues, were valorized in the 80s and 90s, alongside poststructuralism, as premier sites of political resistance, critic David Savran theorizes that such practices hold appeal in part because of their limited scale. Teaching, bondage, criticism, theorizing the decline of the subject, all operate on an individualist and private scale, in direct contrast to the large-scale strikes and protests of the 1930s (or, to go back further, of the anticapitalist actions of the late 19th century). For Savran, it's telling that the privatization and individualization of resistance take place within a historical moment when anticapitalist struggle has all but died out (I note that Savran's book was published in 1998, a year before the Seattle protests brought antiglobalization to public view.) He's talking about the Left, of course, and particularly the Left under Reagan/Clinton; it's entirely possible that something different, if not precisely anticapitalist radical, has emerged in the recent confluence of MoveOn.org, antiglobalization, the recharged SEIU, and other Leftist organizations posing genuine questions about capitalism and capitalized war. Savran writes:

“Obsessed with locating and valorizing sites of transgression and resistance, both poststructuralism and the discourses of sexual dissidence tend to imagine resistant political practices not in the collectivist terms of the 1960s (or the 1930s, for that matter) but in strictly individualistic terms. For both, resistance has become a purely privatized affair, restricted to one’s scholarship, one’s teaching, one’s bedroom, one’s dungeon” (239) .

I bring this up because this is one of the points I've long sought to make about conspiracy theory, that it offers the appeal of a privatized and individual resistance, at least in the post-Kennedy forms I critique (the widely-telegraphed conspiracy theories of a Hitler or Ahmadinedjad pose a different case). The researcher, alone in his bedroom with his facts, practices a resistance that is purely private. Here, I would differentiate 9/11 Truthers or Beck fans from anticapitalists (though obviously, Tea Partiers are not limited to private, individual acts). Savran provides, in this aside, a fine way to think about why this conspiracy theory model of masculinity fits this time frame, and also, how it carries forward to now. (progress, progress, progress).