Million Man March in Moscow /Key Bloggers in Prison

Hannah Arendt ardently believed that power does not belong to an individual but to a group of people who think alike and act in concert. What happened in Moscow on 6th of May demonstrated that there are many people who think that a government without Putin is possible, and consequently they were confronted with sheer violence. Following Arendt's thread of thought, the Moscow's march clearly shows that power is the antipode of violence:
"Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance"1
This brutal meeting between opposition and violence shows a lot about Putin's regime, however, it is important to note that the people who were arrested were prominent bloggers.

Blogging as an activity/message was well received in Russia and it fostered -perhaps even strengthened- the publicity of "like-mindedness." It's not like the Russian opposition didnt exist before and suddenly emerged. Oppositional forces were always present but the nature of the current government invoked/reignited its purpose, which is shared with others and communicated via blogs. The people didnt just decide to protest on the 6th of May, but they were blogging about it and took the risk. Their physical appearance at the Bolotnaya Ploshchad was the culmination of their ACTION, which started -and continues after the arrest as there is a flashmob event organized for today- from the fact that they share the same idea and they published it via blogs. 

The good news is that violence has to be justified, as it is instrumental by nature and as Arendt aptly noted "what needs justification by something else cannot be the essence of anything."2

1Hannah Arendt, On Violence, P56

2 Ibid, P51

To blog is ultimately to ACT!

For all those who want to get into the business of thesis writing...well, it is definitely a challenge. Personally, it was hard for me to accept the mantra "everything is just a draft" but with the thesis I definitely got it thanks to my supervisor, to whom Im really grateful by the way. At this stage of my research, I realized that blogs definitely constitute ACTIONS as long as they are read (so thanks to all those readers around the world who do read this one:) your number left me in a state of pleasant surprise! ) 

In the second "draft" of my introduction I elaborate further on the statement "blogging equals action" so here it goes:

"Human action is a beautiful paradox - an inherent attribute of human existence and yet, totally unpredictable in the grand scheme of things. As Hannah Arendt understood well “in acting, in contradistinction to working, it is indeed true that we can really never know what we are doing”[1], which premise holds quite strongly in the case of Russian blogging - they really don’t know what they are doing but they are blogging anyway. The reason why Russian blogging requires further elaboration and research is not merely because “blogging is interesting” or “blogging is a new phenomenon”; undoubtedly these characteristics of blogging are real but a painstaking approach is required due to its quality as a force that shapes the current Russian political and social predicament. Blogging is a new synonym for human action, and as such it invokes my interest and fascination; however, in order to understand it I chose Arendt, because she pertinently delineates the course of human action in every sphere of human organization, be it political or social. From Hobbes’ efforts to “establish a reasonable teleology of action” which initiated philosophy into politics, and since then patterns of human actions have been mistaken for meaning,[2] to the understanding of truth, which is located outside of political sphere, Arendt’s work is the starting point for Russian blogosphere’s conceptualization. Furthermore, she aptly described a conflict between the individual human action expectations – the highest of such expectations would be to attain earthly immortality - and the origins of the action, which according to Vico (whom Arendt cites) are guided by “passions, private aims, and the satisfaction of selfish desires.”[3] This very conflict characterizes the academic discourses about blogging, where again we have the optimists and the skeptics fighting about the semantics of this hybrid way of acting.

The academic debate on blogging so far swirls – primarily - around the following question “does the blogosphere represent an extension of the public sphere or does it create multiple public spheres where human interaction is virtually accommodated?” These questions are inspired by the work of Jurgen Habermas “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere”, where the public sphere is treated as a historical category in order to explain the communicative interaction of the bourgeoisie in the 18th century and establishes its relevance for today’s understanding of rational communication. Therefore, Habermasian ideas of public sphere will be shingled with Arendtian ones, in order to construct a solid argument about whether Russian blogosphere can be treated as a form of such public interaction. Furthermore, the polemical take on Habermasian public sphere by Chantal Mouffe will congeal the argument by adding the significance of the political and the urging acknowledgment of individual “spontaneity” in the multifaceted web of social networks. On the empirical side of the argument, I will concentrate on one platform (besttoday.ru) and follow a discursive path in my analysis, since I will inspect blog entries. Nevertheless, the virtual aspect of blogging in particular and the “digitalization” of our daily life in general, cannot be studied in isolation from its physical components, which are people. Thus, while investing the concepts of public sphere by the above mentioned thinkers, I “wrestle” with the Russian understanding of action as manifested on the particular segment of blogosphere and dare to suggest that it is a new way of rediscovering the political."

Dedicated to my very first reader, Jim Franklin.

[1] The editor of Arendt’s text chose to use her reflections on action, work and labor before the extract dedicated to Public Sphere, In Baehr, Peter. The Portable Hannah Arendt. New York: Penguin Group, 180
[2] In Arendt’s text the most prominent historian who mistakenly understood pattern as meaning was Karl Marx, as “he construed his patter this way because he was concerned with action and impatient with history.” In Baehr, Peter. The Portable Hannah Arendt. New York: Penguin Group, 307
[3] Ibid. 307

"Agon" meets "Consensus": a coffee break for Habermas and Mouffe!

I wonder whether two theoreticians as diametrically opposed to each other as Habermas and Mouffe, would ever agree to have a coffee break, sit on the same table, and talk about the public sphere - which has been used as an abstraction for mapping the role/function/potential of the blogoshpere (the Russian one in my case!) Im sure Habermas would suggest a table for two, close to the window, in order to catch glimpses of the sun because this is what all rational people want after all. They want a nice place close to the window, so Habermas would exclude the possibility of Mouffe refusing such a "rational" suggestion. Of course Mouffe, would refuse to sit at that spot  merely because she wanted to make a point: a consensus is not the ONLY prerequisite to interact in the public space (the coffee shop); instead she would engage Habermas' work in an agonistic manner (paying the due-respects to a clever fellow philosopher) in order to prove him wrong. SO, in case Habermas would have invited her for a coffee, Chantal would refuse in a direct manner just to demonstrate quite empirically the existence of tension in the logic of democracy: everybody is entitled to an opinion and to its enactment!

Habermas and the Structural Tranformation of the Public Sphere

The work of Jurgen Habermas has been cited (or at least referred to) by anyone who writes on philosophy, communication, or politics. For the neophytes though, it is important to note that Habermas decided to explore the public sphere (koina in Greek) both as ideology and as a normativity - the former referring to the liberal dogma of an ideal public sphere, while the latter to the account of specific "normal" practices the individuals performed in that particular space. For Habermas, the public sphere was the salon or any other place that hosted a critical conversation. Here, the bourgeoisie as a class is extremely important since it attained its self-understanding and self-articulation through adopting the principle of publicity and using it against the state. They succeeded in doing so because they were fully privatized individuals (who appeared in public) with a double identity; on one hand they were "owners of goods and persons and [one the other they were] one human being among others."[1] The duality spotted by Habermas is quite relevant for the case of the Russian bloggers, who are using publicity against the state with the help of the Internet. In order to avoid anachronisms of course, I dont imply that 18th c. English, French, and German bourgeoisie are reincarnated as Russian bloggers! Nevertheless, there is a relevance since Habermas put forward the idea that private sphere "challenged the authority of the monarch through interiorized human experience."[2] In the Russian case, the "interiorization" of the private sphere was forced by the state in the first place, through promoting family values and stability. However, in order to understand the phenomenon of the Russian blogging process specifically, Habermas' insights are more or less inadequate.

Chantal Mouffe and the Political

Going back to the "imaginary coffee break" between Mouffe and Habermas, further elaboration on Mouffe's cold hearted rejection is needed. She said NO because her understanding of politics and the political are primarily "agonistical." she claims that the political is antagonism" inherent in human relations...can take many forms and emerge in different types of social relations."[3]   While the notion of politics for her is consisted of "practices, discourses, institutions which seek to establish a certain order and organize human co-existence in conditions that are ALWAYS potentially conflictual because they are affected by the dimension of the political."[4] Mouffe's insights are heavily influenced by the works of Karl Schmitt and Ludwig Wittgenstein, who offer -in their own way- a critical point of view on politics which challenges the idea of consensus altogether. Schmitt shows clearly that the lethal "flaw" in liberalism is its sheer avoidance of politics as such (Mouffe elaborates on that in her book On The Political), and instead it concentrates its attention on technology, on progress, or on anything but POLITICS! On the other hand, Wittgenstein points out that any form of individuality (and especially democratic) stems from identification with certain values, and "this is a complex process that takes place through a manifold of practices, discourses and language games."[5]

Above all, for Wittgenstein (as Mouffe states) prior to any consensus there must be an agreement of judgments, which is taken for granted in the liberal political organization of human life. Therefore, when there is an instance of rejection (in this case Mouffe's) liberalism appears ill-equipped for its successful management.  

Now, back to the Russian bloggers and blogosphere. Undoubtedly, the Habermasian development of the bourgeois public sphere carries historical and sociological significance, yet in case of procedures and rules that dictate behavior Habermas falls short. For him, rationality -which has its roots in private property and personal interest of a market economy- dictates decisions and the rules of the game; however, rationality does not explain the vast diversity of individuals who comprise the Russian blogosphere (from Sobchak - a Russian TV talk-show hostess till political activists and artists who belong to very different backgrounds) nor can it explain the frequent use of humor that overtly appeals to the emotional rather to the rational.  All of them share something in common, which is a fervent anti-Putin sentiment. And this something pushes them to create new practices and procedures fostering political action, but above all cultivating responsibility for any action. At least Wittgenstein would have liked that take on the Russian blogosphere...

This post is dedicated to my favorite artists Ave and Ren, whom I thank for the long walks along the Danube and inspiring conversations.

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[1] Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. (Cambridge : Polity Press, 1989), 55
[2] Ibid. 53 (the family!)

[3] Chantal Mouffe, For an Agonistic Model of Democracy, 125
[4] Ibid. 125

[5] Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 70