On Margarine Words

 Reflections on Anarchist linguistic Practise.

[A] nihilist [may also]… knowingly point[] to the unknowable, to the background… stating more or less what everyone knows, but will not admit” (A de A, The Impossible Patience, 266)

Alejandro De Acosta has diagnosed the anarchist scene as one that is essentially sided by way of an “Anarchist identity machine”, an apparatus that sorts bodies this way or that. This identity involves a morality of a pernicious kind, one that develops sides, while, perhaps tongue in cheek, claiming to be antiauthoritarian. In “To Acid Words”, A de. A has approximated this sorting by way of a term, picked up from Barthes, called “margarine words”. The meaning of this term is complex. Clearly, we can say that:

1] Margarine words may be slogans or they may be oily words (138)

so that while,

2] Slogans are “phrases whose function is to circulate, not to mean”, and
3] oily words “slip from mouth to ear, person to machine situation to scene,

these terms

4] are repetitive: “functioning as code words or pass words, their appropriateness assumed, never shown” (138)

In this rendering, A de A. has proposed that anarchists simply function as sloganeers, throwing around terms all the while, more likely that not, marshalling a morality behind the words. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that margarine words can also be coded negatively (139). These variants do not simply pass as code words, that is, as “a gentle reminder of shared morals” (138), but rather, signify a type whom one mustn’t be. One is one of us (good); or one isn’t one of us (bad), and in both cases margarine words slick the activists language into appropriate behaviours, coding good bodies and bad bodies according to the anarchist identity machine.

On the topic of the assumption at (4), one might stipulate that Anarchists use/interpret words with “vague agreement”. And while this ambiguity is part of the story (166), the terms are not intended as ambiguous; rather, what is presupposed behind the spoken word is an unambiguous morality. Therefore, we say the term itself passes without analysis; passes in the sense that it merely functions to index a background morality. Of course, analysis may be where the limits of the margarine word apparatus go into hyper-meta-mode; for if one were to inquire about this indirect sign, one might be labeled a trouble maker, or an intellectual, a rhetorical sign that closes down the conversation with a reiteration. And even if this is supposed to be an unthinking auto mechanistic response, it is still possible that it stems from self-defensive thought; for one may have thought the matter through, in fact returning to polite conversation with a critiquing strategy. A. de A.’s response here is that this is because one is primarily afraid of the opposite: “Margarine words mobilize fear” (167). Consider the term privilege: What could it mean to deny that this term has traction in any specific case constituted as such by the liberal “privilege" churning machine? Most importantly: Who wants to be that guy? In fact, a whole host of negative pejorative terms come to the defence of the original morality. If you ask about whether shit is so simplistic, in a conversation about patriarchy with a feminist or even a queer, you might be labeled a manarchist. Anarchists are stuck in binary thinking, a stupid form of thinking that stems from dialectics.

In order to clarify what’s at stake here, consider the margarine word: nihilist. Coded negatively and under its best denigration, this term is meant to exclude from possible anarchist behaviour the mutilated being of a hopeless nihilist. One mustn’t disfavour action, no matter how foolish; one must either be an activist, always doing “something”, or an actionist, always looking for action (147). To round out the thought, the active nihilist might then name the one that is beyond the meaning of actionist as activist, for active nihilism seems open to differences towards which the mere actionist is closed. Without morality, active nihilists are without a moral agenda.

Such is how melting the (negatively coded) margarine word “nihilist” functions, a denial of the presumption that a nihilist identity were so simple and obviously undesirable. We could melt pretty much any other margarine word, or—that is, if the metaphor has lost its saltiness—uncover its meaning, slowing matters a bunch, and demand from the users of these slippery terms that simply pass around without thought, the meaning of what they are trying to say.
Indeed.

What would it mean to speak with the intention of being understood, while not wishing to be sorted according to an anarchist identity machine?
Why bother?

According to one theory of propaganda, the most important thing for dissolving power-over would be to permit ones intentions to be present; to take off the mask; to aggressively undermine any implication that one might be trying to manipulate an audience; that unpacking a meaning is always participatory. Bakunin used the term rational persuasion to index this definiendum; and this suggestion seems opposed to A de A’s meaning of acid words-- which isn’t an issue, of course. But let us start from the beginning.

Nihilists have their own margarine words. After all, what do we intend to mean when we use our own margarine word, say “liberal”, denoting those that practise dialectic politics, politics, and certainly not anti-politics, those that we find boring as fuck? All progressivist positions antecedently presuppose some sort of morality; to criticize comes from a better place, surely. But how this position occurs is not as clear: are these nihilists looking for other accomplices to join in the game? or are they simply desirous of not feeling compelled to argue that there is neither point nor future? A de A. often speaks of a studied silence (which still cannot avoid the implication that one is in a better position). And so, perhaps we cannot kick away the ladder as Wittgenstein discerned, since we are situated in language games (of morality); or perhaps, such is a problem of interpretation, as though we cannot help but be roped into a morality even if we intend to avoid it. Surely, however, nihilists use margarine words. So then if so, what does the attendant morality look like? A de A. has also gestured at two other options: acid words and mana words. And here the point above is made clear(er). The orality of mutant speech discloses an opacity of morality; anarchists can’t be sure which side they are on because they do not understand what is going on. This result shouldn't surprise; for militancy was always a matter of secrecy.

Perhaps the game is a straddling, then; perhaps we don't want to come off as predictable, so that the burden is on us to take off and replace masks as we please. Perhaps, that is, we don’t want to be perceived as immoralists; but rather, mask wearers, those that would have morality (or ethics), when it suits, rather than those that would be had by it, those that suit Morality. But perhaps, then, this is why A. de A. has articulated mana words moving towards acid words, words that fail to provide meaning because, while the words themselves are certainly opaque, so too are even the background assumptions.