Francesco Salvini’s article is a brilliant example of engaged writing. While it accounts for a collective experience of ‘militant research’ in the Raval, Barcelona, it also offers a subtle discussion of some of the most important topics at stake in intellectual debates surrounding contemporary capitalism as well as postcolonial and urban studies. Political and theoretical engagement enrich each other in Salvini’s writing, making his article both a productive and an enjoyable reading. In what follows I will limit myself to some reflections on the ‘method’ of militant research (I) and on the use of Chakrabarty’s concepts in Salvini’s understanding of ‘postcolonial capitalism’ (II).
“Militant research,” writes Francesco, is “a committed and collective production of common notions (common analytical tools and practices) for and by a political community that allows for the production of knowledge useful for struggles”1. This is a good definition of militant research, combining insights coming from different theoretical traditions and practical experiences: from Italian autonomist Marxism to Latin American popular education. I also appreciate Salvini’s statement that militant research must be understood as a crucial tool “for rethinking political organization.” What I find potentially problematic is the emphasis on “a political community” as producer and user of militant research. I take this emphasis as a symptom of a widespread tendency in contemporary social movements across diverse geographic scales, often associated with a reference to “micro-politics.” It is often the case (I am thinking here of some experiences I know in Italy as well as in Spain and in the UK) that militant research is used to reinforce the identity of a “political community” instead of opening it up toward new political possibilities and constellations, which should be in my opinion the main aim of militant research itself. In a totally different context, critically discussing the reduction of subjectivity to consciousness in French philosophy in the 1950s, Michel Foucault once spoke of “experiences” that have the task of “‘tearing’ the subject from itself in such a way that is no longer the subject as such, or that it is completely ‘other’ that itself so that it may arrive at its annihilation, its dissociation”2. This seems to me a good definition of what the ‘experience’ of ‘militant research’ should be. I would emphasize in this sense even more than Francesco himself does that the “original us” he mentions3 should be understood as the main stake of militant research and not as its presupposition. This means that the form of organization prompted by militant research as a political method is open and centrifugal.
Francesco Salvini joins a growing chorus of voices that advocate the use of the concept of ‘postcolonial capitalism’. The names of Robert Young, Kalyan Sanyal, Couze Venn, Ranabir Samaddar, Stefano Harney and Miguel Mellino will suffice here to give an idea of the very diverse epistemic and also political community within which theoretical work on ‘postcolonial capitalism’ is currently being done. Since I have myself contributed to this ongoing conversation it is clear that I agree on the productivity of this approach and I will not expand on this. I will limit myself, as announced, to some reflections on the use done by the author of a chapter of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe (2000) 4. It is the second chapter of the book (The Two Histories of Capital), where Chakrabarty develops his idea of the difference between what he terms “History 1” and “History 2”. This is a brilliant and productive theoretical insight, although it is necessary to add that Chakrabarty is sometimes a bit obscure in his formulation and he allows different interpretations of the proposed distinction. Salvini ‘translates’ it speaking of the difference of “histories versus History”5. This is definitely a ‘translation’ that can appear as authorized by certain passages in Chakrabarty’s chapter. The point is not the ‘correct reading’ of the text but rather its most productive use. As far as I am concerned, I think that speaking of an opposition of histories and History tends to end up proposing an opposition between ‘concrete’ and ‘abstract’ that is neither theoretically nor politically productive. Especially once associated with the use done by Salvini of Lefebvre’s critical theory of the abstraction of urban space it risks ending up in some version of identity politics or communitarianism (which brings me back to the observations made under I). I am convinced that a different way of conceiving the relationship between History 1 and History 2, one that stresses the relevance of the encounters and clashes between the two, can be found in Chakrabarty himself, starting from his refusal to consider that relationship in dialectical terms6. Developing this different reading especially from the point of view of the production of subjectivity under contemporary capitalism would make an important contribution also to the method of militant research.
