Beyond Activistism

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Why we need deeper thinking in our protests

"Get active!" It's an important call heeded by many who want a better world. At the same time, it can be tempting for can-do, results-oriented Americans (even those of a radical stripe) to prize action over thought, the street protester over the "mere" intellectual. In this section we hear from a trio of theorists who think American progressives are addicted to action for its own sake -- and from a front-line activist who's convinced that thought is alive and well. And we look at the rise and decline of French theory in American academia, a story that highlights the glories -- and pitfalls -- of deep thinking. -- The Editors

We can't get bogged down in analysis," one activist told us at an antiwar rally in New York in the fall of 2001, spitting out that last word like a hairball. He could have relaxed. This event deftly avoided such bogs, loudly opposing the U.S. bombing in Afghanistan without offering any credible ideas about it. But the moment called for doing something more than brandishing the exact same signs -- "Stop the Bombing" and "No War for Oil" -- that activists poked skyward during the Gulf War. This latest war called for some thinking, and few were doing much of that.

So what is the ideology of the activist left (and by that we mean the global justice, peace, media democracy, community organizing, financial populist, and green movements)? Socialist? Mostly not -- too state-phobic. Some activists are anarchists -- but mainly out of temperamental reflex, not rigorous thought. Others are liberals -- though most are too confrontational and too skeptical about the system to embrace that label. And many others profess no ideology at all. So, overall, is the activist left just an inchoate, "postideological" mass of do-gooders, pragmatists, and puppeteers?

No. The young troublemakers of today do have an ideology. The cadres who populate those endless meetings, who bang the drums, who lead the "trainings" and paint the puppets, do indeed have a creed: They're activistists

That's right, activistists. This brave new ideology combines the political illiteracy of hypermediated American culture with all the moral zeal of a 19th-century temperance crusade. In this worldview, all roads lead to more activism and more activists. And the one who acts is righteous. The activistists seem to borrow their philosophy from the factory boss in a Heinrich Böll short story who greets his employees each morning with the exhortation "Let's have some action." To which the workers obediently reply, "Action will be taken!"

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