Absent Rebels: Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dystopian Fiction. Annika Gonnermann

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СКАЧАТЬ to choose due to their tendency to reduce choices to non-choices. Without active coercion, people can find themselves in situations where they have no choice left but to accept a dominant standard – due to past choices they and others have made. This is a phenomenon captured with the term of ‘path dependence,’ an idea that boils down to “history matters,” that is to say, “where we are today is a result of what has happened in the past” (Liebowitz and Margolis, “Dependence” 17). This helps to explain the phenomenon “that we are pulled by our choices along avenues smoothed by the prior choices of others” (Grewal 140) and are thus shaped by powers beyond control.4

      Such a standard can be found within a neoliberalist world order. David Harvey describes the effect of network power by tracing the history of neoliberalism itself: “[t]he general progress of neoliberalization has therefore been increasingly impelled through mechanisms of uneven geographical developments. Successful states or regions put pressure on everyone else to follow their lead” (Neoliberalism 87, emphasis in the original). His ‘creeping neoliberalization’ can thus be seen as a slow erosion of impediments of neoliberalism (e.g. trade barriers), forcing other countries to adopt the standard even if they originally opposed it (cf. ibid. 89, 93). Manuel Castells, too, comments on the network structure of neoliberalism, calling it “self-expanding logic”: “the more countries join the club, the more difficult it is for those outside the liberal economic regime to go their own way. So, in the last resort, locked-in trajectories of integration in the global economy, […] amplify the network, […] while increasing the costs of being outside the network” (142).

      Grewal argues that neoliberalism and network power are a match made in heaven. They form a unique blend of coercion and reason, yet seemingly favour freedom (cf. 252):

      Neoliberalism […] privileges relations of sociability and mistrusts those of sovereignty, since (on its own accord at least) the latter are distorted and corrupted by power in a way the former are not. Instead, neoliberals place their faith in those activities that people undertake as individuals choosing to participate in broader structures of social life. (ibid. 247)

      But while neoliberalism and its defendants like to think of themselves as formally free, they are bound by the principle of network power – or in the words of Karl Marx, “[t]he social division of labour entails that each free-worker is inserted into, and thus becomes entirely dependent upon, a system of production that vastly exceeds him/her, geographically, temporally, spatially, and so on” (Best 501). The fact that neoliberalism does not originate from a single centre of authority – and thus does not force its participants like totalitarianism would do – does not mean that it is free from oppression. On the contrary, globalization and neoliberalism prove to be “coercive or entrapping even if [they are] entirely driven by free, choosing people who create the conditions under which their agency gradually loses the power to later the circumstances” (Grewal 56). Grewal furthermore argues that “[m]arket relations offer obvious examples of this domination of formally free persons obligated not by direct authority but by interest” (118) – thus creating a potentially threatening system disadvantageous for themselves, which once created is difficult to be tamed by individual decisions any longer.

      Following Serena Olsaretti, Grewal introduces a necessary differentiation between free and voluntary choices, thereby arguing that what appears to be a free choice due to the absence of external coercion, must not be confused with voluntariness. To say it in the words of Serena Olsaretti, “[f]reedom does not guarantee voluntariness” (141). Grewal goes on to argue that

      [i]n liberal political thought, particularly of libertarian bent, freedom is often identified with an individual’s freedom to make choices for herself. In this identification lies a truth and a danger. The truth is that freedom may sometimes be manifested in the choices a person makes. The danger is that the simple act of choosing does not signify anything until we specify the domain of options over which someone chooses. (108)

      A precondition for voluntariness is ultimately the availability of two equally desirable options, not just the mere act of choosing. To illustrate his point, Grewal quotes from Serena Olsaretti’s Liberty, Desert and the Market (2004), which tells the story of a girl, Daisy, wishing to leave her hometown, a desolate city in the middle of a desert. While nobody actively forces her to stay there, Daisy knows that she has no means to cross the desert alive. Thus, “[h]er choice to remain in the city is not a voluntary one” (Olsaretti 138; cf. Grewal 109f.), although she is formally free to leave. Olsaretti’s desert city is thus a good example for a situation “that is in some sense coerced even while being formally free” (Grewal 112), since there are no other acceptable options. We cannot, however, speak of a voluntary decision, as Daisy wants to leave.

      This example stands in opposition to Olsaretti’s second thought experiment, the “Wired City”: “Wendy is the inhabitant of a city fenced with electrifying wire, which she is unfree to leave. However, her city has all that anyone could ever ask for, and Wendy, who is perfectly happy with her life there, has no wish of leaving it. She voluntarily remains in her city” (138; cf. Grewal 110). The difference between Daisy and Wendy is the notion of voluntariness. Both girls are theoretically unable to leave their respective cities, yet while one cannot do so due to the desert, the other does not want to, although one might presume that she lives in a somewhat repressive community. Therefore, a “choice is voluntary if and only if it is not made because there is no acceptable alternative to it” (Olsaretti 139, emphasis in the original). Tellingly, Olsaretti’s first example works without the notion of an oppressive authoritarian leader, who forces their subjects to remain in the city. Wendy’s decision to stay in the city is a form of coercion despite the fact that there is no detectable form of juridico-political power. Following Gerald Cohen then, Olsaretti concludes that a person can only be considered to have made a free choice, “if he has a reasonable or acceptable alternative course” (Cohen quoted in Grewal 109); anything else should be considered unfreedom in the sense of non-voluntariness. When Darko Suvin asserts that “free choice [must be the] guide of any society worth living in” (“Bust”), he actually demands the right to make voluntary choices between two equally desirable options.

      Referring to the writings of thinkers like Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and others (cf. 131ff.), Grewal’s network power can thus be seen as an addition to the macro-theory of structuration, “an integrated account of agency and structure” (55). As a result of neither expressing preferences for one structure over the actors nor the other way round, the theory of structuration (a term introduced by Anthony Giddens) helps to “move beyond the dichotomy that supposes either that we are masters of our contexts or that our contexts must master us” (Grewal 56). It thus provides an explanation of how power prunes freedom, even if no identifiable actor, i.e. a totalitarian leader, actively deprives people of their rights and choices. With the notion of network power, “direct coercion as such is not necessary” (ibid. 121). Rather it works “through the simultaneous promise of belonging to a dominant network and the threat of social exclusion, which together give a network influence over the actions of individuals” (ibid. 122). This type of power then thrives off the all-too human wish to belong to a community, fostered by the fear of expulsion and the unavailability of alternatives after enough people have joined the dominant network:

      [N]etwork power exists in all the ways people are drawn to each other, wanting to gain access to cooperative activities with other people. It is relational: we cannot even talk about this power outside the multiple networks of individuals whose choices are shaped by allegiance to a common standard. It is immanent: not an abstract force, but inherent in our mediating social institutions. (ibid. 140)

      To summarise, the analytics of network power show how aggregated individual choices can come to constitute a form of decentralised power immanent in social relations – and all without the command of a central authority (cf. ibid. 139). While “many theorists would prefer to attribute all relevant causation to identifiable individuals and their actions alone” (ibid. 127), Grewal opts for the middle line between individual responsibility and systemic coercion, СКАЧАТЬ