Brighton’s quair

Ever since we sat on two plastic chairs, left out in Brighton Square, I’ve regarded the place as a kind of steel center of my universe.

It must have been about midnight, one weekday, when there was virtually no-one still out and about. The laughing groups of drinkers, weaving through the Lanes after last orders, had given way to the peculiar English silence due to the licencing hours. We’d just gotten into our stride, though, and hadn’t had so much to drink as to feel inclined to knock it on the head.

Matty produced the magic pills, reassuring me they served as a pick-you-up and improved the quality of late-night summits. He was right. He usually didn’t make mistakes about that sort of thing.

It’s hard to imagine this tidy little square, with its expensive boutiques, cheap café, record shop and art gallery, as it must have been originally. In fact, I never believed all that about Brighton being a fishing village. Myth and fairy tale. And how would it be in a hundred years’ time? History is noun England. That night, though, it was hours. Almost like a private sitting room, in fact.

In fact.

We were getting to grips with facts again. We’d decided we were on to something important, that couldn’t be postponed until the next evening.

’Factum, like de facto: from ... what would it be, now ...? Facere ...? Factum. Doesn’t sound quite right, somehow ...’

’Not sure ... I get confused with the Italian: faccio, fare, feci, fatto ... mind you, even that sounds funny, now ... feci ...’

’Must be the effect of the pills ... or the beer ...’

’... feci means something ...’

’What?’

’... quite different! Faeces! Feci means faeces! But that’s got nothing to do with ...’

’ "I did!" Faeces! Shit good, that! ha ha! Feci ... I did!! ’

’Effect of the beer! ha ha! Feci! ’

’But factum ... now, that means "done", right?’

’Or made.’

’Maid?’

’Mm. That which has been made, or constructed ...’

’Ah! You mean "made", with an "e".’

’What?’

’As in mad, with an "e"...’

’I don’t ...’

’Mad. Matto or matti! Fatto, fatti ...’

’Fatty?’

’Fatty Matty! ’

’The beer again ...’

’I think ...’

’I ..’

’I think those are ...’

’I think we’re losing sight of ...’

’... the facts. That which has been made or constructed! Yes! I think ...’

’... As opposed to a datum, for example, which is "given" ...’

’Mm, mm ...’

’Do, dare, datum ... but always passive ... that which has been, or is, "given". But who by ...?’

’You mean "by whom" ...’

’Or by what? That is the question ...’

’That which is given, that which is made ...’

’Or done ... constructed ... ’

’ ... like a dato di fatto ...’

’Dato di ...? ’

‘Fact. A state of affairs, say ...’

We paused for breath, convinced we were on to something.

’So a "fact" should be something essentially constructed, made, done ... and somewhere along the line there was a confusion, or need to distinguish making, or doing, from fabricating or constructing in the physical sense ...’

’I think the important thing is just to hang on to the fact that a fact isn’t a datum, but is something which has essentially to be constructed, in the creative sense, and hence is always open to deconstruction ...’

’And to the analysis of who or what is constructing, or making – and when - and hence ... oh yes! ... This is, this is important! And hence the tools, or ...’

’Yes! Yes! The ... who constructs a fact when, with what tools ... and hence, ultimately, to the specific mode of production ...! Yes! ’

’Which ... which brings us neatly back in a circle to what we were talking about before ... It’s all very ...’ ‘Mm, mm ...’

We sat back, to congratulate ourselves. We were definitely getting somewhere.

’And on the other hand, if we want to distinguish from the idea of "datum" or "data" ... I was just thinking, the English seems to have got ... I mean, there’s do ut des ... and then the word "do" got taken over …’

’Mm! I see what you ... And pronounced "do", which brings us back to ...’

’So the confusion between "fare"-equals-"do", and "do"-equals-"I give" ... both in Italian and Latin ...’ "Mm. I give ... do ... I ...’

‘Mm, mm.’

’But let’s go back to, you know, the mode of production and all that. That ties in with what I was telling you ... that article of Bob Young’s ... where he substitutes "scientific fact" everywhere Marx put "commodity" ... so facts are produced, reproduced, exchanged, consumed ...’

’I don’t ...’

’... and they become alienated! The fetish of commodities, or facts ... deliberately alienated from the subject ... the who constructs, or produces them ... for what purposes ...’

‘Mm ... and then how they get taken over ... appropriated by the ruling class ... or rather through the hegemony of ... say, the liberal bourgeois myth of external truth. Scientific facts existing independently of ... of ...’

’Yes! And ... and so you have this, this kind of thought control, or ideology, which hammers you over the head with ... with Science ... and, and Technology, and ...’

’As if ... as if this alienated labour, that has constructed the "facts", isn’t ... I mean, as if these facts existed, like objects, like metaphysically I mean, like ... like Capital ... and that can in fact be used to produce more facts ... or rather, forgetting that it’s us - I mean people ... who construct facts, using dead facts as ... capital ... to produce more facts, to ... and all the time ... who owns and controls the facts through ... through ... through the media ... or even the scientific institutions, say, like ... like the modern Church, which authorizes ... and that’s good, too! ... authorizes the authors of these facts ... which publishes these "facts" ... like controlling the market, reproducing, and commercialising these facts ... and’

’Mm. And all the time, like with capitalist commodities, subjugating the living labour that creates, transforms, gives value to these "facts" ... to the dead weight of textbooks, papers, the accepted world view, the dominant ideology ... as if ... as if ...’

’Like with anything that Capital controls ... there’s this desparate need to insist on things existing in themselves, metaphysically, without relations ... I mean, where the only relations are external, and supposed to be independent of ...’

’So, concretely, a particular social movement creates or constructs a "fact", such as ... "the laws of the economy", or ... "or the inalienable rights of the individual" ...’

’Mm, or even - I mean, especially – "the earth goes round the sun" ... or "the virus which causes cancer"’

’Mm, scientific or political facts, or history ... like the "fact" that Stalin’s purges were historically necessary ... or that "democracy" is what happens in the West, or ...’

’Mm, anything like that ... and then it’s an ideological battle between ... I mean, each side claims that their facts are real facts, and the other side’s "facts" are ’mere’ "ideology" ...’

’As a kind of battle to control the market of ideas, or "facts", by claiming that the, kind of, "other brand" is a "fake"!’

’Like ... like monopolising the market ...’

’And of course the whole thing comes back to the relation of forces: who can most credibly control the apparatus of reproduction and distribution ... so the Establishment ridicules the loony left, or the intellectuals, and appeals to good old common sense - you know - "of course there’s a world out there" - to say, "look, you lot, we are the depositories of serious, scientific. disinterested Truth, and we decide what counts as a fact, and if you want to be accepted into respectable society, you have to pass the exams, and get a degree, or anyway accept the rules."’

‘Mm, and if anyone actually challenges those rules, by touching the nerve of ... Truth, "facts", scientific verifiability and so on – correspondence with the "real world" - the mirror metaphor - and all that - the reaction is always the same - the same old appeal to facts being "given", existing, and being essentially non-political ...’

’So you get this incredible arrogance of people like, like the Tories, proclaiming a kind of arrival ... the end of history and all that ... because it all comes down to an external technical question of efficiency and removing obstacles from the natural God-given eternal verities of of of social relations and and scientific enlightenment ... and ... and on the other hand you have this, this Stalinist, this "scientific socialism" which preaches an inevitability, and anyway fundamentally TRUE ideology, which has only to be put into practice, with the Party as a kind of Modern Church mediating between True Theory and Imperfect Subjects ... or as, as a Modern Prince, so that the ends justify the means, and the Science of Government becomes simply a question of imposing efficiency, again, on potentially reactionary and devious individuals who get persecuted in psychiatric prisons if they don’t see the Truth as authorised by the Party ... and you get this kind of unholy alliance between right and so-called left based on a common ... common sense idea ... of facts as being given ...’

An uneasy pause ... A latent question, in a soft Irish voice, hanging over Brighton Square ...

’Is dat a fact? Now ders a quair idea, an a foin amusement far de tellin of it ...’