Chapter Two - Part Five 

The Value of Autonomy in Relation to Personal Power - The Origins of Citizen X

Another look at Oshana

The mechanics that legitimize state authority bear a remarkable positive parallel to the negative description presented in Oshana’s theory.

By this I mean that the mechanisms involved with legitimizing the state’s authority to exercise its power are parallel to the restrictions placed upon individuals from exercising their power and usurping the common authority of the liberal state.

To explain, let us look a little closer at the structure of State Power.

A first look at the Structure of Political Power

Political power is traditionally spoken of in terms of a “sovereign,” traditionally a particular individual or select group “holding the reigns” of state authority.

Using the insights of Foucault, we see the idea of political power as an exclusive possession of a lone ruler or cabal does not describe the modern state, but “sovereignty” instead is embodied in “more-or-less organized, hierarchical, co-ordinated cluster(s) of relations.”

In the modern capital-based liberal state, Princely State power has become structural and bureaucratic and is exercised in three distinct forms: Argumental/Persuasive, Compulsive/Brute, and Deontic/Structural. I will be speaking primarily of deontic power in this blog.

The term 'Deontic" comes from the Greek, deon, meaning obligation or necessity. Deontic power therefore concerns, is related to, or is explicitly about the duties and obligations inherent in large scale social arrangements.

Broadly, deontic power constructs the basic structural limits of the socio-political system and it is expressed in varied, interrelated manners: the standing directives of criminal law and civil society, the rights and duties imposed by constitutional amendments, the permissions and restrictions inherent in institutional bureaucracy.

The enforcement of deontic apparatus involves the legitimate interference of the state into the personal lives of its citizens. Rights, obligations, restrictions, the standing intention and threat of violence empowering authorized military and police action, and the basic assumptions, habits, and norms of our social background all constitute the basic structures of the state and all serve to actively create, express, and maintain the legitimacy of state power.

The dispersion of authority throughout the system allows for the deontic mechanisms at work to strengthen the identification and recognition of state regulations and authoritative patterns.  And once the recognition of an external authority is internalized, it is the acceptance of deontic state power that allows for its authority to compel, by law, force, and argument, the choices and actions of agents standing as subjects to its will.

It is collective recognition of agents as both objects and subjects of state deontic power that empowers state authority and the greater the element of control over the autonomous actions of agents, the more efficient and effective the powers of the state can be exercised. 

The tensions of Power

Agential acceptance of state authority is established and maintained when individual agents recognize the state’s claim of possessing the sole means to provide citizens with the structured and level playing field in which to develop the skills and opportunities needed to live their own chosen ‘good life,’ a liberal cornerstone that I must assume, for the sake of this blog, to be generally understood.

Recognition of state authority ultimately hinges on the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence within it territory and the state’s ability to peacefully resolve group conflict.

This conflict resolution is tied to a larger issue of the state being seen as capable of creating a space for individuals to live lives free from unwarranted intrusions and dangers, thus to promote conditions of security and personal value.

To do this, the state must be recognized as legitimately having the authority to sanction or punish any activities taking place within its borders and must have absolute control over legitimate means of violent behavior within that territory, making itself the lone source of authoritative coercive punishment and legitimate intervention.

Further, it must be known to exercise its power through its police, military and penal systems. The main justification for such interventions, to speak in broad terms, is for the protection or good of the people, as it must be seen as able to provide relative security and opportunity for those who live under it laws. 

The state must make use of and justify certain paternalistic measures so that it may promote an environment of mutual safety and respect for all of its citizens. Placing restrictions on drunk driving, shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, or the compulsory mandates of education and minority-group equality fall into arguably justifiable interventions, but beyond such notions, the needs of state authority are at odds with the needs of agential authority. 

In theory, the state must be seen and known to promote general social conditions favorable to individual growth, prosperity, and self-authoritative control, but, in practice, the state must create underlying conditions that go against these basic ideals.

To remind you, Marina Oshana’s model describes empirical conditions in which autonomy is the possession of the few and the general constitution of such conditions leave many agents with a fundamental lack of control as they face their general social environment.

The criticisms Oshana's theory faces concerning a general “lack of control” and  allowing excessive paternalism could be usefully directed towards the liberal system itself where evidence supporting her claims is revealed in the actuality of lives that are marginalized, excluded, and disempowered.

By framing her theory as a description of what mechanics are involved in the creation of a social system where only a minority may qualify as self-authorities and justification for potential abuse of paternalistic measures are readily available, I have tried to explain how empowering state authority requires a general condition of disempowerment for agential autonomy to insure its power is legitimate and its authority complete and uncontested.

This is perhaps making a stronger claim than Oshana herself would want to make, but I feel it does sufficiently describe the mechanics of our liberal state where the lives of citizens become mere apparatus for its maintenance. 

Objection and defense of Oshana’s theory

An objection to Oshana’s overall thesis is that her descriptive theory is simply wrong and individuals are afforded more autonomy in the contemporary liberal state than ever before in the forms of personal and civil rights. This objection points towards a potential flaw in her (and therefore my own) reasoning.

Such an argument could claim that far from facing the restrictive conditions proposed by her theory, the socio-political structure has actually increased the area of personal choice and action by affording greater room for personal control in areas such as reproduction, lifestyle choice, and employment or ownership opportunities.

The argument would conclude that the legalization of abortion and advancements in minority group rights following the civil rights movements are examples of this widened sphere of self-authority and ownership.

To respond to this type of objection, I argue that these rights, while affording a greater degree of freedom in particular choices and opportunities, do not effectively increase the more relevant ‘global’ conditions of autonomy necessary to possess de facto control over the final decisions one makes concerning his or her life. 

In distinguishing autonomy from freedom, Marina Oshana says, “To be free is to possess the power to decide or to act, but autonomy deals with agential authority over those decisions and actions”. To truly be autonomous, to have actual authority over oneself and one’s decisions, requires more than having the freedom to choose between options that are controlled by an authority higher than oneself.

The more entrenched and internalized the mechanisms of power come to be, the more outlets for the expression of localized autonomy are needed. These outlets afford the agent a relative degree of freedom and independence, but the general conditions within which the agent operates are fundamentally structured to force an underlying subjection to the authority of the state. To recognize that one has the right to choose what to do with her body is to recognize the prior standing authority of the state to be able to decide if your capacity to choose or act according to your own intentions and deliberations is a legitimate option or not. 

To be autonomous, not merely free, in the reality of our social system, requires more than having the capacity to be an authority over one’s own choices and actions. To be autonomous, one must fully exercise that capacity and hold de jure entitlement over ones deliberations and actually be the de facto authority over oneself.

Once the structure of the modern state’s dispersion of authority is recognized and internalized, the range of individual freedoms is able to open even as the range of the conditions suitable to autonomy is diminished.

Conclusion to Chapter Two

This blog has argued that autonomy, traditionally believed to be a granted state all agents share in common is, in the reality of our social environment, quite the opposite.

Not everyone has the opportunity to develop a life conducive to self-directed behavior; there are social, political, and economic conditions operative in the liberal socio-political system that rely to an important degree on creating conditions non-conducive to autonomous behavior.

Oshana recognizes the importance of the relational aspects of our empirical world, and her theory takes pains to stress the fact that actual self-authority is tied to the development of critical cognitive and social skills, as well as to underlying economic and political conditions.

The critiques to her theory, that her model is overly paternalistic and exclusionary, would be more usefully directed towards the liberal system I read her as describing. 

Finally, I need to say that there is a movement in contemporary political philosophy towards applied theories, where it is understood that our conceptions have verifiable results, and one may in fact do philosophical work to “get things done”.

By understanding the dynamic practical and ontological mechanics of political systems, I see the potential for applied work in areas such as domestic and international relations, distributive economics, privacy, and various forms of oppression. 

In Chapter Three I will begin tying several themes together by discussing in detail the concept and structures of Power and the Identity of Citizen X.

References
Bartky, Sandra Lee
Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression, Routledge, 1990, New York

Baumann, Holger
 ‘Reconsidering Relational Autonomy. Personal Autonomy for Socially Embedded and Temporally Extended Selves’, Analyse and Kritik, Lucius and Lucius, Germany, 2008

DeCew, Judith Wagner
‘Marina Oshana, Personal Autonomy in Society’, Social Theory and Practice, 2009
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6395/is_1_35/ai_n32102786/?tag=content;col1

Foucault, Michel
‘Discipline and Punish’, Vintage Press, USA, 1995
‘The History of Sexuality’, Vintage Press, USA, 1990
‘The Foucault Reader’, Pantheon Press, USA, 1984
‘Power’, Essential works of Foucault, Vol. 3, Edited by James Faubion, The New Press, New York, 2001
‘Power/Knowledge’, Pantheon Press, 1980

Meyers, Diana Tietjens, 
Feminist Social Thought: A Reader, Routledge, 1997, New York

Oshana, Marina
‘Autonomy and Free Agency’, Personal Autonomy: New essays on personal autonomy and its role in contemporary moral philosophy, Edited by James Stacey Taylor, Cambridge University Press, 2008
‘How Much Should We Value Autonomy?’, Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation, USA, 2003
‘Personal Autonomy in Society’, Ashgate Publishing, USA, 2006

Searle, John
‘Making the Social World’, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010

Walzer, Michael
‘Spheres of Justice: A defense of pluralism and equality’, Basic Books, 1983

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP): “Foucault and Feminism” http://iep.utm.edu/foucfem/

Another entry in my old 'Intermission' series from the mid/late 1990's, and the second one concerning my time in New Orleans.

Intermission (New Orleans #2) (1996)

“You can stay at my place, and I’ll get you high if you suck my dick.”

“No thanks. I’m okay.”

“New Orleans is a rough place, bro. I’ll take care of you.”

“That’s cool, man, I’m taken care of.”

“C’mon, brother. How about I suck you first?”

“No thanks, man, that ain’t my scene.”

“Alright then. You get cold, you know where to find me.”

“Yeah, see ya.”

And the rest of the night progresses.

A few beers.

A couple of jazz bands, blues bands, rock bands.

The hustlers wanting your money, your lips, your blood, your soul.

The pack on your back is getting heavier by the block.

Up and down those streets you go, kept on your feet by the rain and the fear and the knowledge that around that next corner you may be saved, you may be beaten, you may be left for dead, but it doesn’t matter.

Esplanade. Bourbon. Decatur. Burgundy. Past the gay clubs and the strip joints and the all night bars. It smells like a wet sweater left in a plastic bag for far too long, you can actually taste the city on your tongue, did you know that? You can open your mouth and the city makes it start to water. It tastes of sin and of magic and of power and of things that you are not able to comprehend, so you settle for acceptance, as you curl up in a door stoop. Your head in the shadows, your feet getting wet.

I am truly excited to have a good friend and a much admired writer Nancy Stohlman (author of The Monster Opera as well as being the sexy lead singer for the lounge metal band Kinky Mink) talk about her upcoming online workshop.

This event is certainly worth checking out if you are stuck on a manuscript or if you have just always wanted to write a book and it seemed too daunting a task. Nancy can help!!!

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION #1: FINISH THAT MANUSCRIPT
(AND GET IT OUT INTO THE WORLD) by Nancy Stohlman

4 week-intensive workshop beginning January 6, 2014

FREE preview call Friday, January 3 at 7 pm mst

An Online Workshop on Re-visioning,  Publication, Promotion, Taking Risks, Finding Your Readers, Taking Yourself Seriously, and Falling Back in Love with Your Vision.

Are you still sitting on that same manuscript? Are you stuck in the writing phase or in the revision process? Or have you “finished” but not gotten the response you wanted out in the world? Are you not sure what comes next? Most of us are better at starting manuscripts than we are at finishing them. But it’s only when we can conceive, create, and bring our projects to fruition that we begin to master the longer form known as a book.

 Each book we write brings us closer to understanding how to write a book. What phase of the finishing process are you in? And…what’s it costing you to not finish?

Three Types of “Finishing”

1. Crossing the Finish Line. In this phase, you’re creating, allowing, and writing yourself to the finish line of that first draft, where you can write The End and give yourself that well deserved glass of port.

In this phase you need the support, motivation, and commitment to get to the end. A first draft is like a lump of clay—it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does need to be complete before you can start shaping it into the grand vessel it will become.

2. Alligator Wrestling. In this phase you’ve finished a first draft and now you’re in the revision—re-visioning—process. Re-vision. Seeing again. Sometimes it’s hard to see your manuscript with fresh eyes—like looking for your sunglasses when they’re on your head. Yet the true writing magic usually happens in revisions.

In this phase you need new ways of seeing your manuscript differently, both in pieces and as a whole, as well as identifying your strengths and weaknesses as a writer and inviting the potent potential of unexpected possibilities into your work.

3. Becoming a Player. In this phase you and your manuscript prepare to enter the public arena, and the “finishing” has just as much to do with you as a professional. This is the point where we usually long for an agent to swoop in and do all the uncomfortable work of promoting ourselves, but the catch here is that if we want to be taken seriously, we have to start playing seriously.

In this phase you need help with promotional and professional materials including bios, queries, how and why to excerpt, and learning how to avoid the mistakes of looking like an amateur—regardless of your publishing goals.

In this workshop we will explore:

• What’s keeping you from finishing?
• Are your blocks telling you something about your manuscript?
• How to fall back in love with your work and your vision
• Allowing your manuscript to transform
• Publication—is your manuscript ready to send into the world?
• The different stages of “finishing” a manuscript
• Self-promotion—are you afraid of rejection? (You’re not alone.)
• What’s keeping you from taking the next steps?

In this workshop I’ll give you the deadlines you might need, help you structure your writing time into your life, help you transition more easily between creation and revision, and help you become your own best editor. Whether you are planning to submit or self publish, you’ll learn writing tips, editorial and publication advice, how to find and cultivate a readership, how to excerpt and query, and even when to let a manuscript go. And most importantly, you’ll finally rescue your work from the land of obscurity and give yourself the satisfaction of completion.

The workshop format will include weekly online instruction, telephone check-ins, and professional line edits (limited). Both fiction and nonfiction manuscripts are welcome.

$199 tuition (half due upon registration–payment plans available)

*FRIDAY, January 3 at 7 pm MST, join me for a 30-min FREE WORKSHOP PREVIEW.

Contact me for registration information or questions at nancystohlman@gmail.com

Are you ready?

Here is an old piece from my wandering days, part of my 'Intermission' series from the late-90's.


Intermission -New Orleans (1996)

And then there’s those times when you’re lonely and horny and walking through the streets of New Orleans by yourself and the freshly fallen rain reflects the street lamps and your own crazed face and puts a slight chill in your body that makes you feel just a bit more like a dying breed and the only comfort you know you’ll receive tonight is your head laying on your backpack somewhere in some dark alley while your bones rattle like Gene Krupa gone mad and your mind, wandering to more important things like the honey-vinegar of freedom and staying alive till the morning light, only partially registers the traffic and the big burly man in black hawking in front of the strip joint around the corner. “Hey man, we got some beautiful girls.” “No thanks, man.” “What’s a matter? You don’t like girls? We got the finest women in this city. Black girls. Blonde girls. We got two Asian bitches who’ll eat each other out, and let me tell ya, it’s something." “Nah, thanks anyway.” “Your loss.” “I’m sure.”

And through the night, your mind does wander back to those girls. So incredibly beautiful, so ready and able to trade flesh and illusion, to give those who want what they want, making five hundred dollars a night fingering themselves on a stage in front of fifty strangers caressed in a pinkish glow with AC/DC blaring in the background. Do they know, do they care, if there is more to life than spreading those long legs wide apart and writhing on a metal pole, more to life than plastic breasts and shinny new sports cars, more to life than the table full of married business executives in town without their wives, pumping out fifty bucks a pop to get dragged off into some back room to have some nice smelling, lovely young lady grind up and down on their stiff penis, “Just relax, baby, I’ll take care of you. You can touch me anywhere but between the legs, okay?” “Okay.” And you want to take her by the hand and lead her out of that place, past the mirrored ceilings and the groping eyes, out into the street and say, look around, past the dirt and decay, and the see the beauty and magic, feel it on your skin. You want to drag her into the countryside and say, look around, past the illusion of all you see, and taste the air, feel this harmony. You want to drag her up the mountain, to the very peak, and say, look around, past the veil of humanity and see the blueprint of creation, the majesty and humility. You want to drag her to the foot of God’s throne and say nothing, both of you content to simply sit and wait for the second act to begin.

Chapter Two -
Part Four 

The Value of Autonomy in Relation to Personal Power - The Origins of Citizen X
A Summary of Chapter Two (parts 1-3)

In the first three parts of Chapter Two, I have presented two distinct arguments.

One, Marina Oshana’s controversial study of autonomy in which she claims that individual agents in the modern Liberal State generally fail to obtain a robust or even basic level of personal autonomy.

Two, I have shown Sandra Lee Bartky’s account of the psychological colonization of women as an example of the general mechanisms of oppression in the relationship between State power and Individual power. Bartky has been accused, like Foucault before her, that the level and depth of social construction and systemic oppression she describes leaves little to no room for resistance to its control or to develop an authentic “Self” outside of its influence.

Now, in Part Four, I will begin weaving these arguments together in order to explain the necessary existence of the individual Self and its capacity for resistance. Doing this will open the way for the next step of my larger argument, the relationship between what I term “Citizen X” and the Princely Soverign power of the modern capital-based liberal state. For it is in this relationship that we can find, discuss, and critique the true value of power and the possibilities for meaningful revolutionary action.

The possibility of resistance to the ‘feminine’

The relationships of power discussed in this blog are of the socio-political kind and this ensures that, if nothing else, all political agents are fundamentally recognized as subjects, regardless of the discursive objectification placed on most by some.

Domination, oppression, involves a psychological pressing down, the exploitation of a fragmented picture of the subjective self and its potentials. It is to have the object-hood of ‘other’ stamped on one’s back, be it “feminine,” “black,” “gay,” “transgender,” or “disabled” and to have this complex and contradictory social identity come to define to some degree who or what they are or may be.

Bartky reminds us that when men yell at women on the street, they are not merely being objectified, they are being “made to know” they are a ‘nice piece of ass.”[1]

This epistemological objectification is an affront to the comfort, dignity, and independence of a subject, a “self.” It is understandable that objects do not need reminding that they are tools or things.

Women then, as are all oppressed persons, are fundamentally subjects, otherwise the oppressive discursive power feminist theory is fighting against would not exist.

Psychological oppression, claims Bartky , aids in the transmission of oppressive socio-political discursive apparatus. Seeds grow healthy in fertile ground: if one is born to believe she is to serve or submit she will never know to question the logic of such arrangements.

The self as grounds for resistance

As explained, resistance to the modern feminine is not the resistance of a slave towards a master, it is not a relationship enacted upon mere objects, property or chattel.

For the “feminine,” on Bartky’s account, the resistance is against disciplinary regimes that seek to govern a woman’s body. Her sex, her shape, her mind, her presentation; the patriarchal urge to pull her from the assembly line and use her until she is consumed.

But how is it possible to resist this power? Even the existence of subjective selves do not justify the claim that the enveloping systemic structure of modern power relations in capital-based society can be thwarted or meaningfully resisted.

To understand how political power can be resisted it is helpful to recall where Foucault says modern power exists. He writes:

“Let us come back to the definition of the exercise of power as a way in which certain actions may structure the field of other possible actions. What, therefore, would be proper to a relationship of power is that it be a mode of action upon actions. That is to say, power relations are rooted deep in the social nexus, not reconstituted "above" society as a supplementary structure whose radical effacement one could perhaps dream of. In any case, to live in a society is to live in such a way that action upon other actions is possible-- and in fact ongoing. A society without power relations can only be an abstraction.”
                                                                                        - Foucault, The Subject and Power (1982) pp. 208.

 Foucault claims that modern power is an action upon actions. This means that resistance itself is part of any exercise of power. Resistance is internal to the exercise of power, found at the point where relations of power are exercised.

Resistance is the limit to power, the point of the action where the self-authority inherent in acting agents resolves from the choices available into the actions made. Politically, resistance occurs in the situation where one must act, where one must choose from options fundamentally shaped by social and economic conditions, including access to critical skills, financial stability, and social means. 

Patriarchal power, as socio-political power, is an action upon actions. This pragmatically translates into a limiting of the actual and perceived options a subject has open to her.

Within their interactions, agents must have access to some degree of liberty in choice, options, response, or reaction. If an agent does not have at least this basic autonomy to choose anything, than it is not an exercise of power as it does not involve mutually-acting subjects .

In upcoming chapters of this blog series, I will do an in-depth analysis of my understanding of power (personal power and political power) using the ideas of Foucault and Searle to frame my original work.

For now, let us simply take the ideas that the Self exists implies a necessary capacity for resistance to oppressive practices, a capacity inner-twined with agential social and cultural conditions and access to decision-making power.

The “self” of the female agent, the basic shared humanity of her as we identify with when we speak of human rights or human species, remains complete despite the discursive cannibalism of “femininity” that bonds and devours its perceived fundamental totality. Women, as are all members of humanity, are fundamentally subjects and this necessarily implies a capacity for active resistance to the patriarchal colonization of any and all women’s autonomous “self.”

Again, for the time being, I must refrain from speculating on the formal content of this “fundamental self.” That is a subject for future blog entries. Acknowledging its existence and capacity for resistance is enough to decisively move the question forward.

For regardless of the ontological underpinnings of the political subject, if we grant that political agents[2] maintain basic and viable “Selves” within their total identity, one question remains: what is the worth of an identity and can or does it matter in capitol-based liberal politics.

What does a self matter in the eyes of the world?

In my argument above, I claimed that what individuals conceive of as their “self” has socially constructed elements. I then sought to answer if that was all there is.

I claimed no, that in able to be politically dominated, that is, socio-politically assumed to be an object, there must be a prior, more fundamentally recognized subjective self, a sum of the parts that we understand loosely as “human,” that is recognized and recognizes itself under most circumstances.

I further argued that this “Self” exists and is fundamentally recognized as a political subject by sovereign elements, even while they maintain oppressive, exclusionary practices in the broader scope of the socio-political system and its background discourses and motivations.

To resist these enveloping discourses and expectations is to exercise one’s fundamental subjectivity against the actions that would construct one as an object. As this occurs in the active process of any situation, the fulcrum of object-subject is in the day-to-day choices one makes and feels secure could be made.

If Bartky’s question is, “How does a woman resist the feminine,” then the answer has to be, “By making choices.” It sounds too simple, but I do not think it is.

The value of actual, viable, real, practical choices is something that is perhaps taken for granted. The actual options one has available to them come down to a large degree on ones economic and social stability, not to mention personal disposition, gender, sexuality, and habits; the range of choices agents have open to them vary widely with contingency and circumstance.

Foucault writes that resistance to the type of power men and women face in contemporary society is to “refuse what we are.”[3] Refusing what we are, in the context of feminist theory, is to break, to deny, the boundaries, limitations, and oppressive normalizing identity categories imposed on women by the dominant paradigm.

Resistance is internal to power and the amount and type of socio-political constraints or opportunities is relative to the social position, status, and identity of the agents involved in any relation of power. 

Socio-political power is a matter of degree, as differences in economic and cultural status directly influence the available options an agent has open to her. This makes resistance a matter of degree as well.

In the end, the authentic Self necessarily exists, though its reality has been fought, denied and obscured by the same political systems that confirm its basic existence. This necessary Self contains the capacity to exercise resistance and to some degree exercises that capacity each and every day, the evidence of which is found in the active results of choices made from existing options.

Some types of resistance are more robust than others, just as some actions actively support the oppressive habits and norms, but the fact remains that it is the subjective self of an agent making choices to the best of her ability while blinded by the patriarchal “veil of femininity.”

The degree of success resistance may achieve can only be measured in the empirical conditions that obtain in her general culture and society. With the current vibrancy, importance, variety, and growing organization of the contemporary feminist movement, the success of society’s resistance to the domination of women is evident and active.

The final release of women from the bondage of “femininity” continues to develop and like all social processes, with every passing day, each discussion, struggle, essay, choice, and action we, as women and men, create its reality.

In Part Five of Chapter Two, I will wrap up my defense and discussion of Oshana’s controversial view of autonomy and begin to highlight specific points of political power.

References

Bartky, Sandra Lee
Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression, Routledge, 1990, New York

Baumann, Holger
 ‘Reconsidering Relational Autonomy. Personal Autonomy for Socially Embedded and Temporally Extended Selves’, Analyse and Kritik, Lucius and Lucius, Germany, 2008

DeCew, Judith Wagner
‘Marina Oshana, Personal Autonomy in Society’, Social Theory and Practice, 2009
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6395/is_1_35/ai_n32102786/?tag=content;col1

Foucault, Michel
‘Discipline and Punish’, Vintage Press, USA, 1995
‘The History of Sexuality’, Vintage Press, USA, 1990
‘The Foucault Reader’, Pantheon Press, USA, 1984
‘Power’, Essential works of Foucault, Vol. 3, Edited by James Faubion, The New Press, New York, 2001
‘Power/Knowledge’, Pantheon Press, 1980
 The Subject and Power (1982),

Meyers, Diana Tietjens, 
Feminist Social Thought: A Reader, Routledge, 1997, New York

Oshana, Marina
‘Autonomy and Free Agency’, Personal Autonomy: New essays on personal autonomy and its role in contemporary moral philosophy, Edited by James Stacey Taylor, Cambridge University Press, 2008
‘How Much Should We Value Autonomy?’, Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation, USA, 2003
‘Personal Autonomy in Society’, Ashgate Publishing, USA, 2006

Searle, John
‘Making the Social World’, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010

Walzer, Michae
‘Spheres of Justice: A defense of pluralism and equality’, Basic Books, 1983

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP): “Foucault and Feminism” http://iep.utm.edu/foucfem/


Footnotes
[1] Bartky, pg. 55
[2] I would like to include both individual persons and social groups (i.e. Brown v. Board of Education)
[3] IEP "Foucault and Feminism"

On Being a Writer
by David Edward Wagner Dec. 13, 2013

The Reality of Being a Writer

The aim of this blog entry is to give a bit of friendly advice and insight into the mindset and processes of the professional (or honestly, even the non-professional or the trying-to be-professional) writer.

The simple question, what is a writer is simply answered, “A writer is one who writes.” The similar question, what does a writer do, is similarly answered, “A writer writes.” But, alas, as we all know, things are seldom if ever so simple.

So, with this in mind, I will answer the question as thoroughly and straightforward as I can.

In reality, the simple question, what is a writer, is properly answered, “A writer is one who plans and creates through the methods of thought and writing.” And the question, what does a writer do, is accurately answered, “A writer plans, writes and edits.” It is this second question that I will focus on (as the first question is embedded within it).

A Writer needs time

While simply writing is surely the foundation and prime aspect of a writer’s life and career, it is not the only thing he or she must do and it is, in the end, only of shared importance with the tasks of planning and editing one’s work.

In my own life, I have struggled, sacrificed and fought to keep ahold of the one thing most important to the writing process: Time. That is your most valuable asset and tool as a writer.

All of the imagination, all of the great ideas, all of the valuable connections or amazing insights you have do not mean a thing if you cannot carve out and maintain the long hours necessary to bring your thoughts from intangible mind to the actuality of words and paper (or sure, digital document).

This is a simple truth: a writer needs time.

Perhaps the most important question then becomes: how do I use this time I have? Maybe even better, you could ask how do I use this time wisely and efficiently? This is the best question because writers in general (and I am a great example) are known to be some of the world’s most triumphant wasters of time, pissing away the hours with flights of fancy or organizing their bookshelves or cleaning their fingernails or… doing anything but writing.

So, do not despair, this is another thing I have at last learned and become comfortable with. A writer, if truly a writer, never truly wastes a second. They are merely fulfilling one of the three aspects of their writerly labor. Perhaps it is best if I just dive into those three aspects and explain each one as fully as I can.

To begin, let’s talk about planning, as it is the most vague and easily misunderstood.

A Writer Plans At All Times

While writing and editing are rather straightforward in their explanations, the various types and levels of planning a writer needs to do in order to be successful are a bit more complicated.

To begin, writers need to plan their time properly. Loose but self-regulated weekly schedules are used to keep projects properly juggled and moving forward, with flexible (unless otherwise noted) long-term deadlines for the completion of individual works spread out over the coming months.

Even more, basic daily schedules are necessary for carving out the space to give each current project its due and proper focus at specific times.

If you want to support yourself with your writing, the odds are great that you will be working on and needing to finish more than one project at any time until it is necessary to focus on completing one, and you need to remind your artistic self that generally, when people want to support themselves or their family, they have to get a job. It’s the modern world still, and you can’t pay the landlord or bank with good intentions.

That means you have to get comfortable with the fact that your art is a job and you have to treat it with the same mindset you have when working for wages at the great time-sucking company of your choice. You are a business, your mind and your personal effort, and you have to show up at your job regularly and do your work efficiently and with inspiration.

My own example that has truly changed my life and my relationship with my own creative process is as follows: I plan my week day by day, working on one project in the morning until lunch, (sometimes at noon, sometimes at 2pm, sometimes at four pm, depending on my outside responsibilities and level of inspiration). I eat and then switch gears, working on another project for a few hours, always less than the earlier project. Then, I will generally be burned out after four to eight hours of writing, writing, writing. I take a break and spend the final hour or so of my workday on non-creative projects I call ‘busy work:’ updating websites, formatting completed manuscripts, researching online, submitting completed work to magazines, contests, publishers and agents. Then I go to my job or cook dinner for my wife and me, depending on the day.

I want to turn my passion into a suitable career and so I treat it like a full time job, giving 30-50 hours a week towards directly working on my ‘product.’ Part time opportunities are also available.

But beyond that, you have to plan the work itself. Trace story arcs, plot points, major events. You have to develop compelling characters and keep timelines straight and make sure everything is coherent and cohesive.

This takes pages of notes, sometimes charts, as well as research in books and on the Internet.

And between the time to work and the work itself, you have to plan the projects in general, keep a running list of the story and time worthy ideas you come up with at random times, crossing them out with each precious ‘The End.’ The more ideas the merrier and as the movie says, “If you build it they will come.” Keep adding to your work, everything you can, different mediums and styles, different genres and formats, just keep writing and stretch your limits and virtuosity.

For you non-writers reading this blog entry, or even to you writers reading it, in your defense, I can honestly say that a writer is always planning, always working mentally on that one part, that one character flaw or upcoming cool moment when you can’t quite get your story from here to there in a logical way and you know you can if you can just think of that one missing piece, that one crucial decision…


The most intangible parts of planning for a writer are those seemingly blank and lazy times when you are sitting doing nothing to the outside observer, when you feel scattered and lost in your own house or neighborhood while your brain works through some idea. To the outside world it looks like you are idle, spacing out and being weird again, but do not fear, you are working. You are wracking your brain and doing real, honest, roll-up-your-sleeves creative work. Simply because it is abstract does not mean that it is intangible; concrete results come only from such mental endeavors.

Planning is an important part of writing and the writer’s life, and it should be remembered and taken seriously.

Writers write as much as they possibly can

As I mentioned, the idea that writers write and edit their work is a pretty straightforward and logical notion. With this in mind, I will keep the rest of this blog entry mercifully short.

Here I will just say that you have to write, write, write. Just get it out, don’t loose your momentum on a project just because that transition from act one into act two doesn’t quite work and doesn’t really make sense. Just power through, keep moving, make a few notes where it feels choppy or poorly paced and just get to the end. Write it all out and type ‘the end.’ Get it completed in any fashion you can. This is the first draft, it's not supposed to be perfect, just finished.

This first draft is simply carving the rough shape from the blank white marble of page and mind. You'll never know where you're going if you don't arrive there in some shape. Don’t forget, you have time and you have your third necessary responsibility in your life as a writer: editing.

Writers edit like their lives depend on it.

The title of this section pretty well sums up the truth of editing. You edit like you life depends on it because it does. If you want to support yourself by writing, you have to be willing to tear your work apart, killing your favorite line or paragraph for the sake of the whole, change and retool everything and anything that suddenly makes you realize you are reading something and not experiencing something.

You have to condition yourself to step outside of your own creative ego and wear the separate hat of an objective, non-partial editor. And then when that first draft is more presentable, you need to send it to at least one second pair of eyes, get their feedback and typo findings, and decide what insights you will apply to your further drafts.

Do this at each stage until the final draft, but be aware that everybody you are sending drafts to also have lives and time issues, and may not want to or be able to read four drafts of the same novel. So widen your pool of friendly and interested eyes for your own sake.

I generally begin each daily session by re-reading the previous few pages and editing and note-taking as I go, sliding gently into the flow of the days work as I near the end of what I wrote yesterday. Then it is only forward towards the ever-shortening distance between here and the end.

Editing is vital and the true work of successful writers. It is also the most nerve-wracking and difficult part. But do it. Love it. Know that it is the difference between great writing and plain old everyday schlock. Do it with pride and patience.

Conclusion

Get to work. And have a good day.

Chapter Two -
Part Three 

The Value of Autonomy in Relation to Personal Power - The Origins of Citizen X



A summary of where we are in Chapter Two of this blog series

As I explained in the last part of this blog, an individual’s economic or educational opportunities and the accessibility one has to social and personal resources are not primarily one’s own choice, and by this light we can see that the basic self-ownership, -motivation, and –control valued so highly in our liberal political tradition is, at best, only under the contingent, local, authoritative control of most agents and this is understandably problematic.

Now, in Part Three of this chapter, I will begin delving into one particular example of what I am calling “Phenomenological Oppression” by presenting Sandra Lee Bartky’s arguments surrounding the identity and ontological status of The Feminine in modern society.

Bartky’s argument helps to clarify and spotlight the material consequences of Oshana’s theoretical claim that modern individuals within the liberal capital-based political system are faced with a systemically-based lack of personal autonomy. This discussion helps to pave the grounds for what I am calling the creation of “Citizen X”, the phenomenological political subject who is involved in deeply embedded oppressive social power relations that are dangerous, abusive, and grossly exploitive.

But first, we must turn to Bartky and her insightful work on the creation and destruction of social and personal identity in the liberal capital-based State.

 An introduction to Bartky’s problem of identity

Philosophically, the “self,” a personal unity of subjective experience inherent in individual agents providing grounds for social and political covenant, remains controversial.

Politically, the self is problematized in the field of identity politics where political agents aim to secure liberties and to struggle against injustices as members of specific social groups within the larger social context.

For example, feminist activists and groups fighting for women’s rights are fighting for political recognition qua women and qua the global community of women. By emphasizing their identity as women, their shared experiences and distinctive history, as opposed to organizing around belief systems, manifestoes, or party affiliations, such groups are able to accomplish two goals.

First, they are able to organize and formalize group specific policies and bills. Second, they are able to organize and formalize complaints and protests against oppressive or domineering socio-political practices.

Sandra Lee Bartky, in her works, Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power and On Psychological Oppression, writes of contemporary women’s fight against “the regime of institutionalized heterosexuality” where women must make themselves “object and prey for… a panoptical male connoisseur.”[1]

For Bartky, the struggle for women’s autonomy and equality is hindered, if not rendered impotent, by social conditions that normatively construct women as dependent objects to be servile and complacent towards standards created by the existent patriarchal political system. A woman, in this frame, is second, silent, restricted in movement and desires, and is pleasing to the eye.

Further, she should recognize these traits as necessary parts of herself for participation and success in the general society. Her identity, in other words, is produced by the normalizing processes of contemporary society where what is male, white, and wealthy sets the standards by which what is not male, white, and wealthy is to be evaluated, judged, and politically situated.

Identity, then, is at the least, partially constructed by social means for political ends.

Two questions arise from this idea of identity as a social construction. One, is there an individual identity, an actual “Self,” that exists apart from social constructs and categories such as “the feminine,” and two, what weight do “Selves,” regardless of the degree of social construction, carry in political matters?

The possibility of the “self”

Does an authentic, set and stable, identity exist for female political agents? More fundamental even than this would then be to ask do authentic, set and stable, identities exist at all?

For if one is able to identify themselves as “feminine,” “masculine,” “African American,” “lesbian,” “Republican,” and so forth, then it is apparent that there is a class of identity that is socially constructed; these are words and ideas developed and agreed upon socially.

An agent’s “social identity” may be defined as the collection of group memberships that an individual defines or is defined as belonging to. However, the question I am asking goes deeper than this. I am asking if there is something beneath this social identity, something perhaps prior to and distinct from the socio-political categories imposed upon agents by history, tradition and their implicit normative assumptions.

In the context of this blog, this question becomes: Is the category I understand as “the feminine” the final word on the possibility of female political agents, or is there an actual, stable, personal identity of which “the feminine” is but a highly influential and often time harmful component of its deeper totality?

I will argue that it is the later, and explain how this actual identity vitalizes the processes of resistance against socio-political systems that empower the obfuscation of and alienation away from self-recognition of that fundamental identity.

Bartky’s argument unpacked: Fragmentation and Mystification

Bartky, following Fanon’s study of post-colonial psychology, says that there are forms of oppression not inherently economic or political, and “need involve neither physical deprivation, legal inequality, nor economic exploitation.”[2]

One can be oppressed psychologically, she writes, and “[t]o be psychologically oppressed is to be weighed down in your mind; it is to have a harsh dominion exercised over your self-esteem.”[3] In the case of the feminine, Bartky exemplifies the disciplines of cosmetic and beauty regimes that encourage “internalization[s] of intimations of inferiority.”[4]

The “feminine” lacks some basic quality, be it skin tone, body shape, or status, and must work to remedy this. The “feminine” necessarily fails to live up to idealistic, myriad, often conflicting standards of the “beautiful-feminine” and may become alienated, fragmented, from a fair, subjective image of herself and her qualities. Fragmentation is “the splitting of the whole person into parts.”[5]

As the object-hood of the “feminine” builds upon and within a female agent, she experiences contradictory messages and impulses. Different social identities create different tensions within the individual in unison with external pressures surrounding and stemming from the material reality of the agent’s situation.

To be a woman is to be this, but to be Latin is this, as to be a Latin woman is this. Multiple identities and worlds, from culture and religion down to bowling leagues and carpools, socially shape and refine our self-identity and our identification in the world[6].

While many of these identities and worlds work in unison to create a sense of self and highlight the uniqueness of the individual, there are many aspects inherent within them that serve to create tensions or to pull apart the unity of the self. In her fragmentation, a woman may become mystified, systematically obscured to the “realities and agencies of psychological oppression so that its intended effect, the depreciated self, is lived out as destiny, guilt, neurosis.”[7]

The feminine-body, like the feminine-mind, -posture, and –appetite fall under the normalized standards of a patriarchal system that functions from within and without to guide the realm of the socially acceptable and what possible appearances and behaviors a ‘lady’ may partake in. From this standard come degrees of deviance. Mystification expresses how this is experienced as natural, thus unalterable.

Bartky, like Foucault, stresses the diffuse and web-like nature of contemporary political power. Micro- and macro- disciplinary techniques combine with “membrane-like” networks of external and internalized surveillance mechanisms to cast individuals in the role of their own personal and inter-personal police, reinforcing and recreating social norms, assumptions, and gender relations. I will return to this is greater detail in upcoming installments of this blog series.


The Technologies of Femininity

For women, systemic abuses of political authority and the background effects of mass media, advertising, and information diffusion insure the reach and force of normative oppressive authority is, as Bartky claimed, well-nigh total.
Part of the identity conferred by the status “feminine” upon women is “a body on which an inferior status has been inscribed.”[8]

The “technologies of femininity,” of which we may include eyebrow plucking, moustache waxing, make-up, nail painting, and various hair care procedures, “are taken up and practiced by women against the background of a pervasive sense of bodily deficiency.”[10] Bartky reminds us, “[T]he properly made-up face is, if not a card of entrée, at least a badge of acceptability in most social and professional contexts.”[11]

Women are encouraged towards and applauded for their expertise in skin, hair, and body presentation, yet pre-occupation with ones looks is considered childish and self-centered. The subordination of women, their cultural assignment to the domestic sphere, and the childlike, dependent, servile implications of their “femininity” are presented and experienced as natural and normal; the way it is, has been, and should be.

Bartky writes of women, “Our relative absence from the ‘higher’ culture is taken as proof that we are unable to participate in it.”[12] Though men and women share a basic cultural paradigm, the fact of a male dominated social system creates fundamentally different global visions of that shared world. The “feminine” is not autonomous, independent, or strong, and to be so is to “ceas[e] to be women.”[15]

The internalization of such culturally reinforced and assumed rhetoric leaves women “psychologically conditioned not to pursue autonomous development.”[13] This lack of cultural autonomy is the basis for Bartky’s claim of cultural domination, of the colonization of women (an idea she borrows from Fanon).

She claims that women, like other colonized people, experience psychological oppression through three basic modes or categories: cultural domination, stereotyping, and sexual objectification.[14] Stereotypes threaten agency with demeaning, limiting “prefabricated” natures. Sexual and racial stereotypes tend to regard women and minorities as childlike, unreasonable, and dependent upon the dominant white male culture to support and ‘guide’ them.

Unlike other situations of colonization, however, there exists no ‘time before’ when women were separate from the domineering presence of the patriarchy. Bartky writes, “[T]he culture of our men is still our culture.”[16]

To understand the background conditions of the type of Princely (State, Political) power I am discussing in the blog, it is important to grasp the basics of Bartky’s appropriation of Foucault’s conception of power.

Foucault’s concept of Power: a first look

This short section will serve as only the briefest of introductions to Foucault's insightful view of modern political power. I will return to this specific topic in great detail in later blog entries, as it forms the base for my own original theoretical contributions, that of Relational Materialism and the frame it provides for uncovering the actual value of power and the potential for revolutionary action.

For now, I want to introduce Foucault and to ask a few pointed questions.

Michael Foucault’s definitive qualities for a relation of power are that it “does not act directly and immediately on others” and “exists… only when it is put into action.”[17] 

Foucault claims that modern politico-authoritative power (Princely Power, State Power) is fluid and indirect, no longer needing to rely on overt physical coercion or violence. Instead, it is an action upon actions, a creation of the borders of agential possibility and authority.

To be considered an exercise of modern socio-political power, there must be a relation between mutual subjects, “ …‘the other’ (the one over whom power is exercised) is recognized and maintained to the very end as a subject who acts.”[18] Strictly speaking, for Foucault, a slave master does not exercise socio-political power over a slave; one does not govern chattel, property, or pure objects, one physically dominates, destroys or forces them.

I will quote at length from Foucault here so that I may quickly summarize the main ideas he presents and move on. As mentioned, I will dive into Foucault at length in upcoming blogs.

Foucault writes:
“[An understanding of power]  must not be sought in a unique source of sovereignty from which secondary and descendent forms would emanate; it is the moving substrate of force relations which, by virtue of their inequality, constantly engender states of power, but the later are always local and unstable….Power is everywhere not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.  And “Power,” insofar as it is permanent, repetitious, inert, and self-reproducing, is simply the over-all effect that emerges from all these mobilities, the concatenation that rests on each of them and seeks in turn to arrest their movement …power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.”
                                                                        Foucault’s concept of power in 'History of Sexuality' (pp. 92-93)
The main thoughts from this passage are:
1. Power exists in relationships between agents, be they individual or institutional. It is no longer simply a Sovereign class (a Princely hierarchical top-down situation)
2. Power is everywhere in modern society, there is no escaping it, because it comes from everywhere (membrane-like)
3. Power is a 'complex strategical situation', meaning that there is no one factor granting some power over others. It comes from everywhere, it is so deeply embedded in the socio-political system that it is invisible, untraceable, and total in its influence. There is little room for resistance to its action as we are created by its whims.


Authoritative socio-political power holds over subjects, over men and women who behave, identify and decide. However, against the internal and external forces I have described, as expressed by Foucault and Bartky, resistance seems impossible.

Critics claim Bartky, like Foucault, threatens to “depriv(e) us of a vocabulary in which to conceptualize the nature and meaning of those periodic refusals of control which, just as much as the imposition of control, mark the course of human history.”[19] 

What can a true act of resistance look like when an agent is a construct of the stereotypical assumptions and degrading norms put forward by her own culture and people? How does one resist actively empowering her own disempowerment?

In Part Four of Chapter Two, I further my explanation of how resistance and revolutionary action is possible and necessary. 

References

Bartky, Sandra Lee
Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression, Routledge, 1990, New York

Baumann, Holger
 ‘Reconsidering Relational Autonomy. Personal Autonomy for Socially Embedded and Temporally Extended Selves’, Analyse and Kritik, Lucius and Lucius, Germany, 2008

DeCew, Judith Wagner
‘Marina Oshana, Personal Autonomy in Society’, Social Theory and Practice, 2009
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6395/is_1_35/ai_n32102786/?tag=content;col1

Foucault, Michel
‘Discipline and Punish’, Vintage Press, USA, 1995
‘The History of Sexuality’, Vintage Press, USA, 1990
‘The Foucault Reader’, Pantheon Press, USA, 1984
‘Power’, Essential works of Foucault, Vol. 3, Edited by James Faubion, The New Press, New York, 2001
‘Power/Knowledge’, Pantheon Press, 1980

Meyers, Diana Tietjens, 
Feminist Social Thought: A Reader, Routledge, 1997, New York

Oshana, Marina
‘Autonomy and Free Agency’, Personal Autonomy: New essays on personal autonomy and its role in contemporary moral philosophy, Edited by James Stacey Taylor, Cambridge University Press, 2008
‘How Much Should We Value Autonomy?’, Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation, USA, 2003
‘Personal Autonomy in Society’, Ashgate Publishing, USA, 2006

Searle, John
‘Making the Social World’, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010

Walzer, Michael
‘Spheres of Justice: A defense of pluralism and equality’, Basic Books, 1983

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP): “Foucault and Feminism” http://iep.utm.edu/foucfem/


Footnotes
[1] FST pp. 101
[2] psych opp- first page or so
[3] ibid.
[4] ibid.
[5] ibid. pg. 52
[6] see Lagunes
[7] ibid. pg. 52
[8] ibid. pp. 100 
[10] ibid. pp. 100
[11] fst pp. 100
[12] psych opp pp. 54
[13] ibid. pg. 53
[14] Bartky, pg. 52
[15] ibid. pg. 53
[16] ibid. pg. 53
[17] Foucault, pg. 340
[18]  Foucault, pg 340
[19] Meyers, pg. 108

The Thing About Heroes…

by David Edward Wagner

It’s funny when I think about it now, but for a while there we were heroes. We were all anyone could talk about. The poets called us ‘pioneers,’ the press called us ‘new urban pilgrims,’ but through all the celebration and ceremony, all the parades and endorsement deals, I think it was my mother who actually called us what we were.

She set down her drink when I told her I had been accepted and she looked me in the eye. “You’re crazy,” she said and I just laughed and hugged her, told her that it was an honor, a privilege, that we’re paving the way for future generations. After a silent moment, tears barely restrained behind brown eyes, she finished her drink and just said, “You’re all crazy then.”

Those were the days, training from dawn until dusk, flight simulations, exercise regimes, equipment seminars, psychological conditioning. It was hard, don’t get me wrong, damn difficult, and more than once I wanted to quit, going as far as sneaking off base one night for a last round of whiskey and casual sex at the first bar I could find. But they came for me, they took me back and asked me if I wanted to continue and I said yes. After all, I was a hero.

Two weeks from that night, I shipped off to New Mexico and the final stage of preparations. Three months later, I took my last walk under blue skies, waved my last farewells, felt the wind and sun on my bare face one final time. I climbed onto the ship, heard the door seal and ninety minutes later we launched.

Next stop, Mars.

We were the first, postmodern trailblazers heading straight into that next last final frontier and we were good. We did our jobs, built our colony and sent our data at the scheduled intervals, becoming media darlings with interviews, live feeds, countless articles, dramatizations, hell, we even had a video game created about us, “Rovers of Mars.” We were well taken care of and never wanted for anything.

In the year after our arrival, we methodically built ourselves a life, established our small town and constructed our glass-domed bio-preserve. Then five months later the supply ship was late, they said it was due to increasing hostilities in the Syrian-Saudi conflict. Lines were being crossed daily and both ground and air wars were raging on all fronts. We went a little hungry but the ship finally arrived. With our supplies came a message: conserve.

It’s growing worse, they wrote, and it is getting more difficult to divert the finances and attention the colony needs. So we were careful. We were cooperative.

Two months later we received a radio transmission, barely audible through all the static and popping. It had finally come down to bombs, they said, nuclear and chemical. Things had gotten bad and were only becoming worse: Washington, Colorado, and California were gone, crops would grow no more on the windswept fields of the Midwest. Europe was mostly a memory, only the Scandinavian countries remain relatively intact and the Middle East had become primarily a series of smoking craters.

They told us all further shipments were delayed indefinitely, pieces were being picked up, resources scavenged for, political alliances and neighborhood gangs being formed. Electricity was still intermittent but getting more reliable, basic lines of communication were slowly becoming re-established. They were too uncertain of their own survival to be able to be focused on ours, but if the tenuous truce held they may be able to get the base together enough to send a shipment within a year. They could make no promises.

We tried not to panic. It will be okay, we told one another, they won’t forget us. They kept us up to date for as long as they could but eventually the information streams stopped coming. Only silence greeted us on the other end when we radioed for news.

Our greenhouse was constructed but the hardware to make it run was coming with those next few shipments. As the supplies ran short, we maintained our composure and we did what we could, growing scrawny plants in our houses, moving in together and turning whole domiciles into quasi-greenhouses, figuring out ways to more efficiently collect and reclaim water.

It’s been two and a half years now since the last message was received and only one hundred and thirty colonists remain of the original seven hundred. Malnutrition, suicide and the rot are taking most of us. The rot, that’s what we call it, the dust disease, turning your lungs into driftwood. I can feel it creeping into my joints, my arms hurt, yesterday I coughed up blood, but just a little. Still, I know it’s just a matter of time.

She was right, you know, I understand that now. I've been thinking about her a lot lately. Last night, I ate my final protein bar and couldn’t help but remmeber the fried chicken mom used to make when I was a kid. I tried to make it once, as an adult, but it wasn’t the same. It never is, is it?

END

Chapter Two - Part Two

The Value of Autonomy in Relation to Personal Power - The Origins of Citizen X

Relational autonomy and authority

The core notion of autonomy is “self-law,” or better, “self-authority.” An autonomous agent is able to decide and act in accordance with his or her own choices and does not need to confirm these choices with any authority higher than their own.

Autonomy is closely bound to the concept of authority, defined as “power that acquires legitimization” In practical terms, I understand this to mean that an exercise of authority is when “an agent comes to hold recognized legitimate power over one or more other agents.”

As socially oriented beings, we are involved in a political system constructed of intertwined relationships of institutional and interpersonal natures. Various practical limitations to self-authority exist in the simple fact of social reality[1] and acknowledging these empirical relations negates the usefulness of ideal theories and requires that we examine the nature of the empirical conditions individual agents relate within.

This view of “relational autonomy” has grown in use and acceptance in contemporary discourse[2] and helps philosophers understand the systemic, inter-related nature of our social environment in a frame useful to practical research. By understanding in physical terms the actual consequences of our conceptual apparatus, we are better positioned to examine the empirical evidence of where and how these ideals relate and effect our social environment.

And once we see that self-authority is determined in important part by relations to other self-governing agents along with the various forms and expressions of authority in the modern socio-political state, it becomes possible that personal autonomy, a cherished liberal ideal, may be something beyond the reach of many in contemporary liberal society.

Marina Oshana understands autonomy as “global,” concerning the entirety of an agent’s life, as opposed to “local” theories that explain autonomy in terms of discreet units of choice and event. Among traits she lists as necessary for self-authority are “reasonably astute cognitive skills and a developed set of values,[3]” as well as “certain psychological characteristics and a history of experiences conducive to self-directed agency.[4]”

Such qualities, she claims, can be “cultivated more or less successfully in persons.[5]” She further says autonomy calls for “the presence of certain social, political, and economic arrangements…” and that an autonomous person’s choices “…must not merely be unobstructed but, where realistic, these choices must be socially, politically, and economically within his or her reach.”[6]

These characteristics frame Oshana’s autonomy as a relation of constitutive social forces and degrees of personal disposition, development, and opportunity. The self-authority Oshana describes involves socio-political conditions where agents learn, develop, and refine the skills necessary to live lives of personal choice and where economic and political forces do not hinder the exercise of self-directed decisions and actions.

More specifically, she claims that for an individual to be autonomous two empirically observable traits are necessary[7].

First, an agent must have de jure entitlement, the recognized right, to maintain personal authority over deliberations, desires, and changes of mind, goals and opinion relevant to her life.

Second she must have de facto authority, actual self-control and power, over matters of choice, action, and intention.

Obtaining these characteristics requires developed critical thinking skills and important degrees of self awareness, self-mastery, and personal, social, and financial independence to insure ones choices can be not merely implemented, but maintained over time.

Autonomy is not the sole value in society, she admits, but holds that it does occupy a “central and irreplaceable position[8]” in our social and personal identity. Echoing Mill’s “harm principle,” she claims, “Security may surpass autonomy in value and may justify constraints on the freedom necessary for autonomy.”[9] She recognizes the tensions in the relationship between individual and state authority, and admits there are justifiable instances when the state must limit personal autonomy.

Justifiable instances under her criterion include not permitting the blind to drive or traffic regulations and penalties, but there is a wide swath of area where “the good of the people” intersects with “good for the people”, and it is here that the potential for abuse and unjustified transgression become apparent.

Noting the widespread breaches of personal authority and information following the events of 9-11[10] and their echoes to post-Pearl Harbor internment camps, she describes the social value of autonomy as “not easy to balance” (2003, pg. 142) and finds the line between justifiable and unjustifiable paternalism is not a clear one.

She claims that local, non-arbitrary interventions are sometimes justifiable to promote global conditions for autonomy,[11] as in the case of certain national security practices for the protection of state territory from domestic or international threats or attacks.[12]

Justification of such measures moves her beyond “harm to others” and leaves her account open to critiques of unwarranted paternalism. A full account of her stand on paternalism is beyond the scope of this blog, but I will say that the mechanics involved with the legitimization of state intervention are related to a second critique facing Oshana involving her emphasis on the physical conditions agents find themselves in and the criteria she claims is necessary for de facto autonomy.

To qualify as autonomous, an individual must be able not only to develop the critical and cognitive skills needed to make reasoned judgments and examine, reflect on, and choose from available options, but she must also live within social conditions where she has the economic and political power needed to act upon her choices.

An individual must not merely possess the capacities for de facto self-governance and de jure entitlement, she must actually be self-governing and in control over the course of her life. This socio-political power is not available to all.

The majority of citizens find their choices and options limited by their social and financial conditions, and while they may enjoy a certain degree of individual freedom, it is difficult to say that they are, in fact, the guiding authority in their lives.

By adhering to such restrictive conditions, Oshana’s theory describes a scenario where it is beyond the means of many to qualify as self-governing. She says that her concept of autonomy is compatible with a limited amount of “perfectionism,” and this is an argument I must avoid for now, but there is an even deeper concern implied by this same emphasis on empirical social conditions.

This strong relational stance means that the reasons why an agent is or is not free, be they financial, educational, dispositional, psychological, or circumstantial, are to an important degree constituted by the social conditions the individual is living in, and these lay significantly outside of individual control. Judith Wagner DeCew writes of Oshana’s model,

 “If autonomy is something most of us want to praise and encourage in moral agents, then given the extent to which ones social political situation disallows an agent from being autonomous in Oshana’s sense, it seems it is often beyond an agent’s control to become autonomous[13].”

As in the case with paternalistic matters, the line between self-control and lack of control is not always a clear one. In certain local situations, agents most certainly express autonomy (“I changed my mind, I’ll have a salad instead”; “I voted for so and so”), but what I read Oshana as concerned with are deeper ontological conditions where the choices and actions one must make are to an important degree directly or indirectly born through and shaped by the socio-political paradigm.

In Part Three of Chapter Two, I will bring Bartky’s idea of “embedded femininity” into the discussion as an example of some of the basic phenomenologically oppressive mechanisms and motivations at work in the modern state and begin to explain how the existence of “Citizen X” implies its own justification for revolutionary action.

References

Bartky, Sandra Lee
Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression, Routledge, 1990, New York
Baumann, Holger
 ‘Reconsidering Relational Autonomy. Personal Autonomy for Socially Embedded and Temporally Extended Selves’, Analyse and Kritik, Lucius and Lucius, Germany, 2008
DeCew, Judith Wagner
‘Marina Oshana, Personal Autonomy in Society’, Social Theory and Practice, 2009
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6395/is_1_35/ai_n32102786/?tag=content;col1
Foucault, Michel
‘Discipline and Punish’, Vintage Press, USA, 1995
‘The History of Sexuality’, Vintage Press, USA, 1990
‘The Foucault Reader’, Pantheon Press, USA, 1984
‘Power’, Essential works of Foucault, Vol. 3, Editited by James Faubion, The New Press, New York, 2001
‘Power/Knowledge’, Pantheon Press, 1980
Meyers, Diana Tietjens, 
Feminist Social Thought: A Reader, Routledge, 1997, New York
Oshana, Marina
‘Autonomy and Free Agency’, Personal Autonomy: New essays on personal autonomy and its role in contemporary moral philosophy, Edited by James Stacey Taylor, Cambridge University Press, 2008
‘How Much Should We Value Autonomy?’, Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation, USA, 2003
‘Personal Autonomy in Society’, Ashgate Publishing, USA, 2006
Searle, John
‘Making the Social World’, Oxford University Press, New York, 2010
Walzer, Michael
‘Spheres of Justice: A defense of pluralism and equality’, Basic Books, 1983
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP): “Foucault and Feminism” http://iep.utm.edu/foucfem/

Footnotes
[1] First, as physical beings, basic physical limitations hinder our freedom and independence in important ways; for example, our need for nourishment and rest, and the reality of different environments bring varied opportunities and obstacles. Second, we are involved in ongoing social relationships which enhance and inhibit full autonomous expression. Simply possessing a capacity to be autonomous does not suffice to describe the reality of social and political ‘daily life’, nor does the classic notion of autonomy referring to insulated, atomistic individual units.
[2] See Speery, MacKenzie, Cristman, Benson.
[3] Oshana (2003) pg. 102
[4] ibid. pg. 101
[5] ibid. pg. 102
[6] ibid.  pg.104.
[7] Oshana (2006), pg. 75, 98
[8] Oshana, (2003) Pg. 142
[9] Oshana, (2003) pg. 114.
[10] Of 9-11, Oshana writes, “Circumstances since that date no longer resembles what we once regarded as normal.” (Personal Autonomy in Society, pg. 135)
[11] “…strong paternalistic intervention is sometimes needed to preserve the autonomy that is threatened” (Oshana, 2003, pg. 115)
[12] unwarranted phone tapping, holding prisoners without charging them for crimes, restricting travel for Arab-Americans, and illegal searches of private information are just a few of the possible extra-legal acts commited by the U.S. government following the attacks of 9-11
[13] DeCew (2009) pg. 3