Project Mimique London

'In the image of God': A statement on Project Mimique's withdrawal from public participation in planning With the consultation process on the Mayor's London Housing Strategy (to be pursued after the May 1 2008 elections), Project Mimique will be bowing out of measures for public participation. Our submission on underemployment and forced labour in the capital was ruled out of order on the grounds of 'total theory'. On the other hand, submissions by MACE Housing Co-operative which we contributed to, rigorously analytical but without mystification, have received no feedback or official recognition in subsequent documentation. It is not controversial to state that in the structural functionalist model underpinning the strategic planning process, public participation is a displaced form of conflict, a technique to integrate subjects and groups predisposed to dissent. Ralf Dahrendorf (1959: 207) comments that conflict can be conceived as one of the 'patterns' contributing to the maintenance of the status quo, and quotes Lewis Coser: Conflict may serve to remove dissociating elements in a relationship and re-establish unity. In so far as conflict is the resolution of tension between antagonisms it has stabilising functions and becomes an integrative component of the relationship [...] The interdependence of antagonistic groups and the crisscrossing within such [open] societies of conflicts, which serve to 'sew the social system together' by cancelling each other out, thus prevent disintegration along one primary line of cleavage. While integrating antagonism at the level of consultation, to the effect that nothing actually changes, the discourse of the London Plan itself transcends conflict, validating the 1961 dismissal by the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism: city planning must be understood as a publicity exercise -- a field of public relations -- that is, an invitation to participate in something that it is impossible, fundamentally, to influence. The respondent becomes trapped in a desperate need to be heard, without hope, in further rounds of consultation. Yet such power relations are mobile. The weaker party can turn the tables on the strong. The announcement of a debate by the London Tenants Federation outside the EIP (Further Alterations) proceedings is a step in the right direction. Public participation in planning, it has to be stated, relies on a suspension of disbelief. It is an exercise in conformity. Those whose submissions are amenable to assimilation gain moderate ground, especially if their responses are in the affirmative. Those demanding a policy rethink are ignored. Elsewhere we have quoted Werner Bonefeld (1987: 118) on the operations of the segmented-corporatist post-Fordist state: what we witness here is both a fragmentation and penetration of civil society, in a direct attempt to homogenise social interest. But what of the subject drawn in to this futile engagement? Is the London Plan a creation of its participants, or vice versa? How implicated are those who engage in consultation, however antagonistic, in the construction of policies they oppose? Alex Callinicos (1976: 65-66), discussing the writings of Louis Althusser, points to a complicity of subject and object: The notion of a subject cannot be separated from that of its object, and from the relation held to subsist between them. In a sense, subject and object are made for each other [...] Either the subject has imposed a meaning on the world, that is, he has (in a sense) created his object, as for example, philosophers of the phenomenological school have argued. Alternatively, the subject is a creation of his object, in which case the object is thereby transformed into a subject. While we have a deep respect for all those who made submissions alongside ourselves, Project Mimique notes the subjective status of the London Plan, as a determinant of discourse and form, in the majority of consultation responses. Althusser turns the discussion into one of theology, a conversation between God ('I am that I am') and Moses: "God is thus the Subject, and Moses and the innumerable subjects of God's people, the Subject's interlocutors- interpellates: his mirrors, his reflections. Were not men made in the image of God?" (1971: 53). Were not the majority of consultation responses made in the image of the LDA? Have we not in our discourses, if not in our politics (as in days of yore), become specular mediations of the metropolitan state? Furthermore, the individual is "interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, [...] i.e. in order that he shall make the gestures and actions of subjection 'all by himself'" (ibid: 56). Nikolas Rose (1999: 41), after Foucault, points to the "objectification of the human being in the discourses that would govern [...], and subjectification in diverse practices and techniques". We would argue that planning consultation is one of these subjectifying practices and creates a subjectivity at war with, but amenable to, government. That is, a civil society firmly at a distance. Power for Foucault is "a way of acting upon one or more acting subjects by virtue of their acting or being capable of action" (2000: 341). But the subject has no substance, it is produced "'as an effect' through and within specific discursive formations, and has no existence, no transcendental continuity or identity, from one subject position to another" (Kellett). Project Mimique believes that we were not mistaken to participate. "The analysis, elaboration and bringing into question of power relations and the 'agonism' between power relations and the intransitivity of freedom is an increasingly political task -- even, the political task that is inherent in all social existence" (Foucault: 343). Agonism, a process of "mutual incitement and struggle, less of a face-to-face confrontation that paralyses both sides, than a permanent provocation" (ibid: 342). Yet, we are not mistaken to get out: a key problem for Foucault is "to liberate us both from the state and the type of individualisation linked to the state", to explore new forms of subjectivity through a refusal of this 'individuality' (ibid: 336). Bibliography Althusser, L. (1971) Essays on Ideology (London) Verso Bonefeld, W. (1987) 'Reformulation of State Theory', Capital & Class 33 96-127 Callinicos, A. (1976) Althusser's Marxism (London) Pluto Press Coser, L. A. (1956) The Functions of Social Conflict (London) Routledge & Kegan Paul Dahrendorf, R. (1959) Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (London) Routledge & Kegan Paul Foucault, M. (2000) Power, Essential Works of Foucault 1954- 1984, Volume 3 (London) Penguin Kellett, P. (2008) Lacan's Identity www.swtherapists.com/articles/Lacans_identity.htm Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom (Cambridge) CUP In search of truth where it had never been: A critique of public consultation in urban planning can be accessed here.

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