Chantal Jaquet's first book on what she called "transclasses" took up the subject of non-reproduction, of people who move from the dominated to the dominant class, in part because she argued that such transformations were perhaps the only way to grasp the conditions and forces of social transformation in times that were bereft of revolutionary movements. "In the absence of change on a collective scale, questions of the causes, means, and limits of individual non-reproduction are crucial." The movement from class to class makes it possible to grasp the larger transformations that make revolutions possible.
It is perhaps not surprising that Jaquet has now followed that book up with a book doing just that, theorizing revolution from the perspective of transclasses. Doing so demands returning to the ambiguity of transclasses. As Jaquet wrote earlier, non-reproduction is often an aspect of reproduction. "Individuals from the lower classes who climb the social ladder are used as mascots or symbols reinforcing the social order and fueling the ideology of the self-made man. They serve as political showcases and alibis to reject collective demands and contain people's sense of injustice." The greatest justification our existing hierarchies have is the fact that they are not without exceptions. Class rule is sustained by its exceptions.
In her new book, Révolutions Transclasses: Une nouvelle théorie de l'émancipation Jaquet examines further they way in which "non-reproduction is immanent to reproduction." The very existence of the bourgeoisie as a class, and the proletariat as a class presupposes that they are constantly permeated by exceptions and transformations. The bourgeoisie is as much made up of the nouveau riche, those that have broken out of their proletarian beginnings, as the proletariat is defined by those who have been rendered downwardly mobile due to the various elements of capitalist precarity. Jaquet reads Marx and Engels' famous descriptions of class struggle in the Communist Manifesto, pointing out that it is as much a text of transclass transformation as it is a text of class struggle, the confrontation of bourgeoisie and proletariat is also made up disruptions in which the bourgeoisie are constantly proletarianized. As Marx and Engels write, "The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers." This downward movement is coupled with those few proletarians who through a combination of luck and talents, find themselves among the bourgeoisie.
Jaquet's thesis on this point suggests a new way to look at class, at their constitution and destruction. Recognizing that transclass transformations are not just exceptional moments in the production of classes changes what we understand by class, classes have to be understood not as groups, as things, but as processes. As Jaquet writes,
"In considering classes through the angle of inter-class transformations it becomes possible to better comprehend their mode of constitution and conservation. Far from being an accident or a case of exception, the passage from one class to another is an expression of the necessary movement of non-reproduction immanent to social reproduction. It is therefore necessary to stop considering it as an epiphenomenon because it plays an essential role in a detailed comprehension of economic and social reproduction."
Jaquet makes a distinction between what she refers to (in the passage above) as interclass transformations, the transformations from class to class that leaves class hierarchy in place, and what she refers to as extra-class transformations, transformations that not only move from class to class but challenge the very idea of class. This leads to a reconsideration of what is meant by a classless society, and what is meant by revolution. Révolutions is a more Marxist book than Jaquet's first book on transclasses, which drew more from Spinoza. Which does not mean Spinoza is absent, transclass is Jaquet's contribution to Marxist-Spinozism. However, the intersection of Spinoza and Marx is strained by this question of revolution. As is well known Spinoza did not hold out much confidence in revolutions. As Spinoza argued in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, it is never enough to cut off the head of the king if you do not transform the structures and the people that have come to desire a king. "This, then, is the reason why a people has often succeeding in changing tyrants, but never in abolishing tyranny or substituting another form of government for monarchy." Such a claim would be opposed to Marx's famous exhortation of overthrowing chains. However, as Jaquet argues, this demands an attempt to refine and clarify what we mean by a revolution. Jaquet draws on Spinoza's discussion of mutatio, on the radical transformations of form, (including the famous Spanish poet), to argue that revolutionary transformations must be both a destruction, a destruction of the old ways of living, thinking, and perceiving, and the creation of a new one. A simultaneous pars destruens/pars construens. As Jaquet writes,
"Thus while individual inter-class transclassism espouses a logic of transitio, collective extra-class transclassism espouses a logic of mutatio. The first is a matter of the migration of classes, the second is a mutation which abolishes them. This is why in defining the revolution which institutes a society without classes could be defined as the effective movement of mutant people."
This mutation does not end with the radical transformation of classes. Class domination is not the end all and be all of domination. As much as patriarchy and racism intersect with class, they are not defined or determined by it. This leads to Jaquet to engage with theories of intersectionaly, and the intersection of race, class, and gender. Jaquet's early work on Spinoza's idea of "complexion" and "ingenium" proves well suited to consider the multiplicity of determinations that define an individual. As Jaquet writes,
"Unlike intersectionality, the concept of complexion rests on a holistic approach that rejects the separation of determinations that are necessarily embodied and intertwined. It refers to the singular psychophysical complex that integrates the history of the body and the mind—including their affections and modifications—through the interplay of relationships woven with the external world."
As Jaquet argues the revolutionary question is how to unify the various struggles, against class domination, patriarchy, and racism, without imposing a stifling uniformity on them.
The answer to this question entails a third kind of transclass transformation, what Jaquet calls "supra-transclass" this a mutation not just of the class, but of all of the categories of domination and hierarchy. Of course it is a challenge to even think of such a thing. On this point Jaquet turns to Spinoza' concept of common notions to think about the intersecting complexions that define mutations. As with Nick Nesbitt's very different book, Jaquet insists on the revolutionary dimension of Spinoza's critique of representation. The common is not the similar. The attempt to figure or represent some commonality cannot be separated from its hierarchy. As Jaquet writes, "This slippage from the common to the similar indeed has unfortunate political consequences, for, on the one hand, it fuels disputes over precedence and divisions among forms of struggle." The attempt to identify similarities in struggle produces its hierarchy and differences. In contrast to this the common demands to be thought through its singular and incomparable relations. As Jaquet writes, "In other words, the common is inseparable from the singular and can only be apprehended—in a differentiated manner—through it. The similar always simultaneously encompasses the dissimilar and can never attain perfect sameness."
The common must be constructed. It cannot just be perceived. Jaquet argues that there are two conceptions of the common in Spinoza. As she writes,
"In Part II of the Ethics Spinoza distinguishes thus between "that which is common to all [omnibus communia] (EIIP37) and that which "is common to, and peculiar to, the human body and certain external bodies by which the human body is usually affected, and is equally in the part and the whole of each of them" (EIIP39). In the first case it is a matter of what we could call the "omni-common" and in the second case, the "proper common" [commun propre] if indeed such an oxymoron is permissible. On this double basis, Spinoza elaborates a theory of common notions which consists in conceiving adequate, on one part, that which appears to all bodies, and that which concerns only the human body and certain external bodies only."
What does this "double basis" mean for thinking about the complexions of struggle. Jaquet suggests that the omni-common, the common affecting all, is the common that drives our ecological struggles, while the common propre is that the different ways different bodies are affected by different struggles. It is in the relation between the two that we create a logic and language of emancipation. As Jaquet writes,
"This "omni-common" and this "proper-common"—which together constitute it—anchor it in the reality of bodies and prevent it from becoming a hollow figure. On the contrary, it becomes concrete in the strongest sense, for it encompasses the entire richness of diversity and the density of reality. Thus, it is by analyzing what must be preserved, modified, and promoted within this omni-common and this proper-common that it becomes possible to formulate an ethico-political theory of universal emancipation."
In politics we are constantly beginning from those common notions that stem from a particular situation, a particular body, and its exploitation, domination, or marginalization. In fact, I would argue that these words, exploitation, domination, marginalization, especially as they are applied to both singular instances and across them, to frame political struggle, are an attempt to construct a common language of politics, they are attempts at common notions. This project is often burdened by resemblances, for an attempt to find the things that look the same among the different types of oppression, in what way is racism like sexism, domination like exploitation, etc.. From these singular instances we begin to construct our understanding of that which affects everyone, the omni-common. This double movement is both epistemological and political, in both we constantly move from the singular to the common without effacing either. I think that Jaquet has done a great job of trying to think the connection and disconnection of the singular and the common, the ethical and the political, the exceptions and the rules they reinforce.
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