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ON LIVING IN A GREY ZONE

March 15, 2023 by philco

This text is an introduction to  Waypoints Volume 2 ,  a new collection of occasional writings  from the last five years  to be published  in June by eyeglass books.

The book brings together pieces written over the past five years and thus spans the period  from before the pandemic to its long  aftermath. They are occasional in that they were prompted  by particular circumstances, both personal and political , as well as by actual  commissions. In another sense of the word they were produced in  intermittent moments of inspiration or, more likely, exasperation rather than  forming part of a single developing  line of thought.  These writings  are  thus  happily circumscribed by the time and place of their creation,  specific circumstances which are  briefly spelt out  in the introduction to each piece.  Consequently   I have not attempted to update the  argument   with the wisdom of hindsight. I have however redacted some of the more topical references and added some of more contemporary relevance. 

In selecting and bringing these scattered pieces together for re-publication   I have also become aware of an emergent set of connections, a network of threads of which I was largely unaware at the time of original writing. At one level this is more about   stylistic attitude than any  substantive theme. Whatever the topic at hand  there was a drive to do full justice to its complexity and to avoid  foreclosing its interpretation through falling back on  dogmatic modes of thinking.  Nor did I just want to  document  the ‘over determination’ or ‘multiple entanglements’ ( to use a more current  academic  buzz word ) of the phenomenon in order to vacillate over its meaning . It still seemed necessary to make some kind of judgement, to take sides in the debate even while questioning some of its terms . In particular it seemed important  to distance the argument from  the  thumbs up/thumbs down judgementalism   promoted by the twitterati on social media , and the ‘if you are not with us , you are against us ‘ kneejerk reactivism still current on the sectarian Left. 

Subsequently it  occurred to me that  the attendant  dilemma , namely how far to carry the account in the direction of some kindof  recognisable   parti pris –  with all the associated risks of confirmation bias-  is  one that is  generic  to living in what has been called the grey zone . By this term I  have come to mean  those widening  arenas of public discourse and private anxiety  where received certainties anchored to inherited perceptions of social or ideological polarity  no longer have so  much  traction  in shaping commitments or actions , even though the inequalities and  injustices which  subtend them  continue to multiply, intensify and  intersect , albeit in often new and  unfamiliar  forms.

As someone who has been a committed Groucho Marxist for many years, never joining  a club which would have me as a member, whilst being a conscientious fellow traveller in numerous radical Left wing causes, I have  come to feel quite at home in this grey zone, but in putting this text together I have begun  to realise that it  is  no longer a  creatively habitable space , if it ever was.  Each of the texts in its way is a  groping after some alternative space  of  commitment.        

Taking sides while being in two minds

What does it mean today to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them?. Contemporary audiences, schooled in the neo-liberal catechisms of possessive individualism,   tend to be impatient with Hamlet’s vacillation and the kinds of ambivalence which immobilises him. Why doesn’t he just re-invent himself and move on ? However as soon as we   go  beyond existential angst at the state of the world, and try  to do something concretely about it, we often find  ourselves in a   space where things are more complicated  than simple  binary oppositions : to be or not to be on the right-or left – side of history.

For example, It is easy enough , especially for those on the ‘Left’,  to  enumerate our current political  afflictions : the climate emergency, the geopolitical drift to a new world war,  the obscene concentrations of wealth and power, sexism, racism,   etc etc.. And  to take sides, if not arms ,  against them. But  not only is it increasingly hard to stay with these troubles without feeling overwhelmed by the sheer weight  of their concatenation , it is  even more difficult   to  sustain  forms of collective opposition which stand a  realistic chance of ending them. We can all be rhetorically  on the side of the people of Ukraine in their heroic resistance  against Putin’s villainous attempt to annex their country  as part of a new Russian Empire. But does anyone really have a clue about what can be done to bring the war to a just conclusion ?  Almost everyone is nominally enrolled  in the fight  against global heating , but most of us are heavily addicted to patterns of consumption which accelerate it. We may be ‘anti-capitalist’ but unless we live off grid  and without using  our digital devices, we are  involuntarily  implicated  in the commodification of data which fuels platform capitalism’s  dynamic growth.

In  the new uncertainty principles  which currently govern historical outcomes , it is not just that  actions undertaken in good faith may have unintended and negative  consequences ( or none at all!) but  that this opens up a frame of reference in which those acting in bad faith can  blur crucial distinctions, viz between what is progressive and what is reactionary, what is in the  best interests of the many and what serves to legitimate the privileges of the few , what is  a moral and what  an immoral economy.

 When  such demarcations are no longer being clearly  articulated  in everyday political discourse and are instead replaced by euphemisms, equivocations, or  disavowals,  a vacuum opens up which is increasingly filled by  free floating denunciatory rhetorics, often with  a populist slant .  Against this backdrop the  current proliferation of conspiracy theories can be regarded as an understandable if   delusional attempt to reinstate  Manichean  moral    distinctions as vectors of  social and ideological polarity  :  to feel emboldened  to call a spade a spade if only  because it is being manipulated by a ‘hidden hand’. 

A somewhat similar perverse  logic can be found at work  in the black and white  victimologies created by the more toxic and authoritarian  brands of identity politics.  In  reducing the fluidity of social identifications to the interplay of  fixed  moral  categories  viz  women /gay/ black people – good ;  male/ heteronormative/white people-  bad , this world turned upside down tends to reproduce, even as it reverses  the binaries  of discrimination;  this flip side is, in turn,  used by hostile campaigns  to invalidate  demands for social justice . Just how difficult it is to escape this double bind  is dramatically illustrated by those who adopt a non-binary gender identity, only to discover they have inadvertently created a new one in the opposition between ‘trans’ and ‘Cis’. 

When we move from the front lines to the backyards of social conflict we often find ourselves trapped in a rather different kind of binarism , damned if we do and damned if we don’t .  In such routine quandaries it is easy to forget that to be in  two minds  is actually a quite normal state of affairs and reflects a  simple neurological fact : the operation of the limbic system  is intimately entangled with  that of the pre-frontal cortex;  it is literally  a no brainer to recognise that  our emotional and  rational impulses, the expressive and  instrumental dimensions of our  interaction with the material world , are intimately connected ,  and  continually and contingently generate  states of cognitive dissonance  or  feelings of ambivalence whenever they are simultaneously mobilised.

In one sense we are all potentially double agents, working on both sides of whatever  lines are drawn in the shifting sands of our times. According to  circumstances ( over which we may have little or no control) we may be capable of  acting  generously or meanly ,behave with  kindness or cruelty,  display bravery or cowardice. If ‘being in two  minds ‘ persists as a description of  our ambivalence  , then in my view it is not    because of some  principle of undecidability  built into the very fabric of  human existence  (to be  or not to be)    or  because  there are so many states of affairs   which are  equally probable and improbable at the same time ,  and, from another standpoint, neither possible nor impossible .  I think we remain trapped in two minds because of the  widening gap between what is desirable and what is achievable  in terms of political and personal outcomes .

In the past  it  was possible to sit on the ideological  fence with at least a semblance of equilibrium, whether in the name of ‘objectivity’ ‘ neutrality’ or ‘seeing both sides of the argument’, or even by saying  ‘a plague on both your houses’ . Today in many contexts that notional ‘third space’ is not a credible option. Who apart from climate deniers can in all honesty  assert that there are two sides to the argument about climate change when the science is so overwhelmingly on the side of acknowledging  the damage caused by fossil fuels?  

If mass  indecision  persists in the face of such certainties   it is not just down to  apathy , resignation    or whatever of the hundreds of good  and  bad reasons people may have for doing nothing.  It is  because  political decisions  always imply  a leap into the unknown  and the more these unknowns are known about , the more frightened people become and the greater the urge to foreclose on the painful process needed to address them.  Easier to believe that God or Gaia is punishing us for mismanaging the planets resources, than to do anything to mitigate the  crisis of global heating.

Under our present conditions of radical  un/certainty  , there can never be any guarantees that we are embarked on the right course of action. Which is why  of course we invent fictional ones.   That is the work that ideologies do , especially those  that give a   teleological twist to the tall stories they tell  : they replace debilitating fears of the unknown with motivational  faith in  re-assuring futures.   By no coincidence the most popular (and populist) versions of these grand narratives  answer to a widespread but   disavowed desire to have our cake and eat it, to magically close the gap between what is desirable and what is achievable.  Nevertheless that gap or grey zone persists and continues to overshadow even the most resolute and self confident programmes of action.

Contradictory locations

We use the  term ‘grey zone’ to describe  issues  in which there are no clear cut ‘black and white’ solutions    or where our  moral  and political  vocabulary does not adequately capture their complexity.  But what about  situations  that have not just to  do with subject positions but  structural locations over which people have little or  no choice and control?   

The term grey  zone was originally made famous by  Primo Levi  in his 1971   essay  about the culture of Nazi concentration  camps. The essay   argued that it was in the character  of coercive regimes to not only  brutalise those subjected to them through direct violence, torture  and terror  but by  enabling  some of the  victims to collaborate and even identify with their oppressors. This  could involve carrying out   beatings and other punishments , or routine administrative tasks which kept the machinery .of oppression going .  Whether those who were recruited for such roles did so to secure  minimal privileges for themselves or in the belief that they could mitigate  some of the regime’s  worst effect on fellow inmates, Levi argued that their ambiguous status , as at once perpetrator and victim of institutionalised violence  did not absolve them from judgement..

Levi’s  model of the grey zone  serves  to complicate unilateral models  of domination and subordination and to highlight the complex inter-personal  relations  which mediate them. His  analysis has subsequently been applied to the culture of Soviet Gulags, to  slave plantations ,  to contemporary  penitentiaries and to the position of overseers and foremen  in large  industrial  factories and logistics centres. Even to the prefect system in English public schools.

One of the more transferable aspects of his  concept comes from  its highlighting  the way  State actors i.e. those officially  appointed and employed by the State  to prosecute oppressive policies , often make use of unofficial or non- State proxies  to carry out some of their dirty work for them. This has led to  a more recent adoption of the term  by military strategists  and political scientists to denote situations of armed conflict which are neither all out war  nor  secure peace, but where  a range of actors , both  civilian  and military, irregular militias, ‘special forces’ etc  , operate clandestinely to conduct  what is called ‘hybrid’ or  ‘asymmetrical ‘operations. This euphemism refers to a range of tactics designed to  weaponise social and ethnic divisions,    undermine the morale of the local population  , and destabilise existing forms of democratic governance.  The Russian Federation’s operations in the Ukraine, notably Crimea and the Donbas prior to the invasion of  2022  are often cited as a prime   example of this approach.

As a result of this expanded  take up , the definition of ‘grey zone’, the limits and conditions of its appropriate usage , has itself become a site  of  ambiguity  and contestation. Clearly a term which can be  applied equally to Kapo’s in Auschwitz beating fellow inmates to death  and to public school prefects beating a ‘fag’ for failing to polish their  shoes,   to  guerrilla campaigns to protect  indigenous communities against land grabs by logging companies  and to  cyber attacks on government information infrastructures,  or to the role of  Wagner group mercenaries in Ukraine   and to volunteer civil  militias mustered to defend their homes against  such attacks,  this   diverse usage  offers a hostage to fortune. It  risks conflating a whole lot of disparate  situations   reducing them to a lowest common denominator of being ‘borderline’ in a way that tacitly erases key moral and strategic  distinctions  that need to be made.

 Perhaps then we need to find another term to define the position of those who find themselves caught up and made complicit in the most egregious examples of human rights abuse. We might call  them anthropocidal exterminators in so far as  the effect of their actions or inactions, whether intended or not,  is to help  systematically destroy the grounds of human  solidarity.  In contrast we might  reserve the term   ‘grey zoners’  for those trapped in   contradictory subject  positions  as a result  of  unregulated  interventions by  the State into the life of  civil society, operations  which aim to identify, isolate and ‘pacify’ groups regarded as an ‘enemy within’  through a   mixture of legal and extra-legal means.

Such interventions  have  been greatly facilitated by the development of new technologies of mass  surveillance which have  enabled practices  previously confined to military operations  to be  routinely embedded in  the policing  and governance of whole populations  of citizenry ‘for their own protection and good’.  So we have  declared wars against poverty,  crime and drugs which have the undeclared objective of criminalising , demonising   and incarcerating  various kinds of ‘dangerous class’   . Paradoxically the use of such illiberal measures  by  liberal democracies has only been achieved by  winning the active consent  of a substantial number of those who are potentially their target as well as drawing in and implicating a whole lot of otherwise ‘liberal’  actors  in their administration  : for  example  doctors and teachers become  unpaid ‘border guards’  reporting on the  behaviour or  attitudes of immigrants regarded by the authorities as potentially forming a fifth column  threatening ‘homeland security’ .   

 The structure of the book

This is  the context which tacitly informs   the  studies which make up this book. In different ways they explore  the collateral damage caused by the collapse of the institutions and discourses which hitherto sustained principles of hope, if not certainty , in the advent of a better, more generous world   for the many, and  not just the few .

Each of the five sections  focusses on  a specific grey zone: knowledge power relations in the neo- liberal university  and the changing  role of intellectuals; class dis/identifications  and the  principles of hope historically associated with the Left ;  urban regeneration as a site of private  aspiration and public disenchantment ; the body politics of ‘race’ and the Covid 19 pandemic  ; the traumatic impact of war  on  civil society, its art and cultural memoryscape.        

I hope that taken together these studies may offer what I have called a Left Field perspective on our present conjuncture, the aim being to stay  as  alert to  new and surprising possibilities for democratic renewal and change  as to  the all too familiar structures which inhibit,  pre-empt or corrupt their emergence.  As this disunited island continues to struggle to find a coherent post-Imperial role for itself under an increasingly chaotic, right wing government, we need to challenge     nostalgia for a  future  that is guaranteed to  come to pass  as vigorously as the longing to return to a past that never was.

My  personal stake in this work was suggested by a dream I had as the book was nearing completion. I will leave  readers  to draw their own conclusions:

I am visiting a  strange kind of theme park . At the entrance there is a gateway which reminds me of Auschwitz  with a sign above reading WELCOME TO THE GREY ZONE  Inside , instead of rides  there are  cages with people dressed as clowns and animals working on ‘Heath Robinson’ looking machines  The machines  produce  excrement in little heaps. Each heap is  very smelly and crawling with larvae which turn into grey butterflies. The  child visitors chase them with nets and when they catch some they hand them in at a kiosk  which issues   them with liquorice sticks in exchange. Everywhere you look there are kids  running around with  liquorice smeared all over their faces . The liquorice has a powerful scent which masks the smell of the poo. The words ‘Perfumed  Putrefaction’ come to mind  Then  I pass by  a carnival  parade with characters from the mediaeval ‘monstrous races’ : there is one with two heads, another with a head on his chest, yet a third with a dog face. The parade is being policed by guards dressed in grey pyjamas, reminding me of the inmates of   the camps. From time to time they  perform cartwheels while  the watching crowd  applaud enthusiastically and   give the Sig Heil salute.   I turn my back on the scene and  walk towards a tower  made out of books . The books face outwards so you can turn the pages and read them. I start reading a book about   ‘Grey Zones’ which turns out to be by me  but the wind gets up and blows the pages all over the place. I run after them and try to gather them up but it starts to rain and I am left with just a few soggy pages in my hands..

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ON LIVING IN A GREY ZONE

This text is an introduction to  Waypoints Volume 2 ,  a new collection of occasional writings  from the last five years  to be … [Read More...] about ON LIVING IN A GREY ZONE

The Map, the Territory and the Fog of War

This is an edited version of a talk given to the opening session of ‘Cartography on the Front Line’ seminar series, at the British Library on October … [Read More...] about The Map, the Territory and the Fog of War

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