CONCLUSIÓN DE LA CORTE EN RELACIÓN A LA OBJECIÓN PRELIMINAR Teniendo en consideración el asunto objeto de la disputa, como fue

Drawing on late twentieth-century thinkers, postanarchists have endeavored to resolve this very problem of the subject in classical anarchism. Summarizing postanarchism’s central insights, Dave Morland indicates that postanarchists critique classical anarchism’s

foundationalist assumptions about human nature and the exclusively repressive nature of power (24). Furthermore, he shows that, demonstrating the obsolescence of classical anarchist

assumptions, postanarchists then theorize an antifoundationalist subject and a constructive, capillary notion of power commensurable with the postmodern, globalized world (ibid.). In other words, while they do not frame their theorizations of the subject with the Levinasean notion of the face, postanarchists do theorize the anarchist subject as the product of effects of practices and disparate assemblages. For them, the subject does not possess power to a greater or lesser degree; it is, prior to such possession, always already possessed by the power that produces it.

Lewis Call fits this description. In Postmodern Anarchism, he cries out for the head of the ideology that produced the subject of both classical anarchism and liberalism. He writes: “let the guillotine be deployed [ . . .] against the philosophy of subjectivity” (50). In the place of that philosophy, Call advances a theory based on Nietzsche’s “assault on traditional forms of

subjectivity and consciousness” (49). For him, Nietzsche’s critiques put liberalism and the liberal state into doubt, which Call associates with the metaphysics of being (essence, identity, ground).

He claims that Nietzsche adds to political discourse a subject characterized not by singularity or fixity but by “multiple subject positions and decentered identities” (48). Moreover, rather than possessing a “free will,” he asserts that the Nietzschean subject is “the indirect product of the social and cultural forces which have constituted the individual who performs those actions” (49). Elsewhere, drawing on Foucault, he identifies these “social and cultural forces” with “the practices and techniques by which we are constructed as individuals” and acknowledges that “power is capillary; it is everywhere, and it flows through every social relation” (66). For him, humans are “little more than nodal points where various social, economic, and cultural forces converge to produce the illusion of subjectivity [ . . . ]” (49). While such a subject resembles Bakunin’s materialist theorization, Call designates it “Nietzsche’s anarchy of the subject” (48). Such a subject is animated by what he calls “the anarchy of becoming” (50). Based on

Nietzsche’s critiques of being, the “anarchy of becoming” designates the argument that

everything, including subjectivity, “is in a state of flux” (ibid.). It means that “change is the very heart of who and what we are. And this is true [ . . . ] not only of ourselves but of our world” (ibid.). “For Nietzsche,” Call adds, “the world has no teleology, no destination,” and “the philosophy of becoming assures us that nothing is permanent” (ibid.). Rather than essences, humans are “selves-in-process” (52). In other words, counter to liberalism, which requires subjects to possess a being that can be represented and classified, Call borrows Nietzsche’s theory of a subject fundamentally typified by flux in order to cast an anarchist subject sufficiently mercurial to escape bureaucratic identification, state surveillance, and corporate marketing. Borrowing thus, he challenges the logic of sympathy. Indeed, though it contradicts his previous claim that “nothing is permanent,” Call conjectures that “the philosophy of becoming

suggests that we are in a state of permanent and total revolution, a revolution against being” (51). Is Call’s postanarchist subject among de Cleyre’s bubbles? Quite like the Greek sculpture that seems “about to float into the air,” the idea at the heart of Call’s postanarchist subject is “change, swift, ever-circling change.” Its “state of permanent and total revolution [ . . . ] against being” recalls the subject-in-process in “Bastard Born” who, consigned to the margins of society, poses a perpetual insurrection within that system that contains it through an exclusion designed to dissemble the subject’s immanence. Such a becoming-subject declares with its roil and froth that system’s death sentence. However, Call’s postanarchist subject falls short of “the veriest of soap-bubbles.” Rather than taking responsibility for the other and risking its own life in the struggle, his Nietzschean subject seems isolated and unconcerned with others.

Indeed, while Call implicitly attempts to circumvent the problems produced by the logic of sympathy, his so-called “postmodern Nietzschean anarchism” (55) misunderstands the very concepts that he implements on anarchism’s behalf. First, he misconstrues the complexity of “the anarchy of the subject,” or, if he does not misconstrue, then he fails to construct sentences that accurately convey his understanding. Immediately after hinting at “a revolution against being,” he writes: “the philosophy of becoming implies a single ethical imperative: become who you are, create yourself as a masterpiece” (51). Call’s rhetoric is scandalous not because, without any trace of irony, he identifies anarchism with an “ethical imperative,” albeit only one, or because he hopes to move the anarchist subject to the category of “masterpiece.” Anarchism possesses a flexibility that can accommodate ethical imperatives, and the idea of a masterpiece, if it can be understood outside literary assumptions about the authority of the author and language’s hierarchical metaphorical operations, remains within reach.56 _{Scandalous is that, despite having}

elaborated how the anarchist subject does not possess a “free will” per se and is instead constructed by the effects of practices, he still represents that subject as though it possessed isolated, autarkic power. His rhetoric is subtle, but significant. Rather than using the more appropriate passive voice, Call uses the active. He does not write “be created as a masterpiece”; he writes “create yourself.” The imperative mood betrays his own conceptualization. While his theorization of “the anarchy of the subject” heretofore indicated that prior to the act of masterful creation there is no “in itself,” no being that can create, but only an empty place (“nodal point”) around which power conglomerates in order to produce the subject, his rhetoric ignores the subject’s secondarity. Indeed, though he previously acknowledged that the subject is ancillary and contingent, he now formulates it as though it were primary and autonomous.

Contrary to de Cleyre’s characterization of the passive, self-sacrificing figure of Dyer D. Lum, Call’s postanarchist self-in-process reproduces Mills’ “radical” characterization of the liberal subject that reserves a measure of “self-creation” in the face of “material structures and social restrictions.” For Call, such a subject cannot first and foremost take responsibility for the other; it must focus on the self-interested processes of self-amelioration and self-actualization as

forms of resistance to existing regimes of power. For Mills, such a subject belongs to traditional

humanist struggle. Identifying such resistance with anti-colonial, anti-Fascist, and civil rights struggles, he suggests that the radical subject fits within a traditional, more or less linear and dialectical narrative of empowerment (“Occupy Liberalism!” 316). In this narrative, the doer precedes the deed; confronted with adversity, the revolutionary subject acts on its own behalf. Further, its process of development — from disenfranchisement to emancipation — is

imperative to “become who you are, create yourself as a masterpiece” places the anarchist subject in this same narrative. This is not simply to say that Call reproduces a liberal subject that reifies notions of self-ownership and self-knowledge impossible for a bubble that contains anarchy; I mean that the end of the masterpiece, of self-certainty and self- mastery, belongs to humanist thought.58 _{While the postanarchist subject might see itself as responsible for the}

“material conditions and social restrictions” from which it and others suffer, that responsibility is not from the other; it is an effect of that subject’s capacity to choose those conditions and

restrictions.

Constructing the anarchist subject in this way, Call constrains his theorization of the subject typified by “multiple subject positions and decentered identities.” Rather than guillotining “the philosophy of subjectivity,” he replicates Mills’ liberal subject by speaking liberalism’s language and drawing on its narrative forms. While Call theretofore described that anarchist subject as the “indirect product” of “social and cultural forces,” the command “create yourself” excludes any indication that “the anarchy of the subject” involves even the most superficial contact with the neighbor. Indeed, he gives the impression that the subject creates

itself as a masterpiece alone. He constructs a subject who can only be solitary, self-sufficient,

and anterior to all social relations. This is effectively his “masterpiece.” It is a subject who acts in isolation, mobilized by its own power, and in the absence of any bonds. Such a subject is not only the subject of liberalism according to Call’s own elucidation. While anarchism may reserve a place for the Übermensch, the “masterpiece” into which the anarchist subject would create itself according to Call’s own account of power is merely another alibi: it is a dissimulation that conceals from the anarchist subject the debt that she owes to the other.

Indeed, while Call’s rhetoric dissembles the liberal subject under the sign of “the anarchy of the subject,” it simultaneously terminates in the metaphysics of being. Not only does “create yourself” assign to the subject power that Call’s previous assignations located elsewhere; the mandate is coupled with the command “become who you are.” Based on the problems of “create yourself,” this other instruction elicits the question: how can I become myself when the very fact

that I am not myself, bereft of agency, inspires the pressure to “become” in the first place?

However, beyond this question, Call’s rhetoric produces another problem. While his notion of a “permanent and total” “revolution against being” — and his claim that “change is the very heart of who and what we are” — incontrovertibly indicates that “the anarchy of the subject” will interminably flicker and fluctuate, never arriving at a destination that could pass as being, the order “become who you are” suggests the opposite. Not only does the fact that there is a “you” who the subject could be (“who you are”) contradict the nucleation of “the anarchy of becoming” in the subject. The claim that it is the subject’s responsibility to “become” this being suggests that “the anarchy of becoming” is not unconditional; it is only a detour to being. If “the anarchy of becoming” were held to the premises hitherto set for it, then the anarchist subject could never become itself. Its “revolution against being” would be no more violent or magnificent than maintaining the question that the other incessantly poses to his identity. However, rather than a “permanent [ . . . ] revolution against being,” Call’s formulation of “the anarchy of becoming” only achieves a temporary diversion from stasis. For him, the subject remains in a state of flux during a phase, but ultimately it becomes the self-styled masterpiece that it is and ostensibly always had been. According to the terms of Call’s “postmodern Nietzschean anarchism,” the anarchist subject is a “self-in-process,” but the becoming of that process finds its resting place in

being, and the “process” thereby resembles the dialectical development of the Hegelian Geist far more than any ontological revolution Nietzsche may have launched against it.

If Call’s Foucaultian notion of the subject holds, then, the problem with the later formulation is not merely that it duplicates the subject of liberalism; it mutilates the subject. When Call’s “ethical imperative” is obeyed by me, the self that is produced when I “become myself” is incommensurable with the “volcanic Me,” my ipseity. The “single ethical imperative,” then, is not the law within anarchism’s heart. It is an interdiction that endorses the domination of the other in me in the name of anarchy.

Second, then, while Call misunderstands the subject, he misunderstands becoming as well. However, beyond the fact that his rhetoric indicates that “the anarchy of becoming” is a transitory stage in the development of the anarchist subject that he calls a “permanent [ . . . ] revolution against being,” he also misconstrues what about this revolution would be “total.” In his conceptualization of “the anarchy of becoming,” he correctly problematizes its risks. For him, if the subject is multiple and decentered, nothing prevents it from tipping into a position

antagonistic to anarchism and becoming fascist (52). While “becoming-fascist” emblematizes the danger of subjective multiplicity, Call reasons that it delineates the limits of “anarcho-

becoming.” He queries:

Is this [becoming-fascist] the limit of becoming? Must we conclude that becoming is bordered by a law after all — a visceral, pretheoretical law which says simply, “I will not give myself over to the fascist inside me”? Perhaps. [ . . . ] [m]icrofascism should be understood as the limit which defines becoming, grants it a definite (albeit fluid and flexible) shape, and prevents it from dissipating into

a politically meaningless gasp of chaos. (52-3)

Though it dictates a new “law,” Call’s observation is potentially radical for anarchism.57 _It

suggests that no anarchist subject is absolutely anarchist; he contains a fascist that interrogates his anarchism. Moreover, it suggests that “the anarchy of becoming” encloses its own limits. It risks violating itself, transgressing itself, but it maintains itself qua becoming by resisting that which within itself would bring it to a halt. Call reinforces this idea: “The threat of microfascism is what motivates anarcho-becoming, what makes it possible, and indeed what completes it” (53). However, rather than developing the insight and accounting for the impossible conditions that would constitute a “postmodern anarchism,” he issues a third command. (Despite their palpable difference, Call treats the second and third command as synonymous.) Endeavoring to resolve the problem presented by “the threat of microfascism,” he emphatically writes: “Kill

your inner fascist — this single, minimal limit opens up incomprehensibly vast vistas of

becoming, for there are surely a billion ways to fulfill this prescription” (ibid.)

However, based on Call’s own conceptualization of “microfascism,” this “single, minimal limit” has the opposite effect. While his diction may be hyperbolic, the word “kill” is too strong for “postmodern anarchism.” If microfascism completes “the anarchy of becoming,” then exterminating that microfascism also exterminates that which it completed. In other words, if I could slay my “inner fascist,” I would also destroy that part of my subjectivity that permits my ungovernability and inscribes me outside bureaucratic and liberal frameworks. The “anarcho- becoming” that received its definition from the danger of “becoming-fascist” is dispatched. The fascist’s murder is the anarchist’s demise. Indeed, if I could “kill” my “inner fascist,” I would arrest becoming by eradicating that which mobilizes it, and thereby reduce my subjectivity to

being (or nothingness). If Call is correct that “the philosophy of becoming implies a single ethical imperative” and that the duty of the anarchist subject is to “become [itself],” then the “visceral, pretheoretical law” obliging the subject to “kill [its] inner fascist” would forbid the subject from becoming itself since what it would be abolishing is the “anarcho-becoming” that is the very condition of its self-determination.

Given Call’s explication, despite the fact that he indicates otherwise, “the anarchy of becoming” does not suggest a “total [ . . . ] revolution against being.” Quite the contrary, it is counterrevolutionary. It is a “revolution” that lacks the element that affords “the anarchy of becoming” its edges. However, not only does it arrest becoming and preclude the possibility of the anarchist subject; insofar as it forecloses on all ontological possibilities subtract the limited options of being and nothingness, the discharge of the duty to “kill your inner fascist” is the birth of fascism itself. It would not be counterrevolutionary because it contests anarchism’s ethical and political commitments. Since it would be a form of fascism that refused itself, excluding itself from itself qua “fascism,” it would place fascism into circulation by removing it from

accountability and criticism. The “revolution against being” would not only be an incomplete revolution whose incompletion heralds the affirmation of being; it would be the triumph of a totalitarian regime that calls itself “postmodern anarchism” but forges its political identity from the eradication of another, competing political identity. Elegantly insidious, it would guillotine anarchism by exalting its glory and rejuvenate fascism by taking its head.

What Call misunderstands about becoming is that it is not his to control; it controls him. Antedating any modulation or adjustment that he could accomplish in “the anarchy of becoming” are the adjustments and modulations always already made available by “the anarchy of

becoming.” So, not only are humans “little more than nodal points where various social, economic, and cultural forces converge to produce the illusion of subjectivity”: their agency belongs to the same illusions. This is not to say that political change is not possible. Quite the contrary, the avowal of “the anarchy of becoming” is the affirmation of hope and the promise of change, but the responsibility that comes with it demands reckoning at every point in the political process that the subject I am has been staked out in advance by the other. Call’s observation about the perils of “microfascism” for “the anarchy of the subject” effectively delineate the limits of anarchy, but the “inner fascist” cannot be destroyed. If I could murder him, that homicide would be an “illusion,” but the illusion would be a nightmare. In taking his life, I would through

that very action be put in his place, and not only would my body become his tomb; I would be

that fascist’s resurrection.

Radical would be for the anarchist subject to learn to live with its “inner fascist” and reckon the presence of microfascism in every ethical and political decision. While Call’s

theorizations of the anarchist subject hearken back to de Cleyre’s and Kropotkin’s anarchism and their implications that every ethical decision encloses the unethical, his elaboration of

microfascism clandestinely conveys the idea that anarchism conceals from itself about itself, even if classical explications of the “I” and the neighbor stealthily brought it to mind: anarchism

contains that which places its legitimacy into question. However, insofar as Call’s elaboration

can be trusted, it implies a further reserved confession. If there could be a true “postanarchism” — an anarchism after anarchism or that faced anarchism’s grimmest limits —this confession would be its capitulation: anarchism accommodates the other that forbids anarchism, and that