Statement of Principles for the Alternative Orange

A.O. Staff

Revision History
• Spring 1995	Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students.
The Alternative Orange: Vol. 4, No. 2 (pp. 2).
• August 12, 2003	Webpage: .
DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.7) from original.

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Since its reconstitution in 1991, the Alternative Orange has defined itself as a paper “representing the broad left." We consider that definition to be no longer a useful representation of the A.O.'s practices or goals. The practices of the paper have changed in important ways since that definition was formulated, in particular in relation to contestations within the Syracuse University academic environment over the politics of knowledge, theory and pedagogy (questions which have been foreground ed in the last several issues and even more so in Alternative Orange, vol. 3, no. 1). These contestations have entailed interventions in the mode of determining theoretical and pedagogical priorities in the classroom, in academic departments, and within the broader agenda of precisely those professors who identify their work, more or less explicitly, as “progressive” (i.e., of the “broad left").

The invariable results of these interventions have been the suppression or deflection of their radical tendency, in the interest of maintaining the politics of liberal pluralism and progressive populism. In addition, communications and (non)debates between A.O. editorial collective members and some activist components of the “broad left” (e.g., socialist organizations, campus activists), have confirmed the incommensurability of those positions interested in a theoretically determined politics with those interested in a coalitionist politics based upon notions of sympathy, experience, pleasure, support, etc.

It is clear, then, that the A.O. must re-formulate its purpose in accord with these historical lessons. That is, it is necessary to recognize explicitly that, rather than representing the “broad left," the A.O. is actually primarily interested in uncovering, explaining, and pressing to a resolution the contradictions constitutive of the “left," which communitarian, coalitionist, populist, etc. categories seek to conceal. The central contradiction here is between an objectivist and fatalist recognition (implicit or explicit) of the global extension and reinforcement of capitalist relations of exploitation and domination over the last 25 years, on the one hand, and the valorization of localist political practices (which presumably allow for some semblance of effectivity and where simulacra of “genuine” radicality — above all in the space of “identity” — can be maintained), on the other hand. These localizing practices, whether they be the untheorized “post-60s” populism of most of the activist left, or the “post-theoretical” simulational and performative modern left are, we contend, simply new modes of accommodation to existing social relations and new ways of marketing such accommodation.

The “broad left," comprising those seeking to construct an “umbrella” under which autonomous and self-constituted groupings can gather with the help of slogans like “mutual support," evades and blocks what seems to us the most urgent political project at the moment: inquiring into and pressuring the fault lines where the unfolding of the contradiction between the forces and relations of production produces irreconcilable antagonisms in all social institutions, practices, and subjectivities (including those of the left). Only in this way can new historical forces and collective agencies, based upon the recomposition of the proletariat on a global scale, be theorized and produced. The “broad left," in other words, needs to be contested precisely because it now produces the most up-to-date, subtle, and refined ("liberalized") modes of packaging the defense and management of the existing order as “resistance."

The question here is not of the necessity of engaging the "local," in the sense of those antagonisms which confront subjects most directly in their intellectual, economic, cultural and political practices. Rather, what we oppose is the theoretical legitimation of the local as the limit of the possible, which closes off a space of critique that would theorize the local as a specific manifestation of global and general contradictions. This critical space in turn enables modes of collective pedagogy which make it possible to maintain sustained and conscious pressure upon existing limits. The AO is committed to such a theorization, because it is our conviction that only in this way can we produce the new knowledges needed for politically transformative practices—practices which give conscious expression to the contradiction between the socialization of the productive forces and private property in the means of production. Only with the aid of such knowledges can revolutionary practices contest hegemonic operations of the ruling class aimed at reasserting private control over the productive forces. This contestation requires conceptual knowledges since it involves situating hegemonic operations globally, i.e., under mining them by bringing them into a destructive relation with the contradictions they seek to conceal and resolve and thereby transforming them into instances of the deepening of the late capitalist crisis.

The Alternative Orange sees itself as a site where those students seeking to develop and advance their capacities as radical intellectuals and writers can work productively and collectively toward this end. That the Alternative Orange recognizes the current self-representation of liberal discourses as “radical” (as a result of the radicalization of the late capitalist crisis which requires that the petit-bourgeoisie both align itself with ruling class imperatives and find new ways to incorporate the oppressed into those imperatives) has a contradictory effect: on the one hand, it encourages students to go beyond the limits of criticism allowed by mainstream discourse, but on the other hand it frustrates and suppresses any attempt to go “too far” beyond those limits. Thus, those students who wish to develop the knowledges and political positions to which they have been provided partial and ambiguous access in the classroom are compelled to establish counter-institutional sites where this work (of “going beyond") can become possible. The Alternative Orange conceives of itself as such a site, within which students can train themselves and each other to contest the limits of the dominant liberal multiculturalism: and, as the growing interest in the paper's activities by students and faculty on this and other campuses indicates, the Alternative Orange meets this urgent need in a very effective way.

(October 1993)