Must we (can we?) begin to think anew?

Then it spoke to me again as a whisper: "It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world. O Zarathustra, you shall go as a shadow of that which must come: thus you will command and, commanding, lead the way." And I answered: "I am ashamed."
Then it spoke to me again without voice: "You must yet become as a child and without shame."

-Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Form of Life is one of my favorite blogs. There is a lot of clarity there, and a bit of poetry. I began with Nietzsche because Form of Life gave me insight into his work, specifically Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In a recent post, Form of Life writes the following of the recent conflicts in the Middle East:

After years of continuous and ruthless conflict, there is still absolutely no coherent understanding of the situation in the Middle East. Every explanation seems to be insufficient. Every solution is revealed as a sham. One mistake piles on top of the previous one. It is obvious, therefore, that a radical paradigm shift of thought is needed.

Indeed. Our failure to understand it presents us with a problem. Who shall we become in order to understand this situation? What new forms of thought and what new objects for knowledge must exist for us to understand?

In the quote above, Nietzsche writes that is "it the stillest words that bring on the storm." But who has ears for the stillest words? Too many voices today are booming. Too many people speak of big concepts and of great evil.

Are we ashamed? In one sense, I'm certain we should be. But I don't think that is the shame Zarathustra feels. I believe he is ashamed of becoming something new, and mosomething important. He is shrinking from a powerful and frightening destiny. Certainly there are those in this world that feel that way. There are leaders and regular people who sense they could become someone new in this world, someone able to see this problem better than our weary eyes. I hope that they find the strength to become like children.

We are furthest from ourselves

A philosophy related blog, Long Sunday, recently offered this post, related to Freud. In the penultimate pargraph the author reflects on the meaning of Freud's work and more generally, psychoanalysis:

But perhaps the main value of Freud's whole approach is located at the earlier stages of the process. The 'surprise' of psychoanalysis has always been its ability to challenge our naive conviction that we are in charge of the 'commanding heights' (as Bukharin might put it) of our organism: the will, personality, and so on. We value Freud not for the explanations of symptoms he provides, the "after story" that he tries to impose on really undecidable, untraceable and doubtless overdetermined psychic phenomena, but the original distancing we achieve from a world that 'presents' as full of jostling, self-aware and self-interested agents and their dissolution into discrete but obscure and preconsciously rooted drives. But then it turns out that these drives are themselves jostling, self-aware, and self-interested agents. So not only are we robbed of 'control,' we are subjected to a battle that rages and tosses us to and fro like so much floatsam. Or to use another metaphor: like dispossessed refugees from a war being fought on 'our' turf, but by combattants we neither control nor even perceive clearly.

Freud challenges the idea that our conscious minds are the undisputed king of ourselves qua organism. This challenge isn't solely Freud's, I (as the title should indicate) see Nietzsche in the lead as the prominent challengers of the sovereign self. But my goal here isn't to declare a winner in this contest. Rather, I want to ponder what made this contest possible. How did we come to see ourselves in this way? What discursive practices enabled us to see ourselves caught in a multiplicity of drives? How could we become conscious of pre-consciousness and unconsciousness?

These questions (or more properly, these types of questions) were inspired by Foucault. I've been reading Foucault's Order of Things for a reading group. I read this book over a year ago and found myself overwhelmed and afflicted with stress headaches. This time around I've taken more time. I'm currently in the chapter titled "Classifying." I think my increased comprehension this time can be attritued to working harder and the simple fact that I've been reading (and writing about) Foucault for a couple years now. I understand his methods more these days but I also realize I have many years of research ahead of me. The method contained in Order of Things challenges me. I sometimes grasp it but it eludes most of the time. I keep rereading and rereading. If there is one thing philosophic research has taught is that reading can be strenuous.

What I gather from this latest reading is that Foucault is that knew something was lurking beneath our assumptions of truth, specifically scientific truth. Later on in his analyses, he exposed us to the power that lurks beneath. But Order of Things is a bit different. He is doing work he terms archaeological. This work tries to "reveal a positive unconscious of knowledge", at a level where certain conditions allow for a certain periods thought. Foucault wants to describe that epistemelogical space that makes knowledge possible and governs its formation.

This brings me back to the challenges against the soveriegn self. I don't have the ability or knowledge to expose the archaeological level that allows for us to see ourselves as complex organisms of which conscious is only one part. I also know that Foucault does approach this topic in Order of Things. I will post again on the topic when I arrive in that section. What I do wonder about is what kind of discursive activity enables us to see the unconscious? What episteme guides us to this obscured figure who makes it so difficult to know ourselves?

Perhaps it is not to post questions on blogs but that's all I can offer. But maybe this isn't just a question, perhaps it is just a bookmark. A way to mark my thoughts today so that later on I can return to them and the very act of writing can help me focus on the questions themselves.

We are the Battlefield: The Contemporary Paradigm of War

It's a sad fact that civilains suffer most contemporary wars. Solidiers and militants do not suffer or die as often civilians.

Terrororism is focused on civilians themselves. It strikes trains and planes rather than military bases. Aerial bombings often target forces in and around civilian populations, the unsurprising civilian casualities are called 'collateral damage'.

These two poles of warfare are the limits of warfare today. At the bottom is terrorism. Individual groups exploit any available technology to kill as many civilians as possible. At the top are rich and powerful states using billion dollar airforces to drop million dollar bombs on various targets. Although they speak of "smart bombs", civilian's often suffer the most during such bombardments.

Here is an article about this subject. It might help you form your opinions on this subject. Here is a quote from the article:

War amongst the people is the new paradigm of war, defined by General Sir Rupert Smith in his book The Utility of Force as "the reality in which the people in the streets and houses and fields - all the people, anywhere - are the battlefield. Military engagements can take place anywhere, with civilians around, against civilians, in defence of civilians. Civilians are the targets, objectives to be won, as much as an opposing force."

There could be no more apt description of the situation in Lebanon - or Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya, to name just a few other such situations around the world. In these, all the conventional forces are fighting "resurgents" or "terrorists" or "warlords" who are embedded in the local populations.

This is known, and occasionally even mentioned by military analysts and the media; but what is missed is their purpose: these non-state actors are fighting among the people not only in order to hide, literally and figuratively, beneath the radar screen of the conventional army, but because their main objective in fighting is the will of these people: they are seeking to win them over, or at least to achieve their tacit support, knowing that if they have the people on their side they will eventually attain their political goals - of removing the conventional political and military forces attacking them in the name of states and order, and then instating their alternative.

The political implications of this new reality are deep and disturbing - though once again, they should be no surprise - reflecting that despite declarations of "war on terror" and the like, war is no longer an option to get out of a political problem - at least not for as long as our militaries are still structured to fight an industrial battle against a nonexistent Soviet enemy, and the political-military way of thinking about using force is still based on models of industrial war.

Moreover, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Lebanon are showing that even if one were willing to use extreme force, in other words to use the hi-tech weapons to their full potential, even if the targets were not opposing, identical weapons but rather civilian objectives in which the opposing side takes shelter with very low grade weapons, even if there is a willingness to unleash the full might of the conventional army in this way and cause massive death and destruction, it simply does not work.

Civilians seem to take on 3 major roles in contemporary warfare. They are the battlefield, the target, or the objective. The idea of civilians as as target in themselves is a little strange to me. I think that civilians become targets only within a strategic calculation. Killing civilians is rarely an end in itself. Rather, civilians are a means to an end. Although civilians as means takes on many forms, I'd like to focus on two major examples: attacks on civilians qua political will and collective punishment. Civilians can be the targetted because they constitute the political will of their adversary. The best example of this is democracies where changing the political will of the demos is the aim. The other way in which civilians are an end is in collective punishment. The best example of this is targetting the social infrastructure necessary to sustain the adversary. This could be bulldozing homes of suicide bombers or attacks on the Beirut airport. (Although my examples are pointed, I want to make sure I'm not singling any one group out. I consider these very general phenomena NOT a condemnation against any particular state or group)

The question that lingers in my mind is why do we, as civilians, put up with this? Why do we permit our governments to bomb civilians thousands of miles away? Why do we allow our friends and relatives to become radicalized? Why are we so vulnerable to discourses that dehumanize other civilians? Shouldn't there be a transnational group of civilians who stand against attacks on civilians? Shouldn't we develop transnational values that declare being a civilian universal and inviolable? When will we stand on universal values to refuse any government or group permission to kill civilians?

Inconvenient Truths and Moral Obligations

Some truths are amoral. One doesn't immediately have a specific moral obligation once one knows the truth of water's molecular structure. Other truths are always already related to some moral decision. For example, the recognition of a person as a human being brings with it some moral obligations that don't follow from other objects. These truths are both descriptive (e.g. "that's a human being") and prescriptive (i.e. "I should kill that because it's a human being.") Such truths are both 'is' and 'ought' statements, "that is a human" and "I ought to treat them humanely".  I think this is the logic active in Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative. I also believe that this same logic applies to the global warming debate.

Before diving into global warming specifically, I'd like to distinguish the relation between truth and moral obligation from the Is-ought problem. Here is a quote by Hume on this problem:

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have
always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary
ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God,
or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am
surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of
propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not,
expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it
shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason
should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new
relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different
from it

Hume's careful reasoning reminds us that we cannot directly go from an observed truth to a moral obligation. There must be something else that forms the 'ought' in relation to the 'is' and that something is a value. Without some system of moral values we cannot make the move from a truth to a moral obligation. I believe the moral values relevant to global warming are the simplest and most universal values possible. These are values placed on human life itself. I speak of them in the plural because it's not simple bare survival. Beyond survival there is a value on the quality of life. I don't want to see millions pour into refugee camps around the globe in the wake of the effects of global climate change. These people deserve more than waiting in a camp for enough sustenance to survive for a little while longer. Human life should be more than that.

I watched Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth this past weeked. I was hesistant to go. I shy away from alarmism, I think it impedes action rather than mandating it. Despite my worries about alarmism, I think Gore did a pretty good job not falling into alarmism despite his passion for the topic. I worry that Gore's prominence might obfuscate the dangers of global warming. The US media, specifically it's right-wing variety, tend to latch onto arguments over people not issues. Gore as celebrity is better suited for the palette to Americans than finding out our way of life is endangering the future of the planet.

Although I hope that Gore himself isn't eclipsed by dangers of global warming, I must say that I was impressed by him as an activist. It was a moving portrait that was occasionally distracting, sometimes touching, and sometimes unintentionally funny. I came away with a new respect for a Gore and a reinvigorated disrespect for many politicians. The fact that Gore presented global warming data to congress IN THE 80s should remind anyway of the type of kick in the pants American politics needs in order to change.

But Gore is the subtext, the real point is that global warming is real. This truth pretty much assumes we have a moral obligation to do something about it. I'm not sure what kind of values could sustain continued ignorance on this important issue. But apparently these values exist somewhere because nutheads continue to deny this problem. I think that is two moral failues, the failure to grasp an morally significant fact and the failure to do anything about it.

The body and discourse in the works of Wangechi Mutu

The blog 3quarksdaily has done it again. No other blog consistently stimulates thought and insight. Each day I visit that blog I'm better for it. On days like this, where my head is cloudy and my work excessively mundane, I consider 3quarks a spiritual necessity.

Today I read a simple post referring to a Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu. This post included this incredible image:



The splash of red seems indicative of a violent impact but the figure directly abut to the splash seems unimpressed. The thin arms are crossed as well as the legs which are assembled from various other bits of imagery. The face is made from heterogenous parts. The entire image gives a schizophrenic feeling. After a moment contemplating this piece I had to find out more about Wangechi Mutu, by following that link you can find out more about him too.

After surveying a few more pictures by Mutu I was convinced his imagery expresses one of Foucault's essential insights. Foucault's analyses demonstrated how bodies are penetrated and determined by power relations. Here is a relevant quote:

But the body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations
have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture
it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs.
This political investment of the body is bound up, in accordance with complex
reciprocal relations, with its economic use; it is largely as a force of
production that the body is invested with relations of power and domination;
but, on the other hand, its constitution as labor power is possible only
if it is caught up in a system of subjection (in which need is also a political
instrument meticulously prepared, calculated, and used); the body becomes
a useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body.

Mutu's depiction of the body aren't necessarily focused on the body constituted as labor power but they certainly relfect a body caught up in a system of subjection. Here is another image:


The subjected body in this image is combined wtih a voodoo mask. Here is the description (included on page already linked above):

Wangechi Mutu’s Mask draws provocative comparison between archaeology
and sexual fetishism. Pasted over the photo of a museum relic, her
saucy model becomes a temptress of caricatured exotica. Encasing the
woman’s body and face in a cut out of a voodoo sculpture, Mutu envelops
her cover girl as a product of typecast desire and roleplay:
warrior-princess, s&m freak, chastity-belted virgin. Overlapping
the controversial facets of cultural association, Mutu’s figure beacons
as a subversive dominatrix, shrewdly co-opting the rules of hierarchy,
power, and manipulation.

The description refers to another Foucauldian theme, the play of signification. This idea is included in his essay What is an Author? but I believe it is a common them directly or indirectly maintained throughout Foucault's work. Mutu's image isn't a stabilized subjected body. Mutu puts into play the various power relations symbolized by the heterogenous elements, elements included the subjected body of a model and symbols of power (including the mysterious power conveyed by the voodoo mask)

Four Fundamentalisms

I just finished reading a fascinating article over at counterpunch, The Four Fundamentalisms by Robert Jensen.

The final paragraph in the introduction section of this article drew my attention:

Opposing the war-of-the-moment -- and going beyond that to challenge the whole imperial project -- is important. But also important is the work of thinking through the nature of the larger forces that leave us in this grief-stricken position. We need to go beyond Bush. We should recognize the seriousness of the threat that this particular gang of thieves and thugs poses and resist their policies, but not mistake them for the core of the problem.

I especially like the statement "we need to go beyond Bush." This statement is very important. There is a lot of political energy opposing President Bush right now. This energy will be wasted if it is not refocused onto the larger and more significant forces in American politics.

Jensen see the United States in the grips of four fundamentalisms: religious, national, economic, and technological. Jensen defines fundamentalism as:

any intellectual/political/theological position that asserts an absolute certainty in the truth and/or righteousness of a belief system. Such fundamentalism leads to an inclination to want to marginalize, or in some cases eliminate, alternative ways to understand and organize the world.

Jensen contrasts fundamentalism with humility, specifically the type of humility he associates with the Enlightenment.

It's interesting that Jensen combines religious and national fundamentalism. He sees these two as the most important and associates them together. I think this is justified and I would like to see more work done to use Skillen's concept of America's civic religion and it's mobilization as a fundamentalism (more about Skillen here)

The confluence of religion and nationalism in America is apparent in many phenomenon. Religious conservatives might just be the noisiest segment of the US body politic. As I write this the American senate is debating a possible marriage amendent aimed at enshrining anti-gay bigotry in the US constitution. The same sex marriage debate is a perfect example of the confluence between religious fervor and nationalistic zeal. For example, the LDS church has announced in many of its congregations a church wide policy of opposing same sex marriage. Some examples are even more alarming. There are many people whose beliefs in the apocalypse shae their political beliefs, like dominists.

Jensen makes a great objection to nationalism, he call it intellectually and morally bankrupt:

Nationalism poses a threat everywhere but should especially concern us in the United States, where the capacity for destruction in the hands of the most powerful state in the history of the world is exacerbated by a pathological hyper-patriotism that tends to suppress internal criticism and leave many unable to hear critique from outside. In other writing (Chapter 3 of Citizens of the Empire) I have outlined in some detail an argument that patriotism is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Here, let me simply point out that because a nation-state is an abstraction (lines on a map, not a naturally occurring object), assertions of patriotism (defined as love of or loyalty to a nation-state) raise a simple question: To what we are pledging our love and loyalty? How is that abstraction made real? I conclude that all the possible answers are indefensible and that instead of pledging allegiance to a nation, we should acknowledge and celebrate our connections to real people in our lives while also declaring a commitment to universal principles, but reject offering commitment to arbitrary political units that in the modern era have been the vehicle for such barbarism and brutality.

Amen.

Jensen's section on economic fundamentalism (or "market fundamentalism) is wonderful, especially this section:

But I want to highlight the power of this fundamentalism by reminding us of a common acronym: TGIF. Everyone in the United States knows what that means: "Thank God it's Friday." The majority of Americans don't just know what TGIF stands for, they feel it in their bones. That's a way of saying that a majority of Americans do work they generally do not like and do not believe is really worth doing. That's a way of saying that we have an economy in which most people spend at least a third of their lives doing things they don't want to do and don't believe are valuable. We are told this is a way of organizing an economy that is natural.

I was resistant to the idea of a technology fundamentalism because I'm generally in favor of technological innovation. I belief that Jensen is careful to focus this fundamentalism on developing technologies at a speed that matches our ability to manage them safely:

We live now in the uncomfortable position of realizing we have moved too far and too fast, outstripping our capacity to manage safely the world we have created. The answer is not some naïve return to a romanticized past, but a recognition of what we have created and a systematic evaluation of how to step back from our most dangerous missteps.

I think Jensen is right. I believe that we must develop ourselves as ethical and political beings as much if not more than we develop our pratical technologies.

Here are Jensen's suggestion for turns we need to make to overcome these fundamentalisms:

Technologically: We need to stop talking about progress in terms that reflexively glorify faster and more powerful devices, and instead adopt a standard for judging progress based on the real effects on humans and the wider world of which we are a part.

Economically: We need to stop talking about growth in terms of more production and adopt a standard for economic growth and development based on meeting human needs.

Nationally: We need to stop talking about national security and the national interest -- code words for serving the goals of the powerful -- and focus on people's interests in being secure in the basics: food, shelter, education, and communal solidarity.

Religiously: We need to stop trying to pin down God. We can understand God as simply the name we give to that which is beyond our ability to understand, and recognize that the attempt to create rules for how to know God is always a failed project.

This is an interesting article that I believe will be useful in analyzing American politics as well as shaping political action.

Foucault and My Political Beliefs

Here is an excerpt from my senior thesis. I explored Foucault's and Kant's alternatives to violent revolts. The following is from the section where I discussed Foucault's alternatives. I wanted to post this section because Foucault's historical ontology of ourselves  is very significant to my own personal values that unite my enjoyment of philosophy, my passion for ethics, and my politics.

Foucault’s “historical ontology of ourselves” is a philosophic ethos “consisting in a critique of what we are saying, thinking, and doing” to the extent these things may be determined by our historical era. [i]This philosophic ethos is not just an idea or principle; it is an attitude or a way of being. Foucault characterizes this philosophic ethos as a “limit‑ attitude” embodied in the question:

In what is given to us as universal, necessary, obligatory, what place is occupied by whatever is singular, contingent, and the product of arbitrary constraint?[ii]

This question is tied to the work of freedom, freedom through resistance to modes of subjection without resorting to violent revolt. “[I]t is seeking to give new impetus, as far and wide as possible, to the undefined work of freedom.”[iii]

An “historical ontology of ourselves” is partly critique, consisting in archeology and genealogy. It is archeological “in the sense that it will not seek to identify the universal structures of knowledge” rather it “will seek to treat the instances of discourse that articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical events.”[iv] It is genealogical because:

[it] will not deduce from the form of what we are what it is impossible for us to do or know; but will separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing or thinking what we are, do, or think.[v]

Because Foucault employs both archeological and genealogical methods throughout his body of work, it is possible look at his works as examples of the critical part “historical ontology of ourselves.”

Foucault’s “historical ontology of ourselves” is not solely critique, it also opens up new possibilities: “it’s the destruction of what we are as well as the creation of a completely different thing, a total innovation.”[vi] This creation, in regards to the philosophic ethos, must be understood as experimental. The “historical ontology of ourselves” recognizes limits and boundaries, experimentation enables change:

We must transform the field of social institutions into a field of experimentation, in order to determine which levers to turn and which bolts to loosen in order to bring about the desired effects.[vii]

Experimentation must be understood as partial transformation in contrast to overall programs that have produced the worst political forms in human history. At first glance, Foucault’s alternatives seem to lack specification. This is a conscious move by Foucault, a move that allows him to avoid the problems of totalizing programs. Totalizing programs attempting vast social changes are done at the level of the state not within the ‘body politic’. Foucault gives the “historical ontology of ourselves” more detail by stating that it “has its generality, its systematicity, its homogeneity, and its stakes.”[viii]

Foucault defines the stakes with the question “how can the growth of capabilities [capacities] be disconnected from the intensification of power relations.”[ix] With the growth of technical capacities in Western culture it is always important to ask how these capacities can be severed from domination.

Homogeneity leads to examining practical systems defined as “what they do and the way they do it.”[x] Forms of rationality have a specific way of doing things, the “technical side” and also a “strategic side” in regards to how power reacts and how the rules are modified in reaction.[xi] One interesting possibility that opens up through looking at both the technical and strategic side of discourse is the ability to change the strategic use of a particular discourse. This is possible because of “the rule of the tactical polyvalence of discourses.”[xii]  This rule explains how discourses can be adapted and used for a variety of strategies. If one isolates an effective element of discourse, it is possible to integrate it into a strategy that seeks change without resorting to violent revolt.

The systematicity of the philosophic ethos analyzes power relations according to three axes: “the axis of knowledge, the axis of power, the axis of ethics.”[xiii] These three axes are demonstrated throughout Foucault’s work where he analyzes the relationship between knowledge and power (e.g. Archeology of Knowledge, The Order of Things, Madness and Civilization), where he examines specific operations of power (e.g. Discipline and Punish), and where he examines the subject as it is constituted as an ethical subject(e.g. History of Sexuality series). Through the systematicity of the “historical ontology of ourselves” it is apparent that Foucault associates the body of his work with this philosophic ethos, thus giving clear examples of the critical side of his alternatives to violent revolts. Beyond the critical element, Foucault’s works allow us to see where we must experiment beyond our limits by exposing how these limits are historically constituted thus contingent and changeable.

A “historical ontology of ourselves” is based on Foucault’s understanding of the subject. It is directly involved with struggles against modes of subjection. Thought, that is freedom in relation to action, opens up a space for the “historical ontology of ourselves.”  An “aesthetics of existence” sets down a method for experimenting beyond these limits by emphasizing self‑formative activity as a work of freedom. Foucault’s freedom provides the concepts necessary for resisting power away from the ‘enigma of revolt’. Through the “historical ontology of ourselves” a subject can begin “a patient labor giving form to our impatience for liberty.”[xiv]

---

[i] Foucault What is Enlightenment? 315

[ii] Foucault, Ibid. 315

[iii] Foucault, Ibid. 316

[iv] Foucault, Ibid. 315

[v]  Foucault, Ibid. 315-316

[vi] Foucault, Michel. “Interview with Michel Foucault.” Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 Paul Rabinow. Volume 3, Series ED.: Power. Edited by James D. Faubion. New York: The New Press, 2000. Page 275

[vii] Foucault, Michel. “The Risks of Security.” Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 Paul Rabinow. Volume 3, Series ED.: Power. Edited by James D. Faubion. New York: The New Press, 2000. Page 370

[viii] Foucault, What is Enlightenment? 317

[ix] Foucault, Ibid. 317

[x] Foucault, Ibid. 317

[xi] Foucault, Ibid. 317

[xii] Foucault, History of Sexuality Volume I 100

[xiii] Foucault, What is Enlightenment? 318

[xiv] Foucault, What is Enlightenment? 319