Listen to thisA few years back I wrote a couple of columns called mapping CYC I, II and III. My intention was to think through how we use socially constructed ways of describing the world to make sense of our experience of ourselves and others. The columns centered on two key ideas from the work of philosopher Gille Deleuze and the psychoanalyst and activist Felix Guattari. In their book, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, they propose that one way to think about society and how it is constructed, is to conceive of society as a field of composition. To this end, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that society is made of up of what they describe as lines of force that create social forms.
The first line is what they call the molar line and it is the way in which society delineates what may appear to be facts or nouns. So, when social forces rigidly determine the qualities that map the boundaries of a certain thing, that would be a molar line. Anytime we feel we can name something clearly such as a rock, a person, a tree, a table and so forth, we are in the arena of the molar line. Of course, molar lines can shift over time. For example, our definitions of gender, race, and class are responsive to shifts in how we are coming to understand them in the 21st century.
These shifts are determined by what Deleuze and Guattari call the molecular line of social composition. This line indicates a disturbance in the boundaries set by the molar line. All social categories have exemptions, contradictions and antagonisms within them. In periods of relative social stability these differences tend to be either ignored, glossed over, or overtly repressed, but that doesn’t mean they don’t continue to exert a force within society that pushes the boundaries of the molar delineations of what is what. Over time the tension between the molecular and molar lines can force a shift in the definitional coordinates of the molar line. In other words, the molar line does not go away, but is redefined to be more inclusive of certain key differences.
In the relationship between the molar line that rigidly defines the coordinates of definition and the molecular line that delineates what is left out by these definitions, there is a certain complementarity. The molecular line can change what is left out of a certain society’s definitions of the world, but it cannot escape the process of definition itself. All molecular differences become new sets of molar lines eventually.
For example, the way that we have defined gender in European derived society from the 12th century until the late 20th century was a binary between male and female. Throughout that period there were people for whom that definition did not work. The lived experience of these people comprised a molecular line of difference that would erupt as disturbances in the way gender was defined by the dominant set of social definitional norms.
However, as we entered the late twentieth century there was a breakdown in the capacity of the dominant society’s capacity to manage and control the coordinates of the molar lines that had comprised how we knew the world. During the 50-year period between the mid twentieth century and our contemporary society, the struggle over definitions for everything that comprises what we know has become an ongoing battle over who gets to say who we are and how the world works or should work.
This has certainly been true in the struggle over who gets to define gender. The binary definition of gender has been under considerable pressure from both emerging scientific data and the lived experience of those who feel as though male and female just don’t work for them. Much of this struggle though has been fought on the grounds of who has the actual truth about gender rather than the possibility of abandoning gender entirely. So, the battle over gender has become one over who gets control of the new molar line that will define what is and is not gender. The molecular disturbance of difference is quickly transformed into a new set of molar definitions.
Of course, this is true for many other social categories as well, including race, class, sexual orientation. The binary nature of these social productions is also undergoing a struggle for redefinition with similar contradictions and antagonisms. It is important to note, however, that the social plane on which these struggles are being engaged, is also fraught with a central contradiction that makes molar identity struggles ever more complicated. The binary molar categories which emerge in the 12th century in Europe were not simply neutral divisions of peoples into this vs that. They were riven with power relations and hierarchical configurations that were designed to subjugate the lived reality of certain groups and highlight the importance of the experience of others. The primacy of the landed white male as an exemplar of the pinnacle of human development was central to this project. This meant that those identities defined in relation to white masculinity were not only designated as inferior but were simultaneously erased from view and highlighted at the same time.
The identities highlighted were subject to social scrutiny and definition by the dominant society. This meant and continues to mean that the struggle over identity includes making non-dominant identities available to surveillance in ways that allowed them to be disciplined and controlled. In this sense, to be identified as a person of color, a sexual minority, working class, or poor meant that your affiliation with this identity subjected you to control and discipline by the ruling class. That class, as I have mentioned, was and is composed of those who can be designated as white, wealthy, and preferably male. These privileged bodies are largely invisible to the gaze of the dominant society. So, to be at the center of the molar set of definitions allows for an exemption from the disciplinary gaze of society, while to have your identity constructed in relation to the center is be made highly visible to discipline and control.
On the other hand, to be produced in relation to the dominant center also means being erased from view when it comes to any sense of an independent identity. Gay must always be in relation to straight, people of color in relation to whiteness, poor in relation to wealth, and so on. The dominant molar line creates what Deleuze and Guattari call a majoritarian set of descriptors. By majority, they don’t mean a numeric advantage, instead they mean the group that perpetuates and proliferates the molar definitions of any given historical period. Majoritarian descriptors are those that become the most common ways of talking about things in any given society. Majoritarian discourses frame the language we use to describe ourselves and it is always in relation to a key referent such as masculinity, whiteness, heterosexuality etc.
These ways of speaking a social world into existence, gives a false sense of reality that gives force to sets of power relations. After all, if my identity is always referential to something other than my lived experience, then my sense of who I am is determined by an outside I can’t truly access. In that sense, my actual experience of myself is erased in favor of an identity configured in relation to definitions imposed on me from the outside. To be gay, then has little to do with the lived experience of same sex relationships but is instead defined by the level of deviance from heterosexuality. To be trans must always be measured in terms of binary gender definitions that may or may not match lived experience. To be a person of color can only really be defined against the standard of whiteness.
One solution to this contradiction is to fight for a place of visibility within the existing configuration of molar definitions. That is to reclaim and reassert the definitional category, as a binary opposition. Or to work towards an equitable set of definitions in which both gay and straight, trans and cis gendered, white and person of color have equal standing in terms of disciplinary visibility. This is the ground of a great deal of what has come to be known as identity politics. To take pride in the very categories of definition that were designed to denigrate and control who you are. These can be powerful movements that have produced meaningful changes in how power relations are produced and perpetuated.
There is however an inherent contradiction that continues to trouble these liberatory efforts to find equity and justice. The problem is, that these battles assume the definitions of dominant social molar lines as the battlefield. When that assumption is made, then the battle for liberation can become a battle over who gets to define the new set molar definitions. And whatever that set is, someone will find their lived experience excluded.
The activist Grace Lee Boggs once said in an interview with Bill Moyers that during the twentieth century, political movements were mounted to overthrow governments we felt were oppressive, so that we could institute governments that would be dedicated to the greater good. She said, that what we found out was that those who overthrew governments throughout the twentieth century in revolution after revolution, simply became the next government that was just as oppressive as the old government. The band the Who echoed this in their song “Won’t be Fooled Again,” when they sing,
A change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that's all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain't changed
'Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
There is perhaps a transitional moment in all revolutionary movements when it is necessary to clearly identify a molar identity in opposition to the existing regimes of power. The trick is to not stay there very long or the names might change, but the power relations stay intact. Just a new group in charge of telling us who we are.
The good news is that as we enter the 21st century, there has been a powerful molecular movement that challenges the binary structure of identity in favor of the possibility of multiplicity. Maybe we don’t have to choose between this or that but could opt for many or none. The latter option is what Deleuze and Guattari call a line of flight which they say cuts across society and breaks free of the molar and molecular into a space of sheer composition or ongoing definitional becoming. Simply put, the line of flight opens a space where we recognize that we are all in a process of constant change where any stable sense of identity is a moment not a lifetime. Under these conditions we can see what works for a while and maybe we will stay with it for life or maybe we can become something else again.
And here we enter the lived world of youth/adult relations that is CYC. In our work, this is the reality of what happens in our engagement with young people if we pay attention. Our work is a kaleidoscope of shifting relations and mutable identities. When our work is done in a truly relational manner, we hold the door open for both young people and ourselves to compose ourselves over and over again in a celebration of all that we can or could be. Regrettably, sometimes we defer to the more dominant imperative that would have us assist young people and ourselves in narrowing the options until we know who we are and what our chosen career path is to be. From my perspective, that is a shame and a betrayal. It takes courage to live as fully as possible. I hope as a field CYC can promote that kind of courage so that we don’t become the new boss, same as the old boss.
