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.