What in the hell …

This is a talk I gave recently. Thanks to all the folk who gave comments on earlier drafts.

Introduction

I was asked here today to talk about militant research. I appreciate the invitation, and I hope my remarks are helpful or interesting to you. I got a lot out of writing them. Before I get started, a few preliminary remarks. It was suggested that I say a bit about me. I’ve been active in a variety of things in the activist milieu and I spent a few years as paid professional staff of NGOs, primarily as an organizer. I’ve been involved in some workplace organizing at my own work, which has unfortunately never worked out well, and I’m a member and volunteer organizer in the Industrial Workers of the World. All of that colors my take on things in this talk. Theoretically I’m a rather vulgar marxist. I got this militant research stuff via the operaismo tradition of Italian marxism and some recent work in Argentina and Spain. I’m also a massive anglophile so I always try to find someone English to model myself after. In this talk I’d really love to be E.P. Thompson and swamp you with details which I dearly love, but that wouldn’t be very productive. Instead I’ve opted for J.L. Austin and just give a broad strokes conceptual account and propose terms for a future taxonomy.

On that, I should note that I am going to occasionally change between the terms “militant research” and “research militancy.” The primary difference between the two is in the name for the actor or actors who carry out the activity, either the militant researcher or the researcher militant. Both senses are useful and I will play on the two for purposes of emphasis. This emphasis is largely rhetorical, however, such that the two terms can be considered essentially synonymous in my usage. Now then…

“Militant” and “research” have a number of meanings and modes, which means “militant research” has even more. I want to narrow the range, then say specifically what I mean by militant research, or what mode thereof most interests me.

Militancy

Thinking about the times one might say the word “militant,” two meanings appear, both having to do with politics. Militancy can refer to intensity of belief and extremity of position. Militancy as intensity doesn’t refer to what one believes, but to the how strongly one believes it. One could be a militant for one or the other political candidate, an NGO, a cause, and a number of other causes. Militancy as intensity means both “strong believer” and “activist,” wherein the activity expresses an intense belief, and intense belief leads one to a series of actions sustained over time. I would like to call this conjunction of belief and action “commitment.” Militancy as intensity refers to commitment and as such cuts across both believing and action, or rather, the action of believing and other actions as well.

Militancy as extremity is along the lines of an old view of the term “radical,” meaning to get to the root of, and “critique,” meaning to get at the conditions of possibility from which something arises. Militancy as extremity can be solely at the level of beliefs held or understanding of the world, but it does imply at least a desire for a change in the world, if not necessarily action toward that change. So, for instance, one could have militant beliefs about sex and love, such as the abolition of monogamy and marriage, or the imposition of state enforced lifetime heterosexual monogamy. One can have militant beliefs about, for instance, racial purity or the expropriation of the ruling class or the abolition of the wage.

I want to define the “militant” in “militant research as a conjunction of the above senses, plus a third. The third element glosses the terms “action” and “politics.” By these I mean concerted effort, the construction and action with a collectivity or collectivities. More simply: a militant acts with others. This is not to undervalue individuals and individual actions, but simply to say that that is not what I mean by militant. Furthermore, I mean by these terms the construction or the exercise of collective power against some adversary, with the goal of making the adversary do something the would not otherwise do.

My working definition of militancy, then, is a shared intense commitment to an extreme political position, which means sustained concerted actions over time, with action defined as activity aimed at exerting force on some adversary. I will now turn to the term “research.”

Research

“Research” can mean simply “knowledge production;” “to research” can mean to produce knowledge. I mean the “research” part of “militant research” as a rather more narrow range within this. For my purposes, militant research is not research in philosophy, the arts, history, or political economy. This isn’t a value judgment. All of those areas are tremendously valuable in themselves and politically. They can inform and be informed by militant research but they are not what I mean by “militant research.” In terms of academic disciplines, militant research has elements in common with social work, certain types of sociology, anthropology, oral history, and journalism. That is to say, the “research” part of “militant research” involves knowledge production as a relationship, to produce knowledge and to do so as or in a relationship with other people.

There are at least three modes of this relationship. Each involves different subject positions which are presumed, produced, and reproduced. Each creates different products in addition to the subject position produced, primarily different knowledge objects and know-hows. I’m going to call these modes research upon, research by, and research with.

In research upon, the subject positions are the relatively active researcher relatively external to the relatively passive research subjects or research objects. A relationship might persist after the research is over, which will either continue the active/passive dynamic or be renegotiated. The product is some information about the research subjects, usable by a number of actors and potential actors. This information is generally determined, in the sense of setting goals and mode of inquiry, as well as interpreted by the researcher. The primary goal of research upon is knowledge product rather than subject. An example of this would be interviews conduct with US military personnel or Iraqi and Kosovar Albanian civilians about the effects of exposure to depleted uranium via shell casings made from the stuff. The product of this research would be a report useful in a lawsuit or in seeking policy change. It might also provide a list of people to contact again in the future for efforts like those.

In research by, that the subject positions are internal to an initially given collectivity and generally produce a changed new collectivity. This is individual self-research and comparison with others as part of producing a collective self. Transformation of individual subjects and the production of a collective subject is more of a goal with research by. The knowledge products can include knowledge about the participants as well as increased knowledges and know-hows on the part of the participants. Research by is in one sense also a type of research with, in that people in some group engage in research together. The point is that the being-with here is internal to the group and does not maintain as much of a researcher/researched division. An example of this would be a rather idealized version of a feminist consciousness raising group, wherein women discuss experiences of sexual harassment, come to see these as shared experiences, and decide to start taking some action against patriarchy.

In research with, the subject positions are the relatively active researcher who moves from a relatively external to a relatively internal position in relation to a group of people. This can range from a basically more closely researched version of research upon, emphasizing research subjects researching upon themselves in order to help the researcher produce more and fuller knowledge, to something more like research by, emphasizing subjects determining goals and methods as well as acquiring capacities and producing a collective subject. An example of this would be agitational interviews with tenants about their landlords, with discussions facilitated by outsides. The product would be knowledge of conditions and a group of people taking action against their landlords or other relevant authorities.

All three of these modes of research produces some sort of knowledge object. The primary differences are who determines the research goals, how the research is conducted, what use the research object has and to whom, and the types of relationships produced in the process.

Militant Research

Now I will bring together the two terms as I understand them. Militancy is a shared intense commitment to an extreme political position, expressed in sustained concerted actions over time. Research is to produce knowledge in a relationship with other people. Militant research, then, is a relationship with other people that produces knowledge, as part of sustained concerted actions based on shared intense political commitment.

I have an additional qualification here. Militant research as I understand it is not the same as what we might call politically interested research. Politically interested research is research that seeks to have a political use. “Militancy” is of a greater intensity than “politically interested.” Militancy predominates or determines in militant research, whereas in politically active research political utility is not the sole or determining motivation. Consider an example of doing research that involved participants in a rent strike. Politically interested research might include the success of the action and the outcomes for the participants as one goal or criterion of assessment, but could be evaluated as either an over-all success or an over-all failure based on additional or other criteria than its utility and effects within the conflict or for the participants in the conflict. So, the strike may be won and the workers may gain a great deal from their participation in the research, but the research may be otherwise poorly executed such that it is deemed a failure. Or, the strike may be lost, the workers gain nothing in terms of skills and capacities or material benefit, but the research could be deemed a success due to an innovation in its methods or findings. This is not the case for militant research. Militant research is evaluated solely by its utility for future actions and organization.

The aims of militant research are internal to the political position of which the militants are militants. The knowledge produced as well as the relationships - the individual and collective subjectivities - produced in militant research are bound up with the militant political project. This project is the primary goal of militant research, and provides the criterion for assessing and reflecting upon the outcomes of any instance of militant research.

Research Militancy

I would like to note that I have changed the definition of militancy I have been working with, or elaborated on something only implicit in it previously. I defined militancy in relation to a shared commitment, involving action against an adversary. Given that there are adversaries, it is clear that the shared commitment is not universally shared. There can be people who are not militants as well as people who are militants of the adversary organization or principle.

Militancy is relative to some position held. It is to be assessed then, qua militancy, from within its field or its values. In an important sense militancy is only assessed by, present for, and ascribed from a position internal to itself. Put differently, militancy is always co-militancy. In the absence of co-militancy - that is, if one is not a co-militant - there is in an important sense not militancy at all.

Militancy is the name for - or at a minimum, it is at its most important insofar as or when it is - a shared subjective endeavor considered in the first person, both singular and plural. Considered from outside this first person perspective, militancy is something else, just as I am only I when considered from the first person perspective. Furthermore, I would like to suggest that we think of militancy grammatically in terms of subjective rather than objective pronouns. I am I when I am a subject, we are we when we act: I speak with you, we collaborate together. When I am an object I am me, when we are acted upon we are us: the boss fired me, the police arrested us.

This means that the assessment criterion for militant research is internal to a particular militant project. Given that this is so, it can be said that on one level there is not something called militant research, so much as there are many research militancies. Put differently, the substantive position bound up with any militancy is essential to any militant research connected with it. Different research militancies, that is, different substantive positions may relate to each other along two registers or axes which I will call the technical and the political. By technical I mean techniques and methods that may be experimented with as part of a project. By political I mean the orientation of the militant research, its position and trajectory within and in relation to a field of power.

To use perhaps overly complicated terminology, in each register the relations between different research miltancies can be either compossible, incompossible, or mutually exclusive. In the technical register, this means one experience of research militancy can find the techniques and experiences of another to be either a resources to draw upon and redeploy, something relatively inert and not useful, or something incompatible to and actively destructive for its own project, an object lesson to avoid. In the political register, different research militancies can relate to each other as potential or actual allies, non sequiturs, or opponents.

In these remarks I have focused on elements of militant research that are roughly in common across positions, rather than focus on my own particular position. I believe these remarks generally hold for militant research across position. This means that my remarks have a certain limit. They are to some extent insufficiently first person, when considered in the light of what I have proposed here as militant research. Given that in my view militant research qua militant research is to be assessed based on a criterion internal to a position of militancy, it is difficult to discuss militant research as such outside of a specific instance of research militancy or a least a specific militancy. I would be happy to have a further discussion on militant research from our own political orientations, or a discussion among those of us who share with a common political perspective. I’m not sure, however, that there is adequate time to do so, particularly since doing so would first involve establishing what our different or shared political positions happen to be. In lieu of any attempt to compose or begin a project of research militancy, and in lieu of a conclusion, I would like to offer five observations about militant research. These are considerations which would be true of any attempt to do militant research, or rather, which are true of any attempt to move from the rather external or third person view of militant research I have offered here to a position that stands internal - or in the first person - to some militancy.

Unconcluding Observations

1. Militant research acts both within and upon organizational contexts at a number of levels of scope and formality, from interpersonal association to affinity group to formal projects (squatted women’s center, publishing endeavor) to activity in conjunction with other groups, to a wider movement level. Militant research is collective. It is shaped by and shapes the collectivity or collectivities it is bound up with. This collectivity also exists in relation to other collectivities. Given that all this is so, militant research is not an end in itself but a tool. It can be used for its internal or external effects, but its scope is limited. In some cases, it makes sense to start doing militant research, in other cases it makes sense to stop and pursue other projects. The research phase of a militancy may end or be temporarily suspended.

2. Militant research has effects internally and externally. That is, it changes those involved in the research, and it produces an object for use later. These object or external products of militant research are in turn useful internally and externally. The products can help a group encounter others to work with, either as potential members or as individual or collective allies. The products also serve to help a group to know what it thinks, or, we could say, to think as a group, in order to guide group actions and decision making. The products can also be useful outside the group as part of processes of inspiration, reflection, and organization. This is the case for any radical text that gets used by groups, whether theoretical, historical, organizational, or otherwise. It should also be noted that the products can sometimes be useful to an opponent, as a way for them to better know a group.

3. If one presses upon the concepts and practices of militant research, there is an aspect of militant research within all good organizing. In a sense, politics and organization does not occur successfully without some operation akin to militant research. Counseling activities are a type of research, in that the counselor and the other person produce at least some of the following: knowledge of each other, a shared relationship, the solution to some problem, and clarity and decisions as to goals and the steps needed to accomplish these goals. Even if the data, so to speak, are known in advance, the carrying out of the conversational form of the research still has a useful effect. What I called the “internal” effect or product is still produced in this setting, even the external product is perhaps redundant or only confirms a previously held position. In this sense, militant research in at least some formats has much in common with feminist practices of consciousness raising. It matters less if something has been said before about women’s oppression and more that this particular person or group of persons comes to be able to say it - and does say it - for themselves.

It is similar with workplace organizing. An agitational conversation, one involving, say, the question “what is your job like?” is less about the contents being articulated in order to extract knowledge than it is about a performative activity in which the person has an affective experience (becomes angry), makes a decision (to take a small action toward changing the workplace and coming together with others), begins to develop a relationship with the conversation partner, and begins to acquire the confidence, skills, and analysis needed to successfully organize their workplace. In this sense, then, in terms of its organizational-compositional effects, militant research is a perhaps ineliminable tool for organization in building itself or rebuilding itself (the way that a body builds new cells and repairs or, if need be, replaces old ones). It also has another use, which is for an existing organization to know about itself in order to be able to assess its wants and needs, assess its power, and make informed decisions.

4. Militant research uses capacities everyone has, and is in many ways built into political organization as such. Militant research must, then, take as its fundamental implicit or explicit presupposition a capacity to do and be more, that the actual does not exhaust the potential, and that this is universally the case for all people. This raises a question, though, about what is to be made of the figure of the militant researcher and the practice of militant research. If everyone is capable of militant research then the militant researcher, like the organizer, is only a temporary role, and one that is not monopolizable. Indeed, one who occupies that role should aim at the opposite of monopoly, at collectivization. It could be thought that the militant researcher is someone who uses and produces tools for a toolbox called militant research. She does so in a way that almost everyone always already does, but with the addition of doing so deliberately, with a tactical or strategic eye. She uses that eye in conjunction with others in attempt to do three things: to look at practices that are already happening in order to circulate them to others to experiment with, to collectively develop new practices, and to encourage others to use and produce new tools of militant research as they find it useful.

5. There is an important problematic for those of us who are employed - taking refuge, perhaps, and in some cases maybe trapped - within universities and other institutions, about what use we can and should seek to make of militant research. None of us are, of course, reducible to our institutional relationships or positions, but nor should we be overly certain that institutions don’t introduce certain biases or other problematic elements into our thought and, in some cases, practices of militant research. This is even more the case if we are trying to make militant research functional to our jobs and careers. I alluded to this earlier in my brief discussion on militant vs politically interested research. The university will not be, for many militancies, entirely compatible, and in some cases, not compatible at all, with the aspirations and plans of the militancy. I will call the many militancies which are not entirely compatible with the aims and procedures of those who set the terms of the university as an institution by the term “university incompatible militancies.” One example would be research into how students can get good grades while doing as little work as possible, or how university staff can best undermine the power of their employing university.

Given that the criterion of assessment of any militant research is internal to some militancy, a university researcher, qua university researcher, will be incapable of consistently carrying out university incompatible militant research. The person may do this activity outside the university, or may try to pass this activity off as university research, of course. I would like to suggest that the orientation between activity within the university and militant research, from the perspective of university incompatible militant research, should be one of strategic distance. This means essentially maintaining the internal nature of the criterion of assessment. Strategic distance does not foreclose the possibility of tactical engagement. There may be much to be gained by a relationship with people and access to resources within the university. From the perspective of the university researcher, the relationship to militant research should be one of fallible aspiration. We should seek to make our activity as useful as possible to militant research, without being too sure whether we’ve succeeded. This fallible aspiration also means taking a risk of a double failure: university research that aims to be militant research may well fail to meet standards within the university, particularly if it is bound up with a university incompatible research militancy. University research that aims to be militant research may also fail when judged by the criterion internal to a militancy, since university research at least some of the time must meet standards within the university. Individuals and groups of people in the university must navigate all of this, and much of the time this will mean our activity qua university activity will not be militant research so much as politically interested research, if that. This is, again, not intended to carry any value judgment, but it is a statement of what the situation is for those working in the university. It is in many respects simply a statement of the dilemma posed by anyone who attempts to make their waged labor functional not solely for the production of surplus value.

This is the end of my prepared remarks. Thank you for your time and attention. I would be happy to discuss more substantive matters of our common and divergent political positions and militant research in relation to these. I have also prepared a short selected bibliography on militant research, including work by some current militant research collectives.

* * *

Draft bibliography
Selection of works on militant research

This list is of course not exhaustive. It’s divided into three general categories: inquiries, matrices, and supplements. Inquiries are actual cases of militant research. Matrices are pieces on militant research - histories and theories of. Supplements are historical and philosophical works which can inform or orient militant research. Some works overlap these categories or contain multiple materials across these categories. These works are listed under only one of the categories they fit under. I have only included works in English here. People interested in works in Spanish and Italian can contact me by email.

Inquiries

Emma Dowling, “Formulating New Social Subjects? An Inquiry Into the Realities of an Affective Worker”
http://www.geocities.com/immateriallabour/dowlingpaper2006.html

Robert Foltin, “Resistance and Organization in Postfordism”
http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0406/foltin/en

Martin Glaberman, Punching Out

Dave Graham, “Mersey Docks Dispute”
http://libcom.org/library/mersey-docks-dispute-dave-graham

The Johnson-Forest Tendency, “The American Worker” (Sadly out of print and hard to find.)

Kolinko, Hotlines
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/kolinko/lebuk/e_lebuk.htm

Riff Raff, “Hamburgers vs Value”
http://www.riff-raff.se/en/3-4/burgers_vs_value.php

Stan Weir, Singlejack Solidarity

Wildcat, “Class Struggle in a German Town”,
http://libcom.org/library/class-struggle-german-town-wildkat

Matrices
Colectivo Situaciones, “Further Comments on Research Militancy”
http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/5-4/5-4index.htm

Ed Emery, “No Politics Without Inquiry!”
http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/material/cs18inqu.htm

Hagen, “Notes for the configuration of a trans-european site for the comunication and cooperative research on precariousness, creation of subjectivity and new conflicts”
http://thistuesday.org/node/119

David Graeber and Stevphen Shukaitis (eds), Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization

Kolinko, “Class Composition”
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/kolinko/engl/e_klazu.htm

Marta Malo, “Common Notions: Workers’ inquiry, Co-research, Consciousness Raising”
http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0406/malo/en

Marx, Workers’ Inquiry
http://www.ex.ac.uk/Projects/meia/Archive/1880-AWI/

Antonio Negri, “Logic and Theory of Inquiry”
http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0406/negri/en

Raniero Panzieri, “Socialist Uses of Workers’ Inquiry”
http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0406/panzieri/en

Precarias a la Deriva, “First Stutterings”
http://www.sindominio.net/karakola/precarias/balbuceos-english.htm

Precarity Map’s list of militant research collectives
http://www.precarity-map.net/wiki/index.php/Category:Militant_research_group

Gigi Roggero, “Brief relation about meaning, methods and examples of militant investigation and co-research as political action”
http://www.precarity-map.net/coresearch_method.html

Riff-Raff, “Call Centers and Militant Inquiries”
http://www.riff-raff.se/en/6/callcenters_en.php

Team Colors, Militant Research Collective
http://teamcolors.blogspot.com/

Javier Toret and Nicolas Sguiglia, “Mapmaking Excess”
http://observatorio.fadaiat.net/tiki-index.php?page=Mapmaking+excess.+Labour+and+frontier%2C+by+the+movement%E2%80%99s+paths

Supplements

Alain Badiou, Metapolitics

Franco Berardi, “Social Entropy and Recombination”
http://www.generation-online.org/t/socialentropy.htm

Sergio Bologna, “The Tribe of Moles,”
http://www.geocities.com/Cordobakaf/moles.html

Sergio Bologna, “Class Composition and the Theory of the Party at the Origins of the Workers’ Council Movement,”
http://www.geocities.com/Cordobakaf/bologna.html

Sergio Bologna, “The Factory-Society Relationship as an Historical Category”
http://www.jayul.net/linkfile/doc/THE%20FACTORY-SOCIETY%20RELATIONSHIP%20AS%20AN%20HISTORICAL%20CATEGORY.htm

Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically

Engels, The Conditions of the Working Class in England

Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodríguez, “Translating Positionality”
http://translate.eipcp.net/transversal/0606/gutierrez-rodriguez/en

Mao, Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan

Mao, Oppose Book Worship

Jacques Ranciere, The Ignorant Schoolmaster

Jacques Ranciere, Nights of Labor

Beverly Silver, Forces of Labor

E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class

WIldcat, “The Renaissance of Operaismo”
Part One - http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/64_65/w64opera_en.htm
Part Two - http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/66/w66e_ope.htm

Steve Wright, “I Get Knocked Down, But I Get Up Again?”
http://stateofemergency.nomasters.org/reader/classcomp.html

Steve Wright, Storming Heaven