{"id":4901,"date":"2019-06-26T13:35:04","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T17:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/?p=4901"},"modified":"2019-06-26T13:35:04","modified_gmt":"2019-06-26T17:35:04","slug":"jeff-stein-the-online-space-of-praxis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/jeff-stein-the-online-space-of-praxis\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Stein | The Online Space of Praxis"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Stein<\/strong><\/p>\n

In earlier writings for this seminar, I have claimed that left projects may be, at best, distorted and stunted by the currently unhealthy speech environment and, at worst, overwhelmed by pathologies that metastasize under current conditions.\u00a0 Assuming these claims are true, I argue in this post that at least one form of critical praxis should be the creation of the conditions for recursive publics where communicative action might flourish.\u00a0 Notwithstanding some of the uncharted aspects of operation of recursive publics, today\u2019s speech environment is undoubtedly a \u201cspace at risk.\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Thus, our critical praxis must focus on the development of a more egalitarian speech environment, which necessitates more egalitarian communication architectures.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Ideal of Communicative Action and a Healthy Public Sphere<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    To guide my imagination of a healthier speech environment, I turn to the theories developed by J\u00fcrgen Habermas, particularly his Theory of Communicative Action<\/em>.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 For Habermas, the \u201cinherent telos\u201d of communication is mutual understanding;[3]<\/a> thus, Habermas distinguishes \u201ccommunicative action\u201d (speech acts oriented towards mutual understanding) with \u201cstrategic action\u201d (coordination that is \u201cdependent on the influence<\/em>\u2014functioning via non-linguistic activities\u2014exerted by the actors on the action situation and on each other\u201d).[4]<\/a>\u00a0 As philosopher Joseph Heath explains: \u201cThe point [of the theory of communicative action] is not to deny that speech acts can be performed with the intention to mislead or confuse, but rather to affirm that an orientation toward mutual understanding is an enabling precondition of communication systems in general.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Moreover, communicative action is, in Habermas\u2019s telling, a building block of \u201cthe public sphere,\u201d which itself acts as a \u201cnetwork for communicating information and points of view,\u201d filtering and synthesizing streams of communication into \u201ctopically specified public<\/em> opinions.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 The \u201ccommunication structure\u201d that facilitates the public sphere must itself reflect the inherent telos of communication, enabling participants in the public sphere to engage in coordinating speech acts free of coercion, constraints, and (self-)deception.\u00a0 Indeed, Habermas notes, \u201cstructures of a power-ridden, oppressed public sphere exclude fruitful and clarifying discussions,\u201d thus undermining the legitimacy of the resulting public opinion.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 Instead, \u201c[b]efore it can be captured by actors with strategic intent, the public sphere together with its public must have developed as a structure that stands on its own and reproduces itself out of itself<\/em>.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

    While this last observation in particular\u2014emphasizing a habitually regenerative and democratic vision for modifying and maintaining the structures<\/em> of communication\u2014helps us imagine the types of healthier ecologies that could promote mutual understanding and legitimate will-formation, the Habermasian view has been criticized.\u00a0 For example, Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau argue that \u201cthe inadequacy of the Habermasian approach is [revealed] by problematizing the very possibility of the notion of the \u2018ideal speech situation\u2019 conceived as the asymptotic ideal of intersubjective communication free of constraints, where the participants arrive at consensus by means of rational argument.\u201d[9]<\/a>\u00a0 Mouffe, for her part, adopts a \u201cLacanian approach\u201d to argue that \u201cdiscourse itself in its fundamental structure is authoritarian since out of the free-floating dispersion of signifiers, it is only through the invention of a master signifier that a consistent field of meaning can emerge.\u201d[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Aside from my larger skepticism about Mouffe\u2019s hegemonic project\u2014which seeks to place power and antagonism at the center of democratic politics\u2014I think that this view underestimates the ability of collectives to democratically invent and re-invent structures with morphing \u201cmaster signifiers\u201d; indeed, \u201cthe [development of the] Internet itself, as well as its associated tools and structures,\u201d rebut Mouffe\u2019s assumptions about the fundamental nature of communication structures.[11]<\/a>\u00a0 A more productive critique\u2014and one that ultimately supports the Habermasian vision of the public sphere as critical to democratic legitimation\u2014comes from Professor Nancy Fraser, who offers (amongst others) two important observations about the shortcomings of Habermas\u2019s original formulation: (1) his \u201cassumption that it is possible for interlocuters in a public sphere to bracket status differentials and to deliberate \u2018as if\u2019 they were social equals;\u201d and (2) his \u201cassumption that the proliferation of a multiplicity of competing publics is necessarily a step away from, rather than toward, greater democracy.\u201d[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    On the first point, Fraser is right to note that \u201cit would be more appropriate to unbracket inequalities in the sense of expressly thematizing them\u2014a point that accords with the spirit of Habermas\u2019s later \u2018communicative ethics.\u2019\u201d[13]<\/a>\u00a0 And on the second point, Fraser aptly describes the importance of \u201ca plurality of competing publics\u201d in a stratified society, given that dominant members of society will likely act to subordinate oppressed minorities in a \u201csingle, comprehensive public sphere.\u201d[14]<\/a>\u00a0 Thus, Fraser advocates for the creation of subaltern counterpublics<\/em>, which \u201csignal that they are parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses.\u201d[15]<\/a>\u00a0 As we will see, these crucial addenda to Habermas\u2019s theoretical framework can inform our imaginary of recursive publics, which in turn might provide a theoretical framework for fostering communicative action.[16]<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Recursive Publics and Lessons from the Early Internet<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

      If a modified version of Habermas\u2019s theory\u2014one that deliberately centers substantive equality and the expressive freedom of oppressed minorities\u2014provides a useful framework, how might we operationalize its tenets through critical praxis?\u00a0 One way forward might be the deliberate development of \u201crecursive publics,\u201d a concept crystallized by Professor Christopher Kelty to describe features of early Internet communications architecture.\u00a0 For Kelty, a \u201crecursive public\u201d is \u201ca public that is vitally concerned with the material and practical maintenance and modification of the technical, legal, practical, and conceptual means of its own existence as a public; it is a collective independent of other forms of constituted power and is capable of speaking to existing forms of power through the production of actually existing alternatives.\u201d[17]<\/a>\u00a0 In other words, the shared project of the public\u2019s participants is expressed through processes for modifying, moderating, and controlling not only the substance of communication but the architecture of the space in which the communication takes place.\u00a0 \u201cFree\u201d software is a paradigmatic example of a recursive public, as free software necessarily includes the \u201cfreedom to modify the program to suit [one\u2019s] needs,\u201d which in turn necessitates \u201caccess to the source code.\u201d[18]<\/a>\u00a0 Kelty\u2019s naming of recursive publics, however, stemmed not only from a desire to describe systems qua<\/em> public spaces, but also out of a desire to describe the values that these infrastructures inculcate in participants:<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      People\u2014even (or, perhaps, especially) those who do not consider themselves programmers, hackers, geeks, or technophiles\u2014come out of the experience [of participating in recursive publics] with something like religion, because Free Software is all about the practices<\/em> \u2026 It is a practice of working through the promises of equality<\/em>, fairness<\/em>, justice<\/em>, reason<\/em>, and argument<\/em> in a domain of technically complex software and networks\u2026\u201d[19]<\/a><\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      In short, Kelty describes spaces that democratically and iteratively modify themselves in pursuit of an ideal speech situation.\u00a0 Moreover, the idea of \u201crecursion\u201d is especially provocative, as it does more work than simply describing the processes that allow participants to modify architecture and outputs; in fact, it gestures at continual critique expressed through practice.\u00a0 As Benthall notes, recursion should be understood as including \u201cthe drive to extend [the public\u2019s] logic \u2026 If standards are open, then the source code should be next. If the source code is open, then the hardware is next. If the companies aren\u2019t open, then they\u2019re next.\u201d[20]<\/a>\u00a0 Seen this way, participation in the recursive public demands<\/em> critical praxis.<\/p>\n

      This critical praxis, Professor Yochai Benkler suggests, can be guided by the design choices of the early Internet.\u00a0 In the beginning, Benkler notes, the Internet was \u201cbiased in favor of decentralization of power and freedom to act,\u201d featuring \u201can integrated system of open systems.\u201d[21]<\/a> \u00a0Notably, for our purposes, the early Internet was \u201cdesigned to resist the application of power from any centralized authority;\u201d[22]<\/a> thus, the pathologies that currently arise (due to privatized bottlenecks, hegemonic platforms, and subsequent circulation of communication through oligarchic mass media) were unable to pervade the freer, decentralized ecology.[23]<\/a>\u00a0 But according to Benkler, all of this has changed with the rise of centralizing forces, like the domination of Apple\u2019s iOS app store model, and the use of mobile cellular networks as the primary physical infrastructure of Internet access (thus allowing ISPs to move Internet design towards the highly mediated telephonic communication model and further away from the decentralized early Internet).[24]<\/a>\u00a0 Given these architectural shifts, Benkler argues that future Internet design should include user-owned platforms: spaces that are \u201cself-organized, distributed, discursive arrangements independent of market, state, or other well-behaved sources of accreditation or empowerment.\u201d[25]<\/a><\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      The concept of recursive publics, then, might do real work in guiding our critical praxis moving forward.\u00a0 Creating the conditions for these spaces\u2014which would not only give participants the ability to collectively address pathologies but could also spread egalitarian values\u2014should be prioritized.\u00a0 There are, of course, major hurdles.\u00a0 One is a matter of education: distribution of knowledge to participate in all of the processes of recursive publics.\u00a0 Another is the distribution of individual access to technological tools to enable such participation.\u00a0 Yet another will involve hard questions about how recursive publics relate to each other in a decentralized communications ecology.\u00a0 Further, each recursive public\u2014including those conceived of as counterpublics where subordinated social groups might flourish\u2014will struggle to (or decide whether to) define the \u201cboundaries of the demos.\u201d[26]<\/a><\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      These conceptual and practical challenges, important as they are, should not discourage a critical praxis focused on overhauling communications architecture.\u00a0 In fact, many left projects\u2014from Butler\u2019s emphasis on the performative promise of the assembly to other left attempts to constitute a \u201cpeople\u201d\u2014will struggle to get off the ground until our current architecture is deconstructed and rebuilt so as to allow communicants to engage with each other free of the distorting influence of today\u2019s social media platforms and mass media companies.\u00a0 While the current theory of recursive publics may not offer all of the solutions, I argue that it usefully directs technologists, academics, and activists to imagine and build new spaces that could bring about more egalitarian communications.<\/p>\n

      [1]<\/a> Bernard Harcourt, The Space of Praxis: An Introduction, Praxis 13\/13 (May 4, 2019), https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-the-space-of-praxis-an-introduction\/.<\/p>\n

      [2]<\/a> See generally 1 J\u00fcrgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Thomas McCarthy trans., Beacon Press 1984) (1981).<\/p>\n

      [3]<\/a> Joseph Heath, Communicative Action and Rational Choice 23 (2001).<\/p>\n

      [4]<\/a> J\u00fcrgen Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Communication 221 (1998).<\/p>\n

      [5]<\/a> Heath, supra note 3, at 23.<\/p>\n

      [6]<\/a> J\u00fcrgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy 360 (William Rehg, trans. MIT Press 1996) (1992).<\/p>\n

      [7]<\/a> Id. at 362.<\/p>\n

      [8]<\/a> Id. at 364.<\/p>\n

      [9]<\/a> Chantal Mouffe, Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?, 66 Social Research 745, 751 (1999).<\/p>\n

      [10]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

      [11]<\/a> See infra for a discussion of \u201crecursive publics,\u201d which \u201care publics concerned with the ability to build, control, modify, and maintain the infrastructure that allows them to come into being in the first place,\u201d like free and open-source software.\u00a0 Kelty, supra note 4, at 7; see also Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks 62 (2006) (describing commons-based peer production projects in which \u201cthe inputs and outputs of the process are shared, freely or conditionally, in an institutional form that leaves them equally available for all to use as they choose at their individual discretion.\u201d).\u00a0 As Sebastian Benthall has argued, these recursive publics can serve as loci for experimentation and striving towards a Habermasian ideal.\u00a0 See Sebastian Benthall, Designing Networked Publics for Communicative Action, 1 Interface 1, 18 (2015).<\/p>\n

      [12]<\/a> Nancy Fraser, Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy, 25 Social Text, 56, 62 (1990).<\/p>\n

      [13]<\/a> Id. at 64.<\/p>\n

      [14]<\/a> Id. at 66.<\/p>\n

      [15]<\/a> Id. at 67.<\/p>\n

      [16]<\/a> See Sebastian Benthall, The Recursive Public as Practice and Imaginary, Digifesto (May 25, 2013), https:\/\/digifesto.com\/2013\/05\/25\/the-recursive-public-as-practice-and-imaginary\/.<\/p>\n

      [17]<\/a> Kelty, supra note 4, at 28.<\/p>\n

      [18]<\/a> Richard Stallman, The GNU Project (1998), https:\/\/www.gnu.org\/gnu\/thegnuproject.html.<\/p>\n

      [19]<\/a> Kelty, supra note 4, at x\u2014xi (emphasis added).<\/p>\n

      [20]<\/a> Benthall, supra note 80.<\/p>\n

      [21]<\/a> Benkler, supra note 6, at 19, 20.<\/p>\n

      [22]<\/a> Id.<\/p>\n

      [23]<\/a> Though early digital communities certainly encountered virtual sexual violence and other harms to community members. See Jullian Dibbel, A Rape In Cyberspace: How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society, Village Voice (Dec. 23, 1993), https:\/\/www.juliandibbell.com\/texts\/bungle_vv.html.<\/p>\n

      [24]<\/a> Id.\u00a0 Other physical architectural changes have helped drive centralization, like the phasing out of \u201clegacy telephone copper wire\u201d and the move to cable broadband.\u00a0 Id. at 22.\u00a0 Just as \u201crecursive\u201d logic suggests that digital infrastructure should become increasingly \u201copen,\u201d Benthall, supra note 80, we might query the extent to which truly recursive publics can exist without collective ownership and management of all<\/em> physical infrastructure that undergirds the public, down to fiber optic cable.\u00a0 As we have discussed this year, Hardt and Negri\u2019s call to move beyond property certainly has its limitations.\u00a0 See, e.g., Mikha\u00efl Xifaras, The Role of the Law in Critical Theory, Praxis 13\/13 (Dec. 2, 2018), https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/mikhail-xifaras-the-role-of-the-law-in-critical-theory-the-role-of-property-in-the-commons\/.\u00a0 However, when infused with Fraser\u2019s call to center pre-existing inequalities, as well as Camille Robcis\u2019s imaginary of institutions inspired by psychotherapy practice, see Camille Robcis, Radical Psychiatry, Institutional Analysis, and the Commons, Praxis 13\/13 (Dec. 4, 2018), https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/camille-robcis-radical-psychiatry-institutional-analysis-and-the-commons\/, it may be possible to develop a \u201crecursive\u201d logic for physical infrastructure of communications.<\/p>\n

      [25]<\/a> Benkler, supra note 6, at 30.<\/p>\n

      [26]<\/a> Antoinette Scherz, The Legitimacy of the Demos: Who Should Be Included in the Demos and on What Grounds?, Living Reviews in Democracy (2013), https:\/\/www.ethz.ch\/content\/dam\/ethz\/special-interest\/gess\/cis\/cis-dam\/CIS_DAM_2015\/WorkingPapers\/Living_Reviews_Democracy\/Scherz.pdf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      By Jeff Stein In earlier writings for this seminar, I have claimed that left projects may be, at best, distorted and stunted by the currently unhealthy speech environment and, at worst, overwhelmed by pathologies that metastasize under current conditions.\u00a0 Assuming… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-13-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}