The Prison Slave As Hegemony’s (Silent) Scandal Frank B. Wilderson, Il ‘The Black experience in this country has beer. phenomenon without analog. —Bugene Genovese ‘These is something organic to the black positionality that makes it essensial to the destruction oF civil society. There is nothing willful or speculative in this state- ment, for one could just as well state the claim the other way around: there is something organic to civil ociety that makes if essential to the destruction of the black body. Blackness is a positionality of “absolute derelicticn’ (Fanon), aban- donment, in the face of civil society, and therefore cannor establish itself, oF he established, through hegemonic interventiors. Blackness cannot become one of civil society's many junior partners: Black citizenship, or Black civic obligation, are oxymorons. In light of this, coalitions and socicl movements, even radical cocial movements like the prison abolition movement, bound wp in the solicitation of hegemony. se as to fortify and extend the interlocutory life of civil society, ultimately accom- modate only the satiable demands and finite antegonisms of civil society's juni partners (i.e., immigrents, whize women, ard the working class), but foreslose upon the insatiat prison-clave-in-waiting, In shore, whereas such coalitions and social moversents cannot be called the outright handmaidens of white supremacy, their chetorical structures and political desire are underwritten by a supplemental anti-Blackness, jemands and endless antagonisins of Cae prison slave and the In her avtobiography, Asscta Shakur's comments vacillate between being iater- coting and insight“ul painfully programmatic and “responsible.” The expository method of conveyance accounts for this air of responsibility. However, toward the end of the book, she accounts for coalition work by way of extended narrative as opposed :o exposition. We accompaay her on one of Zayd Shakur's many Panther projects with outside groups, work “dealing with white suppor: groups who were involved in rtising bail for the Panther 21 memiers in jal” (Shakur, 1987: 224), chan thece words, her recollection becomes matter of fact and un- With no moss jered. She writes, “I hated it.” [At the time, I felt that anything below 110th street was another country. All my activi ties were centered in Harlem and i almost never left it. Doing defense committee work ‘was defintely sot up my alley... hated standing around while all these white people eraster of the ons lines asked me to explain myself my existence, I became Her hatred of this work is bound up is her anticipation, fally realized, of all the zonal violations to come wher a white woman esks her if Zard is her “panther. you know, is he your black car?" and then runs her Gugers through Assota's hair to ‘copa kiaky feel. Her narrative anticipates these violations-to-come at the level of the street, as well as at the level of the body. Here is the moment in her life as a prisoa-slave-in-waiting, which is to say, a moment as an ordinary Black person, when she finds herself among “Friends” — abolitionists, at least partners in purpose, and yet she feels it ueccssany to adopt the came muscular conetrietion, the ame eciled anticipation, the came corhative one-liners” that she will need to adopt just one year later to steel herself sgainst the encroachment of prison guards. The verisimilitade between Assate’s well- known police encounters, and her experiences in civil society's most nurturing. nock, the radical coalition, raises disturbing questions about political desire, Black postionslity, and hegemony as a modality of straggle. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon maices two moves with respect to civil society First, he locates its genuine manifestation in Europe — the motherland. Thea, ‘with respect to the colony, he locates itonly in the zene of the settler. This second ‘move is vita. for our understanding of Black positionality in America and for un- desta ig the, at best, limitations of radical social morements in America, For if we ave to follow Fanor's analysis, and the gestures toward this unéerstending in some of the work of imprisoned incellectuals, then we have to come to grips with the fact that, for Black people, civil society iself— rather than its abuses or shortcomings —is a state of emergency. For Fanon, sivil society is predicated on the Manichacism of divided zonss, 09° posed to each other ‘but not in service of a higher unity” (Fanon, 1968:38-39). ‘This is the basis of his later assestion that the two zones produce two different “species,” between which “no conciliation is possible” (Ibid). The phrase ‘aot in service of a higher unity” dismisses any kind of dislectical optimism for a future synthesis. In “The Avant-Garde of White Supremacy,” Martinot and Sexton assert the pri- snacy of Fanon's Manichean zones (without the promise of higher unity), even ir she face of American integration fecticity. Fanon specific colonial cortext does ‘or share Martinct and Sexcon’s historical or national context. Common to both sexte, however, is the setjles/native dynamic, the differential zoning, and the gra- ‘uty (as opposed to the contingency] of viclence that accrues to the blackened position. ‘The dichotomy between white ethics [the discourse of civil society] and its nrelerance to the violence of police profiling is not dialect cal the two are incommensurable ‘whenever one attempts to speat about the paradiga of policing, one is forced back into 4 discussion of particular evente—high profile homicides and their elated courtroom battles, for instance ‘Martinot and Sexton, 2002; 6; emphasis added. It makes no difference that in the U.S. the “Kasbah” and the “Earopean” zone are laid one on top of the other. What is being asserted here is an isomo:phic schematic relation-the schematic interchangeabil ty-betweon Fanon’ eettler soci- sty and Martinot and Sexton’s policing paradigm. For Faron, it is the policeman and soldier (not the discwssive. or hegemonic, agents) of colonialism that make ome town white and the other Black. For Martinot and Sexton, this Manichean delirium manifests itself by way o f the U.S, paradigm o f policing that (relpro- duces, repetidvely, the inside/outside, the civil suviety/Black world, by virtue of the difference between those bodies that do aot magnetize bullets and those that do. “Police impunity serves to distinguish between the racial itself and the else- where that mandate sit. the distinction between those whose hurnan being is put permanently in question and those for whom: it goes without saying” (Toid.: 8). In such a paradigm, white people are, ipso tacto, deputized in the face of Black peo- ple, whcthcr they know it (consciously) or net. Whiteness, then, and by exteasion civil society, cannot he solely “represented” as some monumentalized cohererce of phallic signifiers, but must first be understood as a social formation of conte poraries who do not magnetize bullets. Thic is the essence of their construction through an atignifying absence: their signifying presence is manifested by the fact, that they are,if only by default, deputized against those who do magnetize bullet. In shore, white people are wot sisuply “protected” by the police, they an—in their ‘very corporeatity—the police ‘This ipso facto deputization of white people in the face of Black people accounts for Fanon’s materialicy, and Martinot and Sexton's Manichean delirium in Amer- ica. What remains to be add-essed, however, is the way in which the political contestetion between civil society's junior partuers (i.e., workers, white women, and immigrants), on the one hand, and white supremacist institutionality, on the other hand, is produced ty, and reproductive of, a supplemental anti~ Blackness. Put another way: How is the production and accamulation of unior partner social capital dependert upon on an anti-Bleck retocical structure and a decomposed Black body? Any serious musing on the question of ancagonistic identity formation ~ a for- mation, the mass mobilization of which can precipitate a crisis in the institutions ‘ane assumpsive logic that undergied the United State of America — must come to geips with the contradictions between political desuaads of radical social movements, such as the large prison abolition movement, which seeks to cholish the prison-industrial complex, and the ideological structure that underwrites its political desire. I contend thatthe positionality of Black subjectivity is at the heart of those contradictions and that this unspoken desire is bound up with the politi- cal limications of several naturalized and uncritically accepted categories that have this genesis mainly in the works of Antonio Gramsci, namely, work or labor, the wage, explaitation, hegemony, and civil society. T wich ra thenrize the symptoms of rage and resignation | hecr in the words of George Jackson, when hz boils reform down to. single word, “fascism,” or in Assatw’s brief declaration, I hated it,’as well as in the Manichean delirium of Fanon, Martinot, and Sexton. Today, the failure of radical socicl movements to embrace symptoms of all three gestures is tantamount to the reproduction of an ansi-Black polities that nonethelexe x. resents itself as being in the service of the emancipation of the Black prisoa slave. By examining the strategy and structure cf th: Black subject's absence in, and incommensurability with, the key categories of Gramscian theory, we come face to face with three unsettling consequences: (1) The Black American subject imposes a radical incoherence upon che as- sumptive logic of Granmscian discourse and on today’s coalition politice. In other words, s/he implies @ scandal. (2) The Black subject reveals the inability of social movements grounded in. ‘Gramecian discourse to think of whit2 supremacy (rather than capitalism) as the base and thereby calle into question their claim to elaborate a comprehensive and decisive antagonism, Stated snother way, Gramscian discourse and coalition pol itis are indeed able to imagine the subject that transforms itself into a mass of antagonistic identity formations, formations that can precipitate @ crisis in wage shivery, exploitation, aud Legeaony, but they are asleep at the wheel when asked to provide enabling antazonisms -oward unwaged slavery. despot'sm, and terror, (3) We begin to see how Marxism suffers from a kind of conceptual anxiety. ‘There is a desire for socialism on the ather side of crisis, a society that does away rnct with the category of worker, but with the imposition workers suffer under che approach of variable capital. In other words, the mark of its conceptual anwiery isin its desire to democratize work and thus help t2 keep in place and insure she coherence of Reformation and Erlightensrent foundational values of productivity and progress. This tcenario crowds ont other postrevolutionary possibilities, Le., idleness. ‘Tre scandal, with which the Bleck subject position “threarens’ Gramscian end coalition discourse, is manifest in the Blac’ subjects incommensurability with, or disarticulation of, Gramscian categories: work, progress, production, exploitation, hegemony, and historical self-awareness. Through what steacegies dozs the Black subject destabilize emerge as tac unthought, and thus the scandal of — histori- cal materialism? How does the Black subject function within the ‘American desir~ ing mechine” differently than the quintessential Gramscian subak-ern, the worker? (Capital was kick-started by the rape of the African continens,a phenomenon that is central ro neither Gramsc. nor Marx. According to Barrett (2002), something, atout the Black body in and of itself made it the repository of the violence that was the slave trade. It would have been far easier and far more profitable to take the white underclass from along the riverbanks of England and Western Europe than to travel all the way to Africa for slaves. ‘The theoretical importance of emphasizing this In the early 21s: century is (wo fold. First, capital was Lick-started by approaching a particular body (a black body) with direct re'ations of force, not by approaching a white body with variable capital. Thus, one could say that slavery is closer to capital’s primal desire than is exploitation, It isa relation of terror as opposed to a relation of hegemony. Second, today, late capital is imposing a renaissance of this original desire, the direct rela- tion of force, the despotism of the unwaged relation. This renaissance of slavery, ies the reconfiguration of she prison lustrial complex hac, once again as its scructiring metaphor and primary ta-get -he Black body. ‘The value of reintroducing the unthought category of che slave, by way cf noting, the absence of the Black subject, lies in the Black subject's potential for extending the demand placed on state/capital formations because its reintroduction into the discourse expands the intensity of the antagoniem.In other words, the positional ity of the slave makes a demand -hat isin excess of the demand made by the posi- tonality of the worker. The worker éemands that productivity be fair and demo- cratic (Gramsci’s new hegemony, Lenin’s dictatorship of the proletariat, in a word, socialism). In contrast, the slave demands that production stop, without recourse 1 its ultimate democratization, Work is not an ong absence of Black subjectivity from the crux of radical discourse is symptomatic of the text’s inability co cope with the rossibility tha: the generative subject of cap- italism, the Black body of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the generative subject that resolves late capital’s over-accumulation crisis, the Black (incarcerated) body cf the 20th and 21 st centuries, do not reify the basic categories that structure ict within civil society; Ube categories of work and exploitasion. principle for the slave. The ‘Thus, the Black subject position in Amer'ea represents an antagonism or demand that cannot be satisfied through a transfer of ownership/otganization of existing rubrics. In contrast, the Gremscian subject, the worker, represents a demand that can indeed be satisied by way of a successful war of position, which brings about the end of exploit tive practices, while the slave calls into question the legitimacy of productivity A. Thus, tke insatiability of the slave demand upon existing structures means that it cannot find its articulation within the modality of hegemony (influence, leadership, consent). The Black body cannot give its consent because “generalized trust,” the precondition for the solicitation of consent, “equals racitlized white- ness" (Barrett, 2002). Purthermere, as Orlando Patterson (1982) points out clav- ion, The worker calls into question the legitimacy of produc ety is natal alienation by way of social death, which is to say, a slave has no sym- bolic currency or material labor power to exchange. A slave docs not ente: teansaction of value (however asymmetrical), but is subsumed by direct relations of force. As such, a slave is an articulation of a despotic irrationality, whereas the worker is an articulation of a symbolic rationality. A metaphor comes into being through a violence that kills the thing such that the 1 gaips with: 0 political economy — but not with its structuring irrationality, the anti-production of late capital, and the hyper-discussive violence that first ills the Black subject, so that the con~ cept may be born. In other words, from the incoherence of Black death, America generates the coherence of white life, This is important when thinking the Gram- scian paradigm and their spiritual progenitors in the world of orgs US. today, with their overvaluation of hegemony aad civil society. Stuggles over concept might live, Gramsclan discourse and coalition polities eu: America’s structuring rationality — what it calle capitali mg in the hegemony are seldom, if ever, asignifving. At some point, they require coherence and categories for the record, meaning they contain the seeds of anti- Blackness, ‘What does it mean to be positioned not as a positive term in the struggle for anti~ capitalist hegersouy, ixcy a worker, but to be positioned in excess of hegemony, to be « catalyst that disarticulates the rubric of hegemony, to be a scandal to its asvumptive, foundational logic, to threaten civil society's discursive integrity? In White Writing, J.M. Coetzee (1988) examines the literature of Europeans who encountered the South African Khoisan in the Cape between the 16th and 18th centuries, The Europeans were faced with an “anthropological scandal”: a be.ng without (sccognizable) customs, religion, medicine, dictery patterns, calinary hab- its, sewnal mores, means of agriculture, and most significantly, without character (because, according to the literature, they did nor work). Other Afticans, like the Xhosa who were agricul-uralists, provided Eutopesn discourse with enough jegories for the record, so that, through various strategies of crticulation, they could be known by textual projects that accompanied the colonial project. But the Khoisan did no: produce the neccssary categories for the record, the play of 8 that would allow for a sustainable semiotics. According to Coctree, the cohérence of European discourse depende upon two structuring axes. A “Historical Axis” condsts of codes distributed along the axis of tesaporality and events, while the “Anthropological Axis’ is an axis of cultural codes. It mattered very little which codes on either axis a particular indigenous community was perceived to possess, with possession the operative word, far (hese coves act as a kind of mutually agreed-upon currency. What matters ie that the ‘community has some play of difference along both exes, sufficient in number to construct taxonomies thet can be investigated, identified, and named by the discourse. Without this, the discourse cannot go on. It is reinvigorated when an ‘unknown entity presents itself, bt its anxiety reaches crisis proportions when the ‘entity remains unknows, Something unspeakable occuss. Not to possess 1 pastic~ war code along the Anthropological or Eistorical Axis for brown hair or green eyes on an X or ¥ chromesome. Lacking a Historical or Anthropological Azis is akin to the abseace of the chromosome itself, The first predicament raises the notion: What kind of hurnan? The second predicament bsinge into crisis the notion of the human itse:f, akin ro lacking a gene Without the textusl caregoiies of diess, diet, medicine, crafts, physical appear- ance, and most important, work, the Khoisan stood in refusal of the invitation to become Anthropological Man. S/he was the void in discourse that could only be desigrated as opponent or an imterlocuter, but rather of an unspeakable scandal. His/her position within the discourse was one of disarticulation, for he/ehe did little or jentss. Thus, the Khoisar’s status within discourse was aot that nothing to fortify and extend the interlocutory life of the discourse. Tust as the Khoisan presented the discourse of the Cape with an anthropological scendal, so the Black subject in the Western Hemisphere, the slave, presents Marxism and American textual practice with a historical scandal How is our rience of being “a phenomenon without analog"? A sample list of codes mapaed ‘out by an American subject’ historical azis might include rights or entitlements; here even Native Amerizans provide categories for the record when one thinks of how the Iroquois constitution, for exemple, becomes the U.S. constitutior. Sover- cignty is abo included, whet res 2 state is one the subject lefe behind, or es in the case of American Indians, one taken by force end dint of broker. treaties, White supremacy has made good use of the Indian subject’s positionallry, one thet forti~ fics and extends the interlocatory life of America as a coherent (albeit imperial) ‘dien because treaties are forms of articulation — discussions brokered between two groups are prestmed to possess the same category of historical currency, sov- cereignty. The code of sovereignty can have a past and farure history, if you will ‘excuse the oxymoron, when one considers that 150 Native American tribes have applied to the Bureau of Indian Affairs for sovereign recognition <0 that they sight qual another code that maps the subject onto the American Historical Axis, with nar~ sarives of arrival based on collective volition and premeditated desire, Chicano subject positions can fortify and extend the interlocutory Efe of America a8 an idea because racial confit can be articulated across the various contestations over the legitimacy of arsival, immigration. Both whites and Latinos generate data for fy for fonds harvested from lend stolen from them. Immigration is thie category. Slavery is the great leveler of the Black subject’s positionality, The Black Ameri~ ‘can subject does not generate historical categories of entitlement, sovercigaty, and immigration for the record. We are “otf the map" with respect to the cartography jutics; we have a past, but not « heritage. To the da- that churts civil society's se ta-generating demande of the Historical Axis, we present 2 virtual blank, much like that which the Khoisan presented to the Anthropological Axis, This places us in a structurally impossible position, one that is outside the articula:ions of hegemony. However, it also places hegemony in a structurally impossible position because—and this is key—our presence works kack spor the grammar of hegerno- nny auc Uneuteus it with incoherence. If every subject—even the most massacred. among them, Indians—i jequired to have analogs within the nation’s structusing, narrative, and che experienc: of one subject, upon whom the nation’s order of ‘wealth was built, is without analog, then that subject's presenc: destabilizes all other analogs. Fanon (1968: 27) writes, “decolonization, which sets out to change the order of is, ehviously, a program of complere disorder.” If we take him at his word, then we must accept that no other body functions in the Imaginary, the the world Symbolic, or the Real so completely as a repository of complete disorder as the Black body. Blackness is the site of absolute dereliction at the level of the Real, for inits magnetizing of bullets the Black body functions as the map of gratuitous violence through which civil society is possible: namely, those bodies for which Woolence ic, oF ean he, contingent: Blicknsce is the site of absolute dereliction at the level of the Symbolic, for Blackness in America generstes no categories for the ckromosome of history, and no data for the categories of immigration or sov- cxcignty. Iris an experience without analog — 2 past without a heritage. Blackness is the site of absolute deteliction at the level of the Imaginary, for “whoever says ‘rape’ says Black” (Fanon), whoever says “prison” says Black, and whoever says "AIDS" says Black (Sexton) — the “Negro ie a phobogenie object” (Fanon), Indeed, it means all those things: a phobogenic object, @ past without @ heritage, the map of gratuitous violence, and a program of complete disorder. Whereas this realization is, and should be, cause for alarm, it should not te cause for lament, or worse, disivowal — not at least, for # true revel ry, oF Sor w ruly revolt acy movement cuch as prior abolitio. Ifa social movementis to be neither social democratic nor Merxist, in terms of structure of political desite, then it should grasp the invitation to assume the positionality of subjects of social death. If we are to be konest with ourselves, we must admic that the “Negro” has been inviting whites, as well as civil society's junior partne:s, to the dance of social death for hundreds of years, but Zew have wanted 1 Tearw the steps. Tey have bzen and remain today —- even in the most anti-racist movements, like the priton cholirion movement — invested elsewhere, This is not to say thet all oppositional political desire today is pro-white, bat it is usually anti-Black, meaning it will not dance with death, Black liberation, asa prospect, makes radicaliem more dangorow to the U.S. This is not bectuse it raises the specter of an alternative polity (such ax socialism, oF community control of existing resources), but beceuse its condition af possibility and gesture of resistance function as a negative dialectic: a polities of refusal and @ refusal to affirm, a ‘program of complete disorder.” One must embrac: its tisorder, its incohesence, and allow oneselt to be elaborated by it, if indeed one’s politics are lw be uncles written by a desire to take down this country. If tl not the desire that underwrites one’s politics, then through what strategy of legitimation is the word “prison” being, void “abolition”? What are this movement's lines of political aecountabiliry? wed to the ‘There is nothing foreign, frightening, or even unpracticed about the embrace of disorder and incoherence. The desire to be embraced, and elaborited, by disorder ‘and incoherence is not anathema in and of itself. No one, for example, has ever tuecu known (o say “gee-whi, if only my orgasms would end a little sooner, or maybe not come at all” Yet few so-called radicals desive to he embraced, and claborated, by the disorder and incoherence of Blackness — and the state of po~ litical movements in the U.S. today is marked by this very Negrophobogenesis: “gee-whia, if orly Black rage could be more coherent, or maybe aot come at all.” Perhays there is something more terrifying about he joy o° Black than there is in the joy of sex (unless one is talking sex with a Negro). Perhaps coalitions today prefer to remain in-orgasmic in the face of civil society — with hegemony as a handy prophylactic, just in case. If, through this stasis or paralysis they try to do the work of prison abolition, that work will fl for it is always work from a po- sition of coherence lie., the worker) on debalf2f'a position of incoherence of the Black subject, or pr'son slave. In this Way, socal formations on the Left remain blind to the contradictions of coalitions between workers and slaves. They remain. coalitions operating within the logic of civil society and function less as revolu~ tionary promises than as crowding out scenarios of Black antagonisms, simply feeding our frustration, Whereas the positionality af the worker (whether a factory werker demand .ng monetary wage, an immigrant, or 1 white woman demanding a social wage) gestures toward the reconfiguration of civil society, the positionality of the Black subject (whether a prison-slave or a prisor-slave-in-waiting) gestures toward she dizconfiguration of civil cociety. From the coherence of civil cociety, the Black subject beckons with the incoherence of civil war, a war thet reclaims Blackness not as a positive value, but a a politically enabling site, to quote Fanon, of “ib solute dereliction.” It is a “scandal” chat rends civil society asunder. Civil war, then, kecomes the uathought, but never forgotten, understudy of hegemony. It is a Black specter waiting in the wings, an endless antagonism that cannot be satisfied (via reform oF reparation), but must nonetheless be pursued to the death, NOTES 1, White supremacy tranemogrifies codes inernal to Native American culvure for its own pucposes. However, unlike immigrants and white women, the Native ‘American has ao purchase as a junios parmer in civil society. Space does not per- rit us to fally discuss this here. Ward Churchill and others do explain how —un- the enslavement like civil society’s junior partners — genocide of the Indiany li of Blacks,is a precondition for the idza of Amzrica. Ici a condicion of possibility upon which the idea of imruigration can be narrativined. No web of analogy can be spun between, on the one hard, the phenomenon of genocide and slavery and, ‘on the other hand, the phenomenon of access :0 institutionslity and immigration. ‘Thus, although white supremacy appropriates Native American codes of sover- cignty, it cannot solve the centradiction that, unlike civil society's junior partners, those codes are not imbricated with immigration and access.