The logic of affinity vs. the logic of hegemony
Michel Bauwens
There is an interesting presentation at the Ungrammatical Multitude blog
which counterposes the logic of hegemony and the logic of affinity. It refers to a book by Richard Day, Gramsci is Dead, Gramsci being the foremost theoretician of hegemony.
In political strategy, the old leftist view was antagonist, two ‘classes’ fighting for hegemony, facing each other as two hierarchies. Today, as distributed networks arise, with their ever shifting connections, it is increasingly difficult to recognize such clear opposing camps. Many people are therefore shifting from an antagonistic stance, “we’re against”, to a logic of creative action, seeking like-minded people through networks. That’s the logic of affinity.
Quote: Day establishes an opposition between the “logic of hegemony” and the “logic of affinity. Hegemony, he tells us, is totalizing and state-centered. It operates, equally in either what he likes to term its “(neo)liberal” or its “(post)marxist” variants, by means of demand, representation, recognition, and integration. From the very moment that politics is predicated on the demand, it implies and invokes the existence of a state before which the individual or group constituted in the demand seeks to be represented, and by which it hopes to be first recognized and then integrated. Affinity, on the other hand, begins with Exodus and establishes self-generated (and self-valorizing) communities predicated on a “groundless solidarity” and “infinite responsibility” that are always open to the new and the other.”
February 15th, 2006 at 6:19 am
[...] I would like to add the following. Elsewhere, I have pointed out the contrast between the logic of hegemony, with 2 power blocs confronting each other for state power (the anti-capitalist workers movement’s strategy), eventually negotiating a reform. The new logic of affinity is more about continually changing network relations depending on the different common projects or struggles that are attempted. In such a context, it makes more sense to look for common ground on an ad hoc basis, and lots of new and innovative alliances become possible. [...]