The supposedly high level of political consciousness of the peoples of Pakistan is heavily platitudinised by politicians, public intellectuals, and, most of all, the peoples themselves. I, here, propose that this so-called public wisdom of the masses is non-existent, and rather, should only be conspicuous by its absence. Sadly, this is not the case. This unnoticed absence forms the main reason for the following reflection on why and how this absence is present in our midst. The goal of power is to enforce obedience to its practice through ensuring behaviour of the governed considered desirable is continued and that considered undesirable is abandoned. Apart from the forceful alteration of public behaviour in the interests of power through direct application of force or threat of its use, strategies of persuasion are also put into play.
Political consciousness
One such persuasive strategy is to assume that a desired state of affairs exists when in fact it does not in order to make impossible the very possibility of its ever coming into being. I choose to call this strategy of persuasion, negation by affirmation. The form that it assumes in Pakistan, with respect to its political culture, is the tendency to praise the so-called high level of political consciousness of Pakistanis repeatedly in order to prevent the attainment of the very same high level allowing power and its pundits to foreclose the constitutive condition of political consciousness, that is, the awareness of its absence.
Repository of truth
The consequence of this particular application of negation by affirmation in Pakistan’s political context is a spontaneous recognition of whatever the people do or think as fundamentally correct just because they have been collectively declared to be the repository of truth, wisdom and honesty. Granted that all social wisdom, or even theory, is inspired by individual and collective actions, involving human beings as agents, subjects and even objects of social action but the fact should be grasped that, people qua people, not necessarily as individuals enjoying bounded freedom, rarely initiate the demystification of social reality. To use Kantian terms, people as people are always primarily an in-itself source of social consciousness and change; only secondarily do they become for-itself source of social consciousness and change.
Social education
In other words, all social wisdom and change comes from the people but does not always come to them directly in their capacity simply as everyday subjects of power. Intervening moments of intense educational work are required; such a work cannot be done by people in need of a social education themselves. It involves collaborative education with social educators and continued self-education for those who have graduated from the initial period of collaborative social education. Such people then move on to the next phase of social education in which they collaboratively educate others in need of such critical instruction.
Imprisonment of thought
So, three main moments of the acquisition of true social and political consciousness may be tentatively outlined. The first moment of impulsive and spontaneous awareness of the world and its problems is followed by the second moment of the education of this primordial social awareness in collaboration with social educators which then culminates in the third moment of the true awareness of the world, its problems and a concerted search for the solutions for these problems. The main target of negation by affirmation is basically to interrupt the progression to second and third educational moments. People are confined within the wild but ultimately tractable space of the first moment by declaring this moment to be sufficient and standing complete in no need of transformation. In Pakistan specifically, this imprisonment of thought and curtailment of action is efficiently ensured by media analysts and public intellectuals when they tirelessly assert the high level of political consciousness of Pakistanis.
Toleration of corruption
A special but highly insidious form of negation by affirmation in Pakistan is the oft-used analogy between the household or family and the country or the state that helps in creating a public culture based on the infinite toleration of corruption and incompetence on one hand and consequent continued malversation on the other. This analogy is fervently used first to deflect sincere and correct criticism of the state and its functionaries, and second to defer corrective action based on it. We refuse to recognise that though family and state exist as social institutions serving the same ends of creating a particular kind of social order based on the accumulation of capital, they in no way can be said to be of the same nature.
Reformation of the state
The relative magnitude of the two institutions compels them to follow totally different logics of operation. The superficial similarity between the two institutions is based on nothing but the erroneous extension of the familial values of forgiveness, reconciliation and property inheritance to state apparatuses in order not only to condone but also sanction corruption and dereliction of duty in these apparatuses. By enabling this transference of the family values to the sphere of the state, this analogy makes the reform of the Pakistani state structure extremely difficult. It negates true reconciliation that can only follow after a strict and unsparing accountability by affirming a shabby reconciliation based on conniving at multiple infractions on one hand and living in self-induced amnesia of these infringements on the other. It also fosters clientelism and rent-seeking in the Pakistani public culture.
Unconsciously promoting nepotism
However, the only valuable insight that should be drawn from this flawed correspondence between the state and the family, or between the house and the country fails to be deduced – that both family and the state as presently constituted in Pakistan do in fact form and promote a coordinated but foul social system of favouritism and nepotism based on ignoring merit and its different stages.
Negation by affirmation enjoys widespread currency in modern political and intellectual cultures because it is an inverse mental reflex of the globally predominant logic of capital accumulation. Capital accumulation occurs through dissipation of resources and lives while negation by affirmation takes place through dissolution of reality through accumulation of mental spectres. This relation between the two would be explored in greater detail in a future article.
The writer is a Senior Policy Analyst in the OIC’s Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation and can be contacted at [email protected].
