142 | Hyperpolitics in the Present
What's Left of Philosophy
The episode explores Anton Jäger's concept of 'hyperpolitics,' a state of intense political engagement that lacks the institutional infrastructure to
Key takeaways
- Anton Jäger's framework identifies three eras: mass politics (1914â1989), post-politics (1989â2008), and hyperpolitics/anti-politics (post-2008).
- Hyperpolitics is characterized by high levels of politicization in culture and discourse but a lack of consequential institutional development.
- The decline of associational density, such as union membership and party affiliation, prevents modern protests from translating into policy.
- Lillian suggests the left is caught between attempting theoretical innovation and reconstructing arguments for historically effective models.
- The hosts identify 'doomerism'âa consensus on collapse across the political spectrumâas a major obstacle to meaningful political action.
Main topics
- Hyperpolitics and institutional decay
- Mass politics vs. post-politics
- The impact of social media on political psychology
Notable quotes
hyperpolitics is an abidingly low form, low commitment, low cost, and all too often, low value
Conclusion
The discussion concludes that while the sense of political impotence i
Transcript preview
Speaker 4 (0:00) Kant really understood something about like moral and political action. What? About moral and political. Hey, did you know Speaker 2 (0:07) he's racist? Last time I posted about Kant on Blue Sky, someone told me he was racist. Oh Speaker 4 (0:11) my God. Speaker 2 (0:13) Maybe mass politics would come from Blue Sky. Speaker 4 (0:15) Well, around all the racism, he managed to sneak in a few good ideas. Speaker 4 (0:53) with me today are Lillian, Gil, and Will. Speaker 1 (0:56) Hello. Speaker 4 (0:57) Hello. Yo. So for today's episode, we're discussing Anton Jaeger's book Hyperpolitics, Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences. The recent book tracks the transformation of the political landscape from the early 20th century to the present moment. The mass politics of the early to mid 20th century gives way to what he calls the post-politics of the long 1990s, which in turn gives way to our present hyper-politics. Whereas 20th century mass politics was characterized by high politicization, people being politically active and attuned, and very high associational density across the population, trade unions, political parties, actual parties, civic associations, etc., the end of the Cold War heralded a stark retreat into the private sphere. the attenuation of social bonds, and the hollowing out of institutions. And these trends were already building, obviously. The 90s were many things, many awesome things, but it's a good time to grow up. But intense politicization and institutional participation were not among them. Nowadays, we are accustomed to hearing people complain about everything getting politicized. But in the 90s, the concern was the opposite. It was apathy, and it was widespread depoliticization. Everything changes, according to Yeager, with the great financial crisis of 2008. Post-2008 saw a steady uptick in political activity, much higher election turnout, greater frequency and size of protests and demonstrations, Occupy, the Tea Party, Bernie, BLM, MAGA, and arguing on the internet. Yeager's conceptualization of hyperpolitics begins with the observation that so much of the steep uptick in politicization has been virtually inconsequential in terms of durable new institutions, practices, policies. We've been left watching the biggest demonstrations in American history over the last 10 years, which have led to precisely nothing. So why is that? Well, unlike during the era of mass politics, which also witnessed a high degree of politicization, Our current hyper-political moment lacks associational and institutional infrastructure that is required for politically consequential collective action. Union membership has collapsed, though there is some reason for hope in the last few years. Party membership, mostly meaningless. And the population has dispersed into an extreme social atomization, thanks to neoliberalism, the internet and the smartphone, the hegemony of private life. So just a few points before we start to start our discussion. A few points about hyperpolitics. Whether you're woke or chud, the level of frenzied politicization of everything from music to TV to brands to people's word choice is exactly correlated with increasing powerlessness to change anything in a meaningful way. Speaker 4 (3:52) There's a kind of temporality to hyperpolitics, which is also kind of focused on quick gratification rather than durable political, the patient building of durable political institutions. So owning someone's posts or joining that day's massive demo, there's a kind of instantaneity of gratification that comes from hyperpolitical activity. And that stands in stark contrast, again, to the kind of patient, tenacious, slow work. of creating institutional structures of social solidarity. In contrast to the, this is a quote from Yeager, he says, quote, in contrast to the high politics of the years 1918 to 1989, hyperpolitics is an abidingly low form, low commitment, low cost, and all too often, low value, end quote. And as our own Lillian writes in her article on hyperpolitics, which we'll link in the description, This is her. Street mobilizations are not an institution, but rather an outlet for expressing political frustration. Speaker 4 (4:54) There is, of course, a kind of a social base that is the dynamic center of liberal hyperpolitics, whereas in the past, the left relied on the working class, on trade unions, on class struggle as the kind of center of gravity of their politics. Liberal hyperpolitics, the center of gravity is universities, NGOs and elite institutions and the middle class people who primarily make them up. So, this is a few things, and I wanted to ask, maybe start the discussion, or maybe actually we should end the discussion on this question. The question of how to get out of this political impasse, right? We know what the problem is, hyper-politicization with low density of association and attenuated social bonds. What do we envision as the way to... reverse this slide into social atomization and powerlessness, individualistic powerlessness. Obviously, increasing union membership is really important, but that's something I just want to put on the radar for our discussion. So I'll leave it at that and ask you what you all thought. Speaker 2 (6:05) Thanks. Speaker 2 (6:08) I found the text like relatively, I mean, diagnostically doesn't feel wrong. I mean, I've seen the, I've seen it referred to quite a bit actually in the past couple of months, just because like, it seems to give a name to the real phenomena of, yeah, what do we do with that? There is like been the biggest protests ever. Speaker 4 (6:34) And Speaker 2 (6:34) like the needle doesn't feel like it's moving. at all in like so many important ways there's like a kind of conjoined sense of like i i was thinking about this the other day like one way of like understanding like the what feels like the present impasse is that like we no longer believe i no longer believe i don't think anyone believes in the project of consciousness raising any longer which like characterized a lot of the at least early to mid 20th century political, like progressive political movements, in part because everyone seems to fucking know everything already about how bad it is. And that doesn't seem to matter all that much. Like, like, no one's surprised. I mean, part of like, even in the past 10 years, things feel different for me in the classroom. Like 10 years ago, I could like. explain things to my students about the nature of like capitalism as a social form and they'd be like oh no i'd never thought of that before and now i say stuff about like the ruling class or exploitation or white supremacy or colonialism and they're like yeah we know they're like frustrated that i'd even like bother to try to tell them stuff about this i guess it's time to teach play-doh again exclusively yeah Speaker 3 (7:57) but Speaker 2 (7:58) that doesn't seem to translate so like jaeger seems to at least be naming that in a way that i find like kind of helpful i'm not quite sure what to do about it beyond that like diagnostic and i also don't know like your question owen that you ended with like what do we do like I don't know, build institutions seems to be like the only prescription that comes out of this, but I'm not sure if that's sufficient. Institutions with a Speaker 4 (8:27) working class base. Speaker 2 (8:29) Yeah, great. Let's do that, I guess. Let's Speaker 4 (8:32) do Speaker 2 (8:32) that, yeah. Speaker 4 (8:33) I Speaker 1 (8:33) mean, I think one problem with asking that question and like why, you know, I understand why people respond with let's just do that. You know, sounds great. The problem is, is that the past 50 years have been a kind of recurring cycle of trying to find any other way of doing things. And so people don't want to be told that they have to do the obvious thing. And, you know, like in the early 2000s, you know, we read Hart and Negri. We had left populism. There's been like decades of attempted. theoretical innovation that had some political uptake, like the Chantal Mousse of the world are quite influential in European party politics or were for about 15 years. There's a whole span of movementist... like democratic theory, like people who are like, well, the movements are already doing it. We just need to like learn from them. And at some point in the indefinite future, like once you just do enough movementism, there will be a final, there will at some point be a convergence that is a tipping point, you know? So unfortunately this hasn't happened. And I think the main impasse on The left, in terms of theory, is that there are two options. You either continue to try to theoretically innovate organizational and political forms, Speaker 4 (10:06) or Speaker 1 (10:07) you reconstruct arguments for things that actually have worked and try to see what you can learn for changing conditions. And like, you know, I'm very obviously just on one side of this. At this point, I'm, you know, not like that's where I'm at. Speaker 1 (10:23) I do think that this is kind of the problem is that there's an over-theorization of attempted novelty that has not Speaker 4 (10:32) crossed Speaker 1 (10:34) the boundaries of the, you know, been able to create more of a constituency around anything than the models of the past. And I think that, you know, my last point is that the accusation of people against those on my side of the argument is that's just like retrograde, retro stuff, trying to live in the past. You know, I think at this point, the other side of the argument has to also answer for its own failures. Speaker 2 (10:59) I Speaker 1 (10:59) don't see a lot of people doing that. So that's kind of my point of view. Speaker 2 (11:03) I mean, if it's retrograde, the past was better. Anything better, anything's better than this. I Speaker 3 (11:12) wonder if part of what I was thinking about reading the book wasn't just you. It seems like Jaeger does hit on something that I think all four of us, you see everywhere and certainly seems to be a problem, whether it's the mass protest, whether it's you. You know, what I call like people getting like brain poisoned on the Internet and all of that, you know, the lack of emotional regulation in politics, those types of things. I guess one of the questions I have is, you know, is he describing a symptom? of a broader problem so is hyper politics you know the symptom of some broader change in social relations and the economy and all that sometimes it seems like that's what he's saying or is the cause of our malady i mean if it's the cause of the malady and it can seem as if the answer to hyper politics is to kind of you know start like chastising people who you see engaging in and saying you know you need to stop doing hyper politics you need to start doing X, Y, and Z. But if it's a symptom, and then I think, you know, Owen's question, and, you know, I think something I guess we'll try to talk about is like, so what is actually the corrective? Is the corrective something along the lines of, well, we have to focus on, you know, the economic sources of what causes hyperpolitics to come about? Because I guess what I wonder is, you know, hyperpolitics is sometimes it seems like it's, um, a psychological modality people engage in because they require some type of instant satisfaction. They don't know how to change things or it just seems as if, you know, nothing's working. So you have to try to do everything. Or is it, you know, something that kind of becomes imposed upon us because, you know, those institutions that allowed those associational forms have decayed for one reason or another. And without them, it's not as if you can just simply think your way into that. So that was something that, I felt like I couldn't quite track in Yeager's argument. There's nothing to say that a symptom can't also cause further disorders. But is it the foundation of a problem? Or is it meant to give us insight into this broader change in social economic relations that happened? When does he date kind of the emergence of hyperprog? Was it 2008? Yeah, Speaker 4 (13:27) 2010. Speaker 3 (13:28) Okay. Speaker 3 (13:30) Is it related to the Great Recession? That was something that I was unclear about. I do think it matters, but I was Speaker 2 (13:36) wondering what you all thought. The periodization, as I understand it, it's like 1914 to, what, 89 is the great mass politics era. Then he's got, from 1989, the long 1990s to 2008 is the post-political. Then he calls the 2010s like an anti-political moment. And sometime we shift from anti-politics to hyper-politics. Yeah, Speaker 3 (14:05) I wasn't quite sure. And these Speaker 2 (14:07) are ideal types. And he even says it. It's not as if like it's Speaker 3 (14:11) literally like when it turned 1989, all of a sudden the faucet for hyper-politics turned on. But what was the distinction between hyper-politics and anti-politics? Those seem like. Yeah, I was also a little bit confused. Like Speaker 4 (14:25) anti-politics. Because that also says there's a kind of. period after 2008 where he says it's like a kind of technocratic it's Speaker 2 (14:31) a Speaker 4 (14:31) kind of like technocracy like you know we're Speaker 2 (14:34) not Speaker 4 (14:34) doing politics we're just doing elite management you know that's what there isn't really politics yeah but but then thanks obama Speaker 2 (14:41) that also yeah that actually seems like manifestly false though right like like if by that we refer to like the obama age like that's like the period of time in which like the the right especially was becoming extraordinarily like partisan and like yeah that was not an anti-political moment for for like people on Speaker 3 (15:05) the right isn't there a way of reading obama as a kind of expression of anti-politics yo yes the one's like yo i'm going to manage u.s decline you all get to go back to your houses and let the the well-spoken guy take care of it you know in his tan suit Tansu was kind of flying. So, okay, anti-politics is like the technocratic management. Yeah. And then hyper-politics is, you know, birthed in that brief. Yeah. I Speaker 1 (15:33) think it's more than technocratic. Like, I think that's one part of it. But I think he is all, Jaeger is also describing a shift in, a cultural shift in how people are thinking about politics or like psychologically. Getting intensely invested. Speaker 4 (15:49) Like Speaker 1 (15:50) both. Anton and I began the essays that we wrote about hyperpolitics describing what it was like to actually be political in the 90s and the 2000s. And, you know, I don't know if you guys were political as like kids, but I already was by the time I was in junior high. And that marked me out as not cool and a liberal.