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ILLUSTRATION: This was worth reprinting as the information is so often suppressed.
Palestine and Ferguson: Critical Theory and Angela Davis
By
Karl Entenmann
We have below and excerpt of an interview with Angela Davis. Before presenting that, however, the popular image of her needs a bit of attention. She was actually in Paris when the infamous incident with four black girls in the United States happened and it affected her greatly as in France she had somewhat escaped the bigotry of the United States south.
She did, however, continue her studies in Germany under the influence of Critical Theory or the "Frankfurt School," which is described below. Max Horkheimer was the most important director the school ever had and his The Eclipse of Reason is one of the most important books of this century. It talks about how reason is replaced by instrumental logic which in turn is used as a tool of oppression. Contrary to widely held beliefs, the philosopher who influenced Horkheimer was not Nietzsche, but Schopenhauer which may help explain his own perceptive pessimism.
Ms. Davis began her graduate study onder the direct influence of Herbert Marcuse, author of One Dimensional man. He once raised his own uproar when he talked about audio recordings replacing the experience of the concert hall. He in no way meant to attack the recordings themselves.
After Marcuse, Ms. Davis completed her dissertation with the supervision of Habermas.
If one is pressed to summarize Critical Theory, it is the joining of the political left with the cultural right. To paraphrase the narrator in Mann's Dr. Faustus, the liberation of the masses lies not in the churches but in the literary world, the world of humanism. It should also be pointed outt hat this does not mean Universities where the "Humanity" is taken out of the Humanities, but rather than in individual art.
This, at any rate, is the tradition out of which Ms Davis arises, and the entire prixis of hers involving the Black Panthers, feminism, and cultural studies owes its foundation to the Frankfurt school. This is a brief summary:
Although sometimes only loosely affiliated, Frankfurt School theorists spoke with a common paradigm in mind; they shared the Marxist Hegelian premises and were preoccupied with similar questions.[2] To fill in the perceived omissions of classical Marxism, they sought to draw answers from other schools of thought, hence using the insights of antipositivist sociology, psychoanalysis, existential philosophy, and other disciplines.[3] The school's main figures sought to learn from and synthesize the works of such varied thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Weber, and Lukács.[4]
Following Marx, they were concerned with the conditions that allow for social changeand the establishment of rational institutions.[5] Their emphasis on the "critical" component of theory was derived significantly from their attempt to overcome the limits of positivism, materialism, and determinism by returning to Kant's critical philosophy and its successors in German idealism, principally Hegel's philosophy, with its emphasis ondialectic and contradiction as inherent properties of human reality.
Since the 1960s, Frankfurt School critical theory has increasingly been guided byJürgen Habermas's work on communicative reason, linguistic intersubjectivity and what Habermas calls "the philosophical discourse of modernity".[6] Critical theorists such as Raymond Geuss and Nikolas Kompridis have voiced opposition to Habermas, claiming that he has undermined the aspirations for social change that originally gave purpose to critical theory's various projects—for example the problem of what reason should mean, the analysis and enlargement of "conditions of possibility" for social emancipation, and the critique of modern capitalism.[7]
More on this school can be found here in this link to many of their writings:
Now to Democracy Now:
In a Women's History Month special, we speak with author, activist and scholar Angela Davis, professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her latest book is titled "Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement," a collection of essays, interviews and speeches that highlight the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. "There are moments when things come together in such a way that new possibilities arrive," Davis says. "When the Ferguson protesters refused to go home after protesting for two or three days, when they insisted on continuing that protest, and when Palestinian activists in Palestine were the first to actually tweet solidarity and support for them, that opened up a whole new realm."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about your new book, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Talk about this coming together of movements.
ANGELA DAVIS: Well, oftentimes there are historical conjunctures that one cannot necessarily predict, but they're moments when things come together in such a way that new possibilities arrive. And I think that when the Ferguson protesters refused to go home after protesting for two or three days, when they insisted on continuing that protest, and when they were—when Palestine activists, Palestinian activists in Palestine, were the first to actually tweet solidarity and support for them, that opened up a whole new realm. I don't know whether many people are aware of the extent to which Palestinian-American activists were involved, from the very outset, in the protest against the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson. But it has been absolutely inspiring to watch the development of young activists. And I have to catch myself when I say the, you know, "youth movements" and "black youth movements." I have to catch myself and recognize that these are the movements of our time. They're not youth movements per se, because youth have always led radical movements. But it's very exciting to live during this era. And as I've pointed out many times, I think it must be extremely exciting to be young now. But it's also exciting for those of us who are older to see this promise that has emerged in such powerful ways for the first time since perhaps the '60s and the '70s.
AMY GOODMAN: Angela, you talk about the—not so much the intersectionality of identities, but the intersectionality of struggles.
ANGELA DAVIS: And I think that is what is characteristic of the work that young organizers are doing. They recognize that it's not possible to effectively create radical consciousness by focusing on a single issue. And whereas many of the movements that challenged police killings in the past focused almost in a myopic way on the prosecution of the individual perpetrator, now movements, these movements, are taking on larger questions, such as structural racism, institutional racism, state violence, the connection between terrorism and racism, the extent to which the counter—the so-called counterterrorist ideologies and approaches are transforming the way racism functions, transforming state violence. And so, it's so exciting to see the facility with which young activists are able to engage with this intersectionality of struggles. It's about racism, but it's also about homophobia, and it's about transphobia, and it's about addressing ableism. It's about creating a sense of international solidarity. And the extent to which Palestine has become central to efforts against racism in this country is an indication of how important international solidarity has become.
AMY GOODMAN: You write "On Palestine, G4S, and the Prison-Industrial Complex." Explain what G4S is.
ANGELA DAVIS: G4S is the third-largest private corporation in the world, third only to Wal-Mart and Foxconn. It's a private security corporation. It engages in the ownership and operation of private prisons, private policing and many other activities related to policing and surveillance and imprisonment. It is, interestingly, the corporation that hires more people on the continent of Africa than any other corporation in the world. So, actually, looking at the work that this corporation does gives us a sense of the extent to which security, security as propounded by those who believe that security can only be achieved by violence, whether structural violence or actual violence, is—that is the position represented by this corporation. And, of course, it has played a major role in upholding the occupation in Palestine. And so, we can say, from Palestine to private prisons all over the world to deportation—this company also provides transportation for the deportation of Mexican immigrants. So, if one looks at that corporation, I think that all of the issues that we are addressing can be seen. In a sense, the private corporations recognize the intersectionality of issues and struggles, and we have to do that, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: You write at the beginning of this essay, which was really a speech that you gave, "As I reflect on the legacies of struggle we associate with Mandela, I cannot help but recall the struggles that helped to forge the victory of his freedom and thus the arena on which South African apartheid was dismantled," as you remembered Ruth First and Joe Slovo and Albertina Sisulu and Govan Mbeki and Oliver Tambo. I mean, what you bring to so much of this is in-depth look at what's happening here, but globalizing it.
ANGELA DAVIS: And I think that we have to have a global perspective. We need—we used to call it internationalism. And I think we need to create a 21st century internationalism. None of the past struggles in this country, progressive struggles, took place in isolation from what was happening in the rest of this world. And certainly the Africa liberation movements helped to move struggles against racism in this country forward. And I think we need to begin to think in those terms. Palestine represents what, it seems to me, South Africa represented in the 1980s and up until the end of apartheid. So, you know, while we need to focus our attention on what's happening in Latin America and Asia and Europe—of course, the immigration struggle there, the racism that is so attached to issues of the refugees in Europe—Palestine seems to me that pivot that allows us to enlarge and broaden and extend our consciousness.
AMY GOODMAN: Angela Davis, professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her latest book, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement.
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