Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

values, the texts do not fully determine their significance within the everyday life of the project. The values mustbe enacted in various guises—one of which is a passionate outpouring of commitments during moments of dis-ease. Mikhail Bakhtin’s discussion of ethical situationalism can help account for the necessity and importance of the crisis as a moment in which preexisting norms and codes break down, and then need to be rearticulated. In
Toward a Philosophy of the Act
, Bakhtin offers an ethical theory of action that repudiates the implications of formalistic theories of ethics, particularly Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative. Formalism requires what Bakhtin interprets as a suspect allegiance to universally conceived theoretical precepts standing above time and place. 23 Bakhtin argues that an overallegiance to theoretical precepts misdirects and thus disables responsibility instead of channeling it toward an active confrontation with the living moment in its full-blooded complexity. The effect of such “acts of abstraction,” says Bakhtin (1993, 7; emphasis added), is to be “controlled by [ … ] autonomous laws” in which people are “
no longer present in it as individually and answerable active human beings
.”
    Although Bakhtin’s dismissal of codified norms is somewhat overstated—in fact as I have been contending here, norms are more practical then he suggests; they are necessary guiding abstractions that establish a common ground for action and social cohesion—his critique nonetheless clarifies a number of key points. For Bakhtin, the most problematic aspect of formal ethics is that they provide a false sense of security, “an alibi” for an actual ethical being that downplays the inherent risk and conflict of making decisions along with the necessity of working toward solutions. The hard labor of ethics, its demanding phenomenology, is an outgrowth of taking risks, putting in the effort to engage with others, and choosing to confront the situation at hand in its specificity.
    Despite Bakhtin’s repudiation of theoretical dogmatism, he is careful to steer away from advocating moral relativism. As Michael Gardiner (2004, 39) maintains, Bakhtin rejects relativism for its shaky theoretical presumption that “a priori the mutual incomprehension of view [ … ] renders authentic dialogue superfluous.” Rather, Bakhtin asserts that individuals can potentially achieve some level of consensus because they are situated within a shared world of meaning. Despite clear differences in opinion that are unquestionably made evident during periods of crisis, people participating in a collective endeavor are nevertheless situated in a shared social space and committed to a baseline set of goals. As a result of Debian developers’ common participation in the project and shared rituals of entry such as the NMP, common participation within the broader hacker public, and participation in public events like conferences, they can draw on a set of shared experiences to work toward resolving crisis. This is an important condition of possibility that speaks to a potential, though not a guarantee, for consensus. To reach agreement, ethical labor must still be performed.
    Conclusion
    Given what I have written in this chapter, I hope it is clear that the praxis of ethics among Debian developers is diverse and ongoing; the making of a nomos is a dynamic affair. At times, ethical work occurs as an implicit form of enculturation, and in other moments, it takes shape as a reflective voicing through which a series of temporally and personally significant transformations are declared as well as achieved. For example, the new maintainer narratives allow developers to reevaluate their lives, making them into life histories that publicly offer a current and future commitment to a commonwealth. Crises represent moments of limits; charters and even routine narrative discussion are never enough to confront the emergent realities of new situations. In the simplest terms possible, an ethical life demands constant attention, response, reevaluation, and renewal.
    A critical question remains: Can we generalize Debian to illuminate the ethical processes of other virtual or F/OSS projects? With such a stark adherence to well-established ethical precepts, is Debian in fact just the radical black sheep of development projects? Or do other projects exhibit similar social, organizational, and ethical processes? It is worth noting