The Acephalous Analysis of Spate Heech, or, What I did with my weekend...

Having invested more time this weekend engaging in the discussion over on Scott Eric Kaufman's blog than in what I should have been doing (reading this, this, this, or the introduction to this) and in hopes that the discussion won't quite end or be pushed out of sight by Scott's prolificacy, I've pasted below my last comment in response to Scott's post about Dave Lenihan's firing by station director Tim Dorsey last week. Follow the link for details about what precipitated the station director's action and to see what has been called by an authoritative and unbiased source, "the Greatest Comment Thread Ever (Acephalous Category)."

It may also be of interest to know that N.Pepperell of Roughtheory.org, the "N.P." whom I invoke below, has taken the analysis over there, concluding (sensibly, to my mind) that the response to this event "does, though, sound a precautionary note on the need for theory (social and psychological) to take seriously both the reality of conscious intentions and the potential for non-conscious patterns, rather than reducing one of these phenomena to the level of appearance, in some sort of essence-appearance dichotomy."

Of course, we're all still anxiously awaiting the Acephalous "response to the 'Scott really does believe in the unconscious' discussion."

My (final) comment follows:

Having let the discussion flag (it's basically my turn to respond, right?), I feel derelict (but maybe everyone else is done with this; but if so, that will become clear soon enough), so I'm taking a few minutes away from grading to reply to some of the issues raised above. Since I need to finish grading, I'm afraid this won't be nearly as thorough or plain a comment as I'd like (and I really am liking the discussion). Anyway...

N.P.: "My only question was a very narrow one, which related to the issue of self-contradiction - again, it's probably only my groggy pre-coffee self, but I don't see that specific phenomenon..."

Fair enough. I didn't mean to invoke "self-contradiction," though perhaps my invocation of the "ironic" suggested -- or indeed was -- a milder way of crying foul, but I realize (as you [NP] & Scott have pointed out) that it wasn't Scott's irony or contradiction or self-contradiction. Hence, you're absolutely right -- about the lack of a contradiction. Perhaps not about the lack of an unconscious in general.

But to address that point, I'll have to acknowledge that Scott is both right and wrong to say that I'm assuming psychoanalytical premises and then recapitulating them to "prove" psychoanalysis -- so that my "premises assume the validity of [my] conclusion." He's right that I think the "slip" reveals a racism. He's not right that I think the slip proves racism. In fact, I'm not trying to prove Lenihan's racism from the utterance, which is why I referred to it as (part of) a structural racism earlier.

I do assume racism because (I'm being overtly structuralist here) I see racism and I see a structure of racism, and I assume that even those of us who want to be anti-racist can't help but depend upon racism -- specifically racialism -- to "fight the good fight" or even to point out how fighting the good fight is nothing more than a new form of racism itself. Even my description of the characters of "Black. White." above ("Bruno, the "white" guy "passing" as “black,") does nothing if not depend upon racialist characterizations of difference; even my scare quotes can't undo this fact. And while I understand the distinction between racism and racialism, I don't think I agree with Appiah that "Racialism is not, in itself, a doctrine that must be dangerous, even if the racial essence is thought to entail moral and intellectual dispositions." I think in practice (or, as it really exists), racialism always either leads to or enables racism.

So what I have meant to suggest is that Lenihan must be a racist -- as is every subject who operates in the structure of this historical moment -- but not that he must be an egregious example of a racist (all racism is, after all, not equal), nor that he deserved to be fired. His firing may have indeed been the result of his calling attention to the structure of racism that persists ("There is enough hate. We certainly are not going to fan those flames…."), so that when Dorsey claims "That is not what we're about," he in fact reveals that the only way to conceal that that is by all means precisely what they (and we) are about is by firing Lenihan under the cover of the assertion "That is not what we're about."

I have also assumed that psychoanalysis is valid -- and is a valid way of uncovering the workings of racism (though, again, not of proving racism). I have not meant to prove the validity of psychoanalysis (even if I have suggested there's proof in the existence of "evidence for the unconscious"), but I have (perhaps) assumed that the validity is underscored by the effectiveness of our (maybe just my) use of psychoanalysis on this particular event. Perhaps this latter is not a fair assumption.

But this gets me to the question of "Why Nietzsche? Which leads to: Why Butler? Why Derrida?" Precisely because I have meant to suggest that if there is justice in Lenihan's firing it arises not out of recognition of the racist intent, but out of the inability to tolerate the racist effect of his "slip." Because ultimately, regardless of whether "coon" was an amalgamation of "boon" and "coup" or just an anxiety-produced act that counteracted exactly what the speaker intended not to do, the effect was: it was undoubtedly heard as racist, as offensive to some, and as reinstating racist associations and identifications for everyone, especially those who "just thought it was funny." Butler's book that I cite, Excitable Speech, attends to these very issues, and that's why I found it appropriate to discuss her (or to let her help me discuss). I mean, Lenihan's "coon" is a citation, even if it isn't a selective citation (a selection by "him"), and as such, we would do well to think about how the iterability of this epithet indicates a structure and how it reinstates a structure, not just about whether the subject Lenihan's unconscious revealed a deep-seated but only subjective racism.

ACEPHALOUS SOCIETY

ACEPHALOUS SOCIETY

Acephalous literally means ‘headless,’ that is, the society is without any formalized or institutionalized system of power and authority. Collective decisions are made in a variety of ways, including informal community gatherings.

Related to acephalous concept are monocephalous (one leader, as in a monarchy or modern state) and polycephalous (many leaders, where the society operates as a number of independent units, each having a leader but all representing the society as a whole).

Many anarchist and libertarian socialist societies that have abolished social inequality are also considered acephalous.

Certain nomadic societies are also distinguished as acephalous societies.

The non-stratified organization of society of indigenous peoples - - Indigenous Peoples in Asia - by Gerald Faschingeder.

Although some of these peoples today consist of some million members, indigenous peoples usually are smaller groups that count no more than some hundred thousand members. Many peoples are acephalous societies, so to say "politically headless", which does not mean that there is a lack of political concepts, but that they do not know a highest leading person. Rather, they are segmentarily organized, i.e. they consist of several similar parts or "segments" that are equal in rank, and these segments may subdivide into sub-segments of various sizes (e.g. peoples in "brotherhoods", subdivided in clans, subdivided in families). So, these societies are not disorganized or without structures, as the former term "primitives" implied.
Of course, they know social differentiation and hierarchies, but nevertheless, there is less division of labor to be found than in non-indigenous societies.

Although the acephalous or segmentary organization cannot be presented as universal principle of all indigenous societies, this comment indicates why most of the indigenous societies were not and are not easily compatible with non-indigenous ones.

Indigenous societies do have specific cultural characteristics, but their common features cannot be reduced to a single criterion. René Kuppe, for example, mentions three central points of this topic: "a close relationship between these societies and their lebensraum, a lack of organization as state and social stratification (from the point of view of western sociology), and the dealing with conflicts within a society that is not based on institutional force by the state