Richard Seymour, Lenin's Tomb
In Ferguson, Missouri,
there are 'outside agitators'. On this,
the reactionaries and liberals agree. Of
course, there are all sorts of racialised rumours flying around in the guise of
reporting about what is taking place in Ferguson. We are well used to this. We remember Katrina.
There will be time to
sift through all that. For now, I simply
want to ask a quick question: what is an 'outside agitator'? The metaphor of exteriority, of being
outside, has two salient connotations.
First, one is transgressing the spatial ordering of the state. It is states which constitute social spaces
like districts, wards, counties, etc - a process that is historically far from
racially innocent in the US. Second, one
is 'outside' the polis; one's political being as such is 'outside', one is
traitorous and disloyal. It is not just
that one travelled from one city to another - that's fine, provided the
political agenda one brings is benign for the system - but that one brought
ideas that are not only not native to the destination, but actually foreign to
the nation, the free world, civilisation itself.
