Appendix C – Critical Distance
Though I've spent the majority of my intellectual activity in the past year focused on two or three Situationist books, what I've written in thesis reflects my personal experiences in the spectacle much more than my experiences in the literature. I verified the skeleton of theory that Vaneigem and Debord provide in the streets – in discussions and arguments with bus drivers, policemen, professors, waiters, Republicans, peasants, friends, lovers, and economics majors. Most important to my development were the conditions at Stanford University, where spectacular time and the art of non-communication reign supreme. It was probably my frustration with what Stanford represents that pushed me to finish this thesis long after I felt I had enough.
Vaneigem writes:
"Marx writes ‘theory becomes a material force once it has got hold of the masses. Theory is capable of getting hold of men once it demonstrates its truth with regard to man, once it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp something at its roots. But for man the root is man himself.’ In short, radical theory gets hold of the masses because it comes from them in the first place."
Here we find Vaneigem arguing once again for the importance of the quotidian – but this time twisted towards the radically inclined. As he warns in his first chapter "those who speak of revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life... have a corpse in their mouth". He gives this quote to us by way of elaboration: To be revolutionary, to speak honestly of revolution, is to start from the masses, to understand the situation on the ground. If theory is to be radical, if theory is to have as its end a radical upheaval in society, a radical change in the structures of oppression, a radical realignment of the social hierarchy, it must ground itself in the everyday life of the everyday woman. The quote is Vaneigem's one-line whack against the dead horse of Bolshevism.
However, it's also much more. It's an exhortation to all who would study or analyze revolutionary impulses and movements to do so from the ground. Marx senses the limits to what one can learn and do while encased in an ivory tower; Vaneigem formalizes them: to be radical, theory must come from the masses. Theory must be immediate for both the theoretician and the masses – even if the two do not understand each other, they must feel the same weight, the same desire, the same historical moment.
For a theory of subjectivity, this necessity only amplifies. The writer, according to Marx, must grasp subjectivity at its roots, which are none other than the writer herself. Thus, the writer must write with lucidity about her own life. To do any less would be dishonest: inauthentic. It would be the counter-revolutionary analogue to plagiarism – to write about ideas which you do not essentially grasp (to write about ideas which do not make your eyes sparkle). Because of the importance of this immediacy, there is corresponding importance to demonstrate it. To communicate the author’s grasp of the material is to communicate the material's grasp of the author. The resulting work explores the relationship of the author to her material as much as it critiques the material objectively. To understand and to critique a theory that claims to be radical, which moreover claims to be radically subjective (Vaneigem's), is to write about one's own experience with the text – the degree to which the text resonates subjectively with the critical reader. To do anything less is to reify oneself.
At this point, it seems natural to interrogate the idea of 'critical distance'. The idea that the examiner and the examined are two atomic entities which engage in a one-way relationship of objective criticism to produce an analytic, well-documented, and verifiable result. Such an idea is extremely important in the natural sciences, where personal bias could obscure the universality of nature. However, the above quote by Marx, its interpretation by Vaneigem, and its application in this work conspire to argue the opposite for the humanities – the idea of critical distance has no place in a human interpretation of a text. Only the bourgeoisie’s pathetic incarnation of humanism – centered on woman as producer and consumer, supplier and demander – could allow for such an idea as critical distance, to better facilitate the exchange of ideas and to better ignore their use. If we, however, are interested in learning and in the quality of ideas (as opposed to their quantity), we must throw ourselves into our texts. To write an analysis that any (other) third-rate academic could verify is to fail. The relationship between the text and critic should be sufficiently nuanced, troubling, and dramatic to produce a work unique and unverifiable. Asking writers for anything less is as absurd as asking doctors to maintain critical distance from their patients or asking teachers to maintain critical distance from their students. To ask for critical distance is to ask for the author to reify and to censor herself: to a nip a potentially beautiful experience in the bud. It is to ask her to write not out of love for a text, but out of duty. I find such an idea profoundly counter-revolutionary.