NabberGnossi

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

2006-08-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-26T20:09:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-05T17:32:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

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

An Analgesic for the War Machine

2006-05-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

Contemplating the meaning of Steele’s article White Guilt and the Western Past can be
frustrating. While I read the article violence raged in Baghdad. There is a disconnect between the
victory Steele speaks of and the suffering of the Iraqis caught up in this war.
This disconnect casts a dark shadow over each word in Steele’s article. In the
shadow of this disconnect some of Steele’s points are merely absurd. But this
shadow doesn’t just expose absurdity; it also reveals a gross immorality. It strikes me as odd that people continue to
look at the Iraq
and conclude that the solution is more war. That’s what Steele wants. Steele
thinks the solution to the problem of Iraq is the unrestrained exercise
of military power. More specifically, he wants the American war machine to
operate without the impediments of morality. He doesn’t see it as a morality
that restrains military power. Steele calls it “white guilt” and dismisses it
as an impediment for winning. Thank goodness most of the world does not share
Steele’s view. Because of this Steele’s argument will never translate into the
unrestrained use of military power. As long as there are enough of us willing
to call for restraint guided by morality Steele’s article will remain a right-wing
propaganda piece. But the real function of Steele’s piece isn’t to determine
military strategy in Iraq.
The real function of this article operates on the American people, specifically
pro-war Americans.

The subtitle of Steele’s article is “(w)hy is America
so delicate with the enemy.” The enemy is an important concept for Steele. One
of the primary functions of this article is to dehumanize the enemy. The
article’s focus, ‘white guilt’, reverses the dehumanization of the enemy or in
Steele’s language “(w)hite guilt makes our Third World
enemies into colored victims.” Steele bemoans the constraints caused by ‘white
guilt’. “We must “understand” and pity our enemy even as we fight him”, he
laments. Complaining about having to “understand” one’s enemies isn’t new, it’s
a tired conservative cliché that has been repeated for decades--it even made it
to Euston Manifesto.

In addition to dehumanization of the enemy, the idea of
‘white guilt’ erodes the seriousness of the compassion Americans might feel when
their military exercises it’s might. ‘White guilt’ suggests that such
compassion is merely the stigmatization of the left for past crimes. Steele suggests that the attention on Abu
Ghraib and Guantanamo
results from “stigmatization campaigns.” ‘White guilt’ undermines the emotions
that most human beings feel when faced with the horrors of Abu Ghraib prison.

Dehumanization and numbing compassion are the most overt
functions of Steele’s article but I believe there is another very important
function. ‘White guilt’ shifts the blame for failure in Iraq from the war’s architects and
the ideology that supported the war. Steele accomplishes this by stating that
America could win this war if it wanted to, the reason it’s not winning is that
it is restrained by ‘white guilt’, and that the biggest obstacle to victory is
to unleash the full power of the American war machine.

By dehumanizing the enemy and eroding the emotional response
to war, Steele’s concept of ‘white guilt’ helps the war machine. It allows the war
machine to function without the restraints that most moral people would demand
when exercising military power around civilians. It allows the war machine to
function without slowing even for emotional responses to rape, torture,
violence and death.

Aggressivity and Hierarchy

2006-05-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

This article describes a recent study that suggests a connection between hierarchy and aggressivity:

When individuals were experimentally promoted in rank, their aggression
toward subordinates increased radically, suggesting that aggression
depends on rank rather than vice versa and that particularly high
levels of aggression are used by newly promoted dominants to establish
their status. "We found that rates of both aggressive 'displays' (aimed
at individuals of lower rank) and aggressive 'tests' (aimed at
individuals of higher rank) decreased down the hierarchy, as predicted
by our models," write the authors. Cant et al. conclude that variation
in future fitness due to inheritance rank is the hidden factor
accounting for much of the variation in aggression among apparently
equivalent individuals.

It seems that agressivity functions to reinforce hierarchy, it might even serve to cement changes in hierarchy. It's interesting also that the function of aggressivity functions to those of higher rank and lower rank. I wonder what other behaviors function to solidify hierarchy...

I wonder if there is a possibility that the hierarchal a group is the less agressivity found in that group.

Euston Manifesto: Imperialist?

2006-05-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

In the Guardian's opinion section there is a great section called Comment is free. I saw an article on the Euston and it had imperialism in the title. I had to read it.

The article defends the EM against the charge of imperialism by getting etymological, he argues the EM doesn't conform with the defition of imperialism in wiki (and an online dictionary):

The support for the aforementioned interventions by the people Wheatcroft is talking about was based on human rights and just war considerations, not on empire-building ones.

The author, Norman Geras, then uses some principles in the EM to distinguish the EM's form of intervention from imperialism.

Here is the fine point Mr. Geras wishes to make:

There's a difference between an imperial project that seeks to build an
empire ruled by a superpower, and an internationalist politics that
regards human rights as universal and inviolable - and, beyond a
certain threshold of human suffering, as rendering the claim to
national sovereignty forfeit and justifying outside intervention.

I do not doubt Mr. Geras' dedication to human rights, specifically the human rights explained in the EM. My issue with this idea is that the political justification of an intervention doesn't characterize it as imperialist or not. Imperialism is how the military exercises power of the state it has taken over. Imperialism is in how the local people are treated by an occupying power and the rights they have against the occupying forces. Imperialism is who controls the natural resources and ecnomic infrastructure in the country.

In essence, Imperialism is not judged according to the intentions we express. Whether an action is imperial or not depends on how the action functions and the effect of its functioning on the people it subjugates.

The war in Iraq still hangs over the EM like a dark cloud. It casts are shadow over the expressed idealism. Wouldn't it be great if tyranny could just be defeated by sending some soldiers and speaking openly about good intentions? The problem is that military power is rarely consistent with universal human rights. Occupation isn't consistent with universal human rights. Economic exploitation is a reality. Iraq has made such things very apparent.

Here is a quote that serves as an example of everything that is wrong with the EM:

it's true that we in the Euston manifesto group don't
begin, as some others on the left do, from the idea that everything
America does is bad

"Don't begin"? Is that a typo? No biggie, I'm sure I have many more typos than that.

Who begins with ath assumption? It's a strawman that Mr. Geras is fighting. It's very strange to me to hear the EM defend America from unwarranted criticism in an article that is so incomplete. This article is incomplete because it doesn't deal with Iraq directly. Does it mention private contracts? Does it mention starving Iraqis? Does it take a second to discuss the fact that NO Iraqi has universal legal rights in regards to the troops in Iraq?

Imperialism doesn't come out and say it's imperialist. Imperialism isn't in the intentions, it's in reality. This article doesn't defend the EM very well, it only reinforces my disappointment in it.

The Euston Manifesto: How it fails us on Iraq

2006-05-09T14:11:00.000-07:00

I just read a post over at 3quarks titled "Ocracoke Post: Why I Won't Sign the Euston Road Manifesto" I share a lot of opinions with this post but noteably with the author's comments regarding Iraq:

I believe that, whatever one's views are about humanitarian
intervention, global democratic movement-building, the war on
terrorism, the Iraq debate, or the plans of the Bush administration
regarding Iran, it is manifest that the continued long-term occupation
of Iraq is unjust, impractical, imprudent, and counterproductive.
Political activity ought to focus on getting Americans and Britons to
acknowledge this fact and do something about it. The ERM dodges the
real issue by focusing on high-sounding ideals with which no decent
person could disagree. But let's be honest. The real issue of the
moment is not whether one is against tyranny and terrorism and for
democratic change, it is whether or not one believes that optional wars
are a legitimate way to achieve one's political goals. Here is my final
Statement of Principles - "Against Militarism, Against War Except in
Cases of Self-Defense or Clear and Present Humanitarian Catastrophe."

I agree completely. I consider Iraq to be the most significant moral issue facing America and possibly the world. This author is correct, the issue is thoroughly dodged in the Euston Manifesto.

Plato: Revenge of the Plebe

2006-05-05T12:46:00.000-07:00

I've read Plato's Apology a few times but this time brought new intrepretations that never occured to me.

I always thought that Socrates was being facitious when he expressed ignorance on a subject or when he went out of his way to phrase those he spoke to while at the same time practicing self-deprecation. I thought it was a tactic by Socrates or in the very least disingenuous. I'm beginning to see things differently.

Originally I thought my former interpretation was reinforced by Nietzsche's Twilight of Idols, specifically the section on the "problem of socrates." It seemed like Socrates was intentionally undermining the strict hierarchies in Athenian society that placed him well below the more noble classes. But now, after rereading both the Apology and Twilight of the Idols I believe that Socrates wasn't nearly as insidious as I once believed.

First, I'll begin with Socrates' real crime:

in my investigation in the service of the god I found that those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient, while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable. (Apology 22a)

This passage illuminated the real problem with Socrates. He reversed the power relations in Athenitan society. His want of truth exceeded his loyalty to tradition. This was his crime.

Now back to the new interpretation. Socrates seems very concerned with Athenian law. This is very apparent in the Crito when Socrates speaks for the laws to challenge Crito's suggestion that Socrates flee from his punishment. This occurs between 50a to 54d. The notion of obeying Athenian comes out so strong in this section that I can't help but feel that Socrates was actual quite respectful of Athenian tradition that included the hierarchy. Here is a passage that inspired this thought:

You must either persuade it or obey its orders, and endure in silence whatever it instructs you to endure, whether blows or bonds, and if it leads you into war to be wounded or killed, you must obey. (51b)

Socrates regards the city as a father/mother who has all rights over their child. Socrates seems consistently to align himself with his own subordination in relation to the city and its laws.

It seems to me that Socrates is much more conflicted than I orignally understood. Socrates isn't feigning ignorance and full of confidence in his own abilities. Socrates is still a Plebian in many ways, it's his idea of wisdom (and the Deplic task) that drive him to violate a hierarchy that I believe he respects greatly.

Euston Manifesto: the "new" internationalism

2006-05-02T18:20:00.000-07:00

One of the most important and disappointing sections of the Euston Manifesto is section 10, "A new internationalism."

We stand for an internationalist politics and the reform of international law — in the interests of global democratization and global development. Humanitarian intervention, when necessary, is not a matter of disregarding sovereignty, but of lodging this properly within the "common life" of all peoples. If in some minimal sense a state protects the common life of its people (if it does not torture, murder and slaughter its own civilians, and meets their most basic needs of life), then its sovereignty is to be respected. But if the state itself violates this common life in appalling ways, its claim to sovereignty is forfeited and there is a duty upon the international community of intervention and rescue. Once a threshold of inhumanity has been crossed, there is a "responsibility to protect".

My first impression of this section is that it lacks novelty. Instead of a "new" internationalism, it should be described as a reformulation of a very old form of internationalism. The structural features of this new internationalism are hardly novel. National sovereignty is the basic status of nations within the "international community." There are international standards but these are not articulated in international institutions. States are the subjects within this community and their people are subordinate to them. The people might receive an intervention based on humanitarian concerns based on the "common life" threshold.

I like that the EM speaks out against humanitarian crises but I'm disappointed it doesn't emphasize international standards and laws buttressing strong international institutions. The first sentence seemed to point in this direction but then the section falls apart into a thinly vieled reference to arguments for one state (or a community) attacking another state that has violated the "common life" standard. Am I wrong to read a defense of the Iraq war in here? The Euston Manifesto is a document that cannot be separated from the political arguments surrounding the Iraq war. I think this is a good thing but I feel that too often sections like this are lost to defending past mistakes rather than articulating principles that determine future action.

The EM's "new internationalism" seems like a diet version of current US foreign policy. The EM's expression of it is very limited and I wish it would elaborate more on global institutions rather than focusing on justifying intervention.

I think that Ikenberry's article (one and two) over at tpmcafe shows the unique challenges of our historical moment and I don't think the Euston Manifest (as expressed) provides the principles necessary to guide political action in this moment.

Here is a just a hint at the historical changes I'm referring to:

To start, the Bush administration does not understand the full implications of the two most historic transformations in world politics in half a century -- the rise of American unipolar power and changing norms of state sovereignty. The first of these transformations is the most obvious. It is the near-monopoly on the international use of force that the United States has enjoyed since the demise of the Soviet Union. But the second – an eroding norm of Westphalian sovereignty marked by rising acceptance of intervention in the internal affairs of states – is no less important. These dual epochal shifts in the underlying character of the international system make American power -- regardless of specific Washington foreign policies -- more worrisome to other states than in the past.

(From article one, link above)

The second element is the primary focus in the EM but the EM fails to discuss the unique dimensions of intervention in our historical moment. Ikenberry directly responds to this:

The erosion of norms of state sovereignty makes this problem worse. The gradual decline of Westphalian sovereignty is reflected in the triumph of the postwar human rights revolution. We celebrate this accomplishment – Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The implication is that the “international community” increasingly is seen to have legitimate interests in what goes on within countries. Over the decades, the international community has added more realms of internal state activity that it has a stake in. Most recently, the new threat of transnational terrorism has opened up states even more to outside scrutiny. Sovereignty is increasingly contingent.
This has had two implications. First, eroded norms of sovereignty have created a new “license” for powerful states to intervene in domestic affairs of weak and troubled states. That is, the norms of state sovereignty have less “stopping power.” There are fewer principled and normative inhibitions on intervention. But second, eroded sovereignty has not been matched by a rise of new norms and agreements about when and how the “international community” should intervene. After all, who speaks for the international community? This erosion of the norms of state sovereignty has ushered in a new global struggle over the sources of authority in the international community.

The EM gets the idea of humanitarian intervention. What it doesn't address is the unipolarity of global power relations nor does it get the importance of international institutions. I think that the EM should revisit this section and switch it's focus. Intervention is an action that depends on international law and institutions. How progressives shape these institutions is a much more productive focus than restating rather obvious ideas regarding intervention.

The Euston Manifesto: Protecting the Superpower

2006-05-02T18:17:00.000-07:00

Who's looking out for the big guy?

The EM strains itself to argue against anti-Americanism. On one level this is justified because there is exagerrated claims made about the US and its leaders. It is intellectually dishonest to call Bush Hitler, it's incorrect to characterize the US as fascist. That said, there are reasons America's international credibility has eroded since the Iraq. The EM's failure to recognize these reasons is a disappointment.

Here is the section dedicated to the problem of "anti-Americanism"

We reject without qualification the anti-Americanism now infecting so much left-liberal (and some conservative) thinking. This is not a case of seeing the US as a model society. We are aware of its problems and failings. But these are shared in some degree with all of the developed world. The United States of America is a great country and nation. It is the home of a strong democracy with a noble tradition behind it and lasting constitutional and social achievements to its name. Its peoples have produced a vibrant culture that is the pleasure, the source-book and the envy of millions. That US foreign policy has often opposed progressive movements and governments and supported regressive and authoritarian ones does not justify generalized prejudice against either the country or its people.

Is this section necessary? Is this really such a problem? I'm an American but I'm more concerned with American principles that American victimhood. This paragraph smells like apologetics, apologetics seasoned with self-pity.

I think there are very good reasons for Americans to analyze America. This may seem as anti-American by some but the grounds of such an accusation are often weak. Certainly there are some wild and illegitimate criticisms of the United States. These should be countered with strong argument, not accusations of anti-Americanism. I find such an accusation to be juvenile, it's the kind of thing right wing radio show hosts do.

I believe that holding America to high standards is evidence of a citizen that truly values their country. I would not trade this for the sloganeering and bumper sticker loyalty to America. I recently read Plato's Apology. My favorite moment in the dialogue seems appropriate here:

Good Sir, you are an Athenian, a citizen of the greatest city with the greatest reputation for both wisdom and power; are you not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the best possible state of your soul? (29d-e)

For some, the vocation of praising America is fine. I'm not the type to engage in such activity. I believe that the examination of America and actions to improve it are the best way to express love for it. In many ways one should love their country like they love themselves. A weak ethos praises itself uncritically. A strong ethos is happy to have self-contempt because through contempt one can overcome. I'm more concerned with the best possible state of America's soul than I am with "anti-Americanism".

Perhaps the strangest moment in the EM is right at the end:

The violation of basic human rights standards at Abu Ghraib, at Guantanamo, and by the practice of "rendition", must be roundly condemned for what it is: a departure from universal principles, for the establishment of which the democratic countries themselves, and in particular the United States of America, bear the greater part of the historical credit. But we reject the double standards by which too many on the Left today treat as the worst violations of human rights those perpetrated by the democracies, while being either silent or more muted about infractions that outstrip these by far. This tendency has reached the point that officials speaking for Amnesty International, an organization which commands enormous, worldwide respect because of its invaluable work over several decades, can now make grotesque public comparison of Guantanamo with the Gulag, can assert that the legislative measures taken by the US and other liberal democracies in the War on Terror constitute a greater attack on human rights principles and values than anything we have seen in the last 50 years, and be defended for doing so by certain left and liberal voices.

Why this focus on a single word by an Amnesty International official? I'd prefer to see a paragraph of thoughtful analysis of the existence of places like Guatanamo bay rather than a small condemnation followed by apologetics. I wouldn't echo the exact words of the Official who used the phrase 'Gulag of our times', it's a tasty morself for those who prefer to argue about soundbits rather than substance.

I cringe when I hear about Guatanamo bay. It's a place where some of the most complex ethical issues intersect. It's a dense concentration of the technologies through which contemporary states exercise their power. It deserves to be the center of a debate not just the first part of a paragraph largely designed to critique the rhetorical excesses in a soundbite.

Euston Manifesto: Reactive Poltical Forces vs. Straw men

2006-05-02T17:10:00.000-07:00

Reactive forces begin with a 'No'. At worst they are derivative and parasitic, but they can be very powerful. When I read a manifesto I expect a strong affirmation of principles. I expect strong yeses as opposed to stubborn 'No's.

The Euston Manifesto contains several formulations that seem to indicate reactive forces rather than active forces. The first paragraph of the preample demonstrates this:

We reach out, rather, beyond the socialist Left towards egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment. Indeed, the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between the forces of the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values.

The EM defines itself by opposing itself to the "socialist left" whose "currents" "have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values."

From the very beginning I feel that the EM is incomplete. It defines itself in reference to a "socialist Left" that is "too flexible", it defines itself against this "Left" as the authentic left. This statement is incomplete because the document doesn't reference this other left, it is assumed. My own personal feeling is that this left is made up of a few individuals and movements that have received a lot of press. I feel like the left the Euston refers to might just be the phantom left of pop conservative politics. But we will return to this theme...

This reactive character takes an ugly turn in the second principles of the manifesto, "No apology for tyranny":

We decline to make excuses for, to indulgently "understand", reactionary regimes and movements for which democracy is a hated enemy — regimes that oppress their own peoples and movements that aspire to do so. We draw a firm line between ourselves and those left-liberal voices today quick to offer an apologetic explanation for such political forces.

Here the reactive formulation is quite obvious, the text actually reads :"drawing a line." Nevermind that this principle depends what appears to be a straw man (the one that tried to "understand" tyranical regimes).

The strangest principles in this document is "opposing anti-Americanism". I don't think it's strange that this is a problem, I just don't see it as a principle. Couldn't this be addressed in another way? I personal see more of the problem as America solving its image problems through action rather than just chiding those that would disparage it's reputation. But that's another matter, let's examine the language:

We reject without qualification the anti-Americanism now infecting so much left-liberal (and some conservative) thinking.

Once again the Euston distinguishes itself some rejecting it's characterization of the other left without citing exactly who or what they are talking about.

The racism section is much more comprehensive than the others in focusing on different types of a problem rather than just the problems commonly associated with the bad left:

We oppose every form of racist prejudice and behaviour: the anti-immigrant racism of the far Right; tribal and inter-ethnic racism; racism against people from Muslim countries and those descended from them, particularly under cover of the War on Terror. The recent resurgence of another, very old form of racism, anti-Semitism, is not yet properly acknowledged in left and liberal circles. Some exploit the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people under occupation by Israel, and conceal prejudice against the Jewish people behind the formula of "anti-Zionism". We oppose this type of racism too, as should go without saying.

It's strange that the anti-semitism unacknowledged by the bad left is such attention compared to the others. The antisemitism of the bad left is repeated in the second to last paragraph in the Elaborations section:

Vandalism against synagogues and Jewish graveyards and attacks on Jews themselves are on the increase in Europe. "Anti-Zionism" has now developed to a point where supposed organizations of the Left are willing to entertain openly anti-Semitic speakers and to form alliances with anti-Semitic groups. Amongst educated and affluent people are to be found individuals unembarrassed to claim that the Iraq war was fought on behalf of Jewish interests, or to make other "polite" and subtle allusions to the harmful effect of Jewish influence in international or national politics — remarks of a kind that for more than fifty years after the Holocaust no one would have been able to make without publicly disgracing themselves. We stand against all variants of such bigotry.

The Euston is right about this, there is reason to worry (and fight) regarding this issue. But is this really worth a second mention and such a large paragraph? I'd like to see either a more general remark against the formal aspects of this problem (and how it relates to Euston's principles) or I would like to see a direct engagement with these forces. General claims against the antisemetic Left are suspect. Does the Euston condemn research into Jewish lobbies in the US? That's a legitimate topic that could turn ugly very fast. I don't think the Euston gives enough detail to address this issue without it seeming like a strawman.

The Euston Manifesto wants you to know that its against Leftist apologists for tyranny, specifically for Stalinism and Maoism. We all know this has happened and we should pay careful attention to it. But it really does take a prominent position in this manifesto, here is the mention of it in the section "A Critical Openness":

Drawing the lesson of the disastrous history of left apologetics over the crimes of Stalinism and Maoism, as well as more recent exercises in the same vein (some of the reaction to the crimes of 9/11, the excuse-making for suicide-terrorism, the disgraceful alliances lately set up inside the "anti-war" movement with illiberal theocrats), we reject the notion that there are no opponents on the Left.

(lol, it doesn't take a reader very much time to realize that for the Euston there are many opponents on the left)

Here is another similar formulation in the section "Historical Truth":

One of the tragedies of the Left is that its own reputation was massively compromised in this regard by the international Communist movement, and some have still not learned that lesson.

The reactive element in these sections is stark. Both principles assert positively in a single sentence and express themselves reactively throughout the rest of the section.

Perhaps one of the most interesting mix of negative and positive definitions of the Euston is in the last section, "A precious heritage":

We reject fear of modernity, fear of freedom, irrationalism, the subordination of women; and we reaffirm the ideas that inspired the great rallying calls of the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century: liberty, equality and solidarity; human rights; the pursuit of happiness

This assertion is miles above the others in terms of what it says and how it says it. It's much more affirmative.

I could go on about this subject but this post is already too long. I'll post about other subjects soon.

Euston Manifesto: Preliminary Thoughts

2006-05-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

I've been reading the Euston Manifesto over the past week. The Euston Manifesto wants to be " renewal of Progressive Politics."

I love conversations about theories and principles. I think that a critical examination of beliefs is sorely lacking in contemporary politics, in particular American politics. This critical examination must go beyond the buzzwords of 'family values' or 'American values'. I think that the Euston Manifesto can serve as a catalyst for the examination of the values of the left and politics in general.

I think it's interesting that a lot of the manifesto is concerned with the identity of the left. In particular the document attempts to differentiate itself from the "socialist Left" or a number of other similar labels indicating a socialist/marxist/leninist/maoist left. Yikes! I don't know how to describe this reference, I'll address it more in another post. This struggle for identity is based on a fidelity to certain principles including democracy, universal human rights, equality, critical openness, as well as others. I really would've preferred this document to concentrate on the values constituted the ground beneath this movement. The subject matter in the manifesto is all over the place. The section arguing for a "two state solution" is immediately followed by one standing up against racism. I think both of these ideas are important but one seems like a practical decision while the other is a value. I'd like to see values and policy separated in such a way that policy builds on values.

Anyway, I'm going to post about the rest of my thoughts on this manifesto in posts focused on particular themes.

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion: Final Thoughts

2006-04-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

BTW, I've stopped numbering. I have too many and I believe that I've messed up the order.

Bergson shares a general optimism about technical progress that both his contemporaries and mine often express:

This will be a sovereignty, not over men, but over things, precisely in order that man shall no longer have so much sovereignty over man. (311)

This is a enlightenment value, a value that connected our ability to dominate nature with freedom. This value has it's detractors, the most articulate in my opinion is Horkheimer and Adorno:

Myth turns into enlightenment, and nature into mere objectivity. Men pay for the increase in their power with alienation from that over which they exercise their power. Enlightenment behaves towards things as a dictator toward men. He knows them in so far as he can manipulate them. The man of science knows things in so far as he can make them. In this way their “in itself” becomes a “for him”. In this transformation the essence of things is revealed as always the same, a substratum of domination. This identity constitutes the unity of nature.

(The above quote is from the dialectic of enlightenment)
Because Bergson identifies dynamic religion as a proximity to life I assume that he would be able to work out of the problems mentioned by Horkheimer and Adorno. Bergson's impetus of life would likely use creativity to disrupt the dominating character of the enlightenment. This is consistent with Bergsons idea that the mystical summons the mechanical:

[T]he mystical summons up the mechanical. This has not been sufficiently realized, because machinery, through a mistake at the points, has been switched off on to a track at the end of which lies exaggerated comfort and luxury for the few, rather than the liberation of all. (309)

Thanks to my study of Foucault I cannot read the word 'liberation' without an immediate suspicion. That aside, this quote embodies that optimism we often attach to technological progress. I think there is many reasons to think that human beings can gain greater autonomy through technological progress. At the same time I see extensive evidence that increases in technology have led to increases in control. Foucault articulates this problem as the stakes in his "historical ontology of ourselves":

These are indicated by what might be called 'the paradox of the relations of capacity and power.' We know that the great promise or the great hope of the eighteenth century, or a part of the eighteenth century, lay in the simultaneous and proportional growth of individuals with respect to one another. And, moreover, we can see that throughout the entire history of Western societies (it is perhaps here that the root of their singular historical destiny is located -- such a peculiar destiny, so different from the others in its trajectory and so universalizing, so dominant with respect to the others), the acquisition of capabilities and the struggle for freedom have constituted permanent elements. Now the relations between the growth of capabilities and the growth of autonomy are not as simple as the eighteenth century may have believed. And we have been able to see what forms of power relation were conveyed by various technologies (whether we are speaking of productions with economic aims, or institutions whose goal is social regulation, or of techniques of communication): disciplines, both collective and individual, procedures of normalization exercised in the name of the power of the state, demands of society or of population zones, are examples. What is at stake, then, is this: How can the growth of capabilities be disconnected from the intensification of power relations? (What is Enlightenment?)

I believe that some of Bergson's work can be adapted to this end. Here is a quote that follows up on the observation that mysticism summoned mechanization with a task:

What we need are new reserves of potential energy-- moral energy this time. So let us not merely say, as we did above, that the mystical summons up the mechanical. We must add that the body, now larger, calls for a bigger soul, and that mechanism should mean mysticism. (310)

Bergson makes the argument that tools are extensions of the body, hence the notion that the body is "now larger".

Bergson has an interesting definition of nature, here it is:

Nature--let us repeat--is the name we give to the totality of compliances and resistences life encounters in raw matter--(311)

I'm not sure how to feel about a separation between life and matter. I don't feel comfortable with dualisms. It's certainly interesting though.

Bergson has a unique understanding of our brain:

In a word, our brain is intended neither to create our mental images nor to treasure them up; it merely limits them, so as to make them effective. It is the organ of attention to life. (315)

I don't have too much comment on that idea but I like it. I like thinking of our thoughts as attention to life. good stuff.

Bergson ends the book by leaving us with a decision:

Mankind lies groaning, half crushed beneath the weight of its own progress. Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods. (317)

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion VIII: Borrowing from the old

2006-04-25T10:41:00.000-07:00

Bergson's use of the static and dynamic is a feature of Two Sources that I think will come in handy in my future studies. This dichotomy seems similar to subject-object, active-passive, and other useful dichotomous pairs.

I'd like to momentarily address one feature of the static-dynamic pair. Here is a quote that addresses this feature:

The dynamic religion which thus springs into being is the very opposite of the static religion born of the myth-making function function, in the same way as the open society is the opposite of the closed society. But just as the new moral aspiration takes shape only by borrowing from the closed society its natural form, which is obligation, so dynamic religion is propagated only through images and symbols supplied by the myth-making function. (268)

Dynamic religion is propagated through existing images and symbols provided by the myth-making function. This is why the experiences of the new often find expression (sometimes awkwardly) in the old. It's almost like dynamic religion lacks substance and must utilize the existing shell of static religion for expression.

I'd like to go back to Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge and explore how this could occur. Perhaps a combination of the Foucault and Bergson could shed light on how changes emerge within the old and eventually constitute something new. I'm almost certain Foucault would resist the pair static-dynamic in some ways but I think that relating the dynamic to limit-experiences and the static as discourse might inform what Bergson is trying to accomplish with the static-dynamic.

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion VIII: What we mean by 'god' and 'soul'

2006-04-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

I have at least 3 blogs left regarding this book. I finished it Saturday night in front of a campfire near Goblin Valley Utah. I love finishing books in interesting places!

This book has been frustrating at times but it's also been extraordinarily stimulating at other times. This has been especially true in regards to religion.

There were a few points in this book where Bergson embodied all my frustrations with religion, there were other points where he gave me insights into religious experience that I needed. I'd like to post about one of these insights, the misuse of arbitraty definitions of religious concepts.

Here is a quote that introduces this insight:

The nature of God will thus appear in the very reasons we have for believing in His existence: we shall no longer try to deduce His existence: we shall no longer try to deduce His existence or non-existence from an arbitrary conception of His nature. (262)

It's necessary to note that Bergson himself alludes to 'an abitrary conception of His nature' by assigning god a gender. But beyond that, Bergson makes a very important point. Too often disagreements about God revolve around arbitrary conceptions of the nature of God. I've been very frustrated with atheist versus theist conversations lately. These conversations usually boil down to arguing over arbitrary conceptions of God. Bergson is very explicit on this point, God is an open concept. God is beyond us, that's what mysticism is about. Arguing about what we think God is will never succeed.

Bergson makes a similar point regarding the soul:

What is it? Let us call it the spirit, or again, if you will, let us refer to the soul, but in that case bear in mind that we are remoulding language and getting the word to encompass a series of experiences instead of an arbitrary definition. (263)

We should be careful when discussing God and soul. We should not focus on the arbitrary conceptions giving to these, we should focus ont he experience of them.

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion VII: Creative Evolution

2006-04-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

Bergson's idea of creative evolution drew my attention the moment I read about it. I cannot comment on it extensively because I selected Two Sources as my first text. But I can (and will) comment on what Bergson writes of creative evolution in Two Sources.

There are a lot of strange concepts relating to creative evolution but it has a certain beauty to it. For example:

Granted the existence of a creative energy which is love, and which desires to produce from itself beings worthy to be loved, it might indeed sow space with worlds whose materiality, as the opposite of divine spirituality, would simply express the distinction between being created and creating, between multifarious notes, strung like pearls, of a symphony and the indivisible emotion from which they sprang. In each of these worlds vital impetus and raw matter might be complementary aspects of creation, life owing to the matter it traverses its subdivision into distinct beings, and the potentialities it bears within it being mingled as much as the spatiality of the matter which displays them permits. (256)

First of all, FANTASTIC imagery. The writing around this section is remarkably different than the style that dominates the rest of the book. Isn't this a very lucid view of a idealized realm? Because my next project is the complete works of Plato I would like to compare the above description with Plato's forms and their relation to the material world.

Bergson contrasts this harmonious vision with a description of our world:

This interpenetration has not been possible on our planet; everything conduces to the idea that whatever matter could be secured here for the embodiment of life was ill-adapted to favour life's impetus. (256-257)

This is an interesting claim. It maintains that traditional hierarchy that puts the material below the spiritual (or however Bergson wants to characterize it). Perhaps it's best to see Bergson's impetus of life as consciousness. Maybe it's better to see it as active (and free) that is working on the passive. I wonder how Kant would feel if I related the impetus of life to his system of phenomena and noumena...

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion VI: Religion and Mysticism

2006-04-18T19:35:00.000-07:00

I must admit my enthusiasm for Bergson has declined lately. His admiration for mysticism comes across like street corner evangelism.

Before I jump to where Bergson won my interest again, I want to say a few words about mysticism. Bergson defines mysticism in relation to the vital impetus:

In our eyes, the ultimate end of mysticism is the establishment of a contact, consequently of a partial coincidence, with the creative effort which life manifests itself. (220)

There are some cases that I could agree with this characterization on certain levels. I believe that certain mystics demonstrated remarkable creative powers but I also believe that mysticism is usually a mistaken sensation or even worse, sensationalism.

Anyway, Bergson offers some insight into the relationship between mysticism and static religion:

We represent religion, then, as the crystalization, brought about by a scientific process of cooling, of what mysticism had poured, while hot, into the soul of man. (238)

Within a religion perspective this description makes perfect sense. But there is another dimension to it. Religion's also have a role in legitimatizing mystical experiences and regulating them.

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion VI: Religion is...

2006-04-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

I wanted to add a few finals notes on the chapter on static religion. I began the chapter on dynamic religion and I'm sort of disappointed, it seems that it's about mysticism. More on that later, here are some final notes about static religion:

Religion's social dimension:

The first is that, where religion is concerned, the adherence of each individual is reinforced by the adherence of all. (198)

Bergson tmakes a distinction between such consensus and experimental science:

So long as experimental science is not firmly established, there will be no surer guarantee of the truth than universal assent. (198)

Religion had both individual and social dimensions. The connection between them is the myth-making function:

Let us only say that the guarantee brought by society to individual belief, in the matter of religion, would suffice in itself to put these inventions of the myth-making function in a unique position. (199)

Individual belief and social guarantee work together to bind the individual to society and to bring individuals into society. I'd like to do further work on this. It seems that society can do more than guarantee the recognition of a person's beliefs, it can form them. This may be a great place to investigate the religious mode of subjectivization. Perhaps I need to pull out the old Foucault. The poles individual-society are consistent with pastoral power. I'll have to research this further.

Bergson points out that "religion is mainly action." (200) To illustrate this he offers the image of a swimmer, I think this is one of this books better moments:

The movements of a swimmer would appear just as silly and ridiculous to anyone forgetting that the water is there, that this water sustains the swimmer, and that the man's movements, the resistance of the liquid, the current of the river, must be taken all together as an undivided whole. (201)

I think this is one of the better explanations of why some religious people believe in certain things that are hard for the rest of us to reconcile with their intelligence.

The concise definition:

It is the defensive reaction of nature against what might be depressing for the individual, and dissolvent for society, in the exercise of intelligence. (205)

If only he would've put that at the beginning of this chapter!

Bergson ends the chapter with some flowery prose (pun regrettably intentionally):

Unrest and myth-making counteract and nullify each other. In the eyes of a god, looking down from above, the whole would appear indivisible, like the perfect confidence of flowers unfolding to the spring. (208)

Pretty good imagery but it sounds a bit out of place after the rest of the chapter. It reminds me of when Kant attempts to sound poetic at the end of the second critique.

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion V: Conviction and vital impulsion

2006-04-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

Bergson resituates the relation between biology and philosophy in the following quote:

We shall say it over and over again: before man can philosophize man must live; it is from a vital necessity that the primeval tendencies and convictions must have originated. (176)

The origin of our convictions is biologic necessity. There is a vital impulsion behind all of our convictions. Isn't this a splendid way to begin interpreting convictions?

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion VI: Fear and phantoms

2006-04-03T15:03:00.000-07:00

I types 'phantoms' because I didn't know a better term. What should we call the error that imagines a subjectivity as the cause of aleatory events without intention? I don't know the terminology but there's bound to be a word for it. If anyone knows (or reads this blog), let me know.

I'm still knee deep in Bergon's section on Static Religion. This section is huge by the way and its size becomes unforgiveable once you take into account the very long unbroken paragraphs. But I will leave my stylistic struggles aside, I want to talk about fear and error.
Intelligence impelled by instict "evokes the reassuring image":

It lends to the Event a unity and an individuality which make of it a mischievous, maybe a malignant, being, but still one of ourselves, with something sociable and human about it. (160)

If I had time I would relate this to the evolutionary fitness of seeing agency in natural events as well as bring in some Freud but I'm already so behind with this book!

What I'd reallylike to talk about is my life without phantoms. I've always loved the night. As I child I spent a lot of time in the dark, even when my mind ran away with thoughts about spirits, aliens or other phantoms. There were two major phantoms in my life. The first is demons, or more precisely, mormon demons. They are a 1/3 of the spirits created, they decided not to come to earth and follow satans plan. I had a deep fear of them. I'm sure this fear was brought about because of years of being told they are active in our world, etc. etc. I had nightmares about aliens as a kid. I had nightmares about the greys. I was haunted by these two figures throughout my childhood and youth. I'm not really convinced they are the result of underlying psychological issues. They are an effect, an effect of fear's ability to find agency in aleatory events.

I'm very happy not to live in a world with such fear. I feel sympathy for those that are haunted by demons, the devil, and other such illusions. I remember the horrible feeling of phantom in your thoughts, my liberation from this experience has improved my life immensely.

Once instinct and intelligence translated the unknown into a reassuring image. We know have knowledge that dissipates fear in every direction, we don't need this reassuring image. It's unfortunate that many hold onto this error and for some, it becomes pathological.

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion V: Religion, Life and Power

2006-03-29T10:39:00.000-08:00

According to Bergson, there are two primary functions of religion, social preservation and facing the inevitability of death.

Social preservation:

Looked at from this first point of view, religion is then a defensive reaction of nature against the dissolvent power of intelligence. (122)

Death:

Looked at from this second standpoint, religion is a defensive reaction of nature agains the representation, by intelligence, of the inevitability of death. (131)

There's nothing suprising about these two functions (especially in the same week that you begin reading Freud's Civilization and its Discontents). What interests me is what happens to religion when it ceases to function in these two ways.

Religion doesn't just function in these ways, it also functions within a regime of power. As religion becomes more useful to power relations, it utility to the vital impetus might fade.

But what happens as religion ceases to serve the vital impetus and becomes an enemy to life. When religion ceases to preserve social order and instead sows the seeds of mass dissolution of the social body, can we really say it still serves the same fuction?

If religion becomes an enemy to life what kind of thought will rise in its place?

I've been listening to a recording of Thus Spoke Zarathustra on my commutes. I'm starting to wonder if Nietzsche's point was to show us that we can become creators, that we don't need religion to perform the functions stated above. Isn't Zarathustra's abysmal thought related to the inevitability of death? Isn't the superman able to look at the inevitability of death without inventing pleasant tales about the afterlife?

As Bergson lays the reifications of religion bare, I begin to see it as a function for life. Religion serves life like digestion or reproduction. Once this realization is ours can't we begin to serve life more immediately? Can't we strip away all the negative baggage that weighs down religion? Can't we isolate specific ideas and practices that serve life from those that demean, distort or damage life?

I keep thinking of that other dancing song of Zarathustra:

"O Zarathustra! Crack not so terribly with thy whip! Thou knowest surely that noise killeth thought,--and just now there came to me such delicate thoughts.

We are both of us genuine ne'er-do-wells and ne'er-do-ills. Beyond good and evil found we our island and our green meadow--we two alone! Therefore must we be friendly to each other!

And even should we not love each other from the bottom of our hearts,--must we then have a grudge against each other if we do not love each other perfectly?

And that I am friendly to thee, and often too friendly, that knowest thou: and the reason is that I am envious of thy Wisdom. Ah, this mad old fool, Wisdom!

If thy Wisdom should one day run away from thee, ah! then would also my love run away from thee quickly."--

Thereupon did Life look thoughtfully behind and around, and said softly: "O Zarathustra, thou art not faithful enough to me!

Thou lovest me not nearly so much as thou sayest; I know thou thinkest of soon leaving me.

There is an old heavy, heavy, booming-clock: it boometh by night up to thy cave:--

--When thou hearest this clock strike the hours at midnight, then thinkest thou between one and twelve thereon--

--Thou thinkest thereon, O Zarathustra, I know it--of soon leaving me!"--

"Yea," answered I, hesitatingly, "but thou knowest it also"--And I said something into her ear, in amongst her confused, yellow, foolish tresses.

"Thou KNOWEST that, O Zarathustra? That knoweth no one--"

And we gazed at each other, and looked at the green meadow o'er which the cool evening was just passing, and we wept together.--Then, however, was Life dearer unto me than all my Wisdom had ever been.--

Thus spake Zarathustra.

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion IV: His Method

2006-03-29T10:23:00.000-08:00

In Bergson's analysis of religion's function in regards to life he uses a particular method to study the general forms assumed by religion.

He introduces this method on page 138:

Our method will still remain the same. We postulate a certain instinctive activity; then, calling into play intelligence, we try to discover whether it leads to a danger disturbance; if it does, the balance will probably be reinstated through representations evoked by instinct within the disturbing intelligence; if such respresentations exist, they are primary religious ideas.

Bergson's method follows these steps:
(1) Postulate a certain instinctive activity
(2)Call into play intelligence
(3)Test for "dangerous disturbance"
(4) See if the balance is reinstated through "representations evoked by instinct" that do not disturb intelligence.
If such representations exist, they are primary religious ideas or the general forms of religion.

On page 153 Bergson gives a shorter description of the method:

Let us then follow our usual methods. Let us ask our own consciousness, divested of the acquired, restored to its original simplicity, how it reacts to an agression of nature.

Here is another on page 160:

We must search for these fleeting impressions, which are immediately blotted out by reflexion, if we want to find some vestige of what may have been felt by our remotest ancestors.

These two quotes refer to a sort of bracketing out of our experiences in an attempt to bring up back to "original simplicity" or the vestigal feelings of our remote ancestors. I'm sceptical this is possible but it's an interesting exercise that I'm sure was used by some of our more biological thinkers like Nietzsche and Freud.

I'm going to post sometime in the near future about how religion has led to a dangerous disturbance. That makes me wonder, what happens when religion itself brings a dangerous disturbance? What will bring balance back to the human organism?

Here is another quote on method:

Starting from a biological necessity, we search for the corresponding need in the living creature. If this need does not actually create a real and active instinct, it conjures up, by means of what we call a virtual or latent instinct, an imaginative representation which determines conduct in the same way as instinct would have done. (page 186)

Necessity, need and instinctual response. It seems quite simple when Bergson puts it this way. I realize I've used this method and I've seen it used quite often.

It's interesting that Bergson implies that human beings have an extended ability to respond to biological necessity. Other animals must rely on the long development necessary for instincts, intelligence enables people to devise instinct-like responses rapidly. Technology seems to speed up this process.

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion III: Intelligence and sociability

2006-03-23T10:08:00.000-08:00

Bergson writes that "mankind always presents two essential characteristics, intelligence and sociability." (116) A couple sentences later he writes that "[t]hey call, first of all, for a biological interpretation." (Ibid.) I agree with Bergson on that point, these two essential characteristics of human life demand biological interpretation but that's not the first interpretation that occured to me. The momen I read this words I thought about place, specifically, my place. I thought about this place, where over 100 years ago Brigham Young look over the valley where I lived and declared "This is the place."

In my experience there is no greater symbol of sociability than the beehive.
Here in Utah the beehive is one of the most recurrent symbols. It appears everywhere in Salt Lake and its technologies have been distributed throughout Utah life from the protestant work ethic of its natives to the mini malls dotting its landscape.

I've often contemplated the beehive and its meaning for us Utahns (and more to the point, us postmormons). I've wondered old Brigham's role in the hive we call mormonism. I've asked myself self over and over again why mormonism emerged when it did and out of what social needs did the utopian notions of zion emerge. I think about these things when I go on my routine walking route. During summertime it begins at my appartment, goes to Gilgal Gardens, cuts up to the Mason temple, passes other churches on the way to temple square, and from temple square I make my way home. I often think about the relation between beehives, the layout of salt lake, and the Plat of Zion. But I digress...

Here is a quote about the sociability tendency in organisms:

The bent towards the social ofrm, found in so many species, is therefore evident in the very structure of any of its members.

Here Bergson accidentally overlaps Nietzsche. Nietzsche describes life in terms of a multiplicity of forces. This ontological belief helps explain the role of the 'will to power' as well as the Nietzsche's perspectivism. This belief also anticipates Foucault's power relations. I'm a sucker for seeing the world as a multiplicity of forces, it comes from my personal experience of struggling with my selves ;)

Benefits of Perspectivism

2006-03-21T20:22:00.000-08:00

Nietzsche's perspectivism is one of his greatest insights. It's also my favorite part of Genealogy of Moral. In section 12 of the Third essay, Nietzsche explains the "coming objectivity":

To use this for once to see differently, the will to see things differently, is no small discipline and preparation of the intellect for its coming "objectivity," and not in the sense of "disinterested contemplation" (which is conceptual nonsense), but as the capability of having power over one's positive and negative arguments and to raise them and dispose of them so that one knows how to make the various perspectives and interpretations of emotions useful for knowledge.
From now on, my philosophical gentlemen, let us protect ourselves better from the dangerous old conceptual fantasy which posits a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of cognition," let's guard ourselves against the tentacles of such contradictory ideas as "pure reason," "absolute spirituality," "knowledge in itself"—those things which demand that we imagine an eye which simply can't be imagined, an eye without any direction at all, in which the active and interpretative forces are supposed to stop or be absent—the very things through which seeing first becomes seeing something. Hence these things always demand from the eye something conceptually empty and absurd. The only seeing we have is seeing from a perspective; the only knowledge we have is knowledge from a perspective. The more emotional affects we allow to be expressed in words concerning something, the more eyes, different eyes, we know how to train on the same thing, the more complete our "idea" of this thing, our "objectivity," will be. But to eliminate the will in general, to suspend all our emotions without exception—even if we were capable of that—what would that be? Wouldn't we call that castrating the intellect?

I want to point out in the first paragraph that Nietzsche reveals something very important about his idea of overcoming (as well as the idea of being beyond good and evil). Overcoming is about having power over oneself, it's a will to power that is exercised over the self. I've secretly intrepreted most of Nietzsche's social status metaphors as relating strictly to ourselves, as ways of looking at one's relationship to self. This is an interpretation I've kept close to myself but it has always guided my readings. (Of course I still see the historical insights as historical but they to have an interesting personal dimension)

The goal of this overcoming is "so that one knows how to make the various perspectives and interpretations of emotions useful for knowledge." We should overcome ourselves so that we may be able to use various perspectives in the act of knowing. This is objectivity, not as Nietzsche says in the next paragraph "pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of cognition". (I want to be recorded saying this also applies to homo economicus, the "rational self-interest" guy from capitalists' dreams)

I love Nietzsche's description of the "absurd eye", that is "an eye without any direction at all, in which the active and interpretative forces are supposed to stop or be absent". This is why it's hard to me to speak of Truth, I prefer to speak of our relation with truth, our obligations in regard to truth or truth effects. Truth is relationally and cannot be accessed except through a relationship with truth.

The more eyes we have, the more perspectives we are able to use, the more complete our idea of a thing will be. Is there a better case for an Open society, liberal education, or a voracious appetite for philosophy? (wait, am I trying to justify myself?)

Thanks to Gary Sauer-Thompson for posting about Geuss's description of Nietzsche's legacy. It remined me how powerful perspectivism and overcoming are:

Nietzsche seems sometimes to replace the "transcendence" which stands at the center of traditional accounts--the existence of a transcendent God, or, failing that, a transcendental viewpoint--with that of a continually transcending activity ("Überwindung" in one of the senses in which that term is used)....There is no single, final perspective, but given any one perspective, we can always go beyond it. I merely note that to take this as implying a guarantee that we will always (necessarily?) be able to go beyond any given position we might occupy, would be to fall back into a theological view. For Nietzsche, whether or not we will be able to "overcome" the one-sidedness of a perspective in which we find ourselves is an open question, for him a question of one's strength. One need not endorse Nietzsche's late-Romantic glorification of "strength" to accept his view that there are no guarantees of the requisite kind in the nature of things. (Quote from Geuss's book)
Overcoming the onesided perspectiveness. How appropriate. It's a good legacy. (Sauer-Thompson)

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion II: The Vital Impetus

2006-03-20T16:53:00.000-08:00

I must apologize to myself, I haven't kept my posts up with my reading. I'm trying to do better but work has become about 300% busier.

I really enjoy Bergson's book but it's a difficult read. The book's font is horrific and there isn't nearly enough logical paragraph breaks. It's darn near impossible to read in the bathtub without nodding off. But the book is also marked with exciting moments, wonderful imagery, and a compelling intersection between the biological and philosophical.

I've been interested in vitalism ever since I read it in one of Gary Sauer-Thomas' blogs, philosophic conversations. I'm drawn to vitalism because I have an aversion to design theories of life as well as mechanistic views of the world.

Bergson needs the vital impulse in order to explain myth making (which he connects with religion):

How is it possible to relate to a vital need those fictions which confront and sometimes thwart our intelligence, if we have not ascertained the fundamental demands of life?

This idea seems so similar to Nietzsche's idea of serving life, in fact, this book feels a lot like Nietzsche in some parts.

Here are some of the features of the "vital impetus". Bergson refers to them as ideas to be evoked by the image of the vital impetus.

First Idea:

science is as far as ever from a physico-chemical explanation of life.

I wonder if this still holds true. I normally align with scientific truth but I have yet to find something that explains the active elements of life in terms that convince me. Perhaps I just don't know enough science but in the meantime, vitalism is worth studying.

Second Idea:

The inadequacy of Darwinism ist he second point we brought out when we spoke of the vital impetus: to a theory we opposed a fact, we pointed out that the evolution of life occurred in certain definite directions.

Is this true? Certainly life looks like it has arrived at the end of its development but that's simply from the vantage point of now. Did life set itself goals? I don't think so. No lifeform is the endpoint of a some longterm evolutionary goal. Teleology doesn't make sense to me (unless one calls fitness a telos), at least in terms of the evolution of life.

Third idea :

Let us consider this regular transmissibility to be innate: we shall conform to experience and we shall say that it is not the mechnical action of external causes, but an inward impulse that passes from germ to germ through individuals, that carries life in a given direction, towards an ever higher complexity. Such is the third idea to be invoked by the image of the vital impetus.

I like that Bergson distances the vital impetus form "mechanical action." The universe is neither a god nor a machine. My issue would be that this higher complexity might be too guided for Bergson. Certainly evolution might develop along the lines of more complexity but it isn't in a "given direction." At least not a given direction beyond natural selection.

Fourth Idea:

When one speaks of the progress of an organism or an organ adapting itself to more complex conditions, one means, more often than not, that the complexity of conditions imposes its form on life, as the mould does on the clay

Bergson disagrees with this idea and offers his own:

as if it were the original solution, found by life, of the problem set by external conditions. And this faculty of resolving problems is left unexplained.

This is an important distinction. Life makes use of its capacities in response to certain obstacles in the world.

Bergson uses this imagery to explain his idea

just as a movement of the hand, which we feel to be invisible, is perceived from the outseid as a curve definable by an equation, that is to say, as a series of points infinite in numer, adjacent one to the other, and all obeying one and the same law.

Here we see a huge difference between Bergson and Nietzsche. Where Bergson sees one law Nietzsche perceives multiple warring forces.

where our analysis, which remains outside, finds positive elements in ever increasing numbers--elements which strike us for that very reason as more and more marvellously co-ordinate with one another--intuition, transferring itself to the inside, would be confronted not with factors that are being combined, but with obstacles that are being circumvented.

Bergson relates this to an invisible hand thrusting aside iron filings. This image struck me because it reminds me of my grandfathers metal shop and the magnets I used to play with.

Fifth Idea

where our analysis, which remains outside, finds positve elements in ever increasing numbers--elements which strike us for that very reason as more and more marevellously co-ordinate with one another--intuition, transferring itself to the inside, would be confronted not with factors that are being combined, but with obstacles that are being circumvented.

It's interesting that Bergson draws our attention to experience of the inner that is confronted with the obstacles to circumvent. Does this explain some of the staggering complexities of life? Perhaps it at least explains how very elaborate means of adaptation exist when they don't necessarily have to, the cultural adaptations of human beings come to mind.

Sixth idea:

If life cannot be resolved into physical and chemical facts, it operates in the manner of a special cause added on to what we ordinarily call matter, matter in this case being both an instrument and an obstacle.

Seventh idea:

It divides what it defines. We may conjecture that a division of this kind is responsible for the mulitplicity of the great lines of vital evolution.

A pretty interesting explaination of the "wealth of types".

Eighth idea:

But we thereby obtain a suggestion as to the means of preparing and verifying the intuition we would fain have of life. If we see two or three big lines of evolution running freely forward alongside other paths which come to a dead end, and if along each of these lines an essential characteristic develops more and more, we may conjecture that the vital impulse began by possessing these characteristics in a state of reciprocal implication: instinct and intelligence, of the two principal lines of animal evolution, must there be take one with the other, before their separation: not combined into one, but one in the beginning, instinct and intelligence being then mere views, taken from two different points of that simple reality.

Very interesting explanation of how these forms divide and diverge.

Nineth idea:

And even then we have no mentioned, save perhaps by implication, the essential one, namely the impossibility of forecasting the forms which life creates in their entirety, by discontinuous leaps, all along the lines of its evolution.

"impossibility of foreasting the forms which life.." Isn't that a wonderful sentence? And some people say evolutionary theory takes the magic out of life, I think it invigorates its.

America: Constituted rootlessness

2006-03-20T15:20:00.000-08:00

My Monday vastly improved after reading this post over at philosophy.com (the name of the site, the URL is http://www.sauer-thompson.com). The post is about American democracy and it references a conversation between Fukuyama and Levy, you find that discussion here.

Gary Sauer-Thompson points out this interesting moment in the conversation:
That was the real practical meaning of American democracy: Every individual could set their clock to year zero; they could be what they made of themselves and not what their parents and ancestors expected of them. Europeans often look down on Americans for their loss of memory, their rootlessness, and, true enough, this becomes a real defect when Americans fail to understand that the other peoples they encounter do not suffer from their particular form of liberation amnesia. But it has also been very important to the success of American democracy. It meant that the United States has been more open to people from very different places and cultures who were themselves interested in starting over in a place where no one could locate Yerevan or Pusan or Lublin on a map. Europeans, whatever their aspirations to create a Habermasian post-national identity, are still rooted in communities of blood and memory, where people remember their ancestors and are defined by their parents.

Blood and memory? I prefer blood and soil to describe these roots but I agree with Francis that one of the great features of American democracy is rootlessness.

American rootlessness is a wonderful component of the idea of American freedom. It severs the hardened connections between individual and ancestor. It dissolves the barriers of race and religion. I should emphasize that I'm talking about the idea of American freedom NOT the reality of American freedom ;)

But rootlessness cannot constitute a union, it is necessary for there to be a constitution and a founding. These are features of the American revolution that Arendt describes brilliantly in her book On Revolution.

It's interesting to me that in American democracy there is two almost contrary movements that constitute the idealize American citizen. This citizen breaks free of the old conservative fetters of blood and soil connections but at the same time becomes reconstituted as an American citizen (think of citizenship in terms of the founding documents and the tragically decaying notions of civic duty).

But these notions make me wonder, isn't nationalism an enemy of the rootlessness of American democracy? Haven't the old blood and soil connections been reinstated within discourses about American tradition values?

Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion I: Totality of obligation

2006-03-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

I'm impressed with Bergson's work so far. I've only heard of him on the internets until a week ago when I began reading Two Sources of Morality and Religion. I like the book so far. His distinctions between open and closed morality give a good depiction of a dichotomy I've noticed and I can only hope he touches on how this distinction is articulated politically. He also speaks in a lot of natural metaphors like cells and utilizes biological ideas in his philosophy.

Here is an interesting passage. It gives insight into that strange realm where the social-habitual submerges into various instincts so that it appears natural:

Each of these habits, which may be called "moral," would be incidental. But the aggregate of them, I mean the habit of contracting these habits, being at the very basis of societies and a necessary condition of their existence, would have a force comparable to that of instinct in respect to both intensity and regularity. This is exactly what we have called the "totality of obligation." This, be it said, will apply only to human societies at the moment of emerging from the hands of nature. It will apply to primitive and to elementary societies. But, however much human society may progress, grow complicated and spiritualized, the original design, expressing the purpose of nature, will remain.

It's interesting to substitute individual moral laws with "totality of obligation" when looking for the "original design, expressing the purpose of nature." Am I wrong to hear Bergson as quite similar to Nietzsche? This book seems so similar to Genealogy of Morals. In fact, it seems much more complete in that it focuses in on the two types of morality. These two types of morality seem quite similar to Nietzsche's "morality of the mores" and the transvaluation of values. In fact, Bergson's creative morality feels just like Nietzschean overcoming. Anyway, that's just a thought. Yet another strange pull towards the 19th century's collision of philosophy and biology.

Biologically speaking, I don't think there's good reason to see specific content to the promptings of the conscience or the pull of morality. These things have always seemed impossible to put into the natural structure of human beings. But Bergson's "totality of obligations" suggests that the form for experiencing the "conscience" can be present in each human being according to the purposes of nature. This general form can be filled with specific cultural content. As history unfolds, the social adapts to the biological form so that guilt is more effective. Is this how I was made to feel guilty for absurd things? Is this how guilt drove me to depression when I was younger? Eh, I shouldn't take it personally ;)

I hope to blog a lot more on this book in the next or so.

Foucault's Society Must Be Defended VII: Normalizing power and theories of degeneracy

2006-03-07T16:34:00.000-08:00

The norm is an element common to both discpline and biopower. It circulates between them, reinforces the relationship between them, and is an important measure of value used to judge both the individual and a population.

Foucault says:

In more general terms still, we can say that there is one element that will circulate between the disciplinary and the regulatory, which will also be applied to body and population alike, which will make it possible to control both the disciplinary order of the body and the aleatory events that occur in the biological multiplicity. The element that circulates between the two is the norm. (252-253)

The normalizing is one that can take life itself as its object:

The normalizing society is a society in which the norm of discipline and the norm of regulation intersect along an orthogonal articulation. To say that power took possession of life in the nineteenth century, or to say that power at least takes life under its care in the nineteenth century, is to say that it has, thanks to the play of technologies of discipline on the one hand and technologies of regulation on the other, succeeded in covering the whole surface that lies between the organic and the biological, between body and population. (253)

Foucault describes knowledge taking possession of life in Order of Things and I think it's one of the primary reasons he focuses on sexuality in order to uncover the power relations related to modes of subjection. Power and life is an important subject that I think I'll pursue a little further, maybe with Agamben's homo sacer.

The end of homo economicus?

2006-03-02T08:47:00.000-08:00

Could behavioral economics erode the figure of homo economicus?

This article seems to point to that possibility. Of course homo economicus has been suffering for the past two hundred years or so but behavioral economics marks a complete break from this aging form. Homo Economicus is the agent choosing in rational self-interest. It's the form of humanity described by Smith and Richardo, it's the form of humanity that vulgar capitalists still hold onto dearly.

What has eroding this once reverred figure in economic theory? Well, it's strange facts. The consumption behavior of human beings is far from rational and often far from "self-interest." I chant this to ward away the bad feelings everytime I go shopping on a Saturday afternoon. Anyway, a quote:

Such perverse facts are a direct affront to the standard model of the human actor—Economic Man—that classical and neoclassical economics have used as a foundation for decades, if not centuries. Economic Man makes logical, rational, self-interested decisions that weigh costs against benefits and maximize value and profit to himself. Economic Man is an intelligent, analytic, selfish creature who has perfect self-regulation in pursuit of his future goals and is unswayed by bodily states and feelings. And Economic Man is a marvelously convenient pawn for building academic theories. But Economic Man has one fatal flaw: he does not exist.

Homo Economicus is like many abstract concepts used for academic theories, like Hobbes' State of War or the "machine" figure used when describing natural systems. Homo economicus is a object in the discourse of classical economics and persists in the imaginations of economic libertarians and pop conservatives. As an object in a discourse, homo economicus' erosion implies drastic changes to economic discourse. Who we are, as beings who labor, becomes something quite different without homo economicus.

There are those that would suggest that homo economicus was a useful tool to base theories on. To this I would suggest that homo economicus is inadequate to explain most marketing strategies. Most marketing is a far cry from appealing to "rational self-interest." How could the model of homo economicus explain the superbowl burger king ads or the very strange pharmaceutical ads that often just have visual displays and the warning of the drug side effects. Homo economicus would run from these irrational detours from self-interest. The article also mentions this objection:

To be fair, the naysayers would have agreed that the rational model only approximates human cognition—“just as Newtonian physics is an approximation to Einstein’s physics,” Laibson explains. “Although there are differences, when walking along the surface of this planet, you’ll never encounter them. If I want to build a bridge, pass a car, or hit a baseball, Newtonian physics will suffice. But the psychologists said, ‘No, it’s not sufficient, we’re not just playing around at the margins, making small change. There are big behavioral regularities that include things like imperfect self-control and social preferences, as opposed to pure selfishness. We care about people outside our families and give up resources to help them—those affected by Hurricane Katrina, for example.”

I would add that the very fact of not using these model implies changes in how we see ourselves, the tools we use to analyze ourselves, and the discourses built around economic behavior.

Here's a wonderful paragraph:

Laibson can sketch a formal model that describes this dynamic. Consider a project like starting an exercise program, which entails, say, an immediate cost of six units of value, but will produce a delayed benefit of eight units. That’s a net gain of two units, “but it ignores the human tendency to devalue the future,” Laibson says. If future events have perhaps half the value of present ones, then the eight units become only four, and starting an exercise program today means a net loss of two units (six minus four). So we don’t want to start exercising today. On the other hand, starting tomorrow devalues both the cost and the benefit by half (to three and four units, respectively), resulting in a net gain of one unit from exercising. Hence, everyone is enthusiastic about going to the gym tomorrow.

What is the effect of this on the "sovereign individual" with its protracted will? Here is an illustration of the protracted will in the Odyssey:

Luckily, Odysseus also confronts the problem posed by Wimpy—and Homer’s hero solves the dilemma. The goddess Circe informs Odysseus that his ship will pass the island of the Sirens, whose irresistible singing can lure sailors to steer toward them and onto rocks. The Sirens are a marvelous metaphor for human appetite, both in its seductions and its pitfalls. Circe advises Odysseus to prepare for temptations to come: he must order his crew to stopper their ears with wax, so they cannot hear the Sirens’ songs, but he may hear the Sirens’ beautiful voices without risk if he has his sailors lash him to a mast, and commands them to ignore his pleas for release until they have passed beyond danger. “Odysseus pre-commits himself by doing this,” Laibson explains. “Binding himself to the mast prevents his future self from countermanding the decision made by his present self.”

Nice illustration!

This article is great because it points to a few behaviors that cannot be accounted for with homo economicus.

I may be updating this post from time to time, I think I might start researching a paper on this subject.

Foucault's Society Must Be Defended VI: Link Between Discipline and Biopower

2006-03-01T19:04:00.000-08:00

Foucault ends his books very well. At the end of Order of Things, Foucault contrasts the dry analytics of the rest of the book with a conflagration of powerful insights that tear through the human being assumed in the human sciences. At the end of Madness and Civilization he breaks the silences imposed on the mad through art. At the end of History of Sexuality Volume I, he brings out Biopower. The lecture that ends Society Must Be Defended (March 17th 1976) continues this tradition.

The 3/17/06 lecture discusses disciplinary power, bio-power, degeneracy, normalizing power, and other important Foucauldian themes. One of my favorite moments in this lecture is where Foucault describes the link between bio-power and disciplinary power.

I've had a hard time describing the interaction between bio-power and disciplinary power, specifically, I've had trouble understanding how these forms of power fit in with governmentality and pastoral power. I still struggle a bit with how biopower and disciplinary power work with governmentality/pastoral power but this quote helps clarify the interaction between biopower and disciplinary power:

Now I think we see something new emerging in the second half of the eighteenth century: a new technology of power, but this time it is not disciplinary. This technology of power does not exclude the former, does not exclude disciplinary technology, but it does dovetail into it, integrate it, modify, it to some extent, and above all, use it by sort of infiltrating it, embedding itself in existing disciplinary techniques. This new technique does not simply do away with the disciplinary technique, because it exists at a different level, on a different scale, and because it has a different bearing area, and makes use of very different instruments. (242)

This new technology is "biopolitics" or biopower. I think that Foucault may have used the term biopolitics first and then developed in more into biopower. In fact, the entire Marcch 17th 1976 lectures sounds like a prototype of the material found in the final chapter of History of Sexuality Volume I. A thorough study of Foucault's power might want to begin with the last 3 chapters of Discipline & Punish, work into this lecture, include the Subject and Power essay, technologies of self and the last chapter of HOS volume I.

Foucault says in the above quote that biopower "above all" uses disciplinary techniques. The 'use' of these techniques might offer a clue to biopower's relation to governmentality. Governmentality is primarily a series of techniques that have insured the survival of the state, there are three main characteristics of governmentality, it:

[H]as as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security. (Foucault, Governmentality 220)

Biopower is the technology of power constituted by fields of knowledge focused on populations (birth rates, death rates, etc.) and fields of knowledge related to political economy. How this fits in with disciplinary power depends on referring to another type of power, pastoral power.

As mentioned above, biopower "does not simply do away with the disciplinary technique, because it exists at a different level, on a different scale, and because it has a different bearing area, and makes use of very different instruments." Foucault clarifies the different level/scale by talking about two perspectives on the human being:

Unlike discipline, which is addressed to bodies, the new nondisciplinary power is applied not to a man-as-body but to the living man, to man-as-living-being; ultimately, if you like, to man-as-species. (242)

These two poles (body-species) are very similar to the two poles of pastoral power:
Pastoral power refers to a particular role of power, “whose role is to constantly ensure, sustain, and improve the lives of each and everyone.” (Foucault, Omenes et Singulatim 307) The simultaneous concern with population and each individual body characterizes the micro (individualizing) and macro (totalizing) poles of the State’s power. Foucault says:

After the anatomo-politics of the human body established in the course of the eighteenth century, we have, at the end of that century, the emergence of something that is no longer an anatomo-politics of the human body, but what I would call a biopolitics of the human race. (243)

By looking at the biopower's use of disciplinary power, we can see how biopower fits into the tactics of governmentality. The two poles of pastoral power inform the difference in level and scale between biopower and displine. All four of these concepts together give a robust schema for identify and analyzing the State's power.

Foucault's Society Must Be Defended V: National Duality

2006-03-01T18:43:00.000-08:00

“With Boulainvilliers, in contrast, we have a generalized war that permeates the entire social body and the entire history of the social body; it is obviously not the sort of war in which individuals fight individuals, but one in which groups fight groups.” (162)

This passage connects the partisan's history and nation. The partisan's history unravels itself as a generalized war. It classifies historical figures according to whose side they are fighting. It makes every historical event the site of polemics.

The war discourse operates in the culture wars, butit also operates within other discourses. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States of America also operates like Boulainvillier's discourse and its generalized war. Zinn's operates according to class more than other uses of 'the nation' in historical discourses but it still has that sense of generalized war.

Foucault's Society Must Be Defended IV: The Nation

2006-02-27T18:56:00.000-08:00

The sovereign's version of history culminates in the administrative knowledge of the courts and le bureau, “the knowledge that is constituted as the State talks to itself” (133). Before the discourse of Boulainvilliers, “history had never been anything more than the history of power as told by power itself, or the history of power that power had made people tell: it was the history of power, as recounted by power.” (Ibid.)

The history the nobility begins to tell is used against the sovereign's State. There is a new subject of history, the nation. “This subject talks about events that occur beneath the State, that ignore right, and that older and more profound than institutions.” (134)

Notice that the nation exceeds both right and institutions. The nation functioned to undermine both the king's status (determined by right) and the courts and administrative bodies necessary for the functioning of the State.

“It is this notion, this concept of the nation, that will give rise to the famous revolutionary problem of the nation; it will, of course, give rise to the basic concepts of nineteenth‑century nationalism. It will also give rise to the notion of race. And, finally, it will give rise to the notion of class.” (Ibid.) The nation first emerged in the discourses of the aristrocracy and was used against royal power. But the nation is a tactically strong discourse that has been adopted by many different strategies. Revolutionary discourse used the nation and used it effectively. It seems obvious to use "the nation" in nationalistic discourses but I believe Foucault's observation was still worth articulating. It's worth articulating because of how the nation functions in a discourse. As mentioned above, the nation exceeds both right and the institutions of the State. Nationalisms become pathological once they undermine human rights and the institutions to protect human rights. Class also emerges out of nation but I think this might happen in an interesting way. Throughout most of Society Must be Defended Foucault is analyzing discourses that play out in conflicts between Monarchs, Aristocracy, and the masses. These three groups no longer seem adequate to describe contemporary conflicts. The most obvious change is that there is no sovereign per se. I think that class conflicts have taken over some of the same significance that monarch/aristocracy/masses used to occupy.

“History no longer has the ceremonial character of something that reinforces power, but a new pathos will mark with its splendor a school of thought that will, broadly speaking, become French right‑wing thought. What I mean by this is, first, an almost erotic passion for historical knowledge; second, the systematic perversion of interpretive understanding; third, relentless denunciations; fourth, the articulation of history around something resembling a plot, an attack on the State, a coup d’état or an assault on the State or against the State.” (135)

Foucault offers us four characteristics of French right-wing thought. I might be mistaken but it's my impression all right wing thought has similarities to these 4 characteristics.

Foucault's Society Must Be Defended III: The Partisan

2006-02-24T14:38:00.000-08:00

Ever since I began reading Foucault's lectures titled "Society Must be Defended" I have hoped these lectures would shed light on the "culture wars" in American politics.

Why would I harbor such hopes?

The main reason is that "culture wars" are mostly discursive and those who engage in this war use the metaphor of war to describe what they do. They even call themselves cultural warriors.

I'm not so sure that Foucault's lectures will shed direct light on "culture wars" but I do believe that that Foucault's analysis uncovers some features of discourses characterized by war. One of these key features is the Partisan (In the lecture dated 21 January 1976)

First point, concerning the speaking subject itself (52):

*Not trying to occupy the position of the jurist or the philosopher “the position of a universal, totalizing, or neutral subject.” (Ibid.)

*Speaks of rights but demands “his” rights. “We have a right.” “Singular rights […] strongly marked by a relationship of property, conquest, victory, or nature.”

*It’s truth is no longer “the universal truth of the philosopher.” “it is always a perspectival discourse.”

*”The truth is, in other words, a truth that can be deployed only from its combat position, from the perspective of the sought‑for victory and ultimately, so to speak, of the survival of the speaking subject himself.”

*Truth, for the partisan, is not the peaceful, neutral, or the median position of Greek philosophy (according to Pierre Vernant).

*”The more I decenter myself, the better I can see the truth; the more I accentuate the relationship of force, and the harder I fight, the more effectively I can deploy the truth ahead of me and use it to fight, survive and win.” (53)

Thoughts: The partisan fights for his or her rights. Doesn’t this seem to imply a victimization discourse?

Because the truth is deployed as a weapon doesn’t it seem that this type of discourse would present itself as the universal truth of the philosopher? An admittedly perspectival truth suffers a weaker position in discursive battles than a truth that claims universality, doesn’t it? Perhaps the secret here is that the philosopher’s truth is almost always tied up with a search for knowledge. It is a truth earned through inquiry, critique, and examination. The partisan’s truth is studied like a warrior studies his or her weapon. The partisan does not seek truth, it seeks the truth best suited to defeat its enemy.

The last point connects the partisan to the question of survival. This certainly raises the stakes.

Second point, this discourse “invert[s] the values, the equilibrium, and the traditional polarities of intelligibility, and which posits, demands, an explanation from below.” (54)

*”Explaining things from below also means explaining them in terms of what is most confused, most obscure, most disorderly and most subject to chance, because what is being put forward as a principle for the interpretation of society and its visible order is the confusion of violence, passions, hatreds, rages, resentments, and bitterness; and it is the obscurity of contingencies and all the minor accidents that bring about defeats and ensure victories. This discourse is essentially asking the elliptical god of battles to explain the long days of order, labor, peace and justice. Fury is being asked to explain calm and order.” (Ibid.)

*This principle that explains history begins with contingencies “[a] series of accidents, or at least contingencies: defeats, victories, the failure or success of rebellions, the failure or success of conspiracies or alliances; and finally, a bundle of psychological and moral elements (courage, fear, scorn, hatred, forgetfulness, et cetera).” (Ibid.) Upon these contingencies a growing rationality is built, “the rationality of technical procedures that are used to perpetuate the victory, to silence, or so it would seem, the war, and to preserve or invert the relationship of force.” (55)

*An ascending axis very different from the traditional axis. “We have an axis based upon a fundamental and permanent irrationality, a crude and naked irrationality, but which proclaims the truth; and, higher up, we have a fragile rationality, a transitory rationality which is always compromised and bound up with illusion and wickedness. Reason is on the side of wild dreams, cunning, and the wicked. At the opposite end of the axis, you have an elementary brutality: a collection of deeds, acts, and passions, and the cynical rage in all its nudity.” (Ibid.)

Thoughts: Nietzsche’s ressentiment can help explain some of the bottom part of this axis. Could apologetics be seen as part of the rationality built upon the contingencies?

Third point: “it is a discourse that develops completely within the historical dimension.” (55)

*”it is interested in defining and discovering, beneath the forms of justice that have been instituted, the order that has been imposed, the forgotten past of real struggles, actual victories, and defeats which may have been disguised but which remain profoundly inscribed.” (56)

*Mythical discourse “the lost age of great ancestors, the imminence of new times and a millenary revenge, the coming of the new kingdom that will wipe out the defeats of old.” Also, “the theme of the rights and privileges of the earliest race, which were flouted by the cunning invaders, the theme of war that is still going on in secret, of the plot that has to be revived so as to rekindles that war and to drive out the invaders or enemies; the theme of the famous battle that will take place tomorrow, that will at last invert the relationship of force, and transform the vanquished into victors who will know and show no mercy.” (57)

*”this discourse is in fact tied up with a knowledge which is sometimes in the possession of a declining aristocracy, with great mythical impulses, and with the ardor of revenge of the revenge of the people.” (Ibid.)

In general:

*”It will become the discourse of a centered, centralized, and centralizing power. It will become the discourse of a battle that has to be waged not between races, but by a race that is portrayed as the one true race, the race that holds power and is entitled to define the norm, and against those who deviate from that norm, against those who pose a threat to the biological heritage.” (61)

*”At this point, the racist thematic is no longer a moment in the struggle between one social group and another; it will promote the global strategy of social conservativisms.”

*”This is the internal racism of permanent purification, and it will become one of the most basic dimensions of social normalization.” (62)

Foucault's Society Must Be Defended II: domination NOT sovereignty

2006-02-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

Foucault uses a theory of domination to analyze power relations rather than a theory of sovereignty. Here are some features of these theories.

Theory of sovereignty (law, unity, and subject):

Subject to subject cycle- a theory of sovereignty “goes from subject to subject, that establishes the political relationship between subject and subject.” (43)

Unitary Power- “The multiplicity of powers, in the sense of political powers, can be established and can function only on the basis of this unitary power, which is founded by the theory of sovereignty.” (44)

Cycle of legitimacy and Law- “shows, or attempts to show, how a power can be constituted, not exactly in accordance with the law, but in accordance with a certain basic legitimacy that is more basic than any law and that allows laws to function as such.” (44)

Theory of domination (techniques, heterogeneity of techniques, and the subjugation‑effects):

Power relations not subjects- “[W]e begin with the power relationship itself, with the actual or effective relationship of domination, and see how that relationship itself determines the elements to which it is applied. We should not, therefore, be asking subjects how, why, and by what right they can agree to being subjugated, but showing how actual relations of subjugation manufacture subjects.” (45)

Global strategies traversing local tactics of domination- “[W]e should not be looking for a sort of sovereignty from which powers spring, but showing how the various operators of domination support one another, relate to one another, at how they converge and reinforce one another in some cases, and negate or strive to annul one another in other cases.” (45)

Foucault's analysis are not focused on traditional categories of power. He looks at power in a very different way:

“The general project, both in previous years and this year, is to try to release or emancipate this analysis of power from three assumptions—of subject, unity, and law –and to try to bring out, rather than these basic elements of sovereignty, what I would call relations or operators of domination.” (44-45)

My first response to this section was to think that these categories (subject, unity, law) are restricted to power relations in the political realm. Religion seems to operate within a theory of sovereignty, especially the Abrahmic religions. Traditional families operate within a theory of soveriegnty. ETC. But I don't think Foucault is primarly concerned with how these power relations function according to a theory of soveriegnty, he is primarily concerned about how we look at these institutions. I realize that they didn't function according a theory of sovereignty, I was looking at them in that way.

So instead of looking at power relations and seeing sovereignty (subjects, unity, and law), I should be "Identifying the technical instruments that guarantee the functioning of relations of domination."(46)

Foucault's analysis leads us to examine the “manufacture of subjects rather than the genesis of the sovereign: that is our general theme.” (46)

In this lecture, Foucault explains why he uses the war metaphor: “I am simply taking an extreme [case] to the extent that war can be regarded as the point of maximum tension, or as force‑relations laid bare.” (46)

Foucault's Society Must Be Defended: 5 methodological precautions

2006-01-31T10:39:00.000-08:00

This book is really getting in my head. I love it quite a bit and it keeps surprising me. I've read a bit of Foucault but this book really makes a connection between the analysis of power encountered in Discipline and Punish and biopower in The History of Sexuality Volume I.

In his lecture on 14 January 1976, Foucault discusses 5 methodological precautions necessary to examine the problem of domination/subjugation instead of sovereignty/obedience.

These include:

1-To Understand Power by Looking at It's Extremities.
Example:

I tried to look at how the power to punish was embodied in a certain number of local, regional, and material institutions, such as torture or imprisonment, and to look at the simultaneously institutional, physical, regulatory, and violent world of the actual apparatuses of punishment. (28)

This example illustrates one of my favorite things about Foucault. His analyses place us within a material world, a world that is experienced. From the experience of a psychiatric interview to the solidity of the prison walls, Foucault begins with the brute facts of our instituions and the institutional experience.

2- Grasping the Material Agency of Subjugation as far as it Constitutes Bodies
Cool line eh? That's why we love Foucault.
This precaution also includes looking at practices rather than intentions. I think this should be the NUMBER ONE tenet of discussions about power. Too often I hear discussions degrade into guessing about a person's intention or their character. Such discussions are for psychics not analysists.
This precaution forces our critical eye away from the singularity of the sovereign toward the muliple bodies of power:

Well, rather than raising this problem of the central soul, I think we should be trying--and this is what I have been trying to do--to study the multiple peripheral bodies, the bodies that are constituted as subjects by power-effects.

Two wonderful things about Foucault:
*Decentralization. One of the great pitfalls of studying power relations is to start imagining there is a conspiracy, a conspiracy is looking at power relations as a unified will acting on evil intentions. This leads to soap operas and pop conservative politics, not an analysis of power.
*Subjects Constituted by Power Relations. Subjects are not prior to power relations, they emerge within power relations and our constituted by them. Questions about who they are couldn't be more wrong.

3-Power Passes Through Individuals.
Power isn't applied to individuals. It isn't something possesed that is then used, like magical powers.

Power is exercised through networks, and individuals do not simply circulate in those networks; they are in a position to both submit to and exercise power.

I would add that they are also in a position to resist.

4-An Ascending Analysis of Power
Foucault warns against looking for power at its center and then trying to see how far down it goes. The point is not to find "power" and see what's beneath it.

[W]e should make an ascending analysis of power, or in other words begin with its infinitesimal mechanisms, which have their own history, their own trajectory, their own techniques and tactics, and then look at how these mechanisms of power, which ahve their solidity and, in a sense, their own technology, have been and are invested, colonized, used, inflected, transformed, displaced, extended, and so on by increasingly general mechanisms and forms of overall domination.(30)

This precaution prepares the way for the 5th.

5-Actual Instruments NOT Ideology
Ideology production coexists with the machinery of power but ideology does not shape them.

That is, the delicate mechanisms of power cannot function unless knowledge, or rather knowledge apparatuses, are formed, organized, and put into circulation, adn those apparatuses are not ideological trimmings or edifices.

This relates to the polyvalence of discourses mentioned in HOS Volume I. The main idea is the actual instruments of power are not extensions of an ideology but they are available as tools of the ideology, they can also be adopted for a variety of strategic uses. The medicalization of homosexuality in conservative anti-same sex literature is a good example.

Foucault "Society Must Be Defended" I-The war hypothesis

2006-01-24T18:04:00.000-08:00

Foucault suggests that we examine power according to a model that resembles war.

Foucault finds fault in the traditional ways of describing power. In this quote, Foucault characterizes traditional power conceptions:

Their common feature is what I will call "economism" in the theory of power. What I mean to say is this: In the case of the classic juridicial theory of power, power is regarded as a right which can be possessed in the way one possesses a commodity, and which can therefore be transferred or alienated, either completely or partly, through a juridicial act or an act that founds a right --it doesn't matter which, for the moment-- thanks to the surrender of something or thanks to a contract. (13)

I think one of the most common examples of this error is how we speak about people with power. The first mistake is that we suggest people have power themselves, like it was something they could put in their pocket or hold in their hand. The second mistake is that we attach individuals to the workings of power, we look for the man behind the curtain.

Foucault offers some alternatives to the traditional conceptions of power, these are meant to be tools for analysis. I think that's an important point about Foucault's work that is often forgotten. Anyway, the first is:

We have, first of all, the assertion that power is not something that is given, exchanged, or taken back, that it is something that is exercised and that it exists only in action. (14)

Foucault clarifies this:

[T]hat power is not primarily the perpetuation and renewal of economic relations, but that it is primarily, in itself, a relationship of force. (15)

Foucault returns to the traditional (and contemporary, he includes Hegel and Freud) to assert that "power is essentially what represses" and to this alternative, Foucault offers the war hypothesis:

Power is war, the continuation of war by other means. (15)

This implies three things:

First, that power relations, as they function in a society like ours, are essentially anchored in a certain relationship of force that was established in and through war at a given historical moment that can be historically specified. (15)
Inverting the proposition also means something else, namely that within this "civil peace," these political struggles, these clashes over or with power, these modifications of relations of force--the shifting balance, the reversals--in a political system, all these things must be interpreted as a continuation of war. And they are interpreted as so many episodes, fragmentations, and displacements of the war itself. (16)
The final decision can come only from war, or in other words a trial by strenght in which weapons are the final judge. It means the last battle would put an end to politics, or in other words, that the last battle would at last-- and I mean "at last" --supsend the exercise of power as continuous warfare. (16)

In the end I agree with Foucault that we should examine power according to a "domination-repression schema" where the pertinent opposition is "struggle and submission". (17)

But this agreement feels less certain as I read those 3 implications. Why? Am I just a idealist at heart that doesn't want to accept the base facts about human nature? Am I too jumpy at the word 'war'? Am I ignorant of the terms of survival because I'm lucky Westerner that doesn't struggle to survive?

The first implication seems sound. I do believe that (genealogically speaking) the power relations in a given society have grown out of situations of war. But I wonder, isn't there other ways in which power relations have been established?

The second implication reflects some of my most cynical feelings about our world. But I also have another part to my beliefs, a part that is attracted to Kant's perpetual peace.

The third implication seems impossible. I don't see such an end but I do believe this is type of peace imagined by many eschatological ideologies.

I really like the general ideas of the war hypothesis but I think that this hypothesis should be considered a tool for analysis only. It doesn't offer much in the way of forms of resistance or ethics.

Arendt's On Revolution: Final Thoughts

2006-01-17T17:02:00.000-08:00

On page 221 Arendt writes "Obviously, what was lost through the failure of thought and remembrance was the revolutionary spirit."

In the final chapter in On Revolution Arendt speaks about what was lost after the revolutions. 3 principles inspired the men of both the french and american revolution: public freedom, public happiness, and public spirit.

Arendt laments there loss and highlights the traces of these principles in our current political environment:

What remained of them in America, after the revolutionary spirit had been forgotten, were civil liberties, the individual welfare of the greatest number, and public opinion as the greatest force ruling an egalitarian, democratic society. (221)

Although I had never thought of it along these lines, I recognized these remainders and their relation to the revolutionary spirit.

Arednt recognizes the effects of this law in the contemporary political division between liberal and conservative:

The concern with stability and the spirit of the new, have become opposites in political though and terminology--the one being identified as conservativism and the other being claimed as the monopoly of progressive liberalism--must be recognized to be among the symptoms of our loss. Nothing, after all, compromises the understanding of political issues and their meaningful debate today more seriously than the automatic thought-reactions conditioned by the beaten paths of ideologies which all were born in the wake and aftermath of revolution. 223

I've always been interested in tracing the American political divide past the sixties. It was my impression that the underlying differences that drive the liberal/conservative couplet are deeply rooted in currents that run through the political history of the West. Arendt has done me a great service by illustrating the political divide's relation to the American revolution.

One of the great points of this chapter is the association of the founding with permanence. This permanence captured both the spirit of durability and novelty:

In other words, the political spirit of modernity was born when men were no longer satisfied that empires would rise and fall in a semptiternal change; it is as though men wished to establish a world which could be trusted to last forever, precisely because they knew how novel everything was that their age attempted to do. 224

**Polemic Sidenote- I want to constrast this notion with the religious obsession with the end of times. Our founding and the will to create this foundation is not judeo-christian in the sense of dominionists and fundamentalists in America, specifically the sense that the world is going to end. How well does an ethos of conserveration and enviromentalism fit with this notion of permanence? I think it fits very well.

One of the more depressing features of Arendt's last chapter is the seemingly impossible problem of participation and its poor solution, representation:

[Jefferson] knew, however dimly, that the Revolution, while it had given freedom to the people, had failed to provide a space where this freedom could be exercised. Only the representatives of the people, not the people themsevles, had an opprotunity to engage in those activities of 'expressing, discussing, and deciding' which in a positive sense are the activities of freedom. 235

Arendt discusses two attempted solutions to the problem of participation, the council system and the party system. Arendt's reflections on the party system are very useful although they leave me wanting more, specifically, they leave me wanting some hint at a strategy that might rekindle public spirit over "public opinion."

I truly enjoyed this book and I'm excited to read more from Arendt. Her carefuly insights into the American revolution have given me a much fuller understanding at the unique event that brought us the United States of America. I believe this is where we must start, with the founding, in order to find a critique of US power that brings us back to our principles and away from fetishizing American power.

Arendt's On Revolution: Foundations

2006-01-13T11:43:00.000-08:00

In the chapter titled "Foundations II: Novus Ordo Saeclorum" Arendt provides insight into the establishment of authority for law. This is directly related to the origin and makeup of the American constitution and is most often compared with various attempts to constitute a post-revolution France.

One of the most compelling distinctions offered by Arendt in this chapter is that the Law should come from above and the power from below (with the people).

With this distinction, Arendt is able to point out the problem with the French "deification of the people" (183)

As I see it, the different motions of law and power as an important tension that preserves the republic against the tyranny of the majority. The law shapes the power of the people by limiting it.

The immediate problem becomes the basis for law. Arendt begins by looking at the founding father's return to religious language. The founding Father's saw a need for an "Immortal Leigislator" and an afterlife where punishment would reach those who went unpunished in this life.

What suprised me is that Arendt is able to speak about this basis as our foundation in American. The founding of America is a common event to which we all swear religiously too. It reminds me of the concept used by Skillen called "American civic religion."

Forces of Production and the Revolutionary?

2006-01-06T12:41:00.000-08:00

I'm skimming Hallward's book on Badiou. It's a nice book that kindly includes an appendix summarize the math I need to understand what the hell Badiou is talking about. It's a great book btw!

Anway, I'm reading the section about Badiou's Maoism. I already have a few issues with his Maoism but I should demure, I don't understand his position yet. I'm just very confused about what to think about Maoists and Stalinists in general. But this confusion isn't nearly as fruitful as another confusion I have, I'm confused about Badiou's attention to the revolutionary and its relation to his ideas about event. Here is a kind little quip from Radical Philosophy that lightly summarizes Badiou's relation to revolution, event, and truth:

A truth, therefore, is always truth in a situation, but it is not of the situation: it is a puncturing of the knowledge that accounts for the situation, a process triggered by an emergence, within the given, of the radically new - an event. Badiou's is a philosophy of revolution, where the event as emergence, not so much crisis but devastating flash of otherness, plays the central role. There is truth only where and when an event has occurred.

This idea is compelling to me but still a little hazy. It was Badiou's idea of subjects being constituted through events that first attracted me to his philosophy. The link to link between the revolutionary and truth is still a mystery to me but I think that between Arendt's On Revolution and Marx's preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, I'm beginning to see the revolutionary in all real political activity.

Arendt's relation to this idea is pretty clear to me know. First of all, the revolutionary isn't just the negative movement of liberation (an example of which is the Declaration of Independence) but also positive, embodied in the constitution. The revolutionary, according to Arednt, involves both of these movements if it is to see the type of success that America experienced compared to the French revolution (and I would, against Badiou's wishes I'm sure, put the Bolshevik and Maoist revolutions in that camp). I also think the revolutionary should include a new system of power, not just the removal of the old system but a new system of power.

Marx also seems to be talking about the revolutionary when he writes (from the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy):

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter Into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

By observing the conflicts between "material productive forces" and "existing relations of production" Marx provides us the tools to identify those places in a society where social revolution may begin. What really strikes me is how Foucault picks up on these ideas of Marx. I think that Foucault "historical ontology of ourselves" in What is Enlightenment? operates with a logic similar to Marx in the above quote.

So what does this mean in concrete terms? Well, in my mind it means that the revolutionary in our world doesn't mean the overthrow of the United States or some hideous war. It means that the revolutionary takes place through new "material productive forces" and that our eyes, we meteorologists of time to come, should seek out new productive forces and methods that escape that fixed relations of productions that characterize our current social system.

hmmm... My concrete terms still sounds so fuzzzy, how about an example with a picture:

This is a prefab home. It is very cheap and easy to put together. Why isn't all technology like this?

IMHO, there is a continually growing DIY culture that is no longer just a hobby culture, it is a hint at how human beings can change current production relations.

One of the things I love about my father, grandfather, and many of my other relatives is that they build stuff for themselves. They are they type that look to fill their needs with their own creativity and ingenuity first. This is something we need to spread around.

The increasing commodification of every possible need (or manufatured need) seems irresistable. People want more gadgets. Wouldn't it be avoiding the commodity form if we made it ourselves? Wouldn't it be better to make more things for yourself and work less hours? Wouldn't it be nice to buy bare materials with many uses rather than a billion gadgets that each only have a single use?

I think the DIY culture is something I will look at for my own life but also a place where I will search out for signs of changes in our existing relations of production, changes that might help alleviate the commodification of our lives.

Arendt's On Revolution: Constitution Making

2006-01-05T18:06:00.000-08:00

I swore I would finish most of this book this week but circumstances have overruled. I've been having fun with my girl and working a bit. Hopefully this weekend will help me finish off the slightly more than 100 pages I have left. Either way, I'm still having a great time with Arendt's On Revolution.

This week the Jack Abramoff scandal grew into national news. Those of us willing to peer into the slimy underbelly of American politics called the American right had seen this coming for a while. The reason I mention this is because scandals like these should cause us all to reflect on America itself, whatever in hell that is supposed to mean. One thing that it could mean is the constitution, the very symbol of the united will that gave birth to this nation. So, as I sit in amazement to behold the culture of corruption that is fed by right wing populism and run by GOP mongrels, I reflect on that "endurable objective thing" called the American constitution:

The seat of power to them was the people, but the source of law was to become the Constitution, a written document, an endurable objective thing, which, to be sure, one could approach from many different angles and upon which one could impose many different interpretations, which one could change and amend in accordance with circumstances, but which nevertheless was never a subjective state of mind, like the will. (157)

First of all, I would like to point out the balance between the fickles of populist opinion and the enduring presence of a text is managed not through fixing the text for eternity but by pitting it against the people, which operate according to will. This tension, between the text and the will, is very important for the new system of power that characterized the American constitution. As Arendt points out:

[T]he fact that the actual content of the Constitution was by no means the safeguard of civil liberties but the establishment of an entirely new system of power. (147)

What struck me about Arendt's analysis is how attentive to the machinations of power the founding father were:

Power can be stopped and still kept intact only by power, so that the principle of the separation of power not only provides a guarantee against the monopolization of power by one part of the government, but actually provides a kind of mechanism, built into the very heart of government, through which new power is constantly generated, wihtout, however, being able to overgrow and expand to the detriment of other centres or sources of power. (152)

Most of these ideas were inspired (or borrowed) from Montesquieu. What strikes me is their attentiveness to the type of conception of power Foucault has analyzed. The founder fathers and Montesuieu were concerned with the abuse of power and impotence. Impotence does no one any good. In order to strike a balance between the two, a balance was sought. This balance is a new system of power that sought to some to degree to eliminate sovereignty from the body politic:

In this respect, the great and, in the long run, perhaps greatest American innovation in politics as such was the consistent abolition of sovereignty within the body politic of the republic, the insight that in the realm of human affairs sovereignty and tyranny are the same. (153)

It isn't hard to find a justification for branding Bush's domestic spying as anti-American. It's a strike against our most treasured political innovation. Bush's action are specifically sovereign in the respect that Agamben and Schmitt use the term 'sovereign', the ability to declare a state of exception.

One thing I'd like to mention. Arendt points out that the constitution can be interpreted in different ways and adaptable to circumstances. This flies in the face of "original intent" theorists who have made two critical mistakes in my opinion.

The first mistake is epistemological. It is impossible to know the intentions residing in the skulls of dead men. Yes yes, that's a seemingly unsophisticated represntation of 'original intent' scholarship but I think it is accurate after scrutiny. In the end, the task of determining an original intent is the same type of political magic that relies on the invisible hand of the market. It's bullshit, philosophically bullshit in the way Frankfurt's book called bullshit characterizes it.

The second way in which original intent makes a mistake is historically. History does not allow for perfectly fixed meanings. The constitution iniated a new system of power, it did not freeze the body politic of the 18th century for eternity. Traditionalists love this view because of a misguided nostalgia for some golden past, it doesn't exist.

Arendt's On Revolution: The Pursuit of Happiness

2006-01-03T17:49:00.000-08:00

I finished the chapter titled The Pursuit of Happiness and I'm well into the chapter on the constitution. Arendt really surprised me with The Pursuit of Happiness, so much that she's kept me out of my library books.

Arendt closes the chapter The Pursuit of Happiness with insight into the tension between individuality and citizenship:

On a more sophisticated level, we may consider this disappearance of the 'taste for political freedom' as the withdrawal of the individual into an 'inward domain of consciouness' where it finds the only 'appropriate region of human liberty'; from this region, as though from a crumbling fortress, the individual, having got the better of the citizen, will then defend himself against a society which in its turn gets 'the better of individuality'. This process, more than the revolutions, determined the physiognomy of the nineteenth century as it partly does even that of the twentieth century. (140)

Brilliant!

First of all, Arendt's insight that the "pursuit of happiness" is connected with public happiness was unexpected but incredible. I've long wondered about some libertarians I've met before. I agree with their desire for limited government but I've always felt a little uneasy at their idea of individuality. The problem with some libertarians isn't that they want limits on government, its that the ideology that puts happiness and virtue beyond the boundaries of the individual. Its the ideology that doesn't invite compassion, happiness, loyalty, empathy and whole range of other emotions beyond the threshold of the merely individual into citizenship.

Second, Arendt has explained to me the figure through which an individual can begin to realize themselves as part of a community. The citizen is where political community and individuality meet. Perhaps using the term 'community' seems out of place here. It feels stunted and awkward, a point I readily accept, but it is connected to a larger network of ideas that have been lying in wait in my mind. Last semester I read Etzioni's book From Empire to Community. This book has greatly influenced my thinking about global community. Etzioni skillfully explains the tendencies toward community already present in our society. He gives the best account of the possibility for a better global system I've encountered. But I wondered toward the end of it, how does one constitute themselves as a member of this community? How can I think of myself as a member of this coming community? The answer, I think, might be thinking of myself as a citizen of a global community. The main reason Arendt has pushed me in this direction is here identification of this trend from citizen to individual. This retreat has been in play in the 19th and 20th centuries. Why couldn't the move away from mere individuality not be towards community as a citizen?

While there are many things I loved about this chapter, I will only mention one more of them. Arendt mentions an idea that Tocqueville pointed to, that some would claim to love freedom but only hate their masters. This is an important notion and a grave reminder of the types of irrationality that can lie beneath liberation movements. A desire for freedom, of real freedom, must exceed the mere negative want of freedom behind a hatred for one's masters.

Arendt's On Revolution: The Social Question

2005-12-28T14:05:00.000-08:00

Arendt's book On Revolution is a great read. I especially liked the section titled "On the Social Question."

Arendt differentiates between the American revolution and the French revolution in this section. Much to my dismay this diminishes my hope in Paine's works. I once thought that the differences between Paine and Burke would help uncover a dichotomy indicative of today's political divisions. After reading this section I'm not sure my indictment of Burke is justified and I wonder if my hope in Paine was a little foolish. Well, at least it was just an idea rather than hours in front of a keyboard.

Arendt captures a distinction that I agree with but one that seems to go against the grain of common understanding. She aligns the American revolution with "the rights of freedom and citizenship" and the French revolution with "the rights of life and nature." I would also like to add that she associates the French revolution with historical necessity, often through Hegel-Marx. Perhaps I misunderstand Marx but I honestly don't feel that he falls on the side of necessity as much as people like accuse him of it. But then again, I'm also uncertain that Hegel must be read within the confines of historical necessity. Perhaps this is because I read the Phenomenology as a study of historically constituted subjectivities that illustrates types or configurations of consciousness that help us understand ourselves and history. Damnit! I've strayed off course again. Arendt generally distinguishes the American Revolution from the French Revolution in the following way:

French-Historical necessity and life/nature
American-Individual action and freedom/citizenship

Arendt's division here makes me want to read Hegel on Freedom and Terror. But once again, I digress. The main point here is that there was completely different ways for people to figure themselves as revolutionary individuals. I think an examination of Foucault's revolutionary individual (in Hermeneutics of the subject) could shed light on the experience of individuals in these two very different revolutions.

One of the key differences is the role of citizenship. The very idea of citizenship seems absent from my own political experience. Today it seems that American citizenship is merely determining whose side your on. We should be warned that a diminishing notion of citizenship and an increasing dedication to historical necessity is a deep betrayal of the American revolution. I am alarmed to think of the increasing surrender of pundits to a world determined by threats (war on terror) and lacking a coherent fidelity to citizenship outside of partisanship. Citizenship and freedom must be presented as an antidote to historical necessity. I wonder how well Agamben's (Schmitt's and Foucault's) notion of a State of Exception would fit within Arendt's description of historical necessity? Perhaps as reactionary necessity? hmmmm, I'll have to think about that.

Arendt's description of legal persona is an essential tool for undertanding how "life and nature" might not be the best basis for a revolution. Because the French revolution was a war against hypocrisy in French society, it assumes a way of pulling the mask off to reveal the true face, the natural face. Arendt writes:

They believed that they had emancipated nature herself, as it were, liberated the natural man in all men, and given him the Rights of Man to which each was entitled, not by virtue of the body politic to which he belonged but by virtue of being born. (108)

Arendt reminds us that the French revolution lacked a concept of persona, specifically a legal personage "given and guaranteed" by the body politic. I'm glad that she used body politic in this manner. I think Foucault's description of the body politic in Discipline and Punish is the best out there, too many use it just to refer to the people in a given society. Here is Foucault's definition:

[A] set of material elements and techniques that serve as weapons, relays, communication routes and supports for the power and knowledge relations that invest human bodies and subjugate them by turning them into objects of knowledge. (Foucault, Discipline and Punish 28)

The part about turning them into objects of knowledge isn't necessary here but the investment of human bodies is essential to understanding legal persona. We, as citizens, emerge only through such relations. We are not born with "rights" rather, these rights emerge through a social system through which we are recognized as having rights, we recognize other's as having rights, and these rights can be claimed through the institutional supports comprising the body politic.

Arendt ends this section with a warning:

Nothing, we might say today, could be more obsolete than to attempt to liberate mankind from poverty by political means; nothing could be more futile and more dangerous. (114)

The type of violence unleashed in the naked question of survival is primordial, unrestrained, and irrational. This violence is not the basis of future state. It is nihilism, it is terror. I think Zizek's reflections on the Paris Riots are relevant here. it was in that article that I first dared to think that the riots could be without meaning, that they could be ressentiment not rational. Arendt is attentive to this idea, an idea I'm slowly coming to understand as fact.

Forgiveness V: Final thoughts

2005-12-22T16:45:00.000-08:00

Jankélévitch has a gift for describing force‑relations. Temporal decay, rancor, and the excuse are all Jankélévitch’s concepts that illustrate his gift. Jankélévitch ends with another example of this gift: the relation between wickedness and forgiveness. The following quote lingers in my mind:

Forgiveness is strong like wickedness; but it is not stronger than it. (165)

He builds this point up by comparing it to the evil/love relation in Song of Songs (8:6). Jankélévitch also quotes Saint Paul “where misdeed flows, grace overflows.”

My lasting impression of this book is the power of forgiveness. My main interest in this book is forgiveness as a limit‑experience. Forgiveness, like few things in our lives, can free us from historical and natural necessity. The cycles of violence, rage, ressentiment, rancor, and war that plague human society need limit‑experiences. We need experiences that push us beyond the limits imposed by our history and our circumstance.

Forgiveness is a significant practice of freedom. It is freedom from law and necessity. It is freedom from evil:

But if the excuse boasts of understanding the determinism behind freedom, then forgiveness would rather attempt to uncover the freedom behind determinism. (159)

I cringe at the misuses of freedom. Freedom is not just the condition that makes up culpable. Freedom is an end in itself, not a means to assigning praise or blame.

I liked Jankélévitch’s book a lot. I marked it thoroughly and I expect that I will reference it soon. It will be my primary comparison text when I jump into Hegel’s forgiveness.

Forgiveness IV: Forgive Tookie?

2005-12-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

The story of Tookie seems a paradigmatic case for the possibility of forgiveness. But it does pose many problems.

The first and most glaring problem is that Tookie claims innocence. No crime, no forgiveness.

The second problem is dependent on the first. Even if Tookie was guilt (or admitted guilt) would it be the place of society to forgive or the victim's families? Foucault observed a change in relations of criminality, specifically that crimes once committed against the victim are now often punished as crimes against the state. These people are punished because they have wronged society itself not just another person. Can societies forgive?

There are other problems in that Tookie's forgiveness will never be complete because he will most likely always remain in jail.

What interests me about this case is Tookie's work to transform himself from the founder of the crips to an anti-gang activist.

This is part of redemtive action, isn't it? Isn't this an example of a move from guilt to innocence? From hate to love? The problem with this move is that it was all Tookie. Forgiveness is a relation with another person. Without the relational element, Tookies transformation is a personal conversion not forgiveness.

Forgiveness III: Forgiveness is not just digestion!

2005-12-06T17:52:00.000-08:00

The philosophy of "forget about it" is not a philosophy. How to be rid of something is not a moral problem. (102)

Jankélévich's second chapter in his book Forgiveness focuses in on the excuse. It's a strange thing with this book but it doesn't appear to make too many new insights into forgiveness. Jankélévich's 3 criteria of forgiveness seem are certainly reinforced and used in the subsequent chapeters but this theme is hardly expanded upon. I'm happy though, I want to pursue 'forgiveness' as the second prong to my forked interest in changes in subjectivity (the other prong being counter-memory)

Perhaps the most valuable claim pursued in chapter two is that forgetting isn't moral nor should it be considered an ethical pursuit. Jankélévich goes as far as to prefer ressentiment over the "path of forgetting" (103). The preference for ressentiment is interesting for at least two reasons. One is that Jankélévich seems to invoke the subtleties of Nietzsche's ressentiment. Remember, ressentiment can be creative for Nietzsche and it is also tied with the process leading to the ripest fruit, "the sovereign individual". Of course one could read Nietzsche as completely ironic with this idea but I choose to read him as a bit tongue in cheek with the "sovereign individual" thing.

The second idea is more personal but it also invoked Mr. Nietzsche. Nietzsche writes about the "faculty of forgetting." It behaves a bit like the digestive tract. The person of ressentiment isn't able to digest properly, like the dispectic. Jankélévich doesn't let digestion equal forgiveness, the faculty of forgetting isn't the moral equal of forgiveness. This quote helps us understand why:

Rancor contributes to save hierarchies and moral distinctions from adiaphora. The solution by which one throws things into the fire is also the renunciation of recollection, of fidelity, or permanence, of all that by which men differentiate themeslves from oysters and jellyfish. Can the quietus that we grant to guilty people by means of this good-riddance have the slightest moral significance?

Think of Nietzsche's genealogy of morals, think of the subject's creation and its relation to time. Isn't Jankélévich invoking the image of a creature who has the right to make promises? Isn't the creation of the protracted will directly related to "recollection," "fidelity," and "permanence"?

Forgiveness II: Jankélévich's book

2005-11-30T17:40:00.000-08:00

The Excuse: To Understand Is to Forgive

(The title of chapter 2)

I'm very please with Jankélévich's work so far. Much like Temporal Decay (chapter 1), chapter 2 presents strong challenges to our simplistic understanding of forgiveness. Jankélévich makes good use of his introduction by sticking with the 3 properties of forgiveness (event, gift, relation), he uses these 3 properties to explain why "the excuse" isn't forgiveness.

As I've been speaking about the notion of forgiveness with various people one response keeps coming up. They ask "what about the unforgiveable?" This is a serious challenge to forgiveness and a challenge that Jankélévich takes up with great care. I've read at least two ways Jankélévich addresses this concern in chapter 2 (he also does earlier in the book with his thoughts on temporal decay)

Here is a quote from the first section of chapter 2:

For the intellectuals to forgive is to recognize implicitly the nothingness of
evil, and in turn, one thing leading to another, the nonexistence of sin, the
absurdity of rancor, and the uselessness itself of forgiveness. 58

He later qualifies this a little by suggesting the intelectual doesn't "deny the substantiality of evil" but refuses "the idea of an absolute wickedness inherent in the will of man." 58

It seems to me that Jankélévich is directly addressing the commonplace notion that forgiveness denies the misdeed its substanitality. This is NOT forgiveness according to Jankélévich. He dismisses this idea based on the 3 criteria.

Intellection isn't an event nor a relation with others, nor a gratuitous gift. I really like that Jankélévich is utilizing these properties so well.

Jankélévich addresses intellection as "indulgence" later in chapter 2. This section (starting on page 78) is great because he usese the concept of "The Middle Depth" to describe indulgence. It's a wonderful way of looking at the idea.

Indulgence represents the first depth beneath the superficial plan of primitive
severity. (78)

These "depths" designate levels of deep looking into the misdeed. The surface of the misdeed is severity, then indulgence and then

Indulgence stops halfway down before meeting the new and cruel truth, which is
truth to the third power. 79

I'm not sure exactly what this "third power" is but it is something beyond indulgence. Jankélévich establishes a very topological (or is that geometric) way of reflecting on the misdeed. I enjoy this type of description and I'm excited to see where he takes it.

Forgiveness: Jankélévich's book

2005-11-22T16:15:00.000-08:00

I'm staring to really get into this book. It is one of the freebies I earned at SPEP and it is incredible.

I've encountered the concept of "forgiveness" many times this year, most prominently in the Bernstein lectures on Hegel.

In the book he features 3 main features of forgiveness:
(1) That forgiveness is an event.
(2) Forgiveness is a gift
(3) Forgiveness is a relation between the offender and offended.

Jankelevich has a great section where he distinguishes between Stoic forgiveness (I think that's how it terms it) and forgiveness. One of the problems with the Stoics is that their notion of forgiveness had no relationship. The stoic would forgive only in that they would resist the offense. The offense, for the stoic, is only an offense through how they understand it. By altering their understanding of the offense to be unoffensive the offense and the offender are effaced. Jankelevich suggests this can't be forgiveness because there is no offense or offender, there is nothing to forgive.

Savage Identities: Final thoughts

2005-11-17T19:36:00.000-08:00

I finished Clifford's Savage Identities a couple of nights ago.

As I reflect on the book itself I have to say that I was a little confused by its structure. I honestly think it was trying to do too many things. Here are few notes about it:
*I wish there was more about Mill's On Liberty. I sought out the book because it looked at Mill's On Liberty and the gype of subjectivity made possible by the discursive practices implied (or sometimes declared) in the book.
*I felt the rich possibilities of Mill's Liberty were squandered on negative and positive forms of freedom that Clifford rolled-up into Locke and Nozik.
*Clifford offers a good overview of a lot of details about Foucault's work. I really think that he misses out by not using Foucault's insights into "care of self" and "technologies of self" but Clifford did offer many interesting aspects of Foucauldian concepts.
*The Savage Noble idea was very interesting but I felt it would've been better if it was more bound to its historical context (colonial America or American west of 19th century). I honestly believe that much of the Savage Noble idea has changed quite a bit in the past 100 years. I'm not really sure how to voice this criticism, I just felt no affinity for the concept. I haven't really been able to use it. I think I'm going to reread Monkey Wrench Gang with this idea in mind, that might help it become clearer for me.
*Clifford's work on Foucauldian freedom was very enjoyable to me. I've been working with Foucault's conceptions of freedom for nearly a year and I really enjoyed Clifford's work on Foucault's freedom. His attention to strategic freedom and counter-memory were insightful and articulated well.

Anyway, I'm not sure what else to write. That's one of my uncertainties about this book. It didn't rally my heart or arose curiosity. Perhaps that has more to do with me and where I'm at than Clifford.

Horkheimer/Adorno: Instrumental Reason and Freedom

2005-11-10T18:14:00.000-08:00

I haven't been able to read much more Savage Identities this week. I've been a little too busy.
One thing that I've been busy with is Continental class. Today we spoke about Horkheimer and Adorno. It was a great lecture, I can tell because its themes are still on my mind.

I like that Enlightenment is called into question. Reason itself must be called into question. Doesn't Nietzsche discuss the wonderful contradiction of reason doubting itself (GOM III Section 12, I think). The type of reason Horkheimer and Adorno call into question is the reason that instrumentalizes.

I've always liked Adorno even though he is unjustly critical of Jazz in the culture industry. I still liked the book even though it defeated any hope of mine to write a paper about authenticity in music, in fact, that book made me nervous everytime someone said the word "authentic."

Adorno is like mood music for me. I can hear Adorno in my mind when I go to a busy supermarket or Christmas shopping. Adorno is perfect for the bitter Sam that is forced to go shopping. If capital pisses you off, Adorno helps you remain that way.

But today in class, I began to think about the subject-object domination that Horkheimer and Adorno identify with instrumental reason. They have a great point about it and I wonder what can help alleviate the domination implied in such logic.

I thought that Hegel himself addresses this a bit but I cannot verify that now, I don't have the phenomenology with me.

But besides Hegel, I think we can look back to Kant for a clue.

Kant's first categorical imperative is admirable. It's a tight little technology of ethics and one that I think about quite a bit. I don't have a strong critique of the type of ethical behavior it would permit, I think Kant could answer most of these criticisms. Where I think it lacks isn't it what it permits but what it omits. Often time the ethical behavior that matters seems too insignificant for maxims and universalization. I think that most ethical behavior is about attitude rather than proper deliberation.

For everyday bevahior I prefer Kant's second cat imp, always treat other people as ends in themselves never as means to an end. I don't think people realize how powerful this idea is.

I think Kant's second categorical imperative can be used to help resist the effects of instrumental reason. This is restricted to the human realm of course, it isn't sufficient to help protect nature (at least in an obvious way). But I do believe that Kant's second cat. imp. can be used to resist the instrumentalization of ourselves and others.

Savage IdentitiesI: The Savage Noble??

2005-11-03T12:16:00.000-08:00

I'm reading Michael Clifford's book Political Genealogy After Foucault: Savage Identities. So far, I like this book. Clifford applies Foucauldian concepts like tools to his investigation into contemporary political identities. I believe this is the proper use of Foucault. Foucault is not a thinker that gives you a programme for your life. Foucault does not give you a set of beliefs that constituted a belief system. Foucault offers dispositifs (devices) that help us understand our world.

The geneaological and archeological method are not claims about the objective world, they are practices through which we can analyze discourse, power, and subjectivity. Foucault isn't giving us the Foucauldian bible containing the Truth of existence, he is handing us a toolbox. Perhaps this is one point Arafy and Anderson missed in their critique of Foucault and the Iranian revolution, perhaps they were just hoping Foucault would've used his own toolbox to analyze the discourse of Khomeni's revolution and the power relations that grew out of it.

Anyway, back to Clifford. Clifford's book is imaginative, a trait that immediately appeals to me. He begins with the skeleton of old Mr. Bentham that is kept at the University College, London. Here is a picture:

Clifford begins with this image and relates it to the way our political identities are a fabrication. It's an interesting image and a haunting story. It seems like a bit of an easy metaphor but I like the idea of meditating on an image.

I mostly wanted to read this book to hear someone use Foucauldian genealogy to analyze political identities. I need an example so I can see if it is possible for a variety of things I'd like to try. I also wanted to read Clifford's analysis of Mill's On Liberty. On Liberty has shaped my personal political identity and thought more than most books. I haven't reached the sections about these points but I'm reading at a fast pace to reach them.

In the introduction, Clifford explains his concept of the "Savage Noble." It's a clever I suppose but I'm not too convinced by it yet. It is a reversal (or inversion) of the Noble Savage idea that Rousseau (among others) believed in. This quote helps summarize Clifford's notion of the Savage Noble:

In fact, it wasn't so much the noble savage that came to be revered, to be the
central figure of a new American mythos, but rather a "hybrid" of sorts, a new
form of identity that married the courage and robustness of the native American
savage with the reason, culture, and civility of the white, European male--a
form of identity that might be called the Savage Noble. (page 5)

Clifford's idea of the hybrid is compelling. Not compelling because I believe it's a form of Spirit that embodies an epoche. The hybrid of the noble savage is compelling because it brings together two notions of freedom: sovereignty and frontier

A bit further down the page from the above quote identifies the Savage Noble with autonomy:

It is important to note, however, that for the purposes of my project the term
savage noble is largely a trope for a form of political subjectivity--namely,
autonomous individualism--that informs the texts of traditional political
philosophy and animates moder politics.

This hybrid has characteristics of the "sovereign man" (at least the "rippest fruit" sovereign man mentioned in Nietzsche's GoM). Specifically, this creature develops reason. Reason makes human beings free because they can make promises. The sovereign individual has the right to makes promises because of its protracted will and the ability of this will to guarantee a certain action. Here is one notion of freedom that I believe operates in Clifford's savage noble.

The other portion of the savage noble is its relation to frontier. Clifford quotes Frederick Jackson about the frontier, "the frontier is productive of individualism." (4) A longer quote reveals a few properties about frontier that I found important:

The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him European in dress, industries,
tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts
him in the birtch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays
him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the
Cherokee and Iroquois and urns an Indian plaisade around him. Before long he has
gone on to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick; he shouts the
war cry and takes the scalp in orthodox Indian fashion [..] Little by little he
transforms the wilderness, but the outocme is not the Old Europe... The fact is,
that here is a new product that is American.

(BTW, American Indians learned how to scalp from European Americans)

Here is the notion of frontier as the antithesis of civilization. I like that idea somewhat but I'd like to develop the idea of frontier as the "beyond" of civilization. Inspired by Foucault's "ontology of ourselves," I believe that the concept of 'frontier' is enriched when we examine it from a limit attitude. The frontier represents our limits, it exceeds them at the same time promising us liberation from our limits.

Clifford's noble savage seems to be a locus for two disparate ideas of freedom: the Noble (reason, sovereign individual) and Savage (the frontier that exceeds our limits). I emphasize the difference and contradiction because of Foucault's emphasis on disparity (see Nietzsche, Genealogy, and History).

Clifford makes a suspect point in the Intro, one that I'm interested in seeing him make a case for it:

This examination roots out the common genealogical origins of our various
political positions, challenges the necessity of their oppositional chraacter,
and points toward the possibility of forms of political identity that might
avoid (at least alter in a way less polarizing and hence paralyzing) the
fractious and agonistic structure peculiar to modern politics-not in the name of
some utopian political brotherhood or sisterhood, but through artful
experimentation itself. (6)

Clifford's project is admirable but I don't believe a Foucauldian genealogy will reveal an underlying commonality between liberals and conservatives. There may be common elements but I believe this split is too deep for reconcialiation. The most that can hoped for is coexistence.

Returning the the contradictory character of the "savage noble" illustrates this point. There is no sovereign individual (the Enlightenment one forged with reason) in the frontier. The frontier lies beyond the limits of the sovereign individual. I'm not sure how Clifford will attempt to reconcile these two but I think I will look at it critically, specifically from the standpoint of Adorno.

Foucault in Iran: Part III

2005-11-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

I'm still reading Arafy and Anderson's book about Foucault and the Iranian revolt. I like the book more than I did at first. I still have a problem with the suggestion that Foucault wanted to return to premodern regimes of power.

The section I'm reading right now is most about sexuality in the Middle East. Arafy and Anderson make the claim that Foucault was too optimistic about homosexuality in the Middle East. They build a good case and I agree with their arguments. It seems Foucault desperately wants the Middle East to offer an alternative to Western attitudes about homosexuality. Foucault, who taught us to suspect "liberation," thought he would find the frontier behind the our limits in the Orient. This Orientalism isn't rare. I once fancied myself a buddhist but I realized I was looking for difference not Nirvana.

I believe Foucault became too fascinated with the 'enigma of revolt', so fascinated that he forgot his well-founded suspicions of power. Foucault should know better. Even as I type that it feels strange. Perhaps an "ought" in this case is unfounded. I still like Foucault's article Is it Useless to Revolt. I think it summarizes his attitude after the revolution but I think does not sum up his relation to the Iranian revolt. For some reason Foucault seemed overly enthused about Khomeni. I cannot explain this but I imagine Khomeini was quite charismatic. Perhaps this is a cautionary tale about charisma also but for me, this is another reminder of the perils of violent revolt.

I believe that Foucault's work on governmentality and his writings that refer to resistance distince his work from falling for the 'enigma of revolts'. But Foucault himself did fall for them. A minor mistake really, Foucault saw many things about Islam that have proven correct. In the end, I go to Foucault's What is Enlightenment to make sense of his project. I don't think his fascination with Iran betrays the strength of his work, it only exposes his humanity. Ultimately, I believe it was curiosity that brought him close the Iranian revolt and was swept up by its current.

Foucault in Iran: Part II (a tangent)

2005-10-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

I have to drift from my direct discussion of Foucault and discuss elements of the book that focus in on the Iranian revolution itself. I finished the chapter titled Processions, Passion Plays, and Rites of Penance today. I was very happy to read this.

Here are few good things about this chapter:
*It explains in great detail the origin of Shi'ism. I've known the differences before but it was always told to me and I didn't have time to let it sink in.
*It explains how the Iranian revolution evolved into its most apparent and viscious form. Afary and Anderson describe the Iranian revolution's major figures in a nearly genealogical approach.
*Afary and Anderson describe how Jihad was co-opted by the revolution. Anytime I've asked a Muslim about Jihad they ask me to clarify "big jihad or little jihad?" Arafy and Anderson explain the difference between Jihad in its wider religious sense as a struggle for Allah and its narrow meaning, war against the enemies of Islam.
*Afary and Anderson explain Shi'a holidays like Ashura.
*Afary and Anderson introduce me to a fascinating yet terrifying character, Shariati.

Here is an excerpt from the book about Shariati:

Shariati's reinterpretation of jihad and martyrdom was influenced by his
philosophic studies in France, though he also claimed to present an "authentic
Islam."

Shariati's notion of authenticity is Heideggarian according toe Afary and Anderson. Shariati reinterpreted the Karbala story in terms of Heidegger's work:

Shariati introduced an existentialist reading of the Karbala narrative that
was also informed by Heidegger's work.

Arafy and Anderson go into further detail about the authenticity element:

For Shariati, the key point of the story of Karbala was Hussein's existential
choice. Hussein could not fight and win over the more powerful Yazid, nor could
he remain silent. Therefore, he chose a third option, death, which opened the
possibility of an authentic Shi'ite Islam for others. Martyrdom as defined by
Shariati, was a mystical experience, full of erotic charg, beyond "science and
logic."

Here is a more detailed explanation about the Heidegger influence:

But there was also a stronger philosophical and hermeneutical appropriation of
aspects of Western throught in Shariati's work. In Being and Time, Heidegger had
reinterpreted the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus to arrive at a new
philosophic meaning. When faced with the possibility of one's own death, one
adopted an attitude of freedom-toward-death and thereby experienced authetnic
living, he had written.

Shariati sees two choices for those ruled by the shah. They can face oppression or death, an authentic death.

This is very strange to me. Heidegger's reappropriation to both Nazis and Islamic fundamentalists seems a bit suspect. I wonder if it something about his philosophy or just that he was a philosophy at the time.

I wonder about this concept about "authentic living" facing death. I think I need to read Hedeigger more because this is all sounding very interesting to me.

Foucault in Iran: Part I

2005-10-25T19:50:00.000-07:00

I added a "part 1" to this post's title because I have a feeling there will be many more on this subject. At SPEP, I received the book Foucault and the Iranian Revolution as a thank you for helping out. It was very nice. The book is not what I thought it would be.

I must not know Foucault very well. So many people read him as such a violent and corrosive thinker. For example, there is an entire section that speaks of Foucault's preference for pre-modern life. I disagree. The same few pages suggest Nietzsche preferred pre-modern life, I disagree completely.

Some people are very resistant to critiques of modernity. On page 24 of the book, the authors cite Nietzsche on cruelty. The passage they cite is from Genealogy of Morals. The passage is taken out of context. "when mankind was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life on earth was more cheerful than it is now." This quote cannot be separated from the rest of the book. In many ways, life was more cheerful then. The developments of bad conscience and ressentiment are not pleasant things. Nietzsche speaks about mankind becoming sick but one cannot forget, this is an illness like pregnancy is an illness. This sickness is creative. It's a creative wound. It is in the service of life.

I really do think Foucault is a thinker in the tradition of Nietzsche. The complexity of Nietzsche must serve as a lesson for those who want to understand Foucault. I don't know, perhaps I'm giving them too much credit but I honestly don't see what many people see when they read these thinkers.

One of the better points of this book is its illustration of Foucault's relation to feminism. This is a troubled relation to say the least. I think the number one reason for this is that Foucault, like my last post said, taught us it was shameful to speak for others. A few years ago, I took a feminism class. I tried to be vocal and I wrote a few papers. These papers were not from my standpoint but an attempt to speak for women. Now I believe this is wrong or at least folly. I really enjoy reading Butler, Kristeva, Cixous, de Beauvoir, and many others. Their insights are important. Gender issues are very important. But I think Foucault taught us about exclusion and forced silence. Perhaps I'm wrong but I honestly believe that me speaking for feminism is improper. I should listen, learn, and write my own experience.

Foucault does explicitly distance himself from nostalgia for the greeks. In an interview in the Rabinow Ethics book, Foucault explicitly denied a desire to return to the greeks. I wish I had the book with me but I believe it referenced gender equality.

I believe Foucault's project is best described by his "historical ontology of ourselves" explained in What is Enlightment. We must go to our limits. We must discover these limits by examing what makes us who we are. And beyond these limits, we must experiment with new ways of life.

Nietzsche calls human beings "great experimenters with themselves." We should remember this and remember this is a point of pride for us, the most interesting animal. Foucault, I believe, continues on this line of thinking. He doesn't want simple answers nor a return to a simplier way of life. He wants to expose those power regimes that shape who we are so that we can see them and go beyond them.

Shameful?

2005-10-10T18:51:00.000-07:00

There was a lot of activity on the Foucault mailing list over the weekend. Nobody responded to the article I pointed out. I was very annoyed about how the article portrayed Foucault, is it wrong to want others to share one's annoyance?

In one message the subject of speaking for others came up. Soon a debate irrupted about psychoanlysis and whether the psychoanlysts speak for the other. That is an argument that I am not qualified to participate in.

What I would like to do is meditate on a quote from the original email:
In Macey's biography of Foucault, Deleuze is reported to have said to Foucault "In my view, you were the first to teach us a basic lesson: speaking for others in shameful."

Is speaking for others shameful? In many ways, yes. Well, at least it is problematic. But how can this be avoided?

For instance, if one doesn't support a particular military action because its effect on the population, how can you avoid the shame of speaking for a people?

Perhaps the goal of this little idea is that when we are developing our political ideas we should be careful to make them ours. Instead of trying to speak for victims, we should speak about the ethical use of power. I've thought about adapting my ethical speech to be one focused on how power is exercised rather than its effects on victims.

Is it possible to speak of ethics without speaking about victims? Perhaps this is necessary. Maybe it is the dependence on victims that makes our speech shameful. Perhaps it is making human beings into victims that is shameful.

Self-Help Culture: Sham?

2005-10-06T11:32:00.000-07:00

Its always nice to see an article that draws so accurately on what occupies your mind. I'm still puzzled over self-help culture and how it is different than the culture of the self in Foucault.

In SHAM: How the gurus of the self-help movement make us helpless, Steve Salerno exposes the pretensions of the Self-Help and Actualisation Movement. Gurus' degrees are often fake, their personal lives a disaster, their advice wacky.

I think I'd like to read Salerno's book. It would probably save me a lot of research trouble.

Already I see a hint as to why, it might be that idea of "guru."

Although there is quite a bit of mention of masters in Hermeneutics of the subject, it doesn't appear to be the same authority structure as implied by the word guru. I think guru participates more in the obedience form cultivated in Christian care of the self (specifically those developed in monasteries). I think guru is far from the Platonic concept of midwife.

So, guru, the role of the guru in self-help culture might be distinct enough to distinguish it from the role of authority in care of self. One of the most fascinating aspects of Foucault's archeology is that of "enunciative modalities." Not only does it roll of the tongue, its a useful way of breaking down the speaking subjects of a particular discourse. I wish I had my Archeology of Knowledge with me but I don't. Here is an excerpt I found on the internets:

In the proposed analysis, instead of referring back to the synthesis or the unifying function of a subject, the various enunciative modalities manifest his dispersion. To the various statuses, the various sites, the various positions that he can occupy or be given when making a discourse. To the discontinuity of the planes from which he speaks... similarly, it must now be recognized that it is neither by recourse to a transcendental subject nor by recourse to a psychological subjectivity that the regulation of its enunciation should be defined (Archaeology 15).

The guru as a site of self-help discourse, as a particular status (in relation to truth especially), and the guru as a manifestation of a particular type of discourse.

According to this article about the book, there are two philosophies in self-help culture:

However, as Salerno argues, it's more serious than that. SHAM is based on two different philosophies - victimisation and empowerment - which can only make people's problems worse.

Victimization and Empowerment? Those are strange philosophies. I'm glad they are qualified a bit:

Victimisation preaches that everybody's life is fucked up - and if you don't know it, you're really fucked up. Everything bad that happens to you is somebody else's fault, generally your parents'. This tends to spawn suspicious individuals, who are permanently in recovery. They 'believe nothing and believe in nothing'. Empowerment, by contrast, is about mind over matter. If you believe that you will be a 'winner', you will be. This sets people up for a fall, when they discover that self-belief alone cannot move mountains.

Considering this in light of Foucault's Hermenutics of the subject, I think it deals most relevantly with how the subject is related to the world. The subject's relation to the world is cast either as victim or empowered.

Its seems like these ideas are not so disctinct. They both involve a relationship to will and freedom.

This freedom is different from the freedom discussed by Seneca, freedom that emmerges from knowing about the world.

Here is a passage from Foucault's book on page 282:

It is the self's view of itself from above which encompasses the world of which we are a part and which thus ensures the subject's freedom within this world itself.

Foucault describes a knowledge of the world that leads to freedom (in Seneca of course). This freedom comes from viewing the world in a certain way.

in the self-help paradigm there are two poles: victimization and empowerment. I think they both deal with pathological conceptions of the will, responsibility, and blame.

These two notions could only have come from a worldview that is steeped in responsibility. I see two different misconceptions that relate to human will (or more troubling, blame)
*In victimization the world is out to get you. You blame the world. You are not taking a view above the world to observe it as a whole of which you are part. You search the world for who to blame.
*In empowerment all possibilities are open to you, you just need the right attitude (or somethign, i've never understood it). This type of sick inflated sense of will could only emerge from a meritocracy. The hidden message of this empowerment is if you fail at something it is only because you lacked ambition or the right attitude. This is fertile grounds for a destructive form of guilt.

The Body and Foucault

2005-10-04T11:53:00.000-07:00

I'm still enjoying the hermeutics of the subject but I cannot post details about it. I'm a bit busy at work and can't pull out the big book to quote from it.

This is the type of day its nice to have online books. I recently found a new one that I'm very excited to browse through:One section that immediately drew my attention was about Foucault's ability to analyze the body in more focused manner than Marx could:

Another premise available to historical materialism has been offered by Foucault. In this case the social field is constituted by a grid of technologies of power which act upon the body. It is assumed that there are human beings and things, but it is argued that the level of intelligibility pertinent to critical theory lies elsewhere, at the point where specific arrangements are located through which discourse/practices are created and constitute the social field as varying modes of domination. This alternative premise does not deny the existence of human beings and things, or their interaction, but it does maintain that the significant objects of investigation for historical materialism are arrangements in which the model of labor does not serve as the impetus of interpretation. The premise of technologies of power suggests that discourses and practices are intertwined in articulated formations having the domination of one group over another as their primary trait.⁸ In addition, Foucault is able to focus his analysis on the body more directly than Marx. Because he is not looking for subjects and objects but for techniques of domination, Foucault is able to raise the question of the body more effectively than Marx. He, asks how the body is marked, positioned, temporalized, collected, and so forth, not so much how human beings have been degraded into things.

Foucault's understanding of the body has been essential to my understanding of the body. The way power confronts, subjects, objectifies, and acts upon the body.

Foucault's study of power isn't about who is powerful but how power is exercised. He doesn't search networks of power relations for individuals to blame but analyzes how power is exercised and what its effects are.

This is important when power is omnipresent, good&bad, and not localized in any particular individuals or group.

The body caught up in networks of power is an image that haunts me sometimes. This is why I'm attracted to Foucault's later work, it opens up possibilities in a very daunting depiction of power.

Relation with Self-Platonic/Christian

2005-09-30T16:53:00.000-07:00

At the republican last night I read these descriptions from Foucault's Hermeneutics of the Subject. I also read the description of the Helenistic model but don't have time to mention it here.

Platonic-Recollection:
1-"if one must care about oneself it is because one is ignorant" 254
2-Knowing oneself as recognizing oneself
3-"Recollection is situated exactly at the point where care of self and self-knowledge meet"

"In Platonic recollection we can say that knowledge of the self and knowledge of the ture, care of self and return to being are brought together and sealed off in a single moment."

Christian-Exegesis
1- Circularity between care of self and knowledge of self in Christianity. "I think we can say that in this model knowledge of self is linked in a complex way to knowledge of the truth as given in the original Text and by Revelation: knowledge of the self is entailed and required by the fact that the heart must be purified in order to understand the Word: it can only be purified by self-knowledge; and the Word must be received for one to be able to undertake purification of the heart and realize self-knowledge" (255)
2-Exegesis of self ("deciphering the secret processes and movements that unfold within a soul and whose origin, aim, and form must be grasped" 256)
3-Renouncement.

-------------------------------------------------
What really attracts me to these notions is that recollection and renouncement are so different.

The Christian circularity is compelling, I wish Foucault examined this more. Revealational truth is a powerful element of religious reasoning. Usually it serves as an authority, one that can't be argued against too well.

It is interesting to have a circularity with Christianity yet a "single moment" in Plato. I think I'll mediate on those two different situations of self-knowledge this weekend.

Care of self and self-help culture

2005-09-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

I've always had a problem with self-help culture. For example, the pop psychology of Doctor Phil, the militant moralizing of Dr. Laura (which I have no problem identifying as a bitch), and the protestant work ethic master, Stephen Covey. These 3, this trinity of self-therapy evil, have long bothered me but I had no idea why.

This is the part where I'd love to say "but I know now." I don't. In fact, I'm more puzzled than ever.

I despise self-help books but I've found myself completely enjoying Foucault's work on the care of self.

I know, I know. They are completely different. And they are, but why?

How is the culture of the self today, in the contemporary West different than the culture of the self in Greco-Roman cultures of the 1st and 2nd century?

Of course, that culture of the self was superceded by a later development: CHRISTIANITY! I think there must've been another development in the history of the self around the classical period. The emergence of human finitude (Order of things) and capitalism must have had an effect.

I have a few feelings about how these 3 developments characterized the difference between the Greco-Roman culture of the self and contemporary self-help culture. These "feelings" are not the product of extensive research, they are the first impulses of work I'd like to do in the future.

Christianity and Confession:
In Christianity, Foucault analyzes the decipherment of self and confession. I think these two are connected. Decipherement of self as a subject of desire is a concept I'm still struggling with. Foucault does give a few examples of these techniques. A money lender is one of them. A money lender observes the coin, checks its weight, examines its composition, and checks its face for authenticity.
Like the moneytender, the decipherment of self checks each thought. Its attempts to decipher its origin (from god or satan), to check its authenticity against a certain standard (moral codes), and other such actions.
Confession is another christian development. In History of Sexuality, Foucault speaks about confession in western culture:

"We have since become an extraordinarily confessing society. Confession has spread its effects far and wide: in the judicial system, in medicine, in pedagogy, in familial relations, in amorous relationships, in everyday life and in the most solemn rituals; crimes are confessed, sins are confessed, thoughts and desires are confessed, one's past and one's dreams are confessed, one's childhood is confessed; one's diseases and problems are confessed;..."

Foucault identifies confession with the scientia sexualis (as opposed to ars erotica of other cultures). Finding the "truth" of sexuality becomes very important. So do rules and regulations.

Human Finitude
Foucault's analytics of finitude are explained pretty well here, on Stanford's philosophy site. Our finitude is not only our limitations but the basis of our positive knowledge of who we are. We are limited by our historical moment, so we look to history to see how we are constituted. We are limited to our biological beings, so we look to biology. The same happens with linguistics and economics. I really struggled with Order of Things so I will leave the problem of finitude here and take it up again when I have time to understand it better.

Capitalism
As for capitalism, there are many changes. I think Marx's concept of real subsumption and how its been used by subsequent Marxists give some idea of how our relation to self changed. I think there is also consequence of the protestant work ethic and self-help books' constant focus on "goals." Foucault isn't necessarily my guide here but I'm not very knowledgable about his analyses of the subject and capitalism.

So how do these three factors distinguish self-help culture of today and the 'Greco-Roman culture of the self in the first and second century?

I think Foucault is correct in identifying certain Christian elements of decipherement of self/confession finding their way into psycholanalysis. I think the pop psychology of today is a less challenging, distant progeny of psychoanalysis. In it, there are still forms of confession (ever listened to Dr. Laura?) and self-decipherement.

I don't know exactly what to think of finitude. Could it be that we must analyze ourselves as beings somehow determined by psychology in some way? I keep thinking back to people who strongly identify with childhood memories, or an obsessions, or a label like "alcoholic", "addic", etc.

I don't. I think there is a lot of work to ponder, I just hope this work allows me to keep my affection for Foucault's work on the care of self without having to fell victim to the self-help culture of today.

Funny Onion Article about guy in philosophy class

2005-09-27T18:18:00.000-07:00

This onion article is hilarious but has a few bad words in it, just to warn you. Here is a quote:

"I enrolled in this course because I was fascinated by the question of God,"
said sophomore Miriam Blank. "After spending six hours a week in the same room
as that unbearable windbag, I think I have my answer. Life is as long as it
cruel."
The outspoken student has not gone unremarked by the course's
professor.
"Mr. Floen is a valuable contributor to our in-class discussions,"
Rosenthal said. "His tendency to question and challenge everything before him
captures the very essence of philosophy itself."
Rosenthal added: "Having
said that, I do wish he would occasionally do me the valued service of shutting
his damn cake hole."

lol... Pretty funny article

Multitude as alternative to traditional groups

2005-09-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

The relationship between the individual and the group is one that constantly attracts my attention. I feel this is a relationship full of interesting twists to our accustomed ways of thinking about subjectivity.

What are the organizing principles that form groups? This question is one of the first that comes to my mind when I hear about any group. What are the methods of inclusion and exclusion? Is it organized by hierarchy or as a network? How does authority and submission play out within memebership? ETC ETC

In Philosophy forum last week we disucussed an artilce about partiality by Cottingham. One of the most striking features of the article was his definition of partialiaty (to prefer one's own) and the list (admittedly incomplete) of "one's own." Race, family, nation, planet, and other such groupings are mentioned. Each item on Cottingham's list could be organized in two columns: blood and soil.

Blood and soil are ancient organizing principles. Perhaps the oldest. I think there needs to be some type of mention of Abraham's covenant there but looking at the story of Abraham externally, I think even that organizing principle can be reduced to blood and soil.

What alternative organizing principles are available? Here is a short list of alternatives that I can think of:
*friendship
*Contract families (family groups not held together solely on the reproductive model (man-woman-child) but through strong experiences that bring people together, through personal commitments, through love, etc.)
*Political groups (organized by causes)
*Work relations

hmmm... Can't think of anymore now, later.

Blackwater Rising

2005-09-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

New Orleans has fascinated me for many years, the times I've lived there will always be among my favorite moments of life. That fascination has turned to horror as I've watched images of destruction and death roll out of my beloved city.

Some of these scenes have almost been anticipated in my mind by past experiences. Driving around the New Orleans projects at night and speaking with people gave me an uncomfortable feeling that I will never fully understand the complications of race in America. I never saw poverty until I lived in New Orleans. Utah has the poor but not in the same way. I'm still haunted by the figure of the projects in New Orleans. CP3 especially. Its rows of highly organized buildings, the distribution of people in side, the destitution, their history, and every force that terminated in those unwelcoming rows of buildings.

These signs of our past and symptoms of our historical constitution as Americans will be on my mind but today, it is signs of the future that draw my attention.

New Orleans as the materialization of the state of exception is the focus of a great essay by Tomasz Kitlinski, Joe Lockard and Stephane Symons on Bad Subjects. I posted about this materialization on the UVSC philosophy blog. One sign of a possible future that I failed to address there was the privatization of security and what that might mean for the State of Exception.

I think we've all dreamed of what a totalitarian state would be like. We watch the history channel to catch a glimpse, we used to fantasize about life in Soviet Russia, and there are many books/movies that address this point. I've always thought that it might take the form of a military coup or a civil war but never, never have I thought it might be privatized.

The existence of blackwater security officials in New Orleans is disturbing. When a state of exception is invoked, we are reduce to bare life in the face of sovereign. Will that sovereignty be manifested by private contractors?

I cite and the exceptional

2005-08-30T18:02:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite online bloggers gave another wonderfully insightful post today. Before diving into my interest in her post, I have to say I truly admire this blog. If anyone reads this site, you will become infinitely more interested in the world of thought by reading this blog daily.

Anyway, I cite writes about watching Scarborough country. This guy is a class A wingnut, I think his intro sequence has an American flag in it nearly the entire montage of comforting images of nationalism. He is also the guy who hosted a show on god's involvement with the tsunami. I remember inviting friends over for beer so we could watch this together. Its one of those surreal things best left to laughter and suds.

Anyway, here is a great section of her post:

This language of the exception, if we read Agamben, should remind us its connection with sovereign power. Sovereignty operates by designating states of emergency, sites of exception where law is suspended.

I need to read Agamben. State's of Exception first came to my attention through Foucault and were related to current events through Negri/Hardt. The connection between Exception and soveriegn power immediately draws my interest. In Foucault's essay Governmentality, he speaks of the triangle of "sovereignty-discipline-government." Does a state of exception expose a population to sovereign power? I think it does.

Buzz

2005-08-17T12:47:00.000-07:00

I'm very confused about something.

During the run up to the Iraq attack, administration officials and their rightwing loudmouth counterparts quoted Amnesty International.

After the emergence of evidence of US soldiers torturing detainees, the administration and the rightwing attack machine went after Amnesty International (the main point of this attack was a single word, 'gulag').

Now, there is relative media silence about the latest Amnesty international report that not only shows the brutality of the Hussein regime but also the militants operating in Iraq right now.

The NRO has an article about this:

Amnesty International's "In Cold Blood" report should be screamed from the rooftops, in part, frankly, to mitigate the mess Amnesty created when it decided to equate President Bush with Joseph Stalin by making the ludicrous contention that the enemy-combatant prison we have in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is "the gulag of our times."

Now, the NRO doesn't surprise, it offers blame that doesn't dare step outside pop conservative cliche. It blames the media elite, which may be correct to some extent but it isn't because they are enemies to conservatives (Nearly ever NRO article somehow finds an enemy, I think its an imperative from their editorial board).

I don't think there is any leftists organized movement to suppress this information, I think it comes down to buzz. The conservative defense of US incidents of tortures intensifies this buzz. Half of the attention I saw about Gitmo was the pop right saying it shouldn't be covered.

The amnesty report is worth reading. The truth of this war will never be fully known but understanding the brutality exercised on the Iraqi people will give us more understanding about what has happened to them, what is happening and hopefully inspire change to their future.

Marketting the "war on terror"

2005-08-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

Two interesting phrases continually catch my interest in the US war on terror:

The first is the phrase "war on terror" itself. It has always seemed a bit silly, declaring a war on a tactic. It also seemed a bit ironic, the "shock and awe" tactics of the US against Iraq during the first few days of the war. This is terrorism in its most obvious form. "Terrorism" is a tactic, the war against terror was not a war against a particular tactic, it was a war against a strategic effort. Anyway, this term is gone and the marketting of the war continues, here is the new phrase:

Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism

This term is interesting.

First, The scope. 'Global' indicates a scope. It is another disturbing feature of the war on terror that has no boundaries. In this case, it is spatial boundaries. I returned to Hardt and Negri's Multitude this morning to refresh myself on States of Exception and the boundless nature of the war on terror's state of exception. This boundless nature is not just spatial, it is also without temporal bounds. Identifying the enemy as 'Violent Extremism' pretty much ensures that this will continue for an undetermined amount of time. There is NO specific goals that mark off a discrete "struggle", only a peaceful Utopia could stop this state of exception.

Second, the word struggle is very interesting. Has the Rovian marketting agents found that marxist language tests well? I think struggle also has a hint of being the underdog compared to war. Real warriors don't struggle ;)

Another phrase that interests me is "Islamo-fascists." Despite my realization that listening to AM right-wing nutcases makes me much more cynical about humanity, I still listen quite often. The phrase Islamo-fascists is used quite often. I heard a caller to the Mike Savage show say "islamo-fascists" as if he was cutting away all the obscurities of post-modern leftists and their tolerance with a single phrase. It was his little coming out against the liberals, a way to show them he isn't afraid to give the enemy a religion or to hate the enemy with zeal. Anyway, the point being, "islamo-fascists" is the favored term of the pop right and a common phrase in their outrage politics.

I came across Adam Kotsko's nice little response to the term "islamo-fascists":

Seriously, "Islamofascism?" Are the terrorists winning the sympathy of the common folk by promising to get the trains running on time? Is contemporary Islamic terrorism characterized by a militaristic aesthetic? Are there rumblings of a return to paganism? Is there an industrial-style operation currently attempting to exterminate one or more races of people? Is this supposed Islamic version of fascism an attempt to ward off the danger of communism in the face of the injustices brought about by rapid industrialization? Is it focused in on a messianic leader who speaks publicly to crowds of thousands? Are the terrorists of a nationalistic and expansionistic bent? Do they actually hold power in a legitimate nation-state at all?

No, to all of them. If you take any of the historic traits of actual fascism that actually happened in actual real life, none of them would be found in this dread spectre of International Terrorism. In fact, I would go so far as to say that in terms of political strategy and structure, the dread spectre of International Terrorism is as unlike fascism (as it actually happened in actual real life) as it is possible to be.

In the next paragraph, Adam speaks directly about what this term actually means, it is used to associate al-Qaeda type terror with all forms of bad guys that Americans have had as enemies.

Thus the terrorist enemy is presented to us not just as bad, but bad like fascists. It isn't enough to scare people with terror alerts and exagerrations, it is necessary to conjure up the sentiments of historical enemies to intensify our hatred of the enemy.

Reverse Panopticism

2005-08-03T15:52:00.000-07:00

I'm very excited about this video I just saw, well, actually there are many videos. If you are an interested, here is the permalink on Metafilter where I first encountered it.

The video that most interesting me is here. The brutality in other videos brings the conversation into a sober assessment of police power versus the behavior of citizens. I've been to many parties and a good number of them were shut down by police. I rarely saw violence until the police came. I never encountered anything like these Czech revelers but I did witness Power vs. Party on many occaisions.

What struck me about the video is the constrast between the police in riot gear and the party goers with digital cameras, camcorders and cellular phones.

Does this constituted a reverse panopticism? Foucault discusses the "tactic polyvalence" of discourses in HOS Volume I. Pieces of discourse that have certain tactical advantages can be used for a variety of strategic forces. Why couldn't surveillance technology and its global distrubution be used much like panoptic techniques are? Why couldn't citizens turn their gaze toward their government and disseminate what their technological gaze records throughout the globe?

Bruschetta Orthodoxies

2005-08-02T12:32:00.000-07:00

lol...
I just ran across this meme:

David Aaronovitch came up with the phrase 'Bruschetta Orthodoxies' to describe those articles of political faith one might get into trouble for challenging at a dinner party where tomatoes on toast was likely to be served up.

Gotta love the term... thanks David Aaronovitch

At a family picnic or dinner, nearly everything is a Bruschetta Orthodoxies, I'd even say the disturbing minor comments about certain races are Bruschetta Orthodoxies.

At other places, there are different ones. At work here, I don't think I could speak about my concern about the leveling between religious and national identity.

At other dinners I couldn't mention my underlying distrust of democratic leaders.

Theres hardly a dinner I could express my anxieties about Capital, I think only a handful of people I know would share those anxieties.

A funny moment relating to these was a recent work lunch for top performers. On the drive home my appearance at a protest at a Sean Hannity pep rally raised some eyebrows. I don't know how mormons became so enamoured with Sean Hannity, perhaps its his chin and self-righteousness... I'm not sure...

But there I was, confronted with a violation of Bruschetta Orthodoxies. I think I smirked a bit and tried to hid behind a laugh. Work is hardly a place to discuss this, especially with the emotions surrounding these political issues.

Anyway, love the term and I think I'll make good use of it.

The Exercise of Power

2005-08-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

The most appealing quality of Focuault's "care of self" to me is the continuity between the way we exercise power over ourselves and how we exercise power over other people. Often times, we can gather certain information about how self treatment relates to treatment of the Other.

I believe this has something to do with the role of Thought in Foucault's oeuvre.

Thought […] is what allows one to step back from this way of acting or reacting, to present it to oneself as an object of thought and to question it as to its meaning, its conditions, and its goals. Thought is freedom in relation to what one does, the motion by which one detaches oneself from it, establishes it as an object, and reflects on it as a problem. (Foucault Ethics 117) (Emphasis added)

Thought creates a space between the I that reflects and the I that is the object of reflection, this space is necessary for self-fashioning. I honestly feel that the same practices that form the I often find themselves expressed in the power relations that connect us with the Other.

This has many consequences.

First of all, the division between how we act towards ourselves and how we treat others isn't so clear cut. Instead of focusing on such a division perhaps it would be better to focus on how we exercise power rather than laws guiding treatment of self and laws guiding treatment of the Other.

Second, I believe this idea establishes that the field of action for the ethos is not just the realm of the Other (I'd like to call that specific realm 'justice'), rather that an ethos is produced through a myriad of activities including self-treatment.

Third, I think that there must be attention paid to the cruelties we often exercise in our relationship with ourselves. This is a very personal and self-critical realization. I used to torture myself through committing "sins" that nobody else could see but god. Even the smallest thoughts of mine would result in guilt, horrific, self-directed guilt. Guilt so crippling that I believe it was a major factor in years of unnecessary depression. This is cruel. Excessive guilt, blame and shame is one of the cruelest instruments of control.

I ran across an article today that inspired these thoughts. Its about a "convert." The general notion of conversion is that of complete transformation, rebirth, and the emergence of a new subjectivity. The old self is pushed against, fought against or in extreme cases "killed." This motion, of complete rapid change is an effective process of changing behavior. But I argue, it takes a bit of violence. It takes violent practices, driven by violent thoughts to destroy an old self. I believe conversion is often fueled by a self-loathing in many cases. There is a difference between this and overcoming. I believe that conversion is fueled by ressentiment but it is hard for me to formulate the exact processes involved. Ressentement is outward directed, reactive by nature and seeks to stop certain forces. I believe overcoming is trying to master forces, not sever their power to create new ones. But that is not important here, back to the example:

My example is embodied in a "school", the Abounding Grace School. Notice, not just a little bit of grace ;)
Stan Mitchell is a man on a mission. His own troubled youth has inspired him to help other troubled youth, this pattern of reacting our own "conversion" isn't very unique. Perhaps this is hidden logic from the cliché that the drunk's son becomes the preacher and the preacher's son the drunk.

With only their religious faith and a strict code of discipline, Mitchell and his wife, Lee, opened the school 10 years ago. They say they wanted to give boys a safe place to learn new ways.

But some of the boys tell a different story: They say the couple subjected them to a level of punishment that crossed the line to physical abuse

This formula, "religious faith and a strict code of discipline" played an enourmous role in Mitchell's own rebirth. The abuse at the school is only an extension of the same manner of power that Mitchell used in his own conversion.

Though they have only a limited education - Stan Mitchell has a GED and Lee Mitchell didn't finish high school - they say they felt a calling to educate troubled youth. Stan Mitchell says he wanted them to avoid making some of the mistakes he had made.

His criminal record includes several driving offenses and charges of drug possession and breaking-and-entering. He once spent a year in jail.

"I was a hellion," said Stan Mitchell, 44. "I can't tell you how many times I had been to jail as a teenager. But God saved me and turned me around, and I wanted to save the youth from the mess I had to go through as a kid."

I cite's wonderful post about Zizek and victimhood seems relevant to me. Her specific topic is not directly related but the concepts of 'universal victimhood' and 'pathological narcissicism' seem quite relavent. Saving the youth depends on a conception of universal youth experience, Mitchell's "youth" are not actual people rather they are objects to be saved:

as victims, they are included simply as objects within the hero's libidinal economy.

I'm not schooled enough in "libidinal economy" to suggest that this fits in with my idea of the continuity of power but I have a feeling it is pretty similar. The object of the self for Mitchell in his little conversion experience seems to be understood in the same way as the object of the youth in his "mission" emodied in the instution of his school. Notice the "mess" he had a kid is assumed to be facing all these youth. His youth self and these youth are considered universal, my guess is that the institution of the school was almost an expression of his own practice to convert from the "hellion" of youth into the "saved" adult.

Here are some things about the school:

The boys followed a highly structured routine that included an enforced period of silence each morning. They were required to go to church and do chores and schoolwork. They ate meals together and worked on a buddy system. Breaking the rules brought swats - or "licks" - with a paddle.

The enforced silence, strict requirements, "buddy system" and the swats. Were these the same or similar practices that Mitchell used on himself for a conversion?

The silence was reported to be up to a new month for new students. The relation to silence and obedience is one with a long history, think of the monk's vow of silence.

This part is quite disturbing to me:

Helder acknowledged that anyone who works with troubled youth is taking a risk. "I think they understand that those types of things can happen," he said. "If someone starts a school for these types of kids, you have to ask, 'Were these kids credible to start with?' It's basically, at this point, the Mitchells' word against the kids' word. It's up to the court to decide which is the more credible party."

These youth, as objects for saving, have been demeaned, silenced and ultimately subordinated to Mitchell. I tend to think that these practices came out of Mitchell's own conversion, his own transformation. I believe these practices toward the self often lead to a "mission." This mission is to subject others to the processes of one's own conversion with the same treatment.

Agnostic Pluralism

2005-08-01T13:53:00.000-07:00

I read this great article over at borderlands (it was nice of sauer-thomas to bring it to my attention):
The Problem of Democracy

This article sparked some thoughts in me. I've long wanted to write an essay about the development of an ethos that fosters the Open society, specifically one dedicated to projects of justice.

This essay provides me with some concepts I'd like to explore more. For example:

Democratic practice and logic must as such be plural, set on establishing not so much a common good, but a ‘democratic ethos’ where the aim is to establish in turn what Mouffe calls ‘a chain of equivalence among the different democratic struggles so as to create an equivalent articulation between the demands of women, blacks, workers, gays and others’ (1996: 5, 1993: 77).

I've long heard the arguments that liberals are disorganized because they are so divided, this division is often characterized as "special interest groups." It seems to me that the goal of democracy is in fact to create commonality between these special interest group. The creation of common ground is necessary, specifically creation of the common that still preserves individual differences. I'm thinking of Negri's Mulititude, at least in its form.

The democratic ethos appears to precede notions of good. Does this mean there is a set of principles and ideas that enable the plurality to seek its own good? Isn't there a set of practices and ideas that are embodied in the 'democratic ethos' that would improve the democratic process.

I think there are some principles. I think one that must be relinquished before democracies can seek project's of justice is that the "democratic ethos" must shed ideas of universally constituted subjects. There must be a denial, at least in the political sphere, of a single form of life organized according to universal laws.

This idea is nicely packaged as "agnostic" by Mouffe:

As a plurality, Mouffe insists, democracy is necessarily agonistic, insofar as the sustaining of difference is the sustaining of dissension. Indeed it is on this basis that radical democratic practice can only call for the establishing of equivalences and not consensus or identity.

I really like this idea and I think it is at least one principle that could guide a democratic ethos

Machine Rationality and Foucault

2005-07-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

The senior thesis is going well I think. I've reached the point where I've started to map out the arguments and terminology in each paragraph, I've begun to trim it down, and I've also began eliminating quotes. More and more of the text is mine.

I'm continually fascinated by Foucault's notion of the self constituted through formative activity. It is possible the most attractive and personally significant aspect of his work for me. It has forced me to rethink my positions, reformulate my practices and also reconsider my strategies in regards to ethics.

Charlotte Street is one of my favorite blogs. Here is a recent entry that drew my attention.
First of all, I love Mill. I don't understand people who can't see his relevance to the general forms of arguments made in politics today. Mill presents clear and guiding thoughts on why liberty is important. His utilitarianism I admire for its composition, it was the first major philosophic book I ever read. It was a gift from a professor, the one that got me hooked.

Here is the section of the blog post that drew my attention:

When Mill spoke in 1835 of the celebrity of England resting on her docks, her canals, and her railroads, he added, “In intellect she is distinguished only for a kind of sober good sense;… and for doing all those things which are best done where man most resembles a machine, with the precision of a machine.”

The human subject constituted as a machine is very interesting to me. Interesting because my fascination with robots and machines. Interesting because it is precisely the type of robbed humanity that draws me to Foucault. Interesting because a 'machine' is the active form of the 'docile body' in a Disciplinary power relation. Interesting because these machines, this Victorian machines represent the skills I admire in some but also the anxiety I have over their rationality.

This passage, at the end of Foucault's Discipline and Punish has almost become my mantra:

In this central and centralized humanity, the effect and instrument of complex power relations, bodies and forces subjected by multiple mechanisms of ‘incarceration’, objects for discourses that are in themselves elements of that strategy, we must hear the distant roar of battle. (Foucault D&P 308)

The machine rationality is both the consensual entrance into this centralized humanity and one of the guiding regulatory principles that keeps it together.

But what is this "machine" rationality? I think of it as a reduction, a way of looking at the self and relations in terms effectiveness. When being effective becomes our dominate goal, we become machine.

A machine also has a set use value, a certain role, and a definitive identity. I think of so many that hold onto essential notions of subjectivity, often in terms of a telos. The idea that I am but a machine with a function in the machinery of the cosmos makes me anxious. It reminds me of a silly interpretation I have of the Flaming Lips song Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Part 1. Is it a plea of some form of humanity to fight off the robots? well, probably not but I certainly experience the song that way:

Oh Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots eat me
Oh Yoshimi
They don't believe me
But you won't let those
Robots defeat me

Universal communication

2004-12-03T14:16:00.000-08:00

There is a key issue brewing, one that will have wide reaching effects. Two of my obsessed over topics collide; the internet and activism.

Free and easy access wireless networks should be a goal for anyone who truly values the net. One of the biggest drags on the liberating aspects of the net is the cost. Without working to cheapen the cost of getting online, the internet will be dominated by business and afluent interests.

Here is where Verizon comes in. Verizon is fighting hard against community lines:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26409-2004Dec1?language=printer

The companies are lobbying furiously to block such plans, fearful that their businesses would be hurt. Their efforts most recently paid off Tuesday night in Pennsylvania, where a new law bans local governments from creating their own networks without first giving the primary local phone company the chance to provide service.

Consumer advocates denounce the new Pennsylvania law. They say it amounts to governments now needing a permission slip from entrenched monopolies to put a vital economic and educational tool within everyone's reach.

For them, government has a long history of providing essential public services, such as national highways or electricity in rural areas.

"The Internet . . . is a true global public utility," said Jeffrey Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy, an advocate for consumer rights online. "We should be trying to provide it for free."

At least, they argue, community networks should be able to give the large companies some competition. In a February survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 24 percent of U.S. adults said they had high-speed Internet access at home. About half of those had incomes of more than $75,000 a year.

Harold J. Feld, associate director of the Media Access Project, a consumer-media advocacy group, said a phone or cable company could always come in and provide a wireless network, competing on price and service with any municipal offering.

"But who gets to decide what municipalities can do?" Feld said. "Will it be corporations?"

In some cases, governments acted out of concern that spotty service from commercial providers in rural areas might be inhibiting economic growth. Allegany County in western Maryland is building a high-speed wireless network that will be available for homes and businesses.

Problematizing

2004-11-05T15:33:00.000-08:00

I was outside UVSC talking with my friends today. Everyone is pretty disgusted with the elections. The Utah voter thinks stopping homosexuals from getting marriage is the biggest political issue. Everyone seemed really down, but I don't feel so. Here are few reasons:
(1) Kerry lost but I did not
(2) The absurd Rovian strategies that worked on people can be fought, countered and PROBLEMATIZED.
(3) Energy is important. The run-down, loss obsessed progressives need to overcome this moment. They need to overcome this minor dissappointment. Bush's presidency is a problem but his audacity and arrogance will be his downfall. It is our job to expose this.
(4) What do we really expect? Let's face it, Middle America is upset that the liberals put gay people on the TV. That is really what this election is about.
(5) Bush didn't win on MORAL issues, we won on NORMAL ISSUES. Specifically, trying to legally enforce a notion of normality.

Cheer up kids.... More later