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It
has been said of the late journalist Hugo Young that
power and the way it was exercised were his abiding
concerns. Given that power and politics, both macro
and micro, are inextricably linked, any such concern,
if it is to claim rigour, can hardly remain indifferent
to the task set by the philosopher Jacques Derrida
when he aimed to deconstruct ‘pervasive shibboleths’,
arguing that ‘politics has always been a privileged
space for the lie.’ Not least because, in the
words of Greg Salyer, ‘institutions lie, and
perhaps they can do no other because their reason
for existence is not truth but power, and essential
to the acquisition and maintenance of power is the
production of lies in the name of truth.’
In
the Foucauldian perspective power is much less centralised
than we would expect to find in a political economy
model being, as it is, dispersed through discourses
and institutions. The dominant discursive grid energising
and governing Northern Irish political conversation
has for some time been the peace process. And while
the North may be the epicentre of this powerful discursive
formation, its decibels have on occasion sent tremors
throughout the body politic in both London and Dublin,
not to mention Washington. All other discourses, if
not plugged into its panoptical gaze, are certainly
subordinate to, or where they lack the internal strength
to resist, marginalised by it.
The
peace process has produced its own vernacular which,
to avoid being labelled a ‘rejectionist’
or a ‘no man’ and face eviction from the
gravy train, all the political actors must absorb
and regurgitate a la the ventriloquist’s dummy.
It is a language which fuels and fortifies concepts
such as the ‘Northern Ireland state’, ‘consent’,
‘the equal validity of the two traditions’,
Stormont’, ‘decommissioning’ ‘and
‘policing’ no matter how value loaded or
weighted they may be. But where it reaffirms its own
it also attenuates the other, persistently hollowing
out concepts such as armed struggle, political violence
and dissent. Articulated together as a cluster, this
may be called a systemic discursive ensemble in that
it was always critically situated at the heart of
British state strategy and policy for dealing with
the North. It was a cluster which for long was viewed
as a billiard ball by those in diametrical opposition
to it, who sought to strike it head on. And while
the billiard ball transmuted itself into a cobweb
permitting interaction between opposing forces and
allowing those most opposed to it to now embrace it,
it was the web where the spider rather than the guests
was master. Much like Lampedusa's The Leopard's
dictum that ‘everything must change so that everything
can stay the same’, the British state has shifted
remarkably little in substantive ways in order to
retain the hegemonic position of its key terms within
the dominant discourse.
Conversely,
those who formerly deconstructed and attempted to
devitalise and divest the cluster of concepts of their
potency have subsequently travelled the greatest distance
in order to accommodate it. One of the institutions
now deeply embedded in the dominant discursive formation,
through which power is filtered and dispersed, is
the Provisional Republican Movement. In order to arrive
at this position it has jettisoned the anti-systemic
counter-discourse that had both defined and sustained
it while at the same time demarcating it from the
establishment. Paraphrasing Islam, the discursive
mountain did not come to Adams; he went to it. Subsequently,
he and his colleagues who champion the concepts they
formerly waged a figurative and real war against can
be welcomed into the bosom of the establishment, albeit
in fits and starts. There was no disagreement between
Gerry Adams and the then leader of the Irish Labour
Party Ruairi Quinn, when the latter made the point
that Sinn Fein was now an establishment party.
Meanwhile,
those who oppose such concepts or merely pose the
awkward question are forever depicted as the proverbial
fly in the ointment, the cure for which is a hefty
swat. But even here the institutional lie which permeates
the peace process could scarcely conceal its face.
In the case of Michael McKevitt, the reason for his
conviction was less that he ‘directed terrorism’
for the Real IRA but that he did so for the wrong
IRA. ‘Directing terrorism’ in one IRA and
the terminus is Portlaoise; for directing it in another
it is parliament.
One
way of framing such discontinuity is through recourse
to a Foucauldian paradigm that would contextualise
the peace process as a discursive formation. Michael
Lewis Goldberg has observed that an established 'discursive
formation' is in fact defined by the contradictory
discourses it embodies. Because of this it is characterised
by a hierarchical arrangement at the apex of which
sits the hegemonic discourse, which unites subsidiary
and subordinate discourses, fragments oppositional
discourses and mediates the relationship between the
two. A central plank of this hegemonic discourse is
the ‘regime of truth.’ One of its primary
functions is, as Keeley claims, to dominate, cover
up, and discredit what Foucault terms ‘subjugated
knowledges’ such as those that would highlight
the fundamental political failure of Provisional republicanism
with their claims that each new phase of struggle
announced by the Provisional leadership is a rhetorical
mask behind which lies a strategic failure. For Foucault,
as pointed out by Yang, the regime of truth shapes
the types of discourse which society accepts and makes
function as true and the status of those who are charged
with saying what counts as true. Whether such truth
is accurate is neither here nor there. As Win McCormack
observes, ‘in Foucauldian theory it is power,
the possession and wielding thereof, that determines
what discourse prevails in any given contest, or confrontation,
or battle of discourses - and not the relative merit
or cleverness of the argument.’ Non-unionists
re-designating as unionists in order to fortify the
peace process is a truth because the power behind
the peace process deigns that it should be so and
designates those who query it to the sin bin.
Unfortunately
- and from a radical perspective, unpardonably - the
left-leaning media have been central to sustaining
such a regime. The right by contrast have been more
frank although certainly not more insightful. The
Left merely pretend not to see what is in front of
their noses. But the right too in their fury fail
to see the wood for the trees. According to Michael
Gove, Gerry Adams gets away with it because ‘the
press is so captivated by the bogus theology of the
peace process that it treats every ex cathedra utterance
of St Gerry as if they were pronouncements of near-papal
infallibility. Even when they’re just bull.’
With cooler detachment and stronger perspicacity Kit
Kildare has discerned what exactly is bogus: It is
not that Adams has set out to con the establishment
about his willingness to kill off Provisional republicanism;
‘what fundamentally distorts political coverage
of Sinn Fein is a profound inability by journalists
to measure how that organisation has fared by light
of its own objectives.’ As elucidated by Brian
Feeney, republicans have ‘unsaid everything they
said in the seventies and eighties and ultimately
settled for less than the SDLP got in 1973, which
republicans regarded then as a sell out.’ Or
alternatively by Ed Moloney:
The
journey from war into peace involved, from the Republican
view point, enormous ideological flip-flops. These
included, to name but a few, accepting the idea
that Unionist consent was a precondition for Irish
unity and independence, a rejection of one of the
foundation stones of Republican philosophy. The
peace process also meant and means Republicans accepting
institutions they had died and killed to overthrow,
from the local parliament to the policing and criminal
justice system. It meant and means embracing a system
they had once angrily proclaimed was rotten with
corruption and beyond reform.
A
central concern of Foucauldian analysis is to establish
not so much what we know but how, in epistemological
terms, we have come to know what we know. Provisional
discourse, by virtue of being intermeshed with the
broader peace process, has been successful in establishing
itself as the hegemonic discourse within republicanism
by having the power to produce its own truth, something
recently alluded to by Gerry Adams when in promoting
his book he described it as ‘my story, my truth,
my reality.’ That such a truth, even when it
is patent nonsense, can hegemonise republican discourse
is in part achieved through the suppression, on occasion
violently, of alternative discourses. As a localised
hegemonic discourse it has exercised power in the
area of setting the agenda for the republican constituency.
But it also shapes and approves ‘acceptable language,
symbols, modes of reasoning, and conclusions.’
A regime of truth serves it well. For this very reason
Sinn Fein can argue via the pen of Jim Gibney:
If
there is one big lesson coming out of the peace
process over the last ten years, it is words like
'certainty' and 'clarity' are not part of the creative
lexicon that conflict resolution requires if it
is to be successful … demanding such words
causes crisis and paralysis. They clog the peace
process engine up with gunge … Give me the
language of ambiguity. It has served the people
of this country well over the last ten years. It
has oiled the engine of the peace process. Long
may it continue to do so.
At
first glance Gibney’s position would appear to
contradict the more general view of Bryan Appleyard
that:
we
inhabit a culture of lies, the one law of which
is that everybody, all the time, must pretend they
are telling the truth …We have finally and
fully adopted a world view in which there is no
such thing as truth, only an infinitely modifiable
system of competing discourses.
But
Gibney valiantly rides to the rescue of Appleyard,
waving his demand that ‘the time has come for
the British government to tell the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth about their dirty
war in Ireland.’
There
may understandably be a temptation to think the Provisional
‘regime of deceit’ - itself reducible to
but not merely synonymous with the regime of truth
and which in effect is the corollary of Gibney’s
logic - is exclusively located within Provisional
discourse primarily as a means to pull the wool over
the eyes of the republican constituency. Even where
the lie - as often happens - is told to many outside
the constituency, it is seemingly accepted - although
not believed - by officialdom on the grounds that
the Provisional leadership have to indulge in a bit
of duplicity when engaging with opponents as part
of the process of constituency management where the
appearance of pulling the wool over the eyes of the
other side is a cause celebre. This approach
however, is to displace the role of the lie from its
panoptical perch within the broader peace process.
The British and Irish governments too have spawned
a web of deception. Henry Patterson once referred
to Tony Blair’s absurd comment that ‘clarity
is our friend in this process, and ambiguity is our
enemy.’ Patterson’s’ response was clinical:
That's
a statement to which even the most hardened supporter
of the peace process must respond: "Really,
Prime Minister. Since when?" Ambiguity of the
most subtle - and often not-so-subtle - kind has
been at the heart of the peace process since the
start.
Vicky
Allen who recently interviewed Adams was informed
by him that, ‘I have often been accused, particularly
by my opponents, of being in, or having been in, the
IRA. It is a charge I have always rejected. I tell
the truth on these matters.’ Allen claims that
this ‘seems ‘to mock the peace process’
and she is critical of the belief ‘that if you
say something enough it becomes public truth.’
This is to miss the point. Such denials are part of
the peace process and do not stand in contravention
of it. How else do we explain Bertie Ahern claiming
that IRA disavowals should be believed because the
organization has a history of telling the truth? Or
the situation where Mo Mowlam claims: 'we sat down
with Sinn Fein. We sat at one end and they brought
in some people who were obviously members of the army
council'. Did her political and security advisers
so poorly advise her that she believed she was sitting
talking to anyone else but the army council before
the army council officially appeared?
Not
only has the peace process institutionalised the ‘regime
of truth’, it has also licensed Provisional republicanism
to become a coercive apparatus of power functioning
in a milieu where, as Foucault would put it, ‘the
whole indefinite domain of the non-conforming is punishable.’
Such a function is considered necessary because of
the existence of what Brown has called a ‘structurally
determined domination in play where some members of
the community may wield more discursive power than
others.’ It is further made possible because
the republican leadership has rendered itself indispensable
to the governments tasked with ending political violence
by coming to constitute itself as, what sociologists
and international relations specialists term, an ‘epistemic
community.’ Drawing on the work of Thomas Ford
Brown it is possible to conclude that when Adams exhorts
the republican grassroots not to become mesmerised
by the tactical manoeuvring of the moment performed
by the leadership of a leadership-led movement and
subsequently excludes them from the major decision
making processes, he is doing little other than staking
a claim on the part of those who lead to have specific
knowledge which allows them to ‘frame issues and define
salient discourse; to shape and narrow potential solutions
or outcomes.’ Clearly, there is some measure of power
being exercised here not on behalf of the grassroots
but against them. As Chomsky contends, ‘you can
make things look complicated, that's part of the game
that intellectuals play; things must look complicated
… it's a way of gaining prestige, power and influence.’
In
issues involving some measure of complexity and uncertainty,
governments turn to epistemic communities for guidance
and ideas. Governments in fact demand such input.
In return they provide the epistemic community with
resources which, according to one IRA volunteer, in
the case of his own leadership becomes one of their
most potent weapons - the power of patronage. Furthermore,
according to Drake & Nicolaidis an epistemic community
must have access to top policy-makers through the
establishment of both formal and informal channels.
In the view of Antoniadis epistemic communities, by
controlling knowledge, possess and exercise decisive
power in an “interaction game” of the construction
of the political reality. Rather than compelling others,
epistemic communities more likely serve to limit the
power of opponents by discrediting their definition
of the situation, and by discrediting their solutions.
Looking
over these characteristics it requires little agility
to find points of convergence with the role played
by the Provisional leadership in the peace process.
But
because Provisional republicanism is tasked with presenting
what is in fact a discontinuity of the earlier republican
struggle as a continuity of it, the loudest word in
its vocabulary is hush. But in order to impose hush
there is a need to police the silence. The wider discursive
formation, the peace process, silences itself. As
Moloney contends how Provisional republicanism came
to its present position is one of the least investigated
and most unprobed stories of all time. To do this
the threat of violence is always there. On occasion
the Provisional leadership has resorted to murder,
kidnappings, kneecappings, ostracism, threats and
intimidation.
This
poses a serious threat to the role of dissent not
only within republican communities but in wider society.
If the most vociferous dissident communities in these
islands for decades can be silenced to the point of
remaining mute when Sinn Fein ministers close down
acute health services on behalf of the British exchequer,
what chance is there of effective structures of transparency
and dissent emerging elsewhere?
Yet,
the useless response of armed republican dissidents
has served to reinforce the very discursive formation
that has been responsible for marginalising them to
begin with. Rather than see the Provisionals as having
lost the war, they continue with their fallacious
belief that victory was in fact possible if Gerry
Adams had not, as they see it, concocted a sell out.
Hence they continue with their futile campaign to
achieve what the Provisionals found to be unachievable.
The
peace process is a powerful discursive formation underpinned
from London to Washington. The notion that it can
be subverted and reversed by armed groups who display
the strategic precision of cattle in a field is anathema
to reason. The only space available to those who wish
to dissent from the peace process is to employ strategies
of reversal which allow them to oppose the process
but not the peace.
Throughout
the world there exist epistemic communities which
are anti-systemic. The challenge facing dissident
republicans is one where they avoid reinforcing the
epistemic community they so vehemently oppose and
instead undermine it by constituting an oppositional
epistemic community, seeking to create a new episteme
which will draw people rather than repel them. In
a political milieu where the Sinn Fein leadership
cosy up to the Bush/Blair axis during their war summit
at Hillsborough and where the party president attends
the World Economic Forum in new York but not the World
Social Forum in Brazil, the development of a radical
critique which seeks to align with the Global Justice
Movement creates discursive space where counter discourses
may flourish. Foucault reminds us ‘discourse
can be both an instrument and an effect of power,
but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of
resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy.’
In his words the real challenge is to:
show
people that they are much freer than they feel,
that people accept as truth, as evidence, some themes
which have been built up at a certain moment during
history, and that this so-called evidence can be
criticized and destroyed.
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