Power, Exclusion/Inclusion Mechanisms in relation with Revolutionary Violence and Emancipation

Revolutionary violence is a manifestation of political violence. Political violence is a subset of political action which includes both non-violent means such as elections and referendums, and violent means such as terrorism, revolution, civil war and genocide. In this regard, revolutionary violence is similar to terrorism as it is a form of communication through violence (Schmid, 2004). Communication through violence takes place when other, non-violent, means of communication do not bring the expected outcome. Both forms of communication, violent and non-violent, are means in order to bring about change. Arendt defines revolution as “inextricably bound with the notion that the course of history suddenly begins anew” (Arendt, 2006, p. 18). Emancipation, on the other hand, as Pieterse put it out as an explanatory term (Nederveen Pieterse, 1992), and there are various approaches to emancipation either as empowerment or as resistance. What is fundamental in regards to emancipation is that it is a term used for collective action which is not reducible to class (Nederveen Pieterse, 1992). Emancipation as collective action could be viewed as resistance, as they are both interdependent (Nederveen Pieterse, 1992, p. 13). Emancipation and revolution do not exclude each other, yet this does not mean that revolution is necessary for emancipation. As stated above, non-violent political means of communication could be used to achieve emancipation. It is under certain conditions that revolution becomes necessary for emancipation. By relying on Nietzsche’s notion of “Will to Power”, power in this paper is understood as a priori condition, it is something that every human being seeks. The second condition is the existence of exclusionary mechanisms existing among social groups. And finally, the third condition is discourse which is necessary for the continuity of the struggle for emancipation.

According to Nietzsche, there is no such things as good or evil. For him, such binary distinctions have always been used and abused by people, throughout their pursuit for power everything that maximizes their power they labelled it as good, hence, anything that hinders this pursuit of power is labelled as evil. In his book, On the Genealogy of Morality (2007), Nietzsche portrayed the way Ancient Greeks approached this dichotomy, and particularly the way through which priests used it.

This pursuit and exercise of power or this binary dichotomy between good and evil are exercised through inclusion/exclusion mechanisms best understood in Agamben’s work ‘Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life’ (1995) in which Agamben outlined two forms of life that existed since the Romans. The first form known as ‘Zoe’ is the natural form of life and the second form is ‘Bios’ which the political form of life. The transformation from Zoe to Bios could only take place through the politicization of the human being, where “It is the community itself that excludes, not only in the form of bureaucratic rules and procedures, but also in the form of a consensus of its members, which is itself more or less politically “motivated.” […] It is always the citizens, “knowing” and “imagining” themselves as such, who exclude from citizenship and who, thus, “produce” non-citizens in such a way as to make it possible for them to represent their own citizenship to themselves as a “common” belonging” (Balibar, 2015, p. 76). By setting the perimeters under which bios is defined, Zoe or as Agamben terms it ‘zone of indistinction’ is also defined. Therefore, the exercise of power is relational, it needs ‘another’ upon which this power could be exercised against, through which the pursuit of power could be measured by how much space is left for the other.

Apart from the examples laid out by Nietzsche in his book, there is an abundance of examples which could be given in this regard, it just takes a person willing enough to see it. For example, one of the themes in the geopolitical discourse of the Cold War was the portrayal of both camps of themselves as being enmeshed in a struggle between freedom and totalitarianism (Engerman, 2010), while in reality anything that served the power of either camp was viewed as good by the camp which benefits from it but as outlined above measuring the utility of those things that serve the power of one side requires ‘another’ to measure this power against, and so the logic went that anything that hinders the spread of liberal ideals and capitalist economy was considered as evil and most be contained (Ó Tuathail, Dably, & Routledge, 2003).

Examples of this dichotomy still exist in our world since the emergence of religion; the religious discourses that exist in all religions are based on inclusion/exclusion mechanism to measure their power, take for example Islam; the Muslim/Infidel dichotomy serve the same purpose we see in the Cold War. A historical analysis of the Islamic Scripture; the Quran, sheds lights on three periods during which power struggle of the Muslim community could be outlined. During the first period when Islam first emerged in Mecca, the political reality of the Muslim community did not allow them to exercise power therefore they had to resort to more peaceful means by spreading Islam through wise words and good examples. During this period, Qur’anic revelations commanded the Muslims to remain quiet and resort to “Call unto the way of thy Lord with wisdom and fair exhortation, and reason with them in the better way” (Quran, 16:125). During the second period, when the Muslim community emigrated to Yathreb, later became known as Madina with the establishment of a Muslim Stronghold there conditional/defensive warfare was permitted “against known enemies and with clear limits to the rules of engagement” (Firestone, 2006, p. 316). This can be seen in verses 39-40 of chapter 22 “Sanction is given unto those who fight because they have been wronged; and Allah is indeed Able to give them victory; Those who have been driven from their homes unjustly only because they said: Our Lord is Allah”, and also in 2:190 “Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress. Indeed. Allah does not like transgressors.” During this period, as (Bakircioglu, 2010) state that as long as persecution of Muslims was taking place the use of sword was permitted. Yet with the conquest of Mecca, which was the beginning of the third period, fighting for defensive purposes only was no longer the case. Rather, it was permitted to kill opponents wherever they are found to stop ‘ungodly mischief’ and spread the word of God (Bakircioglu, 2010; Firestone, 2006). this was stated in verse 39 in chapter 8 “And fight them until there is no fitnah and [until] the religion, all of it, is for Allah. And if they cease - then indeed, Allah is Seeing of what they do”.

Other examples of the relationality of power could also be seen in the historical Judeo-Christian relations. Before the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, the Jews were considered citizens of the Empire, but later the adoption of Christianity as the religion of the Empire affected the status of the Jews negatively. Persecution of the Jews took place since then. The inclusion/exclusion mechanisms could be traced very well during the medieval period in Europe, as non-Christians the Jews were not included in the feudal or manorial system; “The identification of Jews as different through clothing and "the badge," their isolation in ghettos, an economy of expulsions from and readmittances to Christian lands all express the strong desire to negate proximity, either by encapsulating the Jewish community and thus neutralizing its "power" or by excising it from the body of Christianity” (Kruger, 1997, p. 186).

As Balibar, quoted above, emphasised the importance of the people’s ‘knowing’ and ‘imagning’ in constructing their identity, this draws special attention to discourse. Discourse is the realm in which inclusion/exclusion mechanisms operate, by outlining negative values on others in order to legitimize their exclusion. In this regard, from an anthropological perspective, Eriksen (2010) outlined how stereotyping was used by the most powerful to justify their behaviour towards the less powerful as inferior (p. 30).

Foucault, in this regard, is essential in outlining the relationship between the variables of power, inclusion/exclusion and discourse. The understanding of power as being relational is also evident in Foucault’s work on power/knowledge relations. For him, power operates within “a network of relations, constantly in tension, in activity” (Foucault, 1997, pp. 26-27). The outcome of this network of relations is determined by meaning negation between people in regards to the established power/knowledge relations. The resulting meaning from this negation is an exercise of power, power in this sense “traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms of knowledge, produces discourse” (Foucault, 1980, p. 119).

In this sense, the Cold War discourse was largely maintained through each side’s deterministic view of history as being on their side even though their discourses were hypocritical for each vehemently denies the other side what “is fundamental to their own existence” (Tsygankov, 2012, pp. 703-704; Ó Tuathail, Dably, & Routledge, 2003).

In arguing whether revolution is an effective way to achieve emancipation, a lot of attention must be paid on the relationship between means and ends. The Jewish emancipation for instance was not achieved through revolution, furthermore had Nelson Mandela failed in his struggle he would not have been seen as a hero today. The understanding and worldview of social groups resulting from discourse may be disadvantageous for some people, but these people attempt to re-balance the structure of relations is emancipation, however, the way they want to achieve emancipation varies according to their social environment and how much mobility they have in such environment, and revolution is just one way.

Power, exclusionary mechanisms and discourse are three elements upon which the relationship between revolution and emancipation could be measured. Grievances are the locomotive behind people’s desire for change, these grievances take place only when a group of people have become disadvantaged, discourse in this regard is important as it for understanding these grievances (Simmons, 2014). Power in this sense, is the spatial scope in which this struggle takes place.

Pieterse in his paper (1992) touched upon different aspects of emancipation that goes down to the individual level, this paper maintained the social group aspect of emancipation in regards to revolutionary violence as a manifestation of political violence. Therefore, it is crucial to make clear a point set out by Arendt that “Before they were engaged in what then turned out to be a revolution, none of the actors had the slightest premonition of what the plot of the new drama was going to be” (Arendt, 2006, p. 19). This helps clarifies the difference between means and ends, no matter what the ends may be, the means of achieving it may bring about a different outcome than expected. This also brings a question of whether or not given the three conditions stated above, what is the likelihood that a revolution would bring about the expected outcome? The American revolution was built on freedom manifested in Virginia’s bill of rights, but was it the case for black people who, the majority of them, were held slaves in America and it was not until the 1950s with Martin Luther King, Jr, that started a non-violent civil rights movement that realized the emancipation of black people from segregation and raising their voice.

In conclusion, even though this paper devised three conditions under which a revolution is likely to occur for emancipation, the course that revolutions may take may not end up the way it is expected. Power as stated above is relational and in this sense, it generates forms of knowledge about social groups, this generation of knowledge through exclusionary mechanisms would in turn generate grievances. Therefore, arguing whether revolutionary violence is an effective way to achieve emancipation, disregards historical and social particularities that are dependent on the context.

References

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