Соединенное MU Королевство - Fuckthejams by MUСоединенноеMUКоролевств
with certain bands, and whats interesting to me with music, is the musicians obsession with the medium itself. In elliot Smith we are offered crisp recordings of beautiful guitar ballads, 'high resolution' recordings in acoustic which the minute details are obvious. we canhear elliots hand bracing the guitar neck, or hear a slight buzz of a string, all these are intended-we are supposed to hear little imperfections and static, these are the recording itself and, its one-offness is captured and catalogued indefinitely. this is just like gang gang dance with their tricky distortions, mandatory dance beat, their signature antithetical openings and closings. with glass candy it is anologue synths. What we are hearing is a certain fetish for the mechanism, it is like a director who identifies with the eye of the camera, a writer with his typewriter. music is unique though, in that we hear his/her obsession directly without having to interpret these qualities (but i suppose it is necessary for them to'register' unless it is completely unnoticed ). music is less symbolic and more ...... well the symbolism is contextual.
or what is interesting music
Friday, April 15, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
thought of the day 3
Hence 'the arguments'.........and all of this is unedited, obviously.
for me, accountability is one of the earmarks of democracy. our public institutions are unresponsive, some would say less than the private sector. there is a fundamental distance from the average person with his surroundings, an alienation. Difference, and ineffectiviy , castration, and impotence.
we can characterize populace as schizophrenic, but is absurd the correct term? more often it refers to totalities or totalizing experiences, like life or existence in general. Populace are without meaning but in the way a body is. how could it be said exactly, that it is absurd if the species creates the very ground for meaning? if the body is charged with the contents of meaning, then we have entered into a strange bio-paradigm.
Society is the animation, the link which lends itself to scrutiny. They require elaboration about their circumstance, they are unique (we speak of temporality, and contingency). The subjective repercussions of that scrutiny is an experience which belongs to an individual. given contingency society can be improved, given the (political) will it can be challenged and scrutinized. And if we can be said to be an absurd society, it seems that this is a sentiment that we would have to share in common.
of society, Power relationships are central to the discussion, as are hegemonic forces. The practical discussion revolves around the institutions of power and the populations which are their subject. SO can we characterize this relationship as ABSURD? The answer for me is Yes.
For Camus, the absurd person has given up hope for a simple cure for society, but for that reason he has learned to live with his absurdity and can improve upon it. He is pitched at every turn against a bunch of institutionalists who confuse the term 'peoples or demos' to argue for a political rationality, over and over again, which is either ironic or a sleight of hand on the term politics. They are opposed to the term which refers to something contested or debated i.e. a 'speaking' situation, and have re-framed it according to their oligarchic ideologies to mean governance and rule. Alternatively, when the discussion turns to class interests it can mean the distant halls of congress impeding the progress of private industry though its 'regulation'. I am inclined to think they are more concerned with the limits of control and an upper class hegemony. Of course by politics i mean, of democracy, or revolt. I think for an effective movement to happen the possibility has to be argued that co-operation is a suitable form of revolt. Between us Solidarity, but not peace (with the other).
for me, accountability is one of the earmarks of democracy. our public institutions are unresponsive, some would say less than the private sector. there is a fundamental distance from the average person with his surroundings, an alienation. Difference, and ineffectiviy , castration, and impotence.
we can characterize populace as schizophrenic, but is absurd the correct term? more often it refers to totalities or totalizing experiences, like life or existence in general. Populace are without meaning but in the way a body is. how could it be said exactly, that it is absurd if the species creates the very ground for meaning? if the body is charged with the contents of meaning, then we have entered into a strange bio-paradigm.
Society is the animation, the link which lends itself to scrutiny. They require elaboration about their circumstance, they are unique (we speak of temporality, and contingency). The subjective repercussions of that scrutiny is an experience which belongs to an individual. given contingency society can be improved, given the (political) will it can be challenged and scrutinized. And if we can be said to be an absurd society, it seems that this is a sentiment that we would have to share in common.
of society, Power relationships are central to the discussion, as are hegemonic forces. The practical discussion revolves around the institutions of power and the populations which are their subject. SO can we characterize this relationship as ABSURD? The answer for me is Yes.
For Camus, the absurd person has given up hope for a simple cure for society, but for that reason he has learned to live with his absurdity and can improve upon it. He is pitched at every turn against a bunch of institutionalists who confuse the term 'peoples or demos' to argue for a political rationality, over and over again, which is either ironic or a sleight of hand on the term politics. They are opposed to the term which refers to something contested or debated i.e. a 'speaking' situation, and have re-framed it according to their oligarchic ideologies to mean governance and rule. Alternatively, when the discussion turns to class interests it can mean the distant halls of congress impeding the progress of private industry though its 'regulation'. I am inclined to think they are more concerned with the limits of control and an upper class hegemony. Of course by politics i mean, of democracy, or revolt. I think for an effective movement to happen the possibility has to be argued that co-operation is a suitable form of revolt. Between us Solidarity, but not peace (with the other).
Thought of the day 2
***%^n, thanks for your reply. I'm going to need some time to think about this to give you an appropriate response. A couple things come to mind however, and I'm glad you used the term co-opted because for me it is a central device in the uses of rhetoric. But we might be employing a different usage of said term. When i was first introduced to it at a series of anarchist seminars in D.C. the speakers were discussing how capitalists were using common motifs from communist and anarchist aesthetics like the red star, sickle and hammer on their pre-ripped jeans, and grunge aesthetic etc. Dead kennedy songs are used in car commercials, and republicans are crying out power to the people. The speakers were concerned about, how they can 'steal' their symbols back. But, i think these efforts are useless. I am also reminded here how lesbian media are using the image of rosy the riveter, and the word bitch to describe their vision of an empowered woman. Symbols are about identity and experience they are supposed to embody and convey. But this means, if we can infuse central terms of political discussion with with new meanings, our arguments carry with them a strange potency that is directed at the very heart of the 'frame of reference'.
Take the neo-cons for example. Their very persuasive arguments are centered around general but 'American' terms like freedom and democracy. Promoting freedom (through military aggression). Without the art of the co-opt, how are we supposed to speak to people on their level? An activist will ignore this at his/her own peril. The communists' argument is alien to the layman because the term proletarian is about as american as a bowl of borsch. we are a people dissatisfied with messianic idols, be they political or religious. Post-Reagan politics is moving towards a political rationalism, which i think could be provided by a proletarian style nationalism just as easily if not better.
lets review the platforms. What is fiscal responsibility; does it have anything to do with public schools? What is national security, does it have anything to do with de-armament (sp?) and normalization of relations? What is opportunity, social mobility perhaps....and political integrity, maybe that has something to do with separating the industrial power structure from the funding of political campaigns; lets buy back our politicians (for instance).
Politics like you say is indeed the interruption of normal power relationships. But for that reason, i think it is like a speaking situation, akin to something like due process, or arbitration, Even so, we are obliged to follow rules. Rules, norms and the common motifs of political discussion. Thus, the subversive element appears to be harmonious with the times, and would have the effect of what Frued calls 'the uncanny' Of course this formula only goes so far, there are real power relationships at work here. We may not be afforded our day in court less we forge that opportunity through our labors. But letting the situation get worse will not help us i think. And how do we create a new politic without metonymizing these old values to reflect the mindset of change?
Our institutions are perfectly rational to those for whom the profit is afforded to. I often come back to schmidt when i consider the efficacy of a 'class consciousness' or critique of power relations. This friend-enemy relationship appears to be productive to a certain extent. Also, any 'inside' forms its borders according to what is 'outside'. That is why universiality is never an attainable goal, unless we exclude the proponents of division; There is no coherence to this community, unless we exclude those who seek to destroy it; there is no great society, unless we usurp the captains of exploitation and so-forth.
Anyhow, your characterization of populace has its historical roots in Plato which im sure your aware; it has been the central schemata of any anti-populist argument that i've ever heard. It boils down to defining populations as irrational and schizophrenic, therefore requiring a vanguard, or rule of oligarchy. From Marx to Goldwater, Keynes to Adam Smith, western political pedagogy is obsessively anti-democratic. But we are afraid of this great beast because we call it a great beast; this is a rhetorical maneuver. We often find that we are in fact merely a great flock, and the term leviathan is rightly afforded to those nobles who comprise 'the institution'.
Take the neo-cons for example. Their very persuasive arguments are centered around general but 'American' terms like freedom and democracy. Promoting freedom (through military aggression). Without the art of the co-opt, how are we supposed to speak to people on their level? An activist will ignore this at his/her own peril. The communists' argument is alien to the layman because the term proletarian is about as american as a bowl of borsch. we are a people dissatisfied with messianic idols, be they political or religious. Post-Reagan politics is moving towards a political rationalism, which i think could be provided by a proletarian style nationalism just as easily if not better.
lets review the platforms. What is fiscal responsibility; does it have anything to do with public schools? What is national security, does it have anything to do with de-armament (sp?) and normalization of relations? What is opportunity, social mobility perhaps....and political integrity, maybe that has something to do with separating the industrial power structure from the funding of political campaigns; lets buy back our politicians (for instance).
Politics like you say is indeed the interruption of normal power relationships. But for that reason, i think it is like a speaking situation, akin to something like due process, or arbitration, Even so, we are obliged to follow rules. Rules, norms and the common motifs of political discussion. Thus, the subversive element appears to be harmonious with the times, and would have the effect of what Frued calls 'the uncanny' Of course this formula only goes so far, there are real power relationships at work here. We may not be afforded our day in court less we forge that opportunity through our labors. But letting the situation get worse will not help us i think. And how do we create a new politic without metonymizing these old values to reflect the mindset of change?
Our institutions are perfectly rational to those for whom the profit is afforded to. I often come back to schmidt when i consider the efficacy of a 'class consciousness' or critique of power relations. This friend-enemy relationship appears to be productive to a certain extent. Also, any 'inside' forms its borders according to what is 'outside'. That is why universiality is never an attainable goal, unless we exclude the proponents of division; There is no coherence to this community, unless we exclude those who seek to destroy it; there is no great society, unless we usurp the captains of exploitation and so-forth.
Anyhow, your characterization of populace has its historical roots in Plato which im sure your aware; it has been the central schemata of any anti-populist argument that i've ever heard. It boils down to defining populations as irrational and schizophrenic, therefore requiring a vanguard, or rule of oligarchy. From Marx to Goldwater, Keynes to Adam Smith, western political pedagogy is obsessively anti-democratic. But we are afraid of this great beast because we call it a great beast; this is a rhetorical maneuver. We often find that we are in fact merely a great flock, and the term leviathan is rightly afforded to those nobles who comprise 'the institution'.
thought of the day
i think 'the problem' of political apathy can be explained at least in part by understanding the experience of absurdity (in the existentialist sense, a world perceived with a lack of meaning or purpose). for example, you are familiar with polling data im sure that shows the political process and its personas, (in part because of media representations) are viewed with an overwhelming sense of distrust and ambivalence. when obama launched his campaign he wisely used the slogan, 'change we can believe in'. this election was unequivocal in terms of voter participation over recent decades....anyhow without taking too long to explain my thought id like to engage your philosophical mind on the possibility that a rhetoric often denounced as manipulative and dishonest could be the life and salience of contemporary politics and a certain type of 'identity politics' is necessary to engage actual human beings. i dont think its necessarily dishonest, simple questions like 'who are we, and what do we want' fall into this category. a deepening of democracy can be framed in a historical context, or historical mission easily. of course by deepening i mean, the intervention of politics in society, or democratizing our economy (the fact that the process is so removed from ordinary life is a relic from early democracies and uncompromised oligarchies etc). and historical mission and class warfare can easily be revived by creating a symbolic 'outsider' and an 'outsiders grievance' has been shown by the tea party movement. coming back to absurdity, i dont think the analysis is exhausted by a philosophy of political activism, leading us to consume our work with functional categories and confuse theory with rhetoric. the 'out of joint-ness' or the absurdity is a proper object of theoretical investigation. but when derrida explained through hamlet, that 'the time is (always) out of joint' he did not lead us to the soft politics and post-modernisms of rorty where democratic struggles are validated by a sense of irony (rorty is first of all confusing the concept of irony, and the ironic observer with cultural relativism). derrida's metaphor is surprisingly insightful to my problem here because absurdity is always a matter of 'to live or not to live' and then 'how to live in an absurd world'. in this case, political participation, or non participation and so on. it is obvious that an astute activism is founded on the righting of wrongs (killing hamlets step father), and a question of 'who are we'; a wide range of rhetorical metonymizing and symbolic hegemony, and not merely upon a soft politics of acceptance and loving kindness.
if the civil rights struggles were waiting for an ironic observer or pan-universalism, i doubt it would have ever left birmingham.
if the civil rights struggles were waiting for an ironic observer or pan-universalism, i doubt it would have ever left birmingham.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
turtles shell
we were standing in the middle of bourbon, bikes in one hand, beer in the other. like i was the night before, my eyes open to a mad carnival; from dream to frolic, instantaneous, miraculous bender. it was only one in the morning and you were wearing your green dress, the weird one that looks like a quilt. you, smirking, laughing at all the same shit...a spring break but older and somehow more naive, like baby but aged, incestuous, euphoric. the 45ers, the suits, casuals, children, italians, blacks, strippers, wives, bouncers and barkers and familiars all come out for familiar incests...a place where beauty and terror dance. so my eyes drift down to your bike, your red bianchi, that well lubricated machine i made sure would fit. every person that enters my sight i take them in just like this highlife one after the other and it goes down real easy. its like a beer-people montage, a sip-seeing alternator that is surrounding us, invading, and distracting one another from the fact that only two words have passed between us in this place. your blushing as you lean over and to reach in and get a kiss. its just a quick one on the lips, so i draw you in a little bit closer, keep you there just half a second longer...
i've been hold up in this house for over three days now. completely hermitized, getting kind of sic of that 'whats goin on with you' look that my roommates give me. so what if i'm depressed, so what if i wallow in my own shit for days on end. to simply forget and move forward is to forfeit anything i could have gained over the last two years, anything i might have become, or wish to not continue to become. on the contrary, i rummage through these memories like clothes in the free pile, and i inspect every fabric, color, and fit, hopeful that each item will be something to take home and i do, do i look good in this?
my body cant forget. your lying next to me and it thinks i'm touching her. as if i could dream with my fingers, how stupid! i shake myself awake to you lying next to me, and take in your scent greedily as the air fills my lungs. i exhale slowly, carefully, and pass over each deformity and defining feature to confirm what my mind already knows is bluish grey in this luminescent laptop radiance. every skin is unique to itself, a one-off deviant, and yours is fucking brilliant! i imagine its telling me the things people dont say but want to, and all the things i dont say anymore. this is the weathered exterior of a soft, generous creature, BEHOLD, the turtles shell. these exceptional moments, little inbetweens, theyre like mutual mercy fucks. i'll kiss the back of your neck when you fall asleep, hold you half of the night, in the morning i'll have left without goodbyes. and the words came out feeling like the whole world sitting on top of us, it was telling us not to be there. so i held my tongue and simply waited it out. i was too busy anyway, being completely absorbed in the half a second you let yourself be vulnerable. and i thought "if these hands learn a new skin i'll feel human again." but its complicated after all, were all trying to remember and forget, to learn a new skin.
i've been hold up in this house for over three days now. completely hermitized, getting kind of sic of that 'whats goin on with you' look that my roommates give me. so what if i'm depressed, so what if i wallow in my own shit for days on end. to simply forget and move forward is to forfeit anything i could have gained over the last two years, anything i might have become, or wish to not continue to become. on the contrary, i rummage through these memories like clothes in the free pile, and i inspect every fabric, color, and fit, hopeful that each item will be something to take home and i do, do i look good in this?
my body cant forget. your lying next to me and it thinks i'm touching her. as if i could dream with my fingers, how stupid! i shake myself awake to you lying next to me, and take in your scent greedily as the air fills my lungs. i exhale slowly, carefully, and pass over each deformity and defining feature to confirm what my mind already knows is bluish grey in this luminescent laptop radiance. every skin is unique to itself, a one-off deviant, and yours is fucking brilliant! i imagine its telling me the things people dont say but want to, and all the things i dont say anymore. this is the weathered exterior of a soft, generous creature, BEHOLD, the turtles shell. these exceptional moments, little inbetweens, theyre like mutual mercy fucks. i'll kiss the back of your neck when you fall asleep, hold you half of the night, in the morning i'll have left without goodbyes. and the words came out feeling like the whole world sitting on top of us, it was telling us not to be there. so i held my tongue and simply waited it out. i was too busy anyway, being completely absorbed in the half a second you let yourself be vulnerable. and i thought "if these hands learn a new skin i'll feel human again." but its complicated after all, were all trying to remember and forget, to learn a new skin.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
epitaph
you were waiting for me to finish my cigarette, my train of thought, my mood. you waited for me to take notice, to wait one moment for you, to listen, to learn, for my eyes to open, to allow, to cherish, to want you simply. waiting, waiting, you were allways waiting... but no more. this was my ground, my presence: a surface, surrounding and air. a movement, plan, and palpable...you were my goddamn maddonna, wonderful breast. i'd lay my ear upon you and listen as if whole worlds were rushing through. to hear and feel you, the feeling i always came back to, it would make those dim walls a look like paradise, somehow rustic and enchanting. that you were there for me, mind and body, in bed i would climb on top of you and look deep in your eyes where my own reflection was staring back at you, and you were waiting.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
metonic showers/long hours (the subversion of Descartes and Kant)
the 60s generation subverted Decartes's axiom "i drift thereofre i am" and founded the self affirmation "i am therefore i drift." amongst the stuggles of labor and civil rights, vietnam shattered the crooked mirror of a rational american society. this sense of vulnerablity, and a burgeoning globalism found a new name in president Carters refutation of american exceptionslism. the sense of 'us' and 'world' came to overlap, cosaturate "i am" in and about these real and lasting moments, the infinite moments; a closet identity crises which brandished itslef upon the suffering, imagination, and fantasy of ordinary americans. what was new was the undeniable place of the other within the very place of 'us'. "i am loved therefore i drift " found recourse in Ronald Reagan, the american narcissist, "i am, therefore there is love (therefore love)" as two sides of the same falling down. the wall of berlin was the defining moment, the euphoric reconcilliation, the traumatic finale'. in the nineties when the reality set in we found the 'we are' to be a rather loose unity because 'we wont'... But we are still frustrated and anxious by thye fact that "i am nothing therefore i drift" is a coded "i am no narcissist therefore pay attention to me" or a literal falling apart of self and world. all the while most of us blind ourselvbes to the semblencing involved (we have to), as its varrying names share the same treading towards meaning in a world void of substantive content. our constructive phobia is a covering up of a something uncertain, by virtue of this it has the charecter of embodiment. sentience, uncertainty, are experienced as the un= prey of bigger and more spectacular contingent certainties. slowly the real is creeping into the age of irony (we were never as Kant said, an unfathomable truth embodied in imperfect certainties, but in fact imperfect certainties were giving birth to new unfathomable truths). the revolution which began in the nineties was a pandemic explosion of technology and communication, and economic syncronicity, where the death of 'real icons' coevaled with an incredible empowering of social bodies. and so empires became 'new orders' and social struggles became 'solvable problems' in short, a politics of management emerged. it is in this context that the dillema of harry tuttle takes foot and M.L.K.'s classic 'refusal to wait' becomes ever more important. 'wherever you go there you are' is corny but true, place and time are right infront of us obviously. here is an excerpt from the "Letter From Birmingham Jail"
My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
thinking about place is important, for one the situationist international was right to protest place commodities but in all their diagnostics politics of mangement was again their ultimate end, another vision of utopia. but because we reflect on negtivity and absent centers doesnt require cynicism or the dadaist 'abolition of the future'. the proper consequence is in fact the wisdom to our own semblenceness. peeling off the fantasy to reverse or alter something like 'american exceptionalism' is totally over shooting the mark. the work of metonomy and myth-bending has never been a more relevant task. henceforth let 'the incredible lightness of being' be your anthem to 'the time is out of joint'. the strange euphoria in the wake of tramau is allways its keynote experience. in this new millenium are we in some whatever place or cynical time cruxx... do we give ourselves to a schitzophenic time siezure or constitute a new spectacular continuity? i for one would love to ceate a big fucking spectacle, i wonder at a radical reorginization of common sense in this country.
My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
thinking about place is important, for one the situationist international was right to protest place commodities but in all their diagnostics politics of mangement was again their ultimate end, another vision of utopia. but because we reflect on negtivity and absent centers doesnt require cynicism or the dadaist 'abolition of the future'. the proper consequence is in fact the wisdom to our own semblenceness. peeling off the fantasy to reverse or alter something like 'american exceptionalism' is totally over shooting the mark. the work of metonomy and myth-bending has never been a more relevant task. henceforth let 'the incredible lightness of being' be your anthem to 'the time is out of joint'. the strange euphoria in the wake of tramau is allways its keynote experience. in this new millenium are we in some whatever place or cynical time cruxx... do we give ourselves to a schitzophenic time siezure or constitute a new spectacular continuity? i for one would love to ceate a big fucking spectacle, i wonder at a radical reorginization of common sense in this country.
Monday, January 25, 2010
metonic showers/ long hours
let 'the incredible lightness of being' be your anthem to 'the time is out of joint'. there is a strange euphoria thats accomanies tramautic experiences. in this new millenium are we in some whatever place or cynical time cruxx...and what did the nineties give us? NAFTA!? SO do we give ourselves to a schitzophenic time siezure or constitute an new spectacular continuity? thinking about place is important, for one the situationist international was right to protest place commodities but in all their diagnostics they were looking for end to politics. the place and time to speak about it is right here obviously. but because we reflect on negtivity and absent centers doesnt require cynicism or the dadaist 'abolition of the future'. its enought in fact to be wise to our own semblenceness. peeling off the fantasy to reverse or alter something like 'american exceptionalism' is totally over shooting the mark. i for one would love to ceate a big fucking spectacle, and i wonder at a radical reorginization of common sense.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
hallmark holiday
start from the beginning, take stock of your whole body and especially your breath, slowly bringing your attention to your toes. it is there you begin to relax completely, one organ to the next, you locate every ounce of tension paying particular attention to the little muscles like around the eyes for instance, the joints in your fingers, the tension held in the groin or thighs. and let it go. let it all disappear. if you find that something remains, if the tension or anxiety is twice vivid as before, you know that your dumb body is no longer bearing the grunt of it. healing our bodies cannot mend our emotions, only they reveal or obscure them further. eventually we can find the very bottom of it and take from this a sense of unbearable nothingness. i have found no use in trying to heal those wounds; same as the babe suckling for milk, we are unconsciously doing it anyway and at best, we can wizen ourselves to the fact of doing it. but does that mean these are so many empty gestures? we are wise to ourselves but must go about as if it were all the same, as if we didn't know... the pretense of meaning is its architect.
the first mistake; my prayers were all too earnest, my promises too sincere. i know that life is not experienced through observation, just as desire doesnt find a spark by any plea or prayer. and the words her mouth wouldnt dare to speak, my eyes were privy to them encrypted in text and told to the entire world. his face and hand would stain her image and engross the story even more than the irony which proceeded in its conception and rebirth. so that i played the central role in my own nightmare is only a small portion of it, but, just a day after their lips met for the last time and she gave her self to him, it was the very next christmas day her legs opened to meet my lips and tongue which were held neither sacred nor apart from any other, the christmas she wept when we met again. her contradictions are equaled only by her betrayal which are both illuminated only in part by her words 'we are nothing but bodies separated only by skin.' sharp shocks that exploded my world equally in opposite directions but into one indecipherable chasm from where the 'word' whore was never shouted like all the slaps to her face and a christmas with her parents was played out to a near perfect portrayal to each one another for some fucking 'ideal' situation in her life, a safe-keeping for all my torments which for my part was committed to out of a respect that had everything to do with them. and for admitting she was a coward by never telling me i am supposed to take her apology, and in the wake of her actions to be genuine or grounds for forgiveness. and to whom is this situation more of an embarresment? do these wounds ever heal or like so many promises instead become irrelevant? or do they constitute (if i continue with) a new beginning where we are merely the said bodies occupying a space that is itself a kind of body separated only by other spaces...and when does this become a stupid, masochistic waste of time (a certain somebody wispers "it already has")!!!??
the first mistake; my prayers were all too earnest, my promises too sincere. i know that life is not experienced through observation, just as desire doesnt find a spark by any plea or prayer. and the words her mouth wouldnt dare to speak, my eyes were privy to them encrypted in text and told to the entire world. his face and hand would stain her image and engross the story even more than the irony which proceeded in its conception and rebirth. so that i played the central role in my own nightmare is only a small portion of it, but, just a day after their lips met for the last time and she gave her self to him, it was the very next christmas day her legs opened to meet my lips and tongue which were held neither sacred nor apart from any other, the christmas she wept when we met again. her contradictions are equaled only by her betrayal which are both illuminated only in part by her words 'we are nothing but bodies separated only by skin.' sharp shocks that exploded my world equally in opposite directions but into one indecipherable chasm from where the 'word' whore was never shouted like all the slaps to her face and a christmas with her parents was played out to a near perfect portrayal to each one another for some fucking 'ideal' situation in her life, a safe-keeping for all my torments which for my part was committed to out of a respect that had everything to do with them. and for admitting she was a coward by never telling me i am supposed to take her apology, and in the wake of her actions to be genuine or grounds for forgiveness. and to whom is this situation more of an embarresment? do these wounds ever heal or like so many promises instead become irrelevant? or do they constitute (if i continue with) a new beginning where we are merely the said bodies occupying a space that is itself a kind of body separated only by other spaces...and when does this become a stupid, masochistic waste of time (a certain somebody wispers "it already has")!!!??
Sunday, January 3, 2010
pinnochio v. hasselhoff
It is not helpful for us dissect celebraties, to ruminate over a seperation of man and myth. But when we turn our attention towards the allure, the human condition that goads us into glory, we begin to illuminate our idols and construct their image conscoiusly. Many people do this on a daily basis in fact-publicicsts, PR firms, narraters, ideologogues. They speak to a body of yearning who can neither be seen or felt, but like a hungry ghost it is heard in echoes of adulation and wanting. Those who would trace its profiles draw the rainbow of desires and common sensibility; they illuminate the heavans and cast shadows upon everything in its horizon. But those who would dispell the world of ghosts like Marx, who would surrender ideology and aesthetics to a false consciousness, are haunted by a spectre of their own-indeed communism has been given this name..."A spectre is haunting europe, the spectre of communism." They are haunted by a spirit who would have nothing to do with spirits. The exorcists of desire erect souless buildings and mosaics that reflect nothing other than material necessity. Moses engaged in a similar project, but was scandalized by the fact that the 'One True' had no face that would not consume us, no voice that would not destroy us utterly. The 'thing' of our dangerous and disgusting desires is sublated and the 'Golden Calf' returnes in jahweh's 'lessor faces' -divine messengers and a holy ghost in that we may know his glory about the world. Our heros and villains are just like this; not individuals in the sense that we know them (not to you or I); they live in our gazing upon, as conjured object-images that move in the world as apparitions do (they walk through walls or appear suddenly in your sleep). All of this is explained in popular media and culture.The story of superman (uber-man) opens with the plight of villains who were nefarious enough to warrant a condemnation within mirrors indefinitely, who return via the folly of a desperate man seeking their power; he is consumed upon first contact. This is not only the price of opening a “Pandora’s Box” but a necccessary step for the narrative to complete itself, where the forces of evil come to face their epic conquest by powers of goodness. This is accurately depicted as powers discovered along the way (they were not given but conjured) who were administered by a single man, the phallic body of our precipitous adulation. But how did the uber-man find his way to earth? When the world is turned upside down a great mourning appears and a haunting is set forth. The thing of reconciliation is set just above the horizon and although we are forced to grasp at this as if it were a real body, as if Pinocchio were a real boy, the sun burns our fingers off. This is why Lois fell in love with Clark Kent only after she knew him as the heroic figure in the news. Were he to become real again his phallic appeal would vanish entirely (it was only when he sought to give up his special status, his Je ne sais quoi that the world became vulnerable to all the evils of the nether world). When in the film Brazil Sam Lowry escaped his captures and his liberator Harry Tuttle immediately falls under a fatal duress. Instead of running he comes to his to his rescue and he recognizes for the first time in this embrace the person who he had wish to become; that the entire time Tuttle was the the expression of all his most controversial desires. This is when Harry Tuttle disintegrates into a mass of worthless paper shards that blow about the cold cityscape untended and forgotten. This is because Lowry was a realist, an iconoclastic spoiler of illusions. Idols and graven images and all great ideas are Harry Tuttles. As ghosts, they are ethereal bodies of lacking in every aspect but name (the corporeality of being-in-names, its body of speech). Names are spoken in hauntings, invocations that carry with them the unfinished business of a world not quite at home with itself. Without its name it cannot be conjured, cannot appear to us in our sleep. When Hamlet proclaimed 'The time is out of joint' he was invoking the spirit of his dead father, who was the name for unspeakable horrors, foul crimes of a past made present who's only salvation lived in the promise of a future indulgence. The experience of the present is always consumed by a kind of spectral lacking, the shadow play of an impossible belonging that permeates the world like a holy ghost. Even though it eludes our grasp, that it has no voice that will not destroy us, no face that will not blind us; even though Harry Tuttle disapears the moment we think we've got him finally, the world moves about its whims, without this ghost, without its continual conjuration, we are merely the profane flesh bags attested to by the stoics, toiling about obscure mundanity. Just ask Mr. Hasselhoff.
>>>>>bbbbborn4pornnnnn<<<<<<<<<
recently ive been getting into broad appeal pop music that has more of a feel good vibes. for ever i was into stuff that had nothing to do with feeling good or crowd pleasing, non song music that took moments to disregard the audience and do something interesting or strange, like take a breK FROM PER4FUNCTORY NORMALNESS, THE 'NORMAL' SITUATION. Like adult. or suicide, black dice among others. at these shows i often wanted to take a break from my own normal situation, temporarily, emotionally, take a dive somewhere outside of formal communicatibility or more importantly the molds that we pour our energies into that they may be recieved by other human beings. the poets are endlessly looking for ways to evade the cliche' expression. but there is in language a tension which has not only to do with the obligation to represent our person through rigid structures that have nothing to do with our actual being, but also that they have everything to do with our experience of being (the form is defining content). the world is absolutely topsy turvey in this way and music offers itself as an energy that communicates on its own terms. AND MUSIC IS, having no neccessary body or rational discourse or reference to concept (tone and pitch are are different cases entirely; they are real objects or, or the superficial roadblocks to the form but not meaning) it is in itself an exceptional continuity or a sensing before words ....For this reason i have disdain for the person who says "i just love that song(the macarana)!!! and genre-centric musicians who buy into replication and precidence. worse yet is the music capitalist who empties out content into a product, or the opportunist that works any genre whatsoever to get listend too (i.e. black eyed peas). music movements and even genre defining artists are guilty of this lazyness. replication is fruitful in certain respects but i find the experience lackluster. the attitude which is genre-conscious but not genre-defined is commendable. glass candy is a good example of just such a band. they have a track called 'superficial roadblocks' on their album music dream which i imagine the themes to be stuttering over the sexual energies of music and dancing. it is in a later album where 'soft boundries/animal imgination' captures this energy perfectly. whats interesting in track 2 about 'ripe apples' is the name itself, it is a kind of metaphor to song. it is song that captures chaotic tendencies in pre-speech or noise music and coalesces it into a fleshy fruit. it is a cocoon of meaning, but like the poem it consists of the 'creature' that would leave it. an obsession with music that disregards its audience is something to do with a deisre for a real intimacy. pop appeal on the other hand is the stamp of a symbolic panopticon, a forboding figure of a kind of perpetual 'no' who smashes the mind and desire into a formal submission. because of this pop culture is the grooming grounds of disconnected bodies, the intimacy in personal aleination; virtual communication in its truest sense. it is a case of looking ffor love in all the wrong places.
Here's a link to it:
http://www.myspace.com/rockthetoy
http://www.myspace.com/glasscandy
Here's a link to it:
http://www.myspace.com/rockthetoy
http://www.myspace.com/glasscandy
horse boy v. saggers
in response to "dont publish that!"
the 60s generation subverted Decartes's axiom "i drift thereofre i am" and founded the self affirmation "i am therefore i drift." when vietnam shattered the few remaining illusions of a rationality american society, what rose in its wake was a sense of vulnerablity, all the more salient within a burgeoning global society and president Carters refutation of americsn exceptionslism. sense of world would construct this "i am." the laudable "i am loved therefore i drift " later fell victim to Ronald Reagan but it just-was as bankrupt as the american narcissist, "i am, therefore there is love (therefore love)." they shared a treading towards meaning in a world wholly devoid of substantive content; thanks to the nineties we can now admit that and the 'i am' just doesnt matter, we are but we wont. But we are frustrated and anxious by thye fact that "i am nothing therefore i drift" is a coded "i am no narcissist therefore pay attention to me" or a literal falling apart of self and world. What this phobia holds proof to is the priority of something, something uncertain which by virtue of ts uncertainty has the charecter of embodiment; sentient prey of bigger and more spectacular contingent certainties. Therefore i affirm the priority of desire even in the face-world of values and truth claims, the fact that truth has no claim upon love, only in that it may embody this force, or represent some obscure cornerstone of driftin apart together (together apart), lends me to take refuge in a whatever place, or this whatever in particular (in your heart not neccessarily). That the claims of drifting and world are overlapping has everything to do with the fact that meaning is an absent guest (like beetlejuice he is not invited but conjured) and we still set a place for him ath the table and set ourselves somewhere between the 'form is emptiness' and bodhidarmas left hand to forgive ourselves in secret not for what we have done, but for the fact that we are knowing it anyway. 'Namaste' is best expessed in irony and our generation can no longer associate itslef with broad conjuctions like 'i am self, i am world." and so i say "go about the world drifter, and love greatly"
the 60s generation subverted Decartes's axiom "i drift thereofre i am" and founded the self affirmation "i am therefore i drift." when vietnam shattered the few remaining illusions of a rationality american society, what rose in its wake was a sense of vulnerablity, all the more salient within a burgeoning global society and president Carters refutation of americsn exceptionslism. sense of world would construct this "i am." the laudable "i am loved therefore i drift " later fell victim to Ronald Reagan but it just-was as bankrupt as the american narcissist, "i am, therefore there is love (therefore love)." they shared a treading towards meaning in a world wholly devoid of substantive content; thanks to the nineties we can now admit that and the 'i am' just doesnt matter, we are but we wont. But we are frustrated and anxious by thye fact that "i am nothing therefore i drift" is a coded "i am no narcissist therefore pay attention to me" or a literal falling apart of self and world. What this phobia holds proof to is the priority of something, something uncertain which by virtue of ts uncertainty has the charecter of embodiment; sentient prey of bigger and more spectacular contingent certainties. Therefore i affirm the priority of desire even in the face-world of values and truth claims, the fact that truth has no claim upon love, only in that it may embody this force, or represent some obscure cornerstone of driftin apart together (together apart), lends me to take refuge in a whatever place, or this whatever in particular (in your heart not neccessarily). That the claims of drifting and world are overlapping has everything to do with the fact that meaning is an absent guest (like beetlejuice he is not invited but conjured) and we still set a place for him ath the table and set ourselves somewhere between the 'form is emptiness' and bodhidarmas left hand to forgive ourselves in secret not for what we have done, but for the fact that we are knowing it anyway. 'Namaste' is best expessed in irony and our generation can no longer associate itslef with broad conjuctions like 'i am self, i am world." and so i say "go about the world drifter, and love greatly"
Monday, September 21, 2009
The Challenge of Carl Schmitt (Review pt 3)
In Carl Scmitt in the Age of Post-Politics Slavoj Zizek takes the reader through Freudian themes that would strive to reveal some psychological and theosophical underpinnings behind Schmitt's decisionism and priority of the sovereign. First in Oedipus we explore the unconscious drive towards enjoyment through the parricide of the father, the figure of authority and monopolizer of enjoyment so that he may consummate his incestuous love with the maternal object. Oedipus is the exceptional figure, the one who casts aside the taboo, to only find in this fulfilling of desire his own destruction. The lesson would seem to suggest it is a permanent prolonging of enjoyment and the permanence of the prohibiting father which allows the maternal link to continue (albeit tension ridden). But according to Zizek the Oedipus story only partially describes the castration process and requires the supplement of yet two other myths, that of Judas and King Lear.
In Lear we uncover the kings personal impotence and discover that the strength we perceived in the man is actually the place he occupies in the symbolic order. In Judas we learn that the betrayal of the king is necessary if he is to occupy the status of symbolic prohibition as the agent of castration. For in killing the symbol we elevate him to the status of the symbolic matrix, or as Zizek says, 'he returns in the form of his name' (though his death he has risen to the glories of spirit). Thus the person of Judas is actually quite necessary to prevent the person of Oedipus from reappearing. Of course it is our being within culture (the rituals of distance/closeness with the maternal object) that has succeeded in always having had killed the father of prohibition, but this is not to deny that the passage from systems of brutality (domination) to systems of symbolic authority (civility) require the act of criminality (revolution) to ensure its progress.
Thus in Civilization and Its Discontents Freud describes the first form of society as the pact between brothers to murder their father and divide the spoils. But Zizek informs us it is not until the murder of Moses that we find the first appearance of Modernity. Because where oedipus's father was the name of a certain taboo, and thus the structure of a symbolic constellation, Moses was the father of monotheism that represented the nature of uncontaminated will. Through a god that is grounded in himself we experience the gap between order and content, where content losses any necessary quality. It is the omnipotent and deciding god who brings about the death of the many sexualized and human like gods of traditional philosophy and marks the beginning of theology. Zizek would have us meditate on the french mathematician Pascal who declared that 2+2 would equal 5 if god declared it so. It is the sovereign who creates the structure of the symbolic playing field, by means of his 'positive act of willing' who without which we would seem to be doomed to the fate of a million oedipistic murders for all time throughout all society. Thus the one god can rightfully command Abraham to murder his son, to contradict the religion he has set out for him, because to do so asserts his authority as the source of all normative content. It is as if god was mimicking Socrates who when wrongly condemned to death defended his sentence by asserting that the value of law is not found in any particular ruling but within obedience to the voice of law as such.
What Zizek takes from this narrative is the lessons of modernism, a political ontology that is grounded in decision, and the shutting out from standards of legitimacy any normative criteria. The historical potential in our liberal institutions is found for Zizek, in the experience of material/subjective excesses "a history of that for which no structure can account but without which no structure would exist" (Gorelick/Kerr). Sovereignty here is experienced as a status-quo, a discredited state from the standpoint of a potential infinitude of political outsiders. A post modern politics then would seem to consist in an opening of the gate to the small guy, the outside, or say if you will as Mouffe does, a deepening of democracy. Through the circuitous route from Schmitt via Frued, to Hegel and Ranciere, Zizek's solution to this predicament is the instituting of a permanent dimension of political antagonism, a dialectical struggle that is a permanent vying for the place of decision, and for which particular struggles are set upon the task of eternally positing their normative programmes as the universal benchmark. Through a critique of Schmitt's uber-politic (the hyper aggressive politics-as-war, or the eradication of other), while still asserting its own positive content. What he achieves is a way to engender and dignify a politics without having to rely on an ideal speech situation or revert to a pure decisionism. Simultaneously invoking the Rortian 'ironist', and a Gramscian 'war of position', what Zizek fails to do is depict a community that could forge the link between such forces of struggle. If a hope for politics is found with a privileged actor as Zizek would suggest, the fate of an inclusive politic seems rather dubious; conversely, for the actor he identifies the model politic would consist in a perpetual revision of sovereignty, and so we are lead back again to the dregs of Oedipus. What he seems to have forgotten is one of the very first lessons that Schmitt offers us: the unity of a state is found in a commonality that is prior to law and systems of governance, and is integral to the friend-enemy distinction where a common ground or shared language is never given. This is why universal concepts like democracy constitute no society or concrete culture, at best they still remain merely the language games that are played within it.
In Lear we uncover the kings personal impotence and discover that the strength we perceived in the man is actually the place he occupies in the symbolic order. In Judas we learn that the betrayal of the king is necessary if he is to occupy the status of symbolic prohibition as the agent of castration. For in killing the symbol we elevate him to the status of the symbolic matrix, or as Zizek says, 'he returns in the form of his name' (though his death he has risen to the glories of spirit). Thus the person of Judas is actually quite necessary to prevent the person of Oedipus from reappearing. Of course it is our being within culture (the rituals of distance/closeness with the maternal object) that has succeeded in always having had killed the father of prohibition, but this is not to deny that the passage from systems of brutality (domination) to systems of symbolic authority (civility) require the act of criminality (revolution) to ensure its progress.
Thus in Civilization and Its Discontents Freud describes the first form of society as the pact between brothers to murder their father and divide the spoils. But Zizek informs us it is not until the murder of Moses that we find the first appearance of Modernity. Because where oedipus's father was the name of a certain taboo, and thus the structure of a symbolic constellation, Moses was the father of monotheism that represented the nature of uncontaminated will. Through a god that is grounded in himself we experience the gap between order and content, where content losses any necessary quality. It is the omnipotent and deciding god who brings about the death of the many sexualized and human like gods of traditional philosophy and marks the beginning of theology. Zizek would have us meditate on the french mathematician Pascal who declared that 2+2 would equal 5 if god declared it so. It is the sovereign who creates the structure of the symbolic playing field, by means of his 'positive act of willing' who without which we would seem to be doomed to the fate of a million oedipistic murders for all time throughout all society. Thus the one god can rightfully command Abraham to murder his son, to contradict the religion he has set out for him, because to do so asserts his authority as the source of all normative content. It is as if god was mimicking Socrates who when wrongly condemned to death defended his sentence by asserting that the value of law is not found in any particular ruling but within obedience to the voice of law as such.
What Zizek takes from this narrative is the lessons of modernism, a political ontology that is grounded in decision, and the shutting out from standards of legitimacy any normative criteria. The historical potential in our liberal institutions is found for Zizek, in the experience of material/subjective excesses "a history of that for which no structure can account but without which no structure would exist" (Gorelick/Kerr). Sovereignty here is experienced as a status-quo, a discredited state from the standpoint of a potential infinitude of political outsiders. A post modern politics then would seem to consist in an opening of the gate to the small guy, the outside, or say if you will as Mouffe does, a deepening of democracy. Through the circuitous route from Schmitt via Frued, to Hegel and Ranciere, Zizek's solution to this predicament is the instituting of a permanent dimension of political antagonism, a dialectical struggle that is a permanent vying for the place of decision, and for which particular struggles are set upon the task of eternally positing their normative programmes as the universal benchmark. Through a critique of Schmitt's uber-politic (the hyper aggressive politics-as-war, or the eradication of other), while still asserting its own positive content. What he achieves is a way to engender and dignify a politics without having to rely on an ideal speech situation or revert to a pure decisionism. Simultaneously invoking the Rortian 'ironist', and a Gramscian 'war of position', what Zizek fails to do is depict a community that could forge the link between such forces of struggle. If a hope for politics is found with a privileged actor as Zizek would suggest, the fate of an inclusive politic seems rather dubious; conversely, for the actor he identifies the model politic would consist in a perpetual revision of sovereignty, and so we are lead back again to the dregs of Oedipus. What he seems to have forgotten is one of the very first lessons that Schmitt offers us: the unity of a state is found in a commonality that is prior to law and systems of governance, and is integral to the friend-enemy distinction where a common ground or shared language is never given. This is why universal concepts like democracy constitute no society or concrete culture, at best they still remain merely the language games that are played within it.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Themes of Carl Schmitt
The first contribution is given by Paul Hirst a professor of social theory at Birbeck College, a basic overview where he characterizes Schmitts ideas as decisionism and his major themes as taking issue with 20th century liberal democracies. Schmitt takes issue with parliamentarianism for mistaking politics for a kind of utopic ideal speech situation that doesn't exist because any political inside requires a political outside. He is equally contemptuous of liberal-constitutionalism for rendering the state impotent by a rule-bound legalism. These theories presuppose an already existing state but fail to recognize how the state arises and continues by means of political struggle and thus cannot comprehend the extra-legality of true state sovereignty. Because the construction of any inside presupposses and outside, politics is the relationship of enmity between freinds and enemies, and a process of statecraft cannot rely on any certain rational or legality but instead is dependent on the capacity of the sovereign to decide and uphold power. These are the dynamic tensions that Hirst seems to consider somewhat alien to internal workings of modern day democracies, but very relevant to Foreign policy relations especially in the field of nuclear proliferation.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Challenge of Carl Scmitt (Review)
This will be the first book review i've done in quite some time, the last time i was in college over two years ago. I'm pretty sure that almost nobody reads this blog, not that it matters because i like to think that with this blog i keep myself sharp enough to return to college at some point, or maybe i'll just write books when i get old, not sure yet. But the truth is that i barely ever update this thing and all i really do besides reading is argue with my roommates and friends who have very different scholastic interests than myself. For example, the most critical topic of conversation in last nights discussion was whether or not class inequality could be considered a kind of slow or passive eugenics....as you can see from other posts, tis not really my forte'. I really need to find a critical discussion group, hopefully one where people have moved past talking about Foucaults concept of all-pervasive power and so forth. So... on to the Schmitt.
Was a great man. This book is a collection of articles edited (with one contribution) by Chantal Mouffe, including a first-ever published english translation of Schmitt's article Ethic of State and Pluralistic State. Scmitt's basic interest lies in how to think of order, or political unity. For him it is a normative or ethical concept, in the sense of he depicts unity as virtue, or the basis of virtue. As a political unity is the basis for the state or a normal situation, all personal and social freedoms emanate from it, and hence an ethic of state for him (as a realist) is the key to ethics in general. Consequently liberal rights take backstage in his theory, as do issues of participation or overt political freedoms. Does this sound reminiscent of a Hobbsian theory of the Leviathan? Thats because it is, but what separates Schmitt from a thinker like Hobbes most pointedly (other than the eras of these authors) is his commitment to a basis for legitimacy other than a guarantee of order, and his committment to politics which he deems neccessary and perminant to the social link. Indeed the political is constitutive of the social whole, and so legitimacy is a question of the sovereigns ability to represent or construct a substantive unity of the 'people'. This is what gives the ruler his appropriateness, or historical rightness which differentiates the dictator from the tyrant whos rule is arbitrary and not bound by normative elements (chapt 7). In this way his theory is prevalent with democratic aims, but not in the usual sense, because for him democracy is not found in a set of procedures nor-like in Plato or Marx-in the people themselves, but in a sovereign who realizes the spirit or substance of a people.
It would seem that many of the authors find his most valuable contribution to be his critique of liberal ambivalence towards political unity, and his clarification of the fact that universalistic ideals such humanitarianism and constitutionalism constitute no basis for such a unity. Chantal Mouffe indicates that such a theoretical stance leaves one without the ability to speak coherently about community, or a political ethic. Thus some of the authors are poised to use his critique to inform a theory of community, the status of which has been dominated in the last century by proponents of economic liberalism and technocrats where it is based on somewhat empty concepts like citizenship, or a negotiations of interests. And so goes the introduction.
Was a great man. This book is a collection of articles edited (with one contribution) by Chantal Mouffe, including a first-ever published english translation of Schmitt's article Ethic of State and Pluralistic State. Scmitt's basic interest lies in how to think of order, or political unity. For him it is a normative or ethical concept, in the sense of he depicts unity as virtue, or the basis of virtue. As a political unity is the basis for the state or a normal situation, all personal and social freedoms emanate from it, and hence an ethic of state for him (as a realist) is the key to ethics in general. Consequently liberal rights take backstage in his theory, as do issues of participation or overt political freedoms. Does this sound reminiscent of a Hobbsian theory of the Leviathan? Thats because it is, but what separates Schmitt from a thinker like Hobbes most pointedly (other than the eras of these authors) is his commitment to a basis for legitimacy other than a guarantee of order, and his committment to politics which he deems neccessary and perminant to the social link. Indeed the political is constitutive of the social whole, and so legitimacy is a question of the sovereigns ability to represent or construct a substantive unity of the 'people'. This is what gives the ruler his appropriateness, or historical rightness which differentiates the dictator from the tyrant whos rule is arbitrary and not bound by normative elements (chapt 7). In this way his theory is prevalent with democratic aims, but not in the usual sense, because for him democracy is not found in a set of procedures nor-like in Plato or Marx-in the people themselves, but in a sovereign who realizes the spirit or substance of a people.
It would seem that many of the authors find his most valuable contribution to be his critique of liberal ambivalence towards political unity, and his clarification of the fact that universalistic ideals such humanitarianism and constitutionalism constitute no basis for such a unity. Chantal Mouffe indicates that such a theoretical stance leaves one without the ability to speak coherently about community, or a political ethic. Thus some of the authors are poised to use his critique to inform a theory of community, the status of which has been dominated in the last century by proponents of economic liberalism and technocrats where it is based on somewhat empty concepts like citizenship, or a negotiations of interests. And so goes the introduction.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Notes from: Jacques Ranciere "The Politics of Disagreement" Chapter 2
Chapter 2: Wrong: Politics and Police
Chapter 2 is mostly an elaboration of chapter 1 with additional development of R_'s concept of the founding 'wrong' of politics and a re-orientation and broadening of the term police, to mean any social body, custom or activity which strives to conserve or legitimize things as they are. It is in fact any of the social management organizations known as government or power structures. Often the police order is mistakenly identified as politics, being based on the actions of elected representatives and so forth. However, in its role of establishing or supplementing the dominant order, it is what sets forth and establishes the initial wrong or 'miscount' that politics are based on.
R_ is not trying to confuse us by redefining the two terms: his nomenclature has a different criteria, which is does the social program in question (pick one) enforce or legitimize a status quo, or is it a challenge to such a state of affairs? He qualifies the term police as non-pejorative or neutral, meaning there is good and bad police, and so in this context politics takes on a similar neutrality.
The elaboration goes as such. Taking from Aristotle's posit of the speaking animal as political animal, he seeks to make a connection between speech and politics that shows the natural political order is commensurate to a division of groups who are granted a stage in the house of law, and those who are not on the basis of their judged capacity for intelligent speech before the law. R_ recounts Livy's Secession of the Roman Plebeians on Aventine Hill, as retold by Pierre-Simon Ballanche where the Plebs elect themselves representatives, and recount their grievances with the Roman state Consul and seek reparations in the form of political equality. The Consul delivers an apologia (a defense of the Roman position) but to no avail, for the Plebs listened politely and reasserted their position in the request for a treaty. Such an action on the side of the Plebs had the effect of proving themselves as beings capable of speech, effectively giving themselves a place in the political landscape that previously had no place for Plebeian masses. On the other hand, the apologia intended to deprive the Plebs their right to litigation was a traitor to its own cause, granting it's audience both intelligibility and a common stage for their dispute.
This is in fact R_'s model for political litigation: there is a break from the inegalitarian police order by the non-patrician class who demonstrate an equal aptitude before the law. This act is most potent when staged in the same institutions serving patrician dominance, and in the same terms of their logic. What this proves is not only an aptitude for intelligent speech before the law, but the contingency of the inegalitarian divide as it is experienced (the social order). Furthermore it is effectively giving names and faces to the 'undifferentiated masses' who are claiming a place to what is held in common. In Aristolean terms: their voices cease to merely make the animal noises of pleasure or pain and begin to show signs of intelligibility. However, R_ qualifies this formula as not merely a case of subjects 'finding their voice', nor is it a compromise or collaboration between interests prevalent in consensus theory. Like Rosa Parks on the bus or Martin Luther King in the Million Man March have shown, it is a re-composition of the places and ways of doing and saying politics, and the capacities involved in this pursuit.
Consider for a moment the Declaration of Independence(http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm), the beginning of all our legal institutions. First, in defiance of the British crown the authors declare themselves representatives of independent states, reinventing their former political identity as colonies. Secondly they make grievance with British domination that they demand an end to, calling in question the legitimacy of British authority via the inadequacy of its policies, and the axiom that governing bodies derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed". In its time this document served as the manifesto of a people redefining the status and place given to them, seeking to become an entity of their own (socially, culturally, politically, etc). It is one example of an emancipatory struggle with a social order that does not hear or see the party in question; the resistance of mere assimilation. By distorting or abolishing their given status or social category they emerge to the world as a living, breathing, independent body to be reckoned with.
So politics is a challenge to the harmony of the police order, whose arrival heralds a larger community experienced as divided, as inharmonious. The body politic broadens the social-cultural landscape, albeit painfully. Because this challenge regards their place in the dominant order, or the finding a part of those who have no part, it is a displacement of the subject itself. Thus R_ is insistent that politics is the experience of becoming subjects; it is the work of producing a body capable of enunciation before the law, whose identification (illumination) reconfigures the political landscape. This is the process he terms political subjectification.
Chapter 2 is mostly an elaboration of chapter 1 with additional development of R_'s concept of the founding 'wrong' of politics and a re-orientation and broadening of the term police, to mean any social body, custom or activity which strives to conserve or legitimize things as they are. It is in fact any of the social management organizations known as government or power structures. Often the police order is mistakenly identified as politics, being based on the actions of elected representatives and so forth. However, in its role of establishing or supplementing the dominant order, it is what sets forth and establishes the initial wrong or 'miscount' that politics are based on.
R_ is not trying to confuse us by redefining the two terms: his nomenclature has a different criteria, which is does the social program in question (pick one) enforce or legitimize a status quo, or is it a challenge to such a state of affairs? He qualifies the term police as non-pejorative or neutral, meaning there is good and bad police, and so in this context politics takes on a similar neutrality.
The elaboration goes as such. Taking from Aristotle's posit of the speaking animal as political animal, he seeks to make a connection between speech and politics that shows the natural political order is commensurate to a division of groups who are granted a stage in the house of law, and those who are not on the basis of their judged capacity for intelligent speech before the law. R_ recounts Livy's Secession of the Roman Plebeians on Aventine Hill, as retold by Pierre-Simon Ballanche where the Plebs elect themselves representatives, and recount their grievances with the Roman state Consul and seek reparations in the form of political equality. The Consul delivers an apologia (a defense of the Roman position) but to no avail, for the Plebs listened politely and reasserted their position in the request for a treaty. Such an action on the side of the Plebs had the effect of proving themselves as beings capable of speech, effectively giving themselves a place in the political landscape that previously had no place for Plebeian masses. On the other hand, the apologia intended to deprive the Plebs their right to litigation was a traitor to its own cause, granting it's audience both intelligibility and a common stage for their dispute.
This is in fact R_'s model for political litigation: there is a break from the inegalitarian police order by the non-patrician class who demonstrate an equal aptitude before the law. This act is most potent when staged in the same institutions serving patrician dominance, and in the same terms of their logic. What this proves is not only an aptitude for intelligent speech before the law, but the contingency of the inegalitarian divide as it is experienced (the social order). Furthermore it is effectively giving names and faces to the 'undifferentiated masses' who are claiming a place to what is held in common. In Aristolean terms: their voices cease to merely make the animal noises of pleasure or pain and begin to show signs of intelligibility. However, R_ qualifies this formula as not merely a case of subjects 'finding their voice', nor is it a compromise or collaboration between interests prevalent in consensus theory. Like Rosa Parks on the bus or Martin Luther King in the Million Man March have shown, it is a re-composition of the places and ways of doing and saying politics, and the capacities involved in this pursuit.
Consider for a moment the Declaration of Independence(http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm), the beginning of all our legal institutions. First, in defiance of the British crown the authors declare themselves representatives of independent states, reinventing their former political identity as colonies. Secondly they make grievance with British domination that they demand an end to, calling in question the legitimacy of British authority via the inadequacy of its policies, and the axiom that governing bodies derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed". In its time this document served as the manifesto of a people redefining the status and place given to them, seeking to become an entity of their own (socially, culturally, politically, etc). It is one example of an emancipatory struggle with a social order that does not hear or see the party in question; the resistance of mere assimilation. By distorting or abolishing their given status or social category they emerge to the world as a living, breathing, independent body to be reckoned with.
So politics is a challenge to the harmony of the police order, whose arrival heralds a larger community experienced as divided, as inharmonious. The body politic broadens the social-cultural landscape, albeit painfully. Because this challenge regards their place in the dominant order, or the finding a part of those who have no part, it is a displacement of the subject itself. Thus R_ is insistent that politics is the experience of becoming subjects; it is the work of producing a body capable of enunciation before the law, whose identification (illumination) reconfigures the political landscape. This is the process he terms political subjectification.
Did Freud Hate Women?
While Reading Slavoj Zizek's Sublime Object of Ideology I found quoted of Sigmund Freud the dubious statement "...women are impossible to bear, a source of eternal nuisance, but still, they are the best thing we have of their kind; without them it would be even worse. So if woman does not exist, man is perhaps simply a woman who thinks she does not exist."
Ifind this wildly interesting because Freud is supposed to be a chauvinist, but his statement applies equally to men: "...men are impossible to bear, a source of eternal nuisance, but still, they are the best thing we have of their kind; without them it would be even worse. So if man does not exist, woman is perhaps simply a man who thinks he does not exist." Jacques Lacan made an addendum to this statement that went "Woman is the symptom of man" which is again, equal to saying "Man is the symptom of woman" but also, "Woman is the fantasy of Man".
Zizek tells that in psychoanalysis personal enjoyment is bound up with personal suffering, in the sense that psychic displeasure or, the symptom, takes root in the inadequacy of the self as it relates the its surroundings. Conversely, fantasy as the object of personal pleasure, takes root in the inadequacy of surroundings as it relates to the self. Psychoanalysis then is the uncovering of the symptom to dissolve its corresponding fantasy. But, this symptom/fantasy conventionally returns because (another quote by Freud) "You must identify yourself with the place where your symptom already was; in all its pathology you will recognize the element which gives consistency to your being."
This means that at the root of our craziness lies the fundamental expression of who we are. And so, treatment of the symptom/fantasy is directed at the forms in which these expressions take place. If the opposite sex is the subject of our dreams and yet our worst nightmare, it is only because we are experiencing in them what is closest to ourselves: ourselves.
Thus I believe we can reformulate Freud's words (yet somewhat paradoxically) to say "woman is the greatest pleasure, a source of eternal joy, but still, she is the worst thing that has happened to us; if woman does exist, man is caught in her image, a plaything of self reflection". I think Freud had a healthy taste for cynicism about the way we see ourselves. Cynical, but not prejudiced. The whole idea is that without this mutual appropriation of the other for the purpose of becoming ourselves, the whole game is over; without the Other, there is neither One.
Ifind this wildly interesting because Freud is supposed to be a chauvinist, but his statement applies equally to men: "...men are impossible to bear, a source of eternal nuisance, but still, they are the best thing we have of their kind; without them it would be even worse. So if man does not exist, woman is perhaps simply a man who thinks he does not exist." Jacques Lacan made an addendum to this statement that went "Woman is the symptom of man" which is again, equal to saying "Man is the symptom of woman" but also, "Woman is the fantasy of Man".
Zizek tells that in psychoanalysis personal enjoyment is bound up with personal suffering, in the sense that psychic displeasure or, the symptom, takes root in the inadequacy of the self as it relates the its surroundings. Conversely, fantasy as the object of personal pleasure, takes root in the inadequacy of surroundings as it relates to the self. Psychoanalysis then is the uncovering of the symptom to dissolve its corresponding fantasy. But, this symptom/fantasy conventionally returns because (another quote by Freud) "You must identify yourself with the place where your symptom already was; in all its pathology you will recognize the element which gives consistency to your being."
This means that at the root of our craziness lies the fundamental expression of who we are. And so, treatment of the symptom/fantasy is directed at the forms in which these expressions take place. If the opposite sex is the subject of our dreams and yet our worst nightmare, it is only because we are experiencing in them what is closest to ourselves: ourselves.
Thus I believe we can reformulate Freud's words (yet somewhat paradoxically) to say "woman is the greatest pleasure, a source of eternal joy, but still, she is the worst thing that has happened to us; if woman does exist, man is caught in her image, a plaything of self reflection". I think Freud had a healthy taste for cynicism about the way we see ourselves. Cynical, but not prejudiced. The whole idea is that without this mutual appropriation of the other for the purpose of becoming ourselves, the whole game is over; without the Other, there is neither One.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Notes from: Jacques Ranciere "The Politics of Disagreement"
Chapter 1: The Beginning of Politics
In this brief chapter, Ranciere through a critique of two patriarchs of political philosophy, Aristotle and Plato, introduces a notion of the of politics and its origin (the chapter title kind of gives that away). He also discusses the nature of class in society, and the counting of class which I suppose in normal language could translate as status. It is in dispute of the status between classes that politics begins.
He begins with Aristotle's 'Politics' where it is posited that man is a political animal by nature, owing to his ability of speech. This separates him from other animals who merely possess voice. Speech allows us to communicate what useful and just, and it is a view in common regarding these that defines a household and a state. Plato theorizes justice of the state through his critique of a guy named Thrasymachus (say that twelve times fast) who was a social darwinist of sorts, positing simply that one persons profit is another's loss (two terms spoken of loosely), and he uses this principle to define and legitimize the order of the state as the dominion of the strongest, in Ranciere's words 'what is useful in the order of individuals'. What T_ has left out is any sense of right or wrong and therefore any concept of justice. Furthermore, the preventing of wrongs also fails to provide us with a framework for justice in society, because addressing society means to speak of what is held in common. Aristotle taught that justice is a matter of each individual and class taking a fair share of desirable and undesirable things, or each his due, perhaps we could say he views it as a balance between entitlements and responsibilities. Plato held a similar theory, that of an intelligent ordering of society, a separate placing of men according to their natural talents.
This is the point where R_ takes issue with both of our patriarchs, and perhaps why they are both taken together, because to order society in any sense it is necessary to account for its parts, and this very count is what determines the distribution of roles and entitlements. It is this count and distribution that lays the framework for an attempt at an intelligent or Just ordering, however it is also the basis of a fundamental miscount, a mis-distribution. Philosophies project was to establish a society based a natural order, that sought to find a correct place for everyone. But there is always an asymmetrical disjunction, a tension between this order which escapes any symmetrical evaluation. In R_'s words, "the sum never equals the whole." The miscount of society's parts gives us in classical modes of statecraft, a structural inequality, a fundamental wronging which is the focus of a dispute original to politics. The subject of this wrong has carried various names; Plebian, Proletarian, the Poor, but in principle it is a group that is entitled to no entitled place of their own. The struggle of politics then, is a break from the established order for the setting up of a part for a class who has no part (or those who are counted in a way that does not count). R_ is very specific about the nature of this subject who, as those who have no part, the miscounted, must place themselves in the center of a dispute for the right to a dispute, for a right to politics, which is nothing other than politics itself.
What he is getting at I believe, is that there are and always have been people to varying degrees, who have no say and or status in society, except an absence of status. There are entitlements available to small quantities, and in the hands of those who are deciding stand entire peoples who have no entitlements or place except the place that is either handed down to them, or available to anyone, which is to say in many cases no place at all. The first dispute that may be called political is above all, about the right to litigate a dispute. Although in his analysis he takes the classics as his starting point, I think the argument is equally applicable to a modern society and farther reaching than areas conventionally labeled as political. It addresses something very basic about social roles that can be observed in daily situations where there are boundaries for our behavior at every turn, and customary postures for every interaction. And so there is a notion of an order that holds society together, and an ethics which binds us as a unitary whole. For the rest of society this is good and useful, but when in the balance of this order one of its members is conventionally discounted or held in the peripheral, there lays a social wronging, a wrong whose redress is by definition, political in nature.
In this brief chapter, Ranciere through a critique of two patriarchs of political philosophy, Aristotle and Plato, introduces a notion of the of politics and its origin (the chapter title kind of gives that away). He also discusses the nature of class in society, and the counting of class which I suppose in normal language could translate as status. It is in dispute of the status between classes that politics begins.
He begins with Aristotle's 'Politics' where it is posited that man is a political animal by nature, owing to his ability of speech. This separates him from other animals who merely possess voice. Speech allows us to communicate what useful and just, and it is a view in common regarding these that defines a household and a state. Plato theorizes justice of the state through his critique of a guy named Thrasymachus (say that twelve times fast) who was a social darwinist of sorts, positing simply that one persons profit is another's loss (two terms spoken of loosely), and he uses this principle to define and legitimize the order of the state as the dominion of the strongest, in Ranciere's words 'what is useful in the order of individuals'. What T_ has left out is any sense of right or wrong and therefore any concept of justice. Furthermore, the preventing of wrongs also fails to provide us with a framework for justice in society, because addressing society means to speak of what is held in common. Aristotle taught that justice is a matter of each individual and class taking a fair share of desirable and undesirable things, or each his due, perhaps we could say he views it as a balance between entitlements and responsibilities. Plato held a similar theory, that of an intelligent ordering of society, a separate placing of men according to their natural talents.
This is the point where R_ takes issue with both of our patriarchs, and perhaps why they are both taken together, because to order society in any sense it is necessary to account for its parts, and this very count is what determines the distribution of roles and entitlements. It is this count and distribution that lays the framework for an attempt at an intelligent or Just ordering, however it is also the basis of a fundamental miscount, a mis-distribution. Philosophies project was to establish a society based a natural order, that sought to find a correct place for everyone. But there is always an asymmetrical disjunction, a tension between this order which escapes any symmetrical evaluation. In R_'s words, "the sum never equals the whole." The miscount of society's parts gives us in classical modes of statecraft, a structural inequality, a fundamental wronging which is the focus of a dispute original to politics. The subject of this wrong has carried various names; Plebian, Proletarian, the Poor, but in principle it is a group that is entitled to no entitled place of their own. The struggle of politics then, is a break from the established order for the setting up of a part for a class who has no part (or those who are counted in a way that does not count). R_ is very specific about the nature of this subject who, as those who have no part, the miscounted, must place themselves in the center of a dispute for the right to a dispute, for a right to politics, which is nothing other than politics itself.
What he is getting at I believe, is that there are and always have been people to varying degrees, who have no say and or status in society, except an absence of status. There are entitlements available to small quantities, and in the hands of those who are deciding stand entire peoples who have no entitlements or place except the place that is either handed down to them, or available to anyone, which is to say in many cases no place at all. The first dispute that may be called political is above all, about the right to litigate a dispute. Although in his analysis he takes the classics as his starting point, I think the argument is equally applicable to a modern society and farther reaching than areas conventionally labeled as political. It addresses something very basic about social roles that can be observed in daily situations where there are boundaries for our behavior at every turn, and customary postures for every interaction. And so there is a notion of an order that holds society together, and an ethics which binds us as a unitary whole. For the rest of society this is good and useful, but when in the balance of this order one of its members is conventionally discounted or held in the peripheral, there lays a social wronging, a wrong whose redress is by definition, political in nature.
Monday, February 23, 2009
The Re-politicization of Ordinary Things
For my first blog on this site, I would like to present a humble idea relating to an opinion I've held for some time now, being that American politics, and perhaps politics of the "First World' in general have become a somewhat stale and irrelevant undertaking for ordinary people, and fail to touch upon everyday issues and things in our immediate reality. When we take a close look at recent history and compare our institutions with those of other countries, political inclusion and participation appear to be on a sharp decline, while apathy appears to be ever more common. Often the problem appears as something of a general separation of the political process from everyday life, or as something inaccessible to many people. I've encountered a few plausible explanations for this (I'm not the only one apparently), that I will enumerate presently. If you are reading this blog and want to add something, comment, or disagree, please feel free.
1. Chantal Mouffe posits that the various political action groups, from the feminists, those fighting for racial equality, to the environmentalists etc, while undertaking politics for their own struggles have failed in general to evoke a common ground, or a struggle for politics in general. This has left the various groups all being a one-off in the process, on their own, and an exception to an otherwise exclusive political process.
2. Ernesto Laclau citing the failings of Marxism and the success of various groups throughout the 20th century, comments on the need for groups to touch on actual keystone issues of human interest and salience, where most still appropriate outmoded ideologies, political programmes, and pseudo-social sciences. More importantly he identifies politics as something more than lobbying or voting, propaganda etc. Effective politics is a social undertaking relating to identity, ideology, values, and it responds directly to expressed needs. It embraces a full range of human experiences and social dynamics, and is therefore more than a process, it is a social movement, one that we haven't seen for some time.
3. Here I will lump together various 'institution' theories. I term them so because they relate to the structure of the political apparatus itself. As early as Aristotle and Plato (not yet irrelevant), politics was supposed to be a medium of public will (whoever the public may include) managed by men of leisure, that is, persons of aristocracy, for the simple reason that working people do not possess the resources and time necessary for such undertakings. This is why Marx envisioned a "Vanguard of the Proletariat." Our institutions bear the mark of this arrangement, relating to our history of arrangements, and upon observation this reality 2000 years later continues to hold strong. For example, what percentage of our public and appointed offices are held by wealthy lawyers and industry captains? That information is somewhere in the book "Who Rules America?'" by G. William Domhoff (http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/), I don't remember it exactly. In his opinion, American government has been constructed in such a way that policy is extremely difficult to be constructed and enacted, and as such, it is groups with the largest budgets that win out. In this way, the public is effectively shut out by a completely unrewarding process. Furthermore, as my professor Simon Gomez often pointed out, a political education is more expensive than is its payoff. This seems very smart to me. Mounting a very fragmented media landscape is a difficult task for someone interested in something very basic like the background of their political candidates. In many cases it appears to be a collective failure on the part of media to provide acessible, unbiased and usefull information. A lot of people probably get frustrated and don't bother.
4. Jacques Ranciere is frustrated with modern conceptions of politics that appear to be more akin to ideas of social management rather than ideas of participation and involvement. Representation, policy, and government in general fall into this charecterization. Not that representative systems are deaf to public needs, and cannot be channels of positive change, but that the system itself adresses the general populace from a standpoint of management, a quasi-policing that occurs at the level of policy. The undertakings of government are further enumerations of an allready established order, one whose stake is in maintaining itself intact, against the throws of 'intrusive' counter movements. As early as Machiavelli, and with a more critical approach by Etienne de la Boetie, political systems were said to have the capacity to persuade a public to its consent. Politics occurs when there is a viable and momentous challenge to the estabished order, (like Laclau) a proliferation of political identities, and (like Mouffe) an assertion of equality that evokes a common space for politics to take place. He defines this idea as 'Democratic Exceptionalism' because politics is in general a very rare exception the Rule.
I personally see the merits of all of these ideas. I believe interest groups should work for a common political involvement and that they have failed in doing that, I also think a salient politics has a basis in social and cultural inscriptions, and that the institutions that politics would play themselves out in are very resilient to popular intrusions, highly complex, and most excessible to those who have the means. I think we have fooled ourselves into thinking that voting once or twice a year gives us a claim to participation or democracy. I'm sure that there are power structures in many other places than the level of policy-making that our elected representatives c/would respond to anyways. All too often politics is mentioned in relation to something most of us have very little to do or say about, and is thus something left to the authorities, or the experts. Because of this I find it hard to imagine why most people wouldn't display some kind of political apathy...which brings me to my own humble idea, that of the re-politicization of ordinary things, especially the things that carry with them an abiding anti-polical status.
Consider for a moment how much involvement you or any of your friends have in making the decisions that that create lasting changes in the very place around you. Your neighborhood, your job, your apartment, your neighborhood police, traffic court, family services, financial institutions etc etc and on to the things around you, like common commodities and household items. How much of any of this bears the mark of a collective or popular will? For example, do you really want your shoes to be constructed by asian childeren in dangerous working conditions? If yes, for you it is ok, but if not, then there is ground for a claim to be made, not only for humane treatment of employees in its production, but full disclosure to the consumer regarding the details of its production. I think people should recognize that everything around us has a political dimension, whether it be expressed as an object of dispute, that is, overtly politivcal, or purely in anti-political terms of something undisputed. Every political act begins with the dispute of a claim, and every movement begins with the mourning of wrongs and a means to redress them. So please, please go do something about it.
1. Chantal Mouffe posits that the various political action groups, from the feminists, those fighting for racial equality, to the environmentalists etc, while undertaking politics for their own struggles have failed in general to evoke a common ground, or a struggle for politics in general. This has left the various groups all being a one-off in the process, on their own, and an exception to an otherwise exclusive political process.
2. Ernesto Laclau citing the failings of Marxism and the success of various groups throughout the 20th century, comments on the need for groups to touch on actual keystone issues of human interest and salience, where most still appropriate outmoded ideologies, political programmes, and pseudo-social sciences. More importantly he identifies politics as something more than lobbying or voting, propaganda etc. Effective politics is a social undertaking relating to identity, ideology, values, and it responds directly to expressed needs. It embraces a full range of human experiences and social dynamics, and is therefore more than a process, it is a social movement, one that we haven't seen for some time.
3. Here I will lump together various 'institution' theories. I term them so because they relate to the structure of the political apparatus itself. As early as Aristotle and Plato (not yet irrelevant), politics was supposed to be a medium of public will (whoever the public may include) managed by men of leisure, that is, persons of aristocracy, for the simple reason that working people do not possess the resources and time necessary for such undertakings. This is why Marx envisioned a "Vanguard of the Proletariat." Our institutions bear the mark of this arrangement, relating to our history of arrangements, and upon observation this reality 2000 years later continues to hold strong. For example, what percentage of our public and appointed offices are held by wealthy lawyers and industry captains? That information is somewhere in the book "Who Rules America?'" by G. William Domhoff (http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/), I don't remember it exactly. In his opinion, American government has been constructed in such a way that policy is extremely difficult to be constructed and enacted, and as such, it is groups with the largest budgets that win out. In this way, the public is effectively shut out by a completely unrewarding process. Furthermore, as my professor Simon Gomez often pointed out, a political education is more expensive than is its payoff. This seems very smart to me. Mounting a very fragmented media landscape is a difficult task for someone interested in something very basic like the background of their political candidates. In many cases it appears to be a collective failure on the part of media to provide acessible, unbiased and usefull information. A lot of people probably get frustrated and don't bother.
4. Jacques Ranciere is frustrated with modern conceptions of politics that appear to be more akin to ideas of social management rather than ideas of participation and involvement. Representation, policy, and government in general fall into this charecterization. Not that representative systems are deaf to public needs, and cannot be channels of positive change, but that the system itself adresses the general populace from a standpoint of management, a quasi-policing that occurs at the level of policy. The undertakings of government are further enumerations of an allready established order, one whose stake is in maintaining itself intact, against the throws of 'intrusive' counter movements. As early as Machiavelli, and with a more critical approach by Etienne de la Boetie, political systems were said to have the capacity to persuade a public to its consent. Politics occurs when there is a viable and momentous challenge to the estabished order, (like Laclau) a proliferation of political identities, and (like Mouffe) an assertion of equality that evokes a common space for politics to take place. He defines this idea as 'Democratic Exceptionalism' because politics is in general a very rare exception the Rule.
I personally see the merits of all of these ideas. I believe interest groups should work for a common political involvement and that they have failed in doing that, I also think a salient politics has a basis in social and cultural inscriptions, and that the institutions that politics would play themselves out in are very resilient to popular intrusions, highly complex, and most excessible to those who have the means. I think we have fooled ourselves into thinking that voting once or twice a year gives us a claim to participation or democracy. I'm sure that there are power structures in many other places than the level of policy-making that our elected representatives c/would respond to anyways. All too often politics is mentioned in relation to something most of us have very little to do or say about, and is thus something left to the authorities, or the experts. Because of this I find it hard to imagine why most people wouldn't display some kind of political apathy...which brings me to my own humble idea, that of the re-politicization of ordinary things, especially the things that carry with them an abiding anti-polical status.
Consider for a moment how much involvement you or any of your friends have in making the decisions that that create lasting changes in the very place around you. Your neighborhood, your job, your apartment, your neighborhood police, traffic court, family services, financial institutions etc etc and on to the things around you, like common commodities and household items. How much of any of this bears the mark of a collective or popular will? For example, do you really want your shoes to be constructed by asian childeren in dangerous working conditions? If yes, for you it is ok, but if not, then there is ground for a claim to be made, not only for humane treatment of employees in its production, but full disclosure to the consumer regarding the details of its production. I think people should recognize that everything around us has a political dimension, whether it be expressed as an object of dispute, that is, overtly politivcal, or purely in anti-political terms of something undisputed. Every political act begins with the dispute of a claim, and every movement begins with the mourning of wrongs and a means to redress them. So please, please go do something about it.
Not Just-So
How does one go about presenting a simple everyday item as an object of social inquiry and on that basis consider a political claim with say, something like a cup of coffee? Well, coffee is an item of immense trade and commoditization, from the plantations, wholesale trade, massive roasting sites, in short from the farmer to the barista, the coffee bean is spun into a complex web of social/economic relationships and procurement on a grand scale, like most commodities. Yet if one were asked what sat in front of him or her at a cafe or a local Tim Hortans, they would probably find humor in the question. Of course it is a cup coffee! The instantaneous intuitions response hands over its most immediate and obvious object. "It is coffee, I just bought it." In most contexts, an item is treated as a thing in itself, or in this case 'just a cup of coffee'. But for our purpose, the thing in itself gives very little room for inquiry into a social dimension or a critical understanding to any stage of its procurement, as it is. Property rights, also offer very little to the discerning eye. Thus, we may begin to question the validity of such a just-so status. For a social consciousness to emerge in this context, one is required to look farther into the object at hand, and engage in understanding the history of that very object, the modes of procurement, and the institutions that legitimize it and so on, in this case I would say, we should look into the context of coffee consumerism.
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