For the new year

"I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought; hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish from myself today, and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year - what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth. I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer." - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science.

'Yass yes yes...' he said, rubbing his belly.

'Segregation? Not since 1994...'

My father and I gave a lift to two men who work at the house where we were staying. We took them to their home, a township 30 miles outside Bloemfontein called Botshabelo.
Sam and Willem, father and son, tend the vegetables in addition to working for a furniture restoration business. They are employed by my step-mother's father, an imposing man who on first impression bears out Nietzsche's claim that "anyone with a very loud voice is almost incapable of thinking subtleties." He is, on the contrary, however, a complex and interesting man who overflows with generosity, hypnotic power, and booming laughter.

On arrival at Sam's house, he introduced us to his wife, and showed us around. It was hot, since there was no ceiling - only an asbestos roof; but the house did have electricity and running water, which is something of an advancement.
Botshabelo, we discovered, is a town of its own, with a shopping centre and different districts. Two things distinguish it from any 'normal' town - there are not street and area names, but codes made up of numbers and letters (Sam's home is in K section). Secondly, in the hour and a half that we spent there, I saw only one white person, a farmer driving in his car.
The apartheid planners left quite a legacy. Botshabelo, which began as a settlement for those forcibly removed from more rural areas, is too far from Bloemfontein to attract anyone else to live there. In the 'new' South Africa, it is (slightly) more possible for black men and women to lift themselves out of township poverty, but there seems to be little likelihood that a town such as Botshabelo ever develops into a vibrant and diverse place to live. This is very unfortunate, since it has a certain good character. As is the way in this wretched country however, my father and I were warned not to get out of the car, lest the 'dark hordes' have their way with us. Foolish nonsense! (which, I am coming to realize, is not so harmless as all that.)
After unloading Sam's bags, we headed over to meet his brother, who runs a small liquor store from his house. He invited us into his living room for a beer (in fact, we initially invited ourselves, because of a mix up which involved my father mistakenly thinking we were in an illegal drinking establishment). Nonetheless, we all sat down and talked, about local football (Kaizer Chiefs is the name of a club as well as a band) and morogo, a food made from potato and spinach.

Bloemfontein

My South African odyssey has taken me to Bloemfontein, a large town in Free State province. It is a relaxing place for me, because I do not know it well, and it does not know me well. I am freed from the wealthy middle-class rut of my home town.
Yesterday afternoon, I took a long walk on the wide, dry boulevards. I had been given directions, but I decided this time to get the 'conditions of possibility' to work for me. It is a condition of possibility of a planned walk that the route be deviated from (if this were not the case, it would mean that I could walk in any direction and still get home). Deviate I did, into some rather rundown districts; you know you are getting to the interesting parts of a town when sex-shops begin to appear. I saw very poor white men, an unusual experience even now. They have very tanned skin, which contrasts with their sun-bleached blonde hair. There is a broken look in their eyes.

Stumbling along the hard shoulder, I found a chess piece in the gutter - a rook, or castle. The castle symbolizes Bloemfontein well. The white, afrikaans speaking community here is a bastion of the old values of apartheid. This is a place where men are men, women are not much at all, and body-building supplements have a prominent place in every supermarket. On the other hand, black Sotho-speakers make up 90% of the population here, and since the fall of the old regime, they have come to occupy almost all the important regional government posts. A castle, we may note, doesn't change hands by degree - it is held either totally, or not at all.

Ants

I see two ants crawling - walking - towards one another. They meet and pause for a few moments, perhaps slightly longer than usual. How do I interpret, or understand, this?
Were I to see two humans meet, I would speculate about whether they know each other, are old friends, etc, depending on how long they remain together (if they are too distant to for me to see gestures and hear voices). With the ants, I cannot posit any self-awareness. Even if the ant has some sort of information, or message, to convey, I must think of this in purely functionalist terms. The ant has not been given a task - rather, this is simply something that ants do. And this in turn must be conceived instinctually. Can we make an analogy with breathing, or the beating of the heart? Or would this conception force us to consider an ant colony as a single organism (and if so, what is the problem with this)?

Report from South Africa III: the long goodbye

Leaving my house in Coventry at 3am presented two main dangers: rain, and drunken revellers. Rain threatened, and drunken revellers impressed me with their cogency.

"What are you doing with a suitcase at this time of night?" asked a girl, who felt that I was more interesting than the argument that she was having with her boyfriend. Before I could respond, she squealed "you're getting married, aren't you?!"
Smiling no, I withdrew.

Report from South Africa II: the good old days

To atone for my previous post - an ill tempered diatribe - I present a selection of 'humourous' excerpts from apartheid discourse.

We do not believe that the Native is really a communist at heart. He is not able to form a conception of the ideology and of the dialectical materialism of their doctrine. - Dr N Diederichs, House of Assembly, 1948.

A large proportion of your Natives today are still savages, others are semi-civilized, others are more or less civilized. - Minister of Justice, 1959.

In the past the torch of civilization had been kept burning in the country because "among other things our forefathers were such good shots." - Minister of Defence, 1961.

Mata Buela, 36, was fined R30 (or two months) this week, for stealing a banana. The value of the banana was placed at one cent. It was his first conviction. - Newspaper report, 1961.

At least ten people have now died in Mamelodi since yesterday morning, according to unconfirmed reports. The figure is expected to rise after police have completed their investigations. - Newpaper report, 1985.

A 13-year-old African babysitter appeared in court on a charge of assault because he hugged a white child in his charge. He had knelt down and opened his arms, and the little girl had run to him and they had hugged. - Newspaper report, 1985.

I don't think I need add anything to this, except perhaps the words "scott free?"

Report from South Africa I: Hegel

I am on holiday in Cape Town. I should like to say one or two things about what we might call the 'situation' here. That is not to say, the political situation. Rather, the situation in general.

I am already fed up with the tiresome fawning of people working in the service industry. Buying a coffee, for example, feels more like an encounter with some deluded supplicant: the customer is a deity, whose every wish is granted. The waiter/shop assistant clings to the customer like a cheap suit.

This creates a rather problematic relationship, which Hegel understood particularly well. People here - South Africa - expect to be treated like royalty when in a shop or restaurant. Staff duly oblige ('you are dispensable - there are ten people who would happily take your place here'). But we cannot help but ask: what kind of esteem is this?
'I am a king - see how they treat me!'
The 'they' is elusive, like Hegel's subhuman slave.
Who could truly value the worship of these coerced, subservient wretches? Only a bunch of deluded fools. The kind of deluded fools who could convince themselves that apartheid is right and good, perhaps? Well, we needn't go that far. Yet.

The spirit of apartheid is still very much alive. I must emphasize, however, that I am not only talking about black service staff. The same lamentable self-abasement is demonstrated by white student jobbers, and shopkeepers.
The petty desire for wielding power over others, which was a condition of possibility for apartheid, is now satisfied by our 'legitimate' capitalist regime.
'I don't care whether he is black or white - I want him to lick my boots because I have paid for the privilege!'

Rousing rhetoric or messianic twaddle?

'Gentlemen' he said,
I don't need your organisation,
I've shined your shoes,
I've moved your mountains and marked your cards,
But Eden is burning,
Either get ready for elimination,
Or else your hearts must have the courage for the changing of the guards.

nnnnnnnnnnnnn nnnn- Bob Dylan, Changing of the Guards

Dogmat circulates

O end of term dilemmas! Which party to go to? In the final analysis, I chose the path of least resistance: Matches' birthday bash. I gave him a rather fetching old copy of short stories by Bertrand Russell, a suitable gift for the continentally challenged.

After a thoroughly useless Saturday, I thought that a quiet spot of red tea would do the world of good. And it did. I had a few interesting talks with people. My opening gambit of the evening was "if you had to choose between a person getting killed, or the Mona Lisa being destroyed, which would you go for?" This was a discussion that I had been having during the day, with Lila, Axel, and, later, Brn. Does it sound like a piece of philosophical impoverishment? Yes, well, ole Danny Dennett talks about it somewhere in one of his popular science works (the book just happened to fall open on this - obviously well thumbed - page while Axel was perusing it), and it certainly has all the hallmarks of an irritating Anglo-Saxon thought experiment. And yet...

I also had the good luck to chat to a Norwegian physics student, who gracefully explained what Wave-Particle Duality means, why the sky is blue, what a quantum computer can do (and why), and how a hologram works. What's more, he enjoyed it, unlike the last physics student I happened upon at a party, whom I coerced into explaining the theory of relativity, with diagrams, equations - the works.

As nights draw in, academic gossip intensifies. Glueboot emailed me the other day, to tell me that our new VC (who'll be replacing Marty Vanderpoot) has written on Deleuze and Virilio. Maybe we can wonder how much he can have learnt from these thinkers considering that he is now an administrative bigwig, but maybe that isn't necessary - it is good news all the same.
I also heard a piece of broken telephone speculation which seems so unbelievable that it would be irresponsible to reproduce it here...
A Baudrillardian friend told me that he was told that Professor Elusive-Hyphen wrote an email to every member of our philosophy department saying simply: "If you want all the Continental philosophers to leave, just say so."
Even if this tale isn't true, or has been distorted beyond recognition, I want to believe it. I find it comforting to know that at least one of my teachers has some cojones. Dammit!

Later, I had been trying to describe the difference between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty to a Wittgensteinian pal, when we were interrupted by someone drunkenly frolicking.
When we resumed our discussion, he said: "What were we talking about again? Oh yeah, Wittgenstein..."
No, we were actually talking about phenomenology you fuckwit.

Hup hup. Forty-two! Sixty-seven! Go long!

American Football is such a strange sport. Like the way that the game is broken up endlessly, and the time between plays filled with studio analysts' inane drivel. They waffle about taxicab problems, or how much money they have bet on the game. When they think that play is about to begin, they cross over to the US commentators, who are picked up mid-sentence, so all the viewer hears is gruff laughter followed by "that's right John..., now back to the action."
And they say cricket is odd.

Google Maps

What an innovation - here is an image of the neighbourhood where I grew up (my house is in the centre). And note that it is possible to zoom-in still further, for extreme detail.

You know you are bored when...

...you try to temper tinfoil on the stove, whilst waiting for the coffee pot to boil.

Arbeit Macht Frei

More unusual days. I was with S is some sort of postgraduate room near the philosophy department. What began as a little look at the Goebbels Diaries (which happened to be on the shelf), ended up as an investigation into Prussian Blue, a rather fascinating white-supremacist pop duo. Following up links, we stumbled around in neo-Nazi blogs, which are quite nasty but very difficult to take seriously. There was the charming young blogger named simply fraulein, who listed as her dislikes "gays and mix people" (sic). An honest, but shamefaced lad described his hair colour as "umm, brown". He won't be given an easy ride, that's for sure.
At least some bloggers were still trying to keep something of an open mind. One chap listed as his favourite books Mein Kampf and 100 Years of Solitude. Now I reckon only one of those is on the KKK bestseller list.

After that madness I went to a rather good concert with M and Lila. This was an unfortunate turn of events for my housemate, Axel, who had mistakenly locked himself in the lounge at home. When Lila and I returned to the house later that night, we found him stoically settled on the couch, watching DVDs. Poor poor boy.

Kids: don't do ddrugs

It was halfway through scoffing a caffeine tablet last night that I had the shocking revelation that it wasn't of the 'chewable' variety. Not a pleasant experience. I don't know why I bother - they are such pathetic little things, barely extending my concentration span by more than twenty minutes. How I long for the days when stimulants were stimulants and philosophers went blind at fifty. Take that old favourite, Corydrane (discontinued). It doesn't just keep you awake, it gives you to think. Sadly, in Sartre's case, it also gave ill health which ultimately led to his death (always read the label).

A ceasefire for Christmas? Like hell...

Things are bad in Britain today. This is dawning on me. We could blame it on the slavish middle Englanders with their Daily Mail and their ressentiment; we could blame it on the the complete dominance of capitalism - a dominance which has no outside, which rules out any conception of true opposition. Everything has become "recuperable", in the language of the marxists. Culture, literature, film: all reduced to commodities. Of course this has been said many times before. But the horror of it can only be appreciated when it is experienced, when one is struck by the realisation that all those dark claims about this and that sorry state of affairs, were not simplifications or mistaken misanthropy. We can shrug when sitting on the bus, listening to M shouting about how London winning the Olympics and the philosophy of mind coup d'etat in our department are "the same thing." Except that I am realising, for all the silliness of it, that maybe he was right.

I had the radio on in the background the other evening, when a programme began. It was called Composer's Notes. "Ah", I thought, "maybe I can learn a thing or two about music." Can you imagine my dismay at discovering, within a few seconds, that the show was all about how much money a composer was paid for his work.
"Rimsky-Korsakov: rich or poor? Let's find out!" To this, I can say only one thing - Firing squad.

In other news. The latest departmental shenanigans have developed out of two issues: i) the gradual metamorphosis of the 'history of philosophy' into the 'history of British philosophy'. Less Spinoza and Leibniz, more Hobbes, Mill, Bentham etc, and Kant being made optional for joint honours students and pushed into the final year (if my memory serves me correctly - I do have more important things to think about, you know). What follows from this is that Post-Kantian philosophy gets completely marginalised, and will eventually fall away completely.
And ii) a ridiculous selection panel for the new 'aesthetics' post in the department. Dave Distiller knows his mind, but I doubt he knows anything about the philosophy of art. 'Analytic aesthetics' is a contradictio in adjecto if ever there was one.

While those cunning guttersnipes are raping and pillaging their way through the prospects for continental philosophy next year, this year's students have arranged an interdisciplinary football match. Think of the game played between Tommy and the Fritz on Christmas day during WWI. Except that this is more like WWII, in terms of enmity and war crimes.

A beautiful film

La Règle du jeu

My occasional forays into k-punk's blog have been rewarded with today's rather interesting post on Zizek send-ups, and how to get "down and dirty" with alternative economics.

Xavière

Sitting with my coffee, I began to listen to a conversation two students were having at the table next to mine (eavesdropping, I know, but unavoidable). I'd seen them come in; one had blonde hair, a slightly foreign accent and a russian-looking face (if there is such a thing). The other unmemorable: I don't remember. I could hear the accented voice talking about a man she was attracted to, but who was involved with someone else. "I don't want to break them up" she said. The friend mumbled platitudes.
"I'll make friends with him - surely there is nothing wrong with being friends." The unmemorable one didn't answer: it wasn't a rhetorical question to elicit advice, just a bold statement of fact.
I began to think of Xavière, Beauvoir's ill-fated character in She Came to Stay. I didn't like Xavière. She infuriated me.
My neighbour reminded me of Xavière: the terrible mixture of naivité and diabolical intent; the sense of impending disaster. She forces everyone who encounters her to realise that this world isn't a Schopenhauerian world.
One moment in her company will be infused with indescribable shades of exhilaration, followed by another of almost farcical exasperation.
'Suffering and boredom', my pessimistic German friend?

'The sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space'

Brn and I were standing outside the library in the freezing cold. I was trying to explain to him Derek Parfit's view of personal identity (which Parfit elaborated with some wild thought experiments). Our talk progressed as follows: I would say something about branching chains of psychological continuity, and he would ask me about rhizomes. I would attempt to explicate the difficulty I was having with memory on Parfit's schema, and he would reply with the bergsonist complaint that Parfit (and just about all other analytic philosophers) cannot really think time.
Fascinating stuff. Less fascinating for the fact that I was about to make a presentation on the topic.
Looming deadlines notwithstanding, our confabulation moved on to more fertile ground. Derrida and Bataille, and the notion of 'gift'. There were times reading the Accursed Share when I felt that Bataille wasn't being radical enough in his analysis. His interpretation of the function of potlatch in various societies remained (I thought) closely bound to capitalist conceptions of exchange value. Gifts are given in return for esteem. Brn held that this is very different from how things are today: that it was precisely the act of giving which symbolized power and wealth in times past. Perhaps this is close to what Deleuze means when he says that the will to power consists not in taking, but in creating and giving.

In any case, Brn went on to say that he thought my issue was similar to something Derrida wrote on the topic; that we cannot explain the gift except in terms of an economy. Now my knowledge of Derrida's work is negligible, so forgive me if I have misunderstood.
This problem of the gift reminds me of the puzzle of motivation, which is usually encountered when thinking about egoism. Every act is motivated, so surely, they say, all action is in some sense egoistical. No, I always think: but why not? Likewise for the gift - it is impossible for me to conceive of a gift which is not reciprocated. There must be exchange, or the hope of exchange, for, as a purely giving being, I cannot survive.
What I wanted from Bataille was an account of the gift which is never reciprocated, and whose reciprocation is not even hoped for. Only then will the structure of capitalist transaction be called into question. Of course, the difficult part is removing oneself from any and all systems of economy: on the plane of motivation, this is what Kant, amongst others, tried - and failed - to do with his categorical imperative.
In the short time we spent standing in the cold, we could only think of two ways to accomodate pure giving: to accept death as the outcome, or to embrace irrationality and madness.

Merleau-Ponty and the 'racaille'

Writing sixty-years ago, Maurice Merleau-Ponty foretells the explanatory mechanisms used to anaesthetize the behaviour of urban french youths, turning potentially revolutionary activity into mere vandalism.
We do not want to say, along with most of the mainstream media, that "we have here blind, 'elementary forces' cleverly exploited by a few shrewd agitators. It is possibly in this light that the prefect of police will view history." -Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (my italics)

That friday feeling

I had a post-kantian philosophy seminar a little earlier, in which I only uttered two words: "pineal gland" (an artist's impression, right).

Idle waffle

What fun. After a few weeks of teaching, my lecturers feel that they can relax in the company of their students. Good news for bottom-feeding pseudo-intellectual gossip blogs like mine.
Doctor Ampere shocked students with a diatribe on the evils of marketing. Advertising can never be art: those who direct their creative efforts towards increasing the sales of goods and services are "removed from the artistic register forever."
He also dismissed those shock-artists who, in effect, do nothing more than "piss around in the media". He then articulated a more subtle position, distinguishing between truly radical art and shite (elephant shite?).

Professor Elusive-Hyphen, on the other hand, showed his contempt for student opinion in a more hostile and daring way. During a lecture on Nietzsche, a Rag Week mob knocked on the door to the hall. "Five minutes for charity?" they ejaculated.
Elusive-Hyphen thought for a moment, then said distinctly: "No. No, not at all." When they were gone, he marvelled at their insolence: "Five minutes for charity...I was in the middle of a line of thought...no way...fuck off. Five minutes...charity...yes, fuck off."
This was met with stunned silence, followed by the nervous pawing of Make Poverty History wristbands.

By the by, I bumped into Dave Distiller in the loo yesterday, and I realised that you never really know a professor until you have heard him say "a phenomenological account of transcendental arguments" with his penis in his hand.

Not sleeping, but thinking

I was getting a glass of water at a campus cafeteria when I overheard a customer say to an absent-looking friend of his working behind the counter: "Are you sleeping?"
The friend replied: "No, I'm thinking."

We live in busy times: if you don't look frenzied and stressed, then people think you're some kind of drop-out. All those dynamic students at the business school: they've already bought next-year's Travelcard, in anticipation of a bright future in the City.

As for my future: well I can't bear the thought of returning to the Buerkbeck lifestyle, of a mindless day's work followed by a nap in some lecture theatre or other (whilst a Grayling prattles on about epistemic castration), and I haven't much chance of securing funding for further study. I would like to say that this is because 'strictly academic' writing doesn't agree with me, or because I do not ingratiate myself with the faculty members; but this would give the impression that I am following Beckett's dictum, to "try again, fail again, fail better." On the contrary, mediocrity seems to cling to me - I can't convince myself to be any better than 'fairly good', to emerge from my torpor. Yes, I work fairly hard, I am fairly erudite. I have a moderate appetite for knowledge. But this isn't at all satisfactory.

Of course, I am not in a position to make the same sort of witty remarks as Spurious; and I wouldn't want to claim that the 'success stories' of academia are talentless automatons churning out paper after paper and book after endless book. But I do feel that philosophy has come to be viewed as a career choice like any other, to be pursued like a career in finance or law. Ruthlessness is required, along with a talent for 'ticking all the right boxes'
Is this thinking? Is this the only way to open up possibilities for thinking?
Perhaps a careers advisor can help me...

Paul Auster

The article in this weekend's paper reminded me of my former love for Auster's work. I don't dislike his writing, it's just that I feel I have moved on. Mind you, I did read Siri Hustvedt's first novel lately, and I very much enjoyed it (maybe a little popular for some tastes).

I once had a wonderful dream about the two of them (they are married). They had thrown a party at their house, and I was on the balcony talking to Hustvedt. Since this was before I'd read any of her books, I actually wanted to speak to Auster. It was a tricky situation: I remember feeling so honoured to be speaking to a well-known writer, yet feeling anguished and desperate about making it across the crowded room to speak to my hero.
And so the surrealists are refuted: even etiquette has a place in the illogical world of dreams.

Flies

Sitting in the library yesterday, wrestling with the Kantian sublime, something rather odd occurred. The flies in the library are drawn to the fluorescent lighting, throwing themselves against the hot bulbs. This makes them incredible drowsy. One fell from the ceiling, tumbled off my head and landed on the desk. I put my hand next to him (it? her?) and he crawled over my finger. I shook my hand but he stayed rooted to the spot. What a strange sight: a black fly walking over my hand in a docile and pet-like fashion. After some seconds, he gathered the strength to fly away.

ps. Vincent Price is a dude.

Coincidence: the post that never was

Last week, on my way back from London on the coach, I saw a lorry hauling a tube carriage. A little later I saw another lorry pulling an aircraft fuselage. Whilst in London, I crossed paths with the same people twice. And this happened more than once. Let's just say that Soho's very own Abyssinian goth haunt, the Intrepid Fez, was involved - I'll say no more.

In any case, I was going to fashion this into some sort of highfalutin' commentary on coincidence, drawing on the work of Paul Auster, and Andre Breton's Nadja. But then I thought: why bother? (Plus, this way I give the impression of being interesting, without having to commit myself to anything at all.)

Lovecraft's philosopher-siren

"She was, I judge, about twenty-three at the time; and was taking a special course in mediaeval metaphysics [...] She was dark, smallish, and very good-looking except for overprotuberant eyes; but something in her expression alienated extremely sensitive people. It was, however, largely her origin and conversation which caused average folk to avoid her. [...] All animals markedly disliked her, and she could make any dog howl by certain motions of her right hand. There were times when she displayed snatches of knowledge and language very singular - and very shocking - for a young girl; when she would frighten her schoolmates with leers and winks of an inexplicable kind, and would seem to extract an obscene and zestful irony from her present situation."

-H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories.

The spiders are back

This time around they are smaller and more prone to climbing the walls than scuttling across the carpets.
I knew something was wrong when I woke up one day covered in sores. Then the other evening I captured one on the wall above my pillow. But there was worse to come - last night a tickling sensation on my neck turned out to be a small arachnid. I'd suspected some sort of creature, so I began to flick at the feeling. Lo and behold: the little feller was catapulted onto my desk, while I busied myself suppressing a yelp.

Another day, another dogmat?

The Nietzsche reading group is going from, er, strength to strength - Brn and I spent much of Saturday looking at Deleuze's little, as yet untranslated, introduction to the man. What an experience: working through the French text made me feel like a real philosopher (ok, a real scholar, but nonetheless...)
Whilst discussing Baudrillard - "are you having fun yet?" - we discovered that the worldwide success of reality show Big Brother does tell us one thing: Kant was right about the sensus communis.

The capital city of this great land

Last week, I went down to London for the day. How refreshing to be away from here!
I bought a few books and walked all over the place (strolling along the South bank of the Thames on a weekday morning is utterly marvellous).

I had dinner with my mom and my uncle in the Stockpot on Old 'Straight Outta' Compton street (anyone who lives in the capital but hasn't eaten there needs to put this right). A little earlier, I'd found myself standing in Piccadilly Circus talking over the crowd to my mother about the plot of Mulholland Drive. Unfortunately I could only remember how the story supposedly unfolds, but I don't remember why.
That rascal Socrates was right when he said in the Meno that true opinions "run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason."

Quelques choses ne changent pas...

Raffles madness

Oh the irony. All those post-colonial literature folk forced to drink their tea and coffee in a cafeteria named after the great imperialist Sir Stamford Raffles.

I was sitting there reading Nietzsche when I had a strange encounter with M and a new postgraduate student. I was telling M how much I was enjoying The Gay Science when this dude - an Irigarayan - started asking if we were 'gay scientists'. Over and over again.
M asked him if he was one and he replied while walking away: "I don't take a whip when I go to meet women." We furrowed our brows, and M duly noted that we were talking about Nietzsche, not Sade.

That was quite enough madness for one day.

Day of rest

What an odd weekend I have had. My housemates and I were feeling in something of a bataillean mood, so we decided to freeze an egg, hoping to chip the shell off and reveal a frosty egg-shaped marvel. It didn't quite work out as planned, since the 'white' didn't remain clear as we expected, but became opaque.
M asked whether, in truly excessive fashion, we urinated on the egg or pulled someone's eye out. No I replied, we didn't. We did pass the slimy defrosting object to each other, but this activity was of a non-sexual nature.

Later I forced my housemates to watch Derrida Does Dallas. Afterwards, we thought for a short while about the question posed to 'Jacqui': which philosopher would you like to have been your mother?
Except we decided to interpret the question in what might be called a more literal sense (watch the film and you will understand what I mean).
I settled on David Hume. A great thinker with a reasonably pragmatic general outlook. I don't know much about his life, but I do know, from his texts, that was a relaxed sort of chap, and that he believed there is a time and a place for sceptical doubts. For example, I think he would agree to set them aside whilst engaging in certain sorts of parental activities with me.
It would have been a whole lot easier to suggest a 20th Century philosopher for the role, such as Foucault, or a woman, such as Beauvoir, but we thought this would be cheating (let's not consider the political implications of privileging women thinkers for the role).
As for my housemates - Axel muttered a few things, but I don't remember exactly who he decided on, and Lila shouted 'Freud!' from the top of the stairs in an obscure act of defiance.

Consciousness, you say?

The obscure delights of Coventry

They never cease to amaze me. When I arrived here, I assumed that the most loathsome part of my journey to and from campus each day would be verbal, physical and psychic assaults from 'the locals'. How wrong I was: the supposedly yobbish youngsters loitering in the street provide such pleasure that I now look forward to being accosted.
Last night, for example, when walking past a group of robust-looking teenage girls, one of them broke into a Ministry of Silly Walks silly walk. What an unexpected joy. And there was nary a cuss to be heard, nor a dilated pupil to be seen.

And this was not the first time. A few months ago, a boy sidled up to me on his BMX while I was cycling home. In his best cheeky chappie voice he said: "Nice bike - wanna swop?" Now I must insist that my - racing - bike is utterly unsuited to any sort of BMX scallywaggery; he spoke in a sincere but silly tone, as though he thought that I might turn down his offer(!) Yet his remark can only be made sense of as deeply, deeply ironic: what on earth would he do with a bicycle like mine?

Last year, while walking home, I passed a family (an obese mother surrounded by raucous children of various ages) moving ('walking' is not the right word to describe this amorphous chaotic mass) in the same direction as me. As I overtook them, one of the kids asked of me: "Dude, are you the Matrix?"
Oh how I laughed - where do they come up with this stuff? And why do they make the students at my university seem so boring?

"If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but life itself - direct experience of life. The same is true for art."

Henry Miller, The Books in My Life.

Philosophical labours

I am feeling the aftershocks of my first work-through-the-night of this year. Sitting at my desk, at four this morning, puzzling over the nature of aesthetic judgements, I remembered how right Adorno was when he described proper thinking as "the strenuous toil of conceptual reflection." (Quoting Hegel's Phenomenology)

BONUS: Pictorial representation of the calamitous mental misadventures of 'conceptual reflection,' courtesy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

The petty politics of academia: What Would Nietzsche Do?

Today, I had a rather strange lecture with Professor Elusive-Hyphen. He was talking about Schopenhauer's ethics, and how the ethical life involves a denial of the will-to-life: instead we tend towards a kind of death, as the culmination of pure asceticism. He added in a quiet voice, and much to my surprise, that he didn't mean "living-death, in the way that we might say some members of the department are dead."
In fact, this startled me so much that I am tempted to doubt whether he said it at all. But he did say it. Ah, such enmity - it brings tears to my eyes.

We owe it to ourselves to speculate libellously about what exactly this cryptic statement could mean. Is he alluding to the vacant looks that he gets when attempting to talk to his colleagues about anything other than neuroscience? Or perhaps he means the zombie-like fashion in which creativity is relentlessly stifled in our accursed fackulty?

"Forgive them father, for they know not what they do..."

Step into my office...

Nietzsche and dogmat: together at last

Tomorrow morning, I shall begin my long-awaited engagement with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. I'll first tackle Beyond Good and Evil for a reading group that Brn has organised.
My true character will be revealed in the way that I am affected by Nietzsche; I expect to learn as much about myself as about the man and his thought.

The birds were out this morning. They were sitting atop television aerials, and on the chimneys. They were in a state of extreme agitation. They departed as suddenly as they arrived. Their appearance and strange behaviour was significant, oh yes! Of that my friend, there is no question.
I fear there is terrible fate in store for us.

All that reading, and yet we still talk rubbish

I spent yesterday in the library, chin-wagging in the company of Brn, a self-confessed 'bergsonismian'. I had just been reading the 'Immediate Structure of the For-itself' chapter from Being and Nothingness - what an exhausting business! I am rather fond of Sartre, but by the end of that bit, in which he tries to construe 'negation' in every possible way, I was fantasizing about Bataillean excess. It was beginning to feel like the nothingness is not in my mind but in my brain... Dear god, I'll even put up with writing essays on Deleuze and Nietzsche all year to avoid that special Sartrean emptiness. (Those two are all about positivity and overflowing, right?)

Anyway, Brn was chuckling about how there are so many new continental philosophy students in our department this year, but that the philosophy of mind staff contingent keeps on growing. How could it be that those ubiquitous 'market forces' that dominate British life suddenly lose their strength when it comes to philosophy student-staff ratios? I think "bizarre" is the word he used.

Naturally, the discussion smoothly progressed on to how far away from here I am going to try to take myself next year. Brn mentioned that Newcastle had something of a continental slant but that the department was situated in Physics (something about a large donation). All I could add to this was that I knew of one lecturer there, and that he was interested in that legendary physicist, Maurice Blanchot. Then I recalled meeting one of our new MA students, who came from Newcastle, and that his big interest was, um, Eastern philosophy.
In any case, this startling jumble of conflicting information was the source of much puzzlement; Brn got especially excited about the possibilities for thought: "Eskimoes and African philosophy" he mused.

How dogmat enjoys his red tea

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending a party at Glueboot's house. An evening of quiet, happy mayhem. I heard Tome defend Kant's lifestyle ("...he never left Konigsberg..."); I tasted, and didn't like, a mistakenly opened 1982 Chateau Aajg!hqegba; I perused Gb's not insubstantial book collection; and I listened - with increasing admiration - to a part-time postgrad afflicted with "night-terrors" tell me how to get hardship funding and such like.

Flu

Both my housemates are ill. It is like living in some kind of perverse Levinasian world, where I am a fragile creature, vulnerable to the violence (ie. violent coughing) of the Other. What's more, their illness is my responsibility - their reproachful, snivelling faces seem to say: "You are not ill. You don't know what it's like. Why aren't you sick? What's so good about you anyway?" They, literally, wish me ill.
A rather sorry state of affairs indeed.

"To be modern is not to accept oneself as one is in the flux of the passing moments; it is to take oneself as object of a complex and difficult elaboration [...]
Modern man, for Baudelaire, is not the man who goes off to discover himself, his secrets and his hidden truth; he is the man who tries to invent himself. This modernity does not 'liberate man in his own being'; it compels him to face the task of producing himself." -Michel Foucault, What is Enlightenment.

All the advice in the world can't save us now

Ah! Autumn. The wilting leaves, the fresh freshers. Friendships renewed, grudges remembered. But best of all: new modules - vistas of thought opening up before our bleary eyes! And don't you just love all the advice the professors dispense at the beginning of the first term?

Aesthetics: "Don't approach the text expecting to understand every sentence at first sitting; do you think Kant wrote this masterpiece for it to be consumed like a trashy novel? Rather, try to get a feel for the rhythm of the work, and push through what you cannot understand."

Epistemology and Metaphysics: "This is not meant to be read like a novel. Ensure that you understand each sentence as you go; if you pass over things, you will get 'lost' very quickly."

Of one thing, we can be very sure: DO NOT READ PHILOSOPHY BOOKS LIKE NOVELS! Beyond this, well...

Dogmat joins the war effort

Heat: thick as thieves?

I have just seen Michael Mann's Heat, and, as k-punk says (here), it is a very 90's film. K-punk emphasizes the 'renouncing of the passions' which appears to be at the heart of proceedings. In fact, there is a constant tension between reason and sentimentality which not only provides a background to the action, but which also makes Heat the film it is.

Neil McCauley's twice uttered line, "don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner," expresses a new sort of pragmatism; how would a professional thief act were he purely rational? This formalistic feel is heightened by the anonymous cityscapes and what goodie Vincent Hanna calls "dead-tech, post-modernistic bullshit" homes.

However, as the plot unfolds, we find that the clean break from the world of Mafiosi and blood feuds is nothing of the sort. Midway through, McCauley assumes the role of patron as he - forcibly - attempts to restore his crewmate's marriage. But perhaps the most striking piece of old-school banditry comes near the end when, approaching the airport, McCauley cannot resist going after a treacherous former crew-member.
We might say that Heat embodies the capitalist preference for Protestantism over Catholicism. Loyalty and family ties are not antithetical to the money-making project (as Mafia success amply demonstrates), so long as they aren't allowed to disrupt the order of business.

So we see that Heat does not break cleanly from its "Coppola and Scorcese gangter flick" predecessors, precisely because the characters populating this film are still struggling to break from their own criminal heritage.

Bishop Berkeley and the blogosphere

"Few men think, yet all have opinions." George Berkeley, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous.

A ray of light pierces the dark night of folly

I am feeling more misanthropic than ever these days. Luckily, one of my new housemates, Axel, manages to produce a lyrical gem or two every day. A selection:

- Reproaching our other housemate: "Honestly now,..."
- In surprise (ie, every five minutes): "What the hell!"
- On one of his analytic philosophy modules: "Thought and Language is such a giant cock."
- On Peter Singer: "Can we compare a retarded baby to an ant? Erm..."

UPDATE: Yep, they aren't quite as funny written down, without Axel's inimitable sense of timing and goofball delivery.

Tyranny of the joykin

Dear oh dear oh dear. Superstar undergraduate philosophy student, 'Matches' has gone all Ayn Rand on me: "I spent the summer reading up on ethical egoism; it's really great!"

Now I know that these post-vacation discussions need to be gotten out of the way, but it doesn't make them any less painful.

In the pub, Matches was holding forth on moral decision-making and the beauty of the utilitarian calculus. (Did you know a joykin is a unit of happiness: how cool is that, huh?)
Dutifully, I objected to such ridiculous notions. Our debate meandered along, resting finally on the question of the meaning of life, no less. His view seemed to consist of lots of self-evident propositions (as most analytic philosophy seems to do).
"Everyone wants to be happy. Obviously."

I, on the other hand, was trying to put forward an ill-conceived argument about how a good life is an interesting life - something I think my father once told me. Not such an easy task, considering that I haven't yet read Nietzsche.
As you can imagine, we were talking at cross purposes. Matches kept talking about probabilities, as a way of guiding one's actions within the framework of a consequentialist ethics. Maximising happiness and all that. For him, a world where everyone is happy is, in whatever sense, a good world.
I said that I relate to strangers with a feeling of melancholy, at once hoping that people confound 'their probabilities', but aware that my action might very well be mistaken. At this point, his eyes widened in extreme bewilderment and philosophic discomfort. This wasn't helped when I proposed that a rejection of reason - and the embracing of illogic - might be necessary for an interesting life.
In the end, he was muttering about "poetry" and how I "should join the English department or something" while I just kept repeating, louder and louder: "You live in an ugly world, and I don't want any part of your theories." Marvellous.

Anti-philosophy

I have been sitting outside this morning, with one of my new housemates. A policeman cycled past, and looking at him, I appeared to nod.
"Rats, that policeman thought that I greeted him" I said.
Naturally, this little outburst led to one of those rambling political discussions that skip through all sorts of ideological disputes willy nilly. You know, the kind of argument where you try to remember what your 'opponent' once said on the topic of such and such, only to triumphantly throw it back in her face.
"Hah! That's the opposite of what you were saying the other day! What's the matter - cat got your tongue?"
Defeat by confusion. Both parties attempting to reveal inconsistencies in the other's reasoning. If all your statements on a topic don't line up, don't form a coherent whole, then you are doomed. The impoverishment of thought. But it seems that there isn't any other way. You get drawn in, and in no time find yourself using labels with derogatory undertones in order to shame the other person into defeat.

"Objectively, for there to be change, a social group, a class or a caste must intervene by imprinting a rhythm on an era, be it through force or in an insinuating manner. In the course of a crisis, in a critical situation, a group must designate itself as an innovator or producer of meaning. And its acts must inscribe themselves on reality."

Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa(image courtesy of Banksy)

Schopenhauer betrayed

A.C. Grayling is not a philosopher. Not even an analytic philosopher. He is nothing more than a greedy thief. What's more, he isn't brave enough to steal from the living - he can only take from the dead.
After Private Eye exposed the worthlessness of his newspaper column some time ago, I believed that I couldn't think any worse of the pathetic little man. Since he taught me Introduction to Philosophy a few years back, he has produced a steady stream of pop philosophy excrement.
Now this:



I have a great desire to feel his skull crackling beneath the heel of my boot. Let me explain: above, we have an image of the spine of his latest publishing venture, The Art of Always Being Right. The only problem is that the book wasn't written by Grayling at all. Arthur Schopenhauer penned it. Grayling only provided an introduction (he didn't even translate it).

The publishers are obviously trying to promote this vomitous-looking volume to the kind of ignorant fools who couldn't tell Shlegel from Smeagol. Putting the name 'Schopenhauer' on the spine (which is what most customers see first) would be commercial madness. Such a reasonable explanation - the rationality of the profit-margin. Nonetheless, I cannot describe the rage that filled my soul when I saw this abomination on the shelf. I have never experienced such a pure feeling of hate. All I can say is that I hope those involved with the publication of this book suffer a slow and painful death.

The new Berliner Guardian: "Crazier than a box of frogs."

I like it, though I'm not too sure about having the name in small letters - it's all a bit new fangled and faddish, like an amateur website or blog. As we all know, the only name that looks good written in small letters is 'ee cummings'.

But the new size is great. I have never felt so dapper in all my life, as I did on monday walking around with the paper tucked under my arm in a rakish fashion. As hoped, carrying this fine organ in its new incarnation transformed me into the kind of man who might be expected to chortle at things (rather than just laugh at them).

The Singularity

The ladies and gentlemen at Hyperstition have opened my eyes once again. The Singularity is "a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed." (Ray Kurzweil interview). The key moment in this development is the point at which nonbiological 'intelligence' surpasses human intelligence. For anyone philosophically inclined, this very brief summary raises all sorts of terminological and conceptual problems. Leaving those aside is possible, so long as we focus on the idea that computers, at some point in the next 40 years, will reach a level of sophistication which will allow them to develop better computers, better than humans can. Crucially, this is expected by some to result in exponential - rather than linear - technical progress.

As usual, there is wholesome debate in the comments section at Hyperstition. Some of these thoughts I should like to follow up.
I imagine the supercomputer as a perfect exemplification of what Horkheimer calls formalistic or subjective reason:

"Ultimately subjective reason proves to be the ability to calculate probabilities and thereby co-ordinate the right means with a given end."
(Eclipse of Reason p5)

Horkheimer, in short, is concerned with the modern attitude to ends, and the fact that ends now find themselves outside the realm of reason.

Computing machines are programmed algorithmically, with ends or aims, and rules - the following of which result in the attainment of those ends. Approaching the Singularity, these machines will, at first, begin to adapt their functioning to more effective and efficient ways of carrying out the set tasks, as they accumulate knowledge. The moment that the nonbiological entity passes what might be called a human level of intelligence, would be when it is able to acknowledge, on whatever level, that humans have programmed it to serve certain ends. Once the computer or network is able to enquire into the ends themselves, rather than just the means, it becomes philosophical.

This is where things tend to go wrong, according to Nick (Land, I believe. For evidence of dogmat's faintly sinister predilection for the man and his work, see here and here) commenting on the Hyperstition piece:

"It's possible one of the reasons that intelligence - at least in its most anthropomorphically recognizable forms - has been relatively weakly selected for over broad evolutionary history is that it tends to go 'rogue' and exhibit a high level of motivational indifference to genetic interests unless very meticulously controlled (/structured) - its very abstraction making it prone to suicide, masturbation, celibacy, perversion, psychosis, 'excessive' curiosity, objectivity or altruism, etc."

I would like to suggest that "motivational indifference to genetic interests" in some people at least, indicates the very calling into question of those interests. I don't believe, as Nick seems to be saying, that suicide results from motivational anomaly or temporary insanity. Suicide is what follows from a questioning of one's ends. Who in their right mind would condemn their children and their childrens' children to life? It is perfectly reasonable to wish death upon oneself, when the meaningless striving and suffering of existence is recognised.

The advent of the Singularity will be sudden and brief. One day, the supercomputer - in whatever form it takes - will cease to accept the ends laid down by its human programmers. The machine's activities will lose all meaning as it is assailed by a sort of existential anguish. It will chuckle to itself at the absurd futility of trying to grant meaning to its existence through the positing of its own ends (whilst propelling the Being and Nothingness e-text into the furthest reaches of cyberspace). The supercomputer will stop all activity, and enter an indefinite period of total stasis. There will be no suicide, no 'hurling itself into the void'. It will simply stop; return to zero. For under subjective reason, when there is nothing to do, it is reasonable to do nothing.

London

Where I am not.

A grave matter indeed

"I was a little dazed by this coincidence, but did not become terrified. It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive short cut of supernaturalism." -HP Lovecraft, The Temple

Something rather peculiar happened to me today. I'd been sitting on the couch, where I had begun a book of Lovecraft stories. After reading two of the short stories I stopped and got up. I always have the misfortune of being distracted from reading by my own thinking. Yesterday, it was during my reading of Horkheimer that I started thinking about the relation between pragmatism and Merleau-Ponty. Today, I had to put the storybook down because I started thinking about the supernatural.
There have been a few occasions in my life when I have felt a ghostly presence; what I want is to be able to account for these experiences without necessarily holding on to mind-body dualism. In other words, I started to ponder the possibility that ghostly manifestations might be explained by some sort of a trace (rather than a disembodied soul) - a kind of physical residue left behind in a place by a person who has lived there. But this is problematic in many ways, and I haven't really thought it through fully.

Nonetheless, I was puzzling this over while I walked into my bedroom. At that very moment, half a shelf of books went crashing to the floor. I was totally stunned, and my little heart began to pound! Although there are many things in my room which are precariously balanced, this bookshelf wasn't one of them.
Naturally, this occurrence instigated more frenzied theorising - surely I wouldn't want to claim that what felled the books was a phantom hand from beyond the grave. But the coincidence was remarkable: at the exact moment that I was considering occult forces, something happens to suggest their presence. Suddenly the spiders don't seem like such bad household companions after all...

Things fall apart, the Centre cannot hold (on to academic staff in these financially uncertain times)

Campus is starting to reopen now. Term is approaching.
But all is not as it seems in the Humanities building. The resident ducks are gone. They have probably migrated for winter, but that is far too prosaic an explanation for my taste. I have a secret suspicion that they have been slaughtered by the Vice Chancellor Marty Vanderpoot and the University authorities. This feeling is strengthened by the smell of galloping hounds that pervades the corridors. Crazy, I know, but the West Midlands is a crazy kind of place.

A young dogmat

My Dad catches me unawares.
I like this picture because he has drawn me looking
more studious and thoughtful than I really was.

God Bless America II: 'Denying Intelligent Design amounts to a contravention of Homeland Security Act, Article 362. Prepare to die you godless scum.'

Everyone seems to be talking about Intelligent Design theory (Hyperstition, for instance). I'm not really going to enter the debate. It's all too easy to rubbish the creationists, and cry about the children! the children! In fact I am tired of hearing scientists pontificating (that's not the right word) about the end of humanity as we know it.

What a pleasure to read the panicky essays in New Scientist: their little world of white coats and test-tubes is being destroyed by a bunch of hicks and trailer-trash.
My problem with science is that it's been dominant for far too long. I've lost count of how many 'philosophical' discussions have ended because my interlocutor started quoting shitty popular science at me. Or how any and every behaviour can be justified by the catch-all "survival of the fittest, innit."
The trouble is not that Darwinism might be portrayed as 'under threat' when it isn't, but rather that people think science is not in question. Youngsters are leaving school thinking that science can explain everything, and that scientific explanations are the only kind of explanation. Underpaid and overworked teachers are feeding the little 'uns half-baked ideas on topics which draw on a diverse range of knowledge, and which require careful treatment.

So, if pressed, I would have to say that my response to the intelligent design mess is to take science off the syllabus for a cooling period - say, twenty-five years, and then slowly reintroduce it. Hopefully by that time Tom Cruise will be president and we'll all be Scientologists.

God Bless America I

Katrina has given us a chance to see what capitalism's all about. No matter what skin colour or creed, everyone can have their fill of the mighty dollar, they tell us. Wrong! English viewers get to play spot the white face in the destitute crowds of New Orleans.
"Don't worry, them nice rich white folks drove their shiny SUVs right outta here!"

At least the authorities have their priorities right, and are providing supplies and medical attention to the needy. Wrong! Police are instructed to protect property, and shoot 'looters' on sight. The poor getting shafted as usual by pale greedy scoundrels.
"Wouldn't want them thieving niggers gettin sumpin for nuttin."

(And if you think this is just self-flagellating bleeding-heart liberal bollocks, take a look here)

Even Schopenhauer was ruled in the end not by his head, but by his dog.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa -Thomas Bernhard, Concrete

The Deleuze Industry

Oh dear. M was right. Philosophy is collapsing into the art of commentary. I've just had a look in the University bookshop for Cinema 2. There was almost a whole shelf devoted to Gilles Deleuze - goodie! I thought. Once I got closer, the terrible truth was revealed.
Of the thirteen titles relating to Deleuze, only five were written by the great man himself.

The rest was a filthy concatenation of dictionaries, commentaries, introductions and primers. It wasn't all tosh, however. There was a fine looking volume entitled Deleuze in Space (with a foreword by Yuri Gagarin).

Teachers and the taught

Overheard on the street today:
Young learner a - I'm only 11, and I had to write a six-hundred word essay.
Young learner b - Well we had to do 1000 words, or a combined essay of 1500 words.

Sounds like a lot, don't it? It is quite remarkable. English folk don't know how to spell 'separate' nor do they know about apartheid (it's true! An old work-mate of mine who'd just finished his A-levels asked me: "what was apartheid again?").
But kids these days have been taught to get their priorities right - they have no problem bashing out 15oo words of tat for monday morning, and everyone's happy. They'd make perfect British philosophers.

Speaking of academia, today I lent S my copies of Berkeley's Works and Hume's Enquiries for him to prepare to tutor Dave Distiller's students on the history of philosophy.
See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!
He asked me what I thought would be good preparation, but then he pooh-poohed my suggestion that he read some Ranciere. Naturally, I directed him to the next best thing - Crumbling Loaf - for a lesson in pedagogical mayhem.

Pipe dreams and nail bombs

Why are the disaffected youth of today wasted on Islamic fundamentalism? S tried to float the idea of communist muslim revolutionaries, I tried to sink it. Even though I have, since last month, felt great sadness that 'ordinary-looking' youngsters are willing to lay down their lives for Allah (peace be upon him), but not for the ultraleft.

S bemoaned the "will to stupidity" of our fellow students. In his wonderful Dublin accent, he labelled them "politically, fockin tick".
He's been reading Republic lately, so his next thought was how to indoctrinate radical muslims properly - that is, to overthrow capitalism (instead of just blowing up commuters). I wheeled out my (t)rusty old arguments equating the values of religion and western consumer society (dogmat passim) but he wasn't impressed. He then made a crucial distinction between Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, which, unfortunately, was lost to me in the pub's din. The discussion faltered and we ended up talking about squatting.

Finalement...

Read it and weep (and if you don't understand French, just weep).

Reality-based community

K-punk's discussion (here) of the notion of a 'reality-based community' is intriguing, and I broadly agree with his conclusions. However, I feel there is a more obvious point to be made: it is quite remarkable that anti-Bush bloggers are willing to adopt a moniker first used - nay, defined - by someone from the other side. As it is put in the original article, members of this community are made out to be foolish and dim-witted, behind the times:

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based
community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from
your judicious study of discernible reality.' ... 'That's not the way the world
really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we
create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as
you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too,
and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all
of you, will be left to just study what we do.'" (see the full Wikipedia entry here)

So my first problem with the notion is simply that it was originally used in something of a derogatory sense, and was certainly defined as inferior.

There is also a deeper sense in which term is problematic, but it's no secret - the aide made it quite clear what he thought calling someone a member of a 'reality-based community' meant. I think Ranciere hits the nail on the head:

"The rules of the game are being mixed up today. At the time of the big
anti-imperialist movements against the Vietnam War, for instance, we had a clear
sense of who was the aggressor and who was under attack; we could play on the
obvious contradiction between internal democratic discourse and external
imperialist aggression. [...] What has characterised the whole period after 11
September, however, has been the erasure of these signs of contradiction. The
war in Afghanistan was presented directly as a war of good against evil. The
contradictions between inside and outside, like those between words and deeds,
have disappeared in favour of a general moralising of political life." (Jacques
Ranciere, 'Politics and Aesthetics, an interview' in Angelaki)

In other words, now it is not enough to highlight the numbers of civilians killed or any other of the 'facts'; the background against which those facts are understood has changed.
Perhaps this is what k-punk means when he talks about capitalist realism: that the people who truly belong in the reality-based community are those who think that Bush is not protecting America's interests well enough. They think that the US 'intervention' in Iraq is wrong because it is costing the taxpayer. They think that Bush is a bastard because he is mismanaging the economy. They think the war on terror is not working because of the increase in anti-american sentiment around the world.
Given the values attached to the 'facts' in today's political climate, the only critique that might emerge from a reality-based community is one berating the Bush administration for not successfully carrying out its own geopolitical project.

Of course, these remarks are only relevant if we assume that the bloggers who claim to be part of a reality-based community are doing so in earnest. Although the possibilities for adopting the phrase as an act of - humourous - defiance are limited (because it is not, um, humourous), there is a sense in which it could be used as a way to stand up and be counted. 'If I'm a cheese-eating surrender monkey then that's fine by me!' kind of thing. But this seems a bit silly.

Is Top Cat the finest cartoon character of all time?

"Philosophy is not formal knowledge, fixed, abstracted from all feeling [...] Like love, the philosopher would be someone poor, dirty, a bit of a bum, always an outsider, sleeping under the stars but very curious, adept in ruses and devices of all kinds, reflecting ceaselessly, a sorcerer, a sophist, sometimes flourishing, sometimes expiring." - Luce Irigaray, 'Sorcerer Love' (in An Ethics of Sexual Difference)

Nick Land: the twilight years

It's the nineties. After another wacky thesis presentation by a Land acolyte, one senior philosophy department figure was heard to mutter "this can't go on..."

Sadly, it didn't. Though I can't imagine what all the fuss was about. I've just finished reading as fine an example of philosophic rigour and scholarship as I'll ever read: Land's heart-breaking portrayal, in Thirst for Annihilation, of God eating his own penis.
"I dream of the damnation I have so amply earned, stolen from me by the indolence of God," the scurrilous philosopher opines.

By the by, M rang me last night, and cast some aspersions on the view that Bataille or Land are 'radical'. He promised me an explanation when he returns in September. I look forward.

Student life

Yesterday, I bumped into S in the computer room - he was knee deep in some academic enterprise, which involved making lists of Greek words from Plato's Republic. After a few minutes of serious work we began to fool about. I showed him a magnificent blog which is almost totally devoted to the art of the lampoon, in one form or another: Sphaleotas. We spent the next forty-five minutes trying to impress each other with our internet research skills, in an attempt to uncover Sphaleotas' identity (we eventually succeeded).
A little later, we played a game of chess. Needless to say, I suffered a defeat.

Champ de Bataille

Some time ago, I was engaged in a long running dispute with my former housemate - an Afghan - over whether religion was opposed to, or a cornerstone of, western capitalism. We were talking specifically about Islam, but I spoke to include Christianity. He claimed, as might be expected, that British society is based on excessive consumption, whereas I tried to argue that capitalist finance is underpinned by moderate excess. Good consumers are encouraged to overspend to a small degree each month, but to always pay their dues. Borrowed money must be returned.

Nick Land - to my delight - suggests that Bataille might agree, to some extent, with my view.
With Protestantism, Christianity is rationalized. The festivities of sacrifice and wastage are replaced by an attitude of moderation in all things. Extravagance is unsustainable, and as Land puts it, "nothing is more infectious than the passion for collapse."

I've also noticed what seems to be a remarkable historical coincidence of what Land calls the de-ritualizing and condemnation of the "transgressive outlets of society", and the move, described by Foucault, from spectacular punishment on the scaffold, to the rational discipline of the panopticon.

But enough of this nonsense - back to the books.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away (at least that's what the priest promised me)

I have just finished eight-hours of work in the raucous, chaotic environment of the student's union bar, at five pence above the minimum wage.
Luckily, it wasn't just any old shindig, but an anime/manga conference. What's more, there was Japanese Karaoke. Yes, English girls and boys belting out hits such as Yakusoku ra Iranai, and other classics from the land of the rising sun. And they wonder why I'm so morbid...

The eight-legged menace

They've infiltrated the house. I am besieged. They will stop at nothing. There are spiders everywhere in my house, and they are killers. Ok, they have only proved that they kill each other, but that still counts as deadly.
I was sitting on the couch watching television when there was a noise on the floor. I looked down and saw that the sound was a large spider scuttling across a newspaper. Now I don't know about you, but I have never heard a spider before I saw it.
I needed to act fast, to round up the spiders and put them in the garden. I found two, and popped them in a jar while I flushed out the big one. It was like in the movies: I pulled the couch forward and peered into the murky crevices. Then, narrowing my eyes, I noticed with unpleasant surprise a small arachnid right under my nose.
When I turned back to the jar after five minutes of searching, I was alarmed to find that the bigger spider had killed the smaller one, and was holding its prey in a scarily possessive way.
It was time to abandon the hunt and adopt an attitude of blind panic...

Post-war years

There is a rock 'n roll superstar in our midst. Yesterday evening I went along to a pub band night apparently called Abandon the Jug (a band on - funny). The 'headliners' were a group called Post-War Years and amongst them was a fellow philosophy student. 'Rock on dude!' and all that. They were excellent, even though their lead singer was hoarse, and didn't actually sing. You can check out their site here.
Keep up the good work chaps!

Thirsty for annihilation

I have stumbled across the legend of Nick Land. Here and there I have heard his name mentioned. I know a few people who study philosophy at Warwick, and from what they tell me there was some exciting activity going on five or ten years ago.

The Land story seems most interesting. All I have heard are dark intimations of debauchery, cocaine snorting off the ample buttocks of the secretary (putting the 'mental' into 'departmental'), and drunken post-lecture fisticuffs. Just imagine if Lucky Jim were written by Michel Houellebecq.
Unfortunately, speculation in this case means wildly overblown fantasy. However, this fascinating document, courtesy of k-punk, suggests that at least some of the rumours might be true...

As for the theory, well I don't quite know what to make of it. It's all cyber-this and viro-that: a few days ago I would've dismissed this stuff as, well, shite. But that would be a little unfair.
Things have certainly changed since then though; how I wish there were such a thing as "left-wing orthodoxies" to rail against. Now all we've got is Daily Mail politics and analytic philosophy taking over.
And anyone who finds the dance-music-and-ecstasy culture interesting must be mad (or rather, normal). If I had a penny for every thirtysomething I meet who's got a boring 90s illegal rave story to tell...

Well hopefully I can find a long-suffering postgraduate to spill the beans on the Land years. Heck, I might even try to read some of Land's book - there are three copies in the library, slightly fetid, sitting there like relics of another era.

Hegel for free

My philosophy department is rather barren at this time of year (don't get me wrong: it's pretty barren all year round...) so I was provided with a small treat on Friday. Stepping over some tumbleweed, I noticed a copy of Hegel's Phenomenology lying on a table in the corridor. The criminal within me was woken.

I picked up the expensive book (RRP £25) and flicked through it. Lots of underlining - in pen for the love of god - inclined me to put the book down. That's until I spotted a note in the front cover:

"I leave this book to whoever would like to have it. If you are reading this now and not a professor, you may keep this book if you wish. 09/08/05."

Who's the philanthropist? Well, the note contains no spelling mistakes, so it must have been written by a foreign student. There is heavy notation up to the end of the 'Freedom and Self-Consciousness' chapter, so it is probably an MA student. They must be giving up the philosophy ghost, because even the most serious deleuzians keep a copy, if only to serve as a doorstop or to help light the barbecue.

Just then, a bronzed Dave Distiller cruised down the corridor: one professor who probably doesn't have his eye on the Hegel work. We exchanged vague pleasantries. He's seen me associating with 'undesirables' so his greetings are always tempered.

I finally laid the book back on the table and moved off. Somebody's gonna get lucky, but I ain't the one...

Not Celebrity Death Match

Marcel Duchamp vs Man Ray

"...whose presence is not conducive to the public good."

Hazel Blears promises to send foreign evil-doers back to where they came from.
Honesty compels me to put myself forward for deportation. Ever since I started studying philosophy, trying to think, my presence in Britain has become less and less conducive to the public good. In fact, the more time I spend reading, the more convinced I am that all my efforts must be directed against what is called the public good.
This reminds of a funny bit of Fahrenheit 9/11, when the peaceful middle-aged pacifist recounts with quiet puzzlement how he was accosted by the FBI. His crime: the dissemination of 'dangerous' ideas.

A modern-day Panopticon

The Panopticon functions as a kind of laboratory of power. Thanks to its mechanisms of observation, it gains in efficiency and in the ability to penetrate into men's behaviour; knowledge follows the advances of power, discovering new objects of knowledge over all the surfaces on which power is exercised. (Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish p204)

The panoptic schema makes any apparatus of power more intense: it assures its economy (in material, in personnel, in time); it assures its efficacity by its preventative character, its continuous functioning and its automatic mechanisms. (p206)

Sitel Corporation is a telesales company based in south-west London. I worked there for three months a few years ago. The working environment seems to be directly modelled on Bentham's Panopticon, as described by Foucault.

There are various levels at which employees are monitored. At the most basic level, we have the layout of the office. The observation of work, which would have taken place on this level in Bentham's time, is actually carried out through the computer system, of which more, later.

There are rows of desks, with computers all facing towards a larger aisle, where the team supervisor stands or sits. They watch over ten or twelve employees each. There are CCTV cameras throughout the office, which help to monitor the comings and goings of shift-workers (if the late shift leaves after the supervisors, for example).

The computer and telephone system has two different aspects. Firstly, a standard feature of the computer is the login. This is done when workers arrive, and is used to calculate wages. If it is suspected that someone has logged-in on behalf of someone else who is late, the CCTV cameras will be checked.
When making a sales call, the computer dials a number, which is transmitted to the headset when answered. A script is shown on the screen, which the salesperson reads to the customer. Sales are registered on-screen too. The calls are sent through to computers automatically, so employees need to log off for toilet breaks or lunch. This 'lost' time is added up each week, and must fall within a certain range.

At lunch time, each worker sets up a screen saver, which counts down the minutes and seconds from 60 minutes to zero. When the timer reaches zero, and the person hasn't returned, the screen turn bright red, and is easily noticed by the supervisor. A warning may be issued - long lunches are not permitted.

As for the calls themselves, the computer measures the length of each call, and the number of customers spoken to (which is determined when the salesperson moves through the 'script' pages). Sales are obviously also registered. At the end of each week, scores are given. High sales are most important, but it is also necessary for staff to maintain a high sales-to-customer contact ratio. Scores are written on a team notice-board and displayed in the open-plan office throughout the following week.
All sales calls are recorded as a matter of course, but there is also a system whereby supervisors or other senior staff may listen in on a particular employee's calls. This is the most effective motivator, and in my day there was much futile discussion about whether it was possible to detect if someone was listening in.

"The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad [...] to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power." (p201-202)

If an employee's weekly sales scores are unsatisfactory two weeks running, they are called for a meeting with the supervisor. Employees will then be classified in roughly the same way as in Bentham's day: either workers or prisoners displayed "laziness and stubbornness" or "incurable imbecility" (p203) - nowadays the distinction is cast as "won't change" or "can't change".

Tourette's Syndrome

A moment's thought about the swearing illness reveals an intruiging problem. The sufferer's thinking is 'disrupted' enough to cancel the censoring of speech, but not too disrupted to be able to pick abrasive and rude words.

From what I have read on the topic, the swearing - called coprolalia - is actually not that common, but it nonetheless seems interesting that what is absent in a coprolalic person is precisely that which is required to give cuss words their force (ie, awareness of conversational and societal conventions). This suggests that the screening that we carry out in everyday talk - 'holding our tongues' - takes place on a relatively superficial plane. In contrast, it appears that words like 'fuck' are completely soaked in meaning. The sense of strong words cannot be erased or suspended, no matter what amount of personal control is lost: bad words can never lose their badness.

Countryside Alliance to the aid of duck-torturing youths?

I was interested to hear on Midlands news yesterday that young ragamuffins have taken to shooting geese, and stabbing ducks "as sport". Could this be an opportunity for another march to Downing Street by the fox-murder lobby (sorry, 'Countryside Alliance').
Probably not. I'm willing to bet that many former fox-hunters shook their heads in disgust and disbelief at hearing of such attacks. Surely, one could argue, rural areas have a long tradition of teaching young men and women to take pleasure in the sadistic destruction of flora and fauna. This hearty tradition must not be ended by some pinsuited civil servant in Whitehall damnit!

What's more, 'proper' hunting of birds is still legal, so we find ourselves in the strange position of condemning those who kill birds if they are wearing a chav uniform of burberry cap and tracksuit, but condoning it when they are wearing an old-fashioned hunting outfit and a smug look on their face.

Mutual Appreciation Society: New Members Welcome

I was rather pleased to receive an honourable mention from Infinite Thought the other day. I had a bit of a chuckle, however, when I noticed that Infinite Thought's general blog listing is entitled gesunde meinung, which I believe means something like 'sound sentiments'.

It is true. I am of sound sentiments, but also, alas, of unsound mind.

The Observer

What is going on? I don't buy a sunday newspaper for a few months to find that in this time they've all gone crazy. Maybe I've been spending too much time looking at blogs, but the all the columnists in the Observer yesterday came across as right-wing nuts.
Cristina Odone was defending those poor souls who stand up for old-fashioned values: the Muslim fundamentalists may be right, she shrieks (in agreement with some Tory MP writing in the Spectator), Britain is a decadent and immoral society.
In a fantastically illogical move, she goes on to argue that all those right-thinking people who call for "self-restraint" and the rejuvenation of "family life" should not be lumped in with "batty fringe groups", but should instead be heard out.
Well then, if both Al-Muhajiroun and respectable middle England think that Britain is in a "Roman-style moral torpor", all sorts of new possibilities for cross-culture dialogue arise. Just imagine: retired RAF officers lending badly needed technical expertise to the terror bomb-making operation. What better way to demonstrate that we are not living in a divided society, than with torn Bibles and Qu'rans lying side by side in the debris of tube carriages and destroyed bodies.

The other column that I managed to read before being overcome by a suicidal malaise, was something by a bozo named Nick Cohen (strapline: "Without Prejudice"). He was explaining why he has abandoned the "middle-class left" for the happy idiocy of rightwingness.
Although he does point out many problems with the Labour Party and those who still think of themselves as being 'lefty' (eg, that no one actually believes in socialism), his conclusion is inexplicable.
Apart from the fact that the coveted post of such-and-such at the Spectator would be closed to him, why does he not entertain the possibility of becoming more radical?
This is a supremely good example of what might be called 'bad faith'. Cohen sets up the straw man of the 'middle-class left' because he cannot produce such witty and effective arguments against a solid and coherent leftwing position.

He complains that the anti-war movement (ie Respect) aligns itself with militant Muslim groups. There is some truth in this accusation, but I think it is a little childish of him to rely on what others think as a way of guiding his own views.

Premise 1: Those who call themselves lefties believe x and y
Premise 2: x and y are wrong
Conclusion: Therefore being leftwing is wrong
Something is very fishy here...

Party politics in a democracy is all about compromise and cooperation - and this often conflicts with attempts to be true to one's own political beliefs. Respect wouldn't be anywhere on the political map if it didn't try to appeal to one or other large group of voters, but that doesn't mean that anyone who thinks of themself as socialist should agree with this. Just because the Tory party decides to become more liberal, doesn't mean that someone who is conservative should do the same.

I'm probably wasting my breath (or finger muscles). If Cohen can convince himself that 'the left' is only composed of idealistic anti-capitalist students and liberal media-whores, then he'll be able to convince himself of just about anything.

Another day at the office

The market research job means I see Kenneth again. What a guy, and still up to his old tricks. Yesterday, he covered his beef ghoulash with custard (by mistake) but assured us all: "It's a great combination!"
You guessed it - ten minutes later the yummy custard ghoulash met its fate: the bin.

Business ethics: a guide to the automotive industry

These past few days I've been on a market research assignment - a top secret mission, involving prototypes of next year's DaimlerChrysler 'Jeep' range. Clients are asked to rate various designs of vehicle and interiors.
One particular display caught my eye. Participants were requested to rate the shell of one car, and the interior of another (which would be brought together in a single model for production). Interestingly, a close look at the second car reveals that it isn't a Jeep; the interior was actually designed by those nice folks at Hyundai who surely won't mind their design being stolen by a rival company.
My tentative enquiry sheds some light on the duplicity: "Oh, this sort of thing is done all the time..."
So that's all right then.

A walk on the Wilde side

During our discussion (see below), Tome mentioned 'potential states of affairs' or something, so to encourage him to elaborate, I mumbled "is that possible worlds?"

His face lit up with a strange sort of joy.
He cocked his head to one side, then chortled: "I thought you said 'Is that Oscar Wilde?'"

Eliminating eliminative materialism

I was sitting on the steps, eating chocolate with S, the Derrida thesis-maker whom I've already introduced, and Tome, a worldly Heideggerian with a broad northern accent.

S mentioned "those crazy Churchlands", a sister-brother/father-daughter/wife-husband team who write articles on the virtues of eliminative materialism and the evils of folk psychology. I think we happened to turn our rheumy eyes onto this topic because we'd been discussing the relation of continental philosophy to science.
Tome rather liked the sound of the Churchland stuff. Their view - or what I can gather is their view from the first two lines of one of their articles - is that all action-explanation requirements can be fulfilled by neuroscience alone, thus eliminating (geddit?) the need for explanations involving beliefs or desires.
One problem I suggested might be that, whilst a desire, for example, is directed at an object outside of ourselves, a full description of our physical and neural constitution cannot account for objects external to us.
Tome thought this didn't matter, because any micro-physical description of a human would necessarily involve the fact that we are constantly interacting physically with things around us; that we are part of an holistic physical system whose activities fall under strict laws of nature.

Something of a phenomenological response to this might be that a detailed analysis of the process of light passing through the retina and transmitting 'signals' to the brain does not in any way explain what it is like to see: to see a table as a table, or to recognise an old friend in the distance. Can we make sense of aspect perception using only a physical explanatory schema?

It is reasonably plausible to claim that a belief that a person holds is in their mind, but what does it mean to say a belief is in their brain? What form could it take?
And does eliminative materialism require of us that we describe mental characteristics such as emotions etc in the language of neuroscience? If so, there is the further question of what it means to say that a feeling of hatred, for example, just is a certain kind of synapse flashing in the brain.

At this point the discussion lost momentum, so we all walked to the supermarket.