Correcting the error

I swore under my breath (whilst reading something), not because it was revealed that a young artist - and Picasso's neighbour - had committed suicide after smoking opium, but because it was claimed that he 'hung' himself.
It is a question of values, you see...

Michel Henry

Everyone has been talking about malarkey on post-continental philosophy. Badiou, Deleuze, (Michel) Henry and (Penelope) Laruelle. Quite a Christmas list. I read the first few lines whilst standing in the bookshop (considering tucking the volume under my coat and shuffling out). Something about Henry and phenomenology without a transcendent subject. I talked to Brain and Brn.
"Tome is reading it!" they cried. An endorsement. Brain suggested the short 'Phenomenology of Life', for a summary of Henry's project.
This is an intriguing text. Lots of biblical references, which is problematic since I find that they introduce a degree of opacity.
Difficulties aside, I was able to discern two threads to Henry's analysis. On the one hand, the - negative - characterisation of the appearing of the 'world' through intentional consciousness (as that which underpins most phenomenologies), and on the other, a notion of 'life' as immanent revelation, or affectivity.

Thus: "Whereas the world unveils in the 'outside of self,' being only the 'outside of self' as such, such that everything which it unveils is exterior, other, different, the first decisive trait of the revelation of life is that, because it carries no divide or gap within it and never differs from itself, it only ever reveals itself." (p103)
Henry wishes to find a way out of a "crisis of extreme gravity" (p101) brought about by the inability of classical phenomenology to think the revealing of intentionality to itself without positing an anonymous second consciousness which is able to 'intend' intentionality. In addition, there is an equally important (and arguably more interesting) aim: Henry's attempt to ground the significance of phenomena in affectivity.

"[L]ife is marked with a radical passivity towards itself, it is a suffering of oneself or a 'self-suffering', a 'self-enduring'." (p106)
This 'me' which I carry around with myself is a peculiar creature. Henry will have it that there is a coincidence of selves, rather than another tired subject-object duality. In pain, for example, we do not 'intend' the pain. The pain is not other or external; there is no gap across which consciousness stretches. Thus pain and the presentation of pain are the same.
For Henry, the 'putting up with me' is the foundation of suffering, and thus of joy. This originary self-enduring, and the a priori possibility of passing from one tonality to another - of becoming - allows for a moment of recognition, in an explosion of joie de vivre, of the vocation of man. This is complex, but it seems to me that being born into such an originary suffering suggests a capacity for the overcoming of suffering, in joy. There is a metaphysical element too, which Henry brings out by quoting Kierkegaard: "The self plunges through its own transparency into the power which established it." (p107)

The ebb and flow of our affective tonalities determines our actions. According to Henry, we spend most of our time trying to effect a move from negative to positive modalities. The world of phenomenal objects is described by Henry as being devoid of meaning, cold, lifeless, a matter of indifference (since we have no affinity with it). It is only in 'life' that meaning surges into the world. It is only through an affective, living body - flesh - that we are forced to 'take the world personally'.
"Thus affectivity does not designate any particular sphere of our life, it penetrates and founds as a last resort the entire domain of action, of 'work' and thus of economic phenomena, which [...] cannot be separated from the realm of human existence." (p105)

Where does all this leave us? I feel particularly inclined to investigate these points:

• The 'problem' of immanence. That is to say, if pain and flesh are invisible (as Henry insists), how can we take them up in thought (without defiling them by intending them)?
• Among the resonances with Bergson, one is particularly striking. Like in Bergson's Matter and Memory, Henry articulates two heterogeneous lines of thought which meet in the moment of action (matter and memory/intentionality and affectivity). Are we always condemned to a form of dualism?
• Can a sufficiently complex account of the determining relations between affectivity and 'meaning in the world' be provided in order to distance these views from an animalism?

Sartre finally taken up by the analyticists...

"Now, Albert is unaware that the author of Nothing and Beingness [sic] moonlights by writing cheap, disgusting pornography."

- W.G. Lycan, Philosophy of Language p15.

Work

The last few days I spent some time writing someone else's essay.
"Hume and induction", they said.
"Fuck it - I'll refute him off the top of my head", I said.
Five hours later and my bravado had turned to ashes.
"Easy", I'd said, "I'll deploy the old 'conditions of possible experience' argument." This turned out to be a mind-achingly complex process. In my gusto, I'd neglected to consult the secondary material (of which one must demonstrate a suitable knowledge!). I hadn't even looked on the internet for any vague guidance. My answer of choice demanded that I reread the transcendental deduction, and even then I wouldn't be sure whether all my analyses would actually answer the question (and one must answer the question!)
What's more, the issue of 'cheating' was troubling me. Luckily, I discovered that the wiring of the computer had - conveniently - created an electromagnetic zone of indiscernability right where I was sitting. One less thing to worry about, at least.

Ethics

What role does our thinking of such atrocities as the holocaust play in forming a political notion of life, and therefore ethical notions of a good life? That is to say, in what way does it follow that the primary aim of the political should be the elimination of suffering (and the often unspoken promotion of 'comfort')? Is it so straightforward to move from a recognition of the horror of genocide to the demand that 'this must never happen again', with this demand entailing a renunciation of violence used for political ends. Must this be so?
And perhaps you say this is all very simplistic - you would be correct. I have not attempted to think the 'fallout' from the holocaust before.
And yet this view seems to be prevalent in popular discourse, in the sense that what was horrific was precisely that, in Nazi Germany particularly, it was people like you or me who were evicted from their homes and sent to their deaths , shorn of their culture, our culture - their books, their music, our thought, our art.
And yet this point doesn't quite express the problematic that interests me (since it might be challenged in very different ways from those which I am eager to explore).
Rather what has captured my imagination is the possible connection between thinking the evil of the holocaust and the trend in western society which might be called 'health fascism'. This will be difficult, I hear you laugh, since I know nothing about either.

Postscript: Alain Badiou's Ethics has provided me with an interesting starting point to an enquiry, though I don't think he would agree with my categorisation of Jews in Germany as Same (ie, their victimhood designates them as Other - thus he might say that I am dining on the "ethical dish" history has served up to me). This work nevertheless resonates with issues I have raised above, eg: "The very idea of a consensual 'ethics', stemming from the general feeling provoked by the sight of atrocities, which replaces the 'old ideological divisions', is a powerful contributor to subjective resignation and acceptance of the status quo. For what every emancipatory project does, what every emergence of hitherto unknown possibilities does, is to put an end to consensus." (Alain Badiou, Ethics p32)

'About Warwick and everything connected with Warwick, with special attention to the Cone'

"Instead of committing suicide, people go to work."

— Thomas Bernhard, Correction p224.

"...there are some who if they were tied to the whipping post - and could but get one hand free would use it to ring the bells & fire the cannon to celebrate their liberty."

— Henry David Thoreau, Journal 26 April 1851.

A chance meeting

I came in from the cold, out of the blasted icy blasts, and we began to talk about judgements of taste and judgements of the agreeable. I have this idea, which I believe to be mistaken, but which - surely - cannot be wrong, that since pleasure in the beautiful arises from the play of understanding and imagination, pleasure in the merely agreeable cannot involve cognition (but must be 'bodily', given that what is required for this pleasure is the material existence of this object). We were thinking of this because SF is pursuing a line of thinking tangentially related to - but not necessarily supported by- mine.
Beside us, a man was growing restless. He deployed that universally recognised tactic for announcing one's interest to strangers: "........ Wittgenstein(?)", where the missing words are mumbled, producing the ambiguous result of either a question or a statement. The key word is enunciated clearly. Thus it could be that he said "Have you read much Wittgenstein?" or "I have read a little Wittgenstein" or "this problem was (dis)solved by Wittgenstein".
It is always a pleasure to meet someone like this under these circumstances. He had studied philosophy thirty years ago, and still tries to think things through thoroughly in his current situation (as an economist). We spoke of various matters, but, as is often the case when talking to Wittgensteinians, the discussion reached its peak with mutterings of conspiracy. Something about Wittgenstein's secret communist activity (I didn't hear, because the man really was muttering. I think he may have said "Wittgenstein was the third gunman on the grassy knoll" but I don't think the dates are right.) I would venture the thesis that Wittgenstein acolytes have a troubled and problematic relationship to the unknown, to the infinite. But I am not in a position to say.

The danger of a singular path

I almost knocked Charles Kennedy over yesterday. No, he wasn't drunk, and no, it wasn't my fault. He always seemed to me the kind of man who wills his own destruction. He was walking outside parliament on the road side of the terrorist barriers, striding along, heading no doubt for a hearty and important lunch. I came straight at him, since I was riding on the left of the traffic. Luckily I recognised his red hair and more-florid-by-the-day face...I swerved and braked to avoid him.
The look on his face at this moment secured my everlasting love. He was thoroughly irritated by the whole scenario, and my manoeuvre appeared to leave him particularly nonplussed.

The police

In the course of my work as a cycle courier, I am obliged to break as many rules of the road as possible. The Metropolitan Police do not assist me in this. On the contrary, they go to great lengths to prevent me fulfilling my duties as a ne'er do well.

I have only been stopped by the police once (so far), and it was - shall we say? - interesting. I was trundling along, as one does. I saw the police car, and moved ahead. Not far enough ahead, as it happens. I ran a few red lights, and lo, there were wailing sirens behind me. The car pulled alongside me, at a light for which I had deigned to stop.
"Oi, you! Round the corner. Now!" Fine morning for it officer.
Once off the road, I pulled up on the passenger side of the police car to listen to their gentle advice. But this was unsatisfactory. The driver stepped out, and ordered me off my bike, and onto the pavement. He advanced until I was up against the wall, then stuck his face in mine.
'Ah, the softly-softly approach', I thought.
"Do you know why we stopped you?" I didn't much like this line of questioning, so I proceeded with my own enquiry (yes, really): "Hold on - I saw you make a right at a no-right-turns junction further back."
This pissed knacker right off: "I'm asking the questions here! Why did we stop you? Police have special dispensation! [word of the day 12/06/06] You don't want to go there mate!"
Yes, special dispensation. Like that policeman jailed for speeding. Very handy on the street to quiet a bunch of pot-addled couriers, but not so clever up in front of m'learned chums.
After continuing my enquiry for a few more moments, I was ordered to "shut up". Serve and protect old boy, serve and protect.
"You have a choice: either I'm going to give you a friendly talking to, or I'm going to give you a fine. Which'll it be?"
My response can be credited with being honest, if nothing else: "If this is friendly, then I don't want to know what unfriendly is like."
Was my new friend going to realise he was being raucous (he was shouting now), and tone it down some? No.
"Yes! Exactly! You don't want to know what unfriendly is like!" His face was very close to mine. I was admiring his empeccable shaving (especially under the nose, a tricky spot indeed).
To finish our little tête á tête, he told me to say "I'm sorry officer. It won't happen again."
But this just wasn't going to happen. I laughed, and mumbled "it won't happen again", with enough of a pause and a smile for him to grasp the unspoken addendum "while the fuzz is watching."
He was sick of the sight of me, so he drove away.

Philosophy now

It occurs to me at this moment that philosophy must concern itself with those elements of life which resist one's control. That is to say, bad habits and the Other. To understand these is to understand everything.

I remember. But there is no past.

Why the anguish when hearing of past romantic episodes - however insignificant - of those with whom one is intimate? There appears to occur an overlooking of the time that separates prior adventures from the present circumstance. What is the nature of this overlooking?

When I drink something, I can be enveloped in either a sort of joy, or in a reminiscing sadness. This sadness is precisely an awareness of the ('objective') time which separates me from better moments. But if, on the contrary, I am transformed into a joyous state, two distinct transportations take place. There is a kind of 'dissolution of the subject' whereby the pleasure - the 'good times' - of a stranger can be my pleasure too. There is also an elimination of temporal gaps, such that past pleasures can bring me present enjoyment.
These two effects are very different. When a memory is recalled, it is 'made present' again (which of course leaves sad reminiscing unexplained, but I shall pass over this difficulty). It seems clear, given a certain conception of memory, that the overlooking of temporal distance can be understood fairly simply. We are, to a certain extent, our past. Our past is made present at every moment. Our actions express the past; our recollections are made present in their very recollection.

So to return to our original question - why is this overlooking problematic and painful? Perhaps we are seeking the source of the anguish in the wrong place; perhaps it is not the temporal aspect of the romantic event, but the spatial aspect (ie, that it doesn't involve me) which troubles. I find it quite fascinating that in certain moods I can exult in the mere appearance on earth of moments of reciprocal pleasure, even if they are far removed from my situation. This I cannot explain. But I think we can correlate this attitude, and its opposite - the wish to deny the pleasure of others - with what can broadly be described as active and reactive forces.

It is becoming aware of the independence of the other which stimulates the reactive forces (in our case). Recognising that one is vulnerable in the face of the other, that one is subject to the - possibly - whimsical fancies of another person, causes an agitation of the reactive forces, since from this recognition follows a denial of the false strength which is the pinnacle of reactivity.

Raj and Brick Lane

When I worked in a London shoe store, I had a colleague named Raj. He was from Bangladesh, here working two jobs in order to send something back each month (needless to say, they were both poorly paid). Raj provided me with an interesting insight into the way things really work 'on the other side'. He was not a devout Muslim, but he did try to live life in conformity with the Islam of his home and community. He was a tragic figure.
He relation to women was fraught. Ramadan was a particularly problematic time. I fondly recall his shop-floor erections, and his not-too-surreptitious taking-cover behind the till. As devoted Westerners, his co-workers took great pains to draw his attention to attractive or scantily-clad women during this holy month. In his turn, he hesitantly embraced the crude and suggestive language of a London lad.
One day, we discovered that during his last holiday home, he had been married. Finally the time arrived when his wife came to England to live with him. We were fascinated: what could this small, faintly comical man make of married life? The following day, he was at work looking unwell.
"Did your wife arrive safely, Raj?" we enquired.
"I bought her MacDonalds for dinner. She threw it in the bin. And cried."

Raj struggled to reconcile worthless Western ways of living with the - to us - unsettling traditions of his home. The MacDonalds episode only gives us a very small taste (!) of this 'clash of cultures', but it also provides us with an opportunity to consider the multifarious cultural forces which push and pull at immigrants in Britain. He was clearly willing to accept certain ways of thinking which are considered 'British', though these are (also) repugnant. How can we expect someone who is living near the bottom of society to be moved by such ugly culture? It is not a question of 'Mill or Mohammed', but of 'capitalist slavery or patriarchal religious slavery'.

How does this relate to the Brick Lane episode? All those who wail about freedom of speech believe this choice is between Mill and Mohammed. Of course, those people who protest against the filming present themselves as petty and small-minded. In my view (naturally) the appropriate response would be for those Muslim men - and women - who feel attacked to stand proud and say: "Look at yourselves. You want me to abandon my culture for this noxious spectacle you call civilization?"

Israeli blitzkrieg

I feel a sense of irony - can anyone else feel it?

Intelligence as metaphysics

"The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made," Paul Pillar, the CIA's senior Middle Eastern analyst from 2000 to 2005, argued recently.

Dogmat gets his dream job

I have been employed as a bicycle messenger. This is very exciting, since it was my childhood fantasy to be paid to ride my bike (ok, this is not the Tour de France, but let us leave those small details aside).
The bad news is that, apparently, many couriers are on heroin. The good news is that the last London courier to die 'in the line of duty' was back in 2004.
My training is this afternoon, and I should start tomorrow.

One year on

The information superhighway's slowest vehicle has been trundling along for a year now. Allez dogmat, allez!
Blossoming in the aftermath of horror, like poppies in the trenches, dogmat has endured a whole year of shaky consumer confidence and uncertain futures markets. Bravo!

"the Consul needed a drink..."

There is a pub two doors down from where I am staying, which I ventured into yesterday. A proper Irish place, promoting not live World Cup but live Gaelic football. The barman strolls over to me: "What tickles your fancy?"
This question was made all the more funny by the lad's scruffy countenance and three day old shiner. I began to imagine a bare-knuckle boxing match, horses milling about in the background...though he probably got it in a karate class, or being mugged (is nothing sacred anymore?)

I settled down to try to read Nietzsche and Philosophy over the blaring folk music. It wasn't difficult.

Retrato de Oscar Morineau, 1936 (Diego Rivera)

What on earth has dogmat been up to?

I have arrived in London. Before coming here, I spent my final weeks in Coventry mostly in a pleasant 'pub' on campus, drinking, smoking and talking 'philosophy' with other students too jaded to want to do anything else. I was re-acquainted with Tome, discussing Bergson and the thing in itself. I also spent time with Favela, who reawoke my interest in Neil Young (and other things which I don't care to mention).
Yes, it is true, I got my results, but they were poor, very poor, except for the dissertation on perception which stumbled into a fair mark. On the plus side, Axel outdid himself - and everyone else - proving that 'marijuana and David Lynch' is not a recipe for disaster after all.

I put my nose around the door of Tate Modern the other day, but I only looked at the Francis Bacon, whose paintings I have never seen - dare I say it? - 'in the flesh' before. I have made the embankment my new home, sitting around with my flask of coffee, reading Lowry's Under the Volcano, and dreaming of ice cold cerveza.
I've not been reading much lately, though I did delight in consuming a book called - mysteriously - La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant, written by a mysterious man named Jean-Baptiste Botul, and recommended to me by M, who was introduced to this marvellous thinker by one of his mysterious co-conspirators.

Storm out of season

"He watched the clouds: dark swift horses surging up the sky. A black storm breaking out of its season! That was what love was like, he thought; love which came too late [...] It slaked no thirst to say what love was like which came too late."

Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano p16.

Mind-brain identity

Axel, and others, have been revising for their 'philosophy of mind' exam. They've been revising Davidson, and others. They have been discussing mind-brain identity theories.
I think I have discovered why those theories are rubbish. They assume what they set out to prove; they beg the question. The brain is in the head, and it is the process or events of the brain which we are seeking to identify with feelings, perceptions and such of the mind.
Where is the mind? The preliminary considerations of identity theorists always already locate the mind in the region of the head. The mind is not self-evidently in the head, since that is one of the things identity theorists are attempting to demonstrate. So if we lose this absurd assumption (absurd, given what they are trying to prove), there are two obvious difficulties: 1) when I plunge a hypodermic needle into my heroin-hungry arm, the 'pricking pain' of the needle is felt, if anywhere, in the arm. It is very certainly not in the head. If you knee-cap someone, then ask them where it hurts, the answer would be an incredulous "in my knee you fucking psychopath."
2) Not all mental 'events' are like this though. Anguish, for example, could not be said to be anywhere: it is non-material, governed only by our temporal inner sense.
So certain feelings can be felt around the body, and others are no more in the head than on Pluto. I struggle to see what kind of identity could hold between these so located mental events and a physical event in the brain.

Heidegger on Art

"From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toil-some tread of the worker stares forth. In the stiffly rugged heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading and ever-uniform furrows of the field swept by a raw wind. On the leather lie the dampness and richness of the soil. Under the soles stretches the loneliness of the field-path as evening falls. In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field. This equipment is pervaded by uncomplaining worry as to the certainty of bread, the wordless joy of having once more withstood want, the trembling before the impending childbed and shivering at the surrounding menace of death."

—Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art .

Judgement Day: not quite how we imagined it...

From this marvellous site of cartoons (thanks Axel).

A machinic portrait of dogmat

A) The grounding.
B) The ground.
C) Thought is de-grounded as it passes through the ground at (B), and emerges from the spout at (C). 'Percolation' introduces time into the schema. Not only does thought pass upwards through space, but it matures in the temporal process of percolation. The temporal is also where we find the sexual. As percolation - the 'ejaculation of thought' - comes to an end, the system produces an epiphenomenon, which is consciousness in the form of steam. Completion of the process is indicated by the crescendo of sounds emitted; Bergsonians should be interested to note how intimitely linked are the steam of consciousness and the 'music of the system'.

Mug

Q: What is the most exotic coffee you've ever sipped and where?
A: I once had an espresso in Brazil where the beans had been hand-picked by monkeys on a hard-to-access mountain top.

—BOBBY HASHEMI, my former employer and Coffee Republic founder.

Live long and prosper

Some Labour MP wrote an article in the paper about the wonders of free-market economics. She was waxing lyrical about how "the operation of markets is a peaceful way of facilitating revolution whereby outsiders are allowed in, vested interests are challenged and the old is replaced by the new."
Yes! All is tickety-boo when market forces are in control.
"Globalisation is not a threat, but an opportunity, and we should embrace it and see liberal markets as the most effective instrument for generating prosperity."
Yes! All those nasty aristocrats will lose their privileges, their stately homes etc. Instead we'll see a veritable thunderstorm of trickle-down wealth; meritocracy will prevail. Hurrah! Then the privileged will be those who have earned it. But 'earning it' requires a bit more than mere hard graft. You need money to begin with, to get the virtuous circle turning. Money 'lends itself' to the creation of wealth - but what happens if you are penniless to begin with? You've got a problem.

Not really. You see, now it appears as if the successful in a meritocracy have earned their success, rather than simply been born with it. Yet one question remains: what makes 'earned' success more legitimate than inherited wealth (or stolen wealth, for that matter). What kind of wacky protestant work ethic are we tangled up with here? Answers on a postcard, please.

It's so good to laugh again

Television or the drink?

Television has the unique power of bringing people together. The usual complaint is that a tv dominates the living room. The flip side to this is that it unifies the thought of each viewer, to a remarkable degree. Films can do this, but there is nothing quite like mimicking a line from a tv show, only for your interlocutor to reciprocate, turning the dialogue into a skit.
Of course, if you happen to be reading the same book as another person (apart from Potty Harry, what are the odds...) there is instant rapport. But really, 'what are the odds?'

Life on Earth

The house has begun to turn into an life-form of it's own. The spiders are returning for the summer, and the beehive/insect park in the chimney is spewing out more and more creatures. Two bees fell out of the fireplace this morning, and a few days ago we had a visit from an inch-and-a-half long European Hornet. In the bathroom, a number of mushrooms have mushroomed in the corners.
I can't understand the contemporary obsession with destroying these various living things. Personally, I am quite proud that the conditions in the house foster life and growth. And the place feels a lot more cosy. It is almost as if our home is itself an organism (here a more astute blogger would invoke Hegel or something about 'flat ontology').

Public Service Announcement

Good news for all those who study at the Coventry university which is not Coventry University. I have jimmied open an ice-cream fridge in the Arts Centre (first floor, across from the Mead Gallery). Free Haagen-Dazs for everyone!
We shall conduct an experiment of sorts. How many free riders can there be? Is there even a free rider problem here? I welcome anyone who wishes to 'take things too far' and 'spoil it for the rest of us', for example by taking as much as they can carry. The sooner the fridge empties, the better.
For all those who wish to hand me over to the authorities, I provide once again the details of the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
I believe it was Herbert Asquith who once said "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice-cream!"

Can 'Yakety Sax' make anything funny?

Yep, it sure can. Play on full volume.

Alberto Giacometti

Dave Distiller: six reasons to

1) Distiller's exam had all my favourite questions: Bernard Williams and his S&M/torture obsession in 'The self and its future' - thought experiments are definitely making a comeback; analytic philosophy's very best faux-phenomenology; Dummett on Frege (who else?). The list goes on.

2) Trying his best to make Worms squirm (to be honest, I didn't see this with my own eyes). Even if Elusive-Hyphen forced him to organise that evening, and forced him to look like he was having fun, I don't mind. In the end I don't want any more of the analytics than that they invite a few speakers from France, and sit politely listening during their talk.

3) The man might have some taste. A little sparse for some eyes, but I would say that this is a fairly good image to have on the cover of one's book - admit it! (this is actually the editors copy of the proof after he'd finished reading it. Kidding.)

4) Distiller and I have had almost all our meaningful exchanges in the lavatory (no Axel, no Lila, not that).

5) Apparently he left Christminster because the atmosphere was too 'aggressive' (purely hearsay). Within a few months of arriving here he was nicknamed 'the Gauleiter'. Fast workers will always have a place under my wing.

6) Like Churchill, he marks essays on the exercise bike in the gym. 'Healthy body healthy mind' as Neechee used to say (and both at the same time!)

Is Jean Hyppolite the finest reader of philosophy?

I have smudged my way through a few weeks of busy-ness. Hence the dearth of posts. Hyppolite has been there by my side every step of the way (ok, except for that niggling Epistemology and Metaphysics exam).
What a legend. Elusive-Hyphen calls Hyppolite's essay on memory "the best", and Hegel scholars the world over turn to his books for guidance in those darkest of arts - Hegelianism.

Luce Irigaray part two: "Keep your difference!"

Luce Irigaray exhorted us to keep our difference - this remark signalled that the seminar was beginning to open up. It had begun badly, with one participant reduced to tears through an unfortunate sequence of misunderstandings and miscommunications. This failed dialogue was followed by a disagreement over whether Allah is neuter. "Prove it!" demanded Irigaray playfully.

There were one or two blogworthy diamonds in the dust of seminar waffle (sorry, 'valuable discussion'): "...it is fashionable to reject Heidegger today..."; and in response to a question about another academic, "I am not here to judge anyone".

I asked a question at the end of the seminar: "Does a deeper commonality, or common humanity animate our progress towards the other? I would like you to elaborate whether there must be a more fundamental sameness, beneath the difference of which you speak." I thought it was a suitable question for someone of my standing: not too specific or knowledgeable - the kind of question expected of a person familiar with philosophical problems, but not an expert on Irigaray's work.
The response was interesting: humans are relational, but they relate in different ways. Each person inhabits their own 'house of language', so the problem is how to articulate a way to meet in a common region. She also made one or two crucial remarks about mourning - which I didn't fully understand.

Later, there was another dinner for the seminar participants. Funnily, we arrived at our table just as the Frédéric Worms party was arriving at theirs' (luckily, I managed to catch most of Worms' talk earlier that day). The evening took on a dreamlike quality. In the distance I could see mortal enemies Elusive-Hyphen and Dave Distiller conversing with vigour and apparent pleasure, in the company of the eminent Bergson scholar.

As we (the Irigaray group) threw ourselves heartily into our second day's drinking, the discussion livened up considerably. Someone asked Irigaray a question about Sartre.
"Sartre! Sartre! When they offer me the Prix Nobel, only then will I talk about Sartre!"

At the end, there were only five: four philosophy students and the guest of honour. She was regaling us with stories of the Italian school children with whom she works. She showed us some drawings, and explained their importance.
Since most of our group had left, it appeared that I was the only person remaining with any knowledge of french (I use 'knowledge' in its loosest sense). Fargone asked Irigaray a question about whether the bambini 'keep their difference'. She couldn't understand the English. She gestured at me: "You seem to have some French - can you translate?" I tried. Let's just say that we built a small tree-house of language, between French and English. Irigaray understood my rendition of the question, although in my excitement I made a grammatical blunder (or two).

The end of the evening was marvellous - there was a collective sense of joy. Whoever said in vino, veritas was mistaken. One finds not truth in wine, but love. Just as we reached the bus stop, where some of us were to separate, Irigaray began to tell a story about an interview. We started to say our goodbyes, and she said with mock incredulity "don't you want to hear my story?"
"I imagined for the interviewer a dialogue between the masculine identity of Beauvoir and the feminine identity of Deleuze!"
Everyone started falling around in raucous laughter. And then she was gone.

Luce Irigaray part one

On Tuesday, Professeur(?) Irigaray gave a talk ('The path towards the other') at our university, which was followed by wine and dinner with her and the English department. I was fortunate enough to be invited.
Near the end of the evening, I infiltrated a small group of people talking to Irigaray. She asked me what I did at the university. I told her of my status, adding that I really enjoyed her lecture. Not satisfied with this formulaic response, she said: "Oh yeah? What part of the talk did you like?" The other people at the table erupted into comical derision: "You got rumbled...Tough break kid."
Fortified by the wine I'd been drinking all evening, I waved them away: "No no no, I will answer the question." I proceeded to say something about authentic communication with the other - which I now realise she couldn't really understand, since in my ardour I talked too fast.

A little later, she turned to quiz the (analytic) philosopher of literature sitting beside me. It was, erm, tricky: "I am interested in the knowledge we can gain from fiction...Woolf...ethics" the hapless anglo-americano mumbled.

After the main course, Irigaray managed to snaffle two desserts from the set menu. I heard our waitress being gently admonished by her supervisor - but her explanation for the freebie was simple: "Gift of the gab, innit."

Monday, Tuesday, Opus Dei...

Always nice to have a Labour Minister for Women and Equality who thinks homosexuality is a sin, and that condoms promote promiscuity. I won't even mention whether she is pro-life or pro-choice. At least we can feel comfortable in the knowledge that the Catholic Church has the interests of the proletariat at heart. Like when they tried to spread the rumour - amongst poor and Aids stricken communities - that condoms have tiny holes through which HIV can pass.

Sign in a toilet near the philosophy department

To prevent blockages, please do not deposit cigarettes in the urinal.

Mmkay

A game of chess is like a sword fight: think first, before you move

"Reading philosophy sometimes stimulates, even cures. Reading sends us back to our daily existence with our spirit a little more alive. A chess match would have perhaps done just as well, and would have created less mental perversity and illusion."

Luce Irigaray, The Way of Love p4.

Five minutes is a long time in philosophy

Brn has arrived back from France. We talked of Bergson.

"Oh, yeah, thanks for recommending that Deleuze book - it was excellent," a whippersnapping second-year piped as he tumbled past the door of the room Brn and I occupied. At last, I am a guru. The lad's cheeks reddened; he was trying to suppress the lust that he couldn't understand.

Later, I turned to look out the window, as Brn reminisced about the cafés. A student walked past, and adjusted her skirt with a tug. I wouldn't notice this but for the fact that a moment later, another girl strolled by, doing the exact same thing. Tugging the skirt straight.

The earth moved

'This is it, my niggaz: this what we boast about'

I have submitted my Bergson/Merlot-Ponty car crash. All's well that ends well, as they say in the tropics.

Democracy in full bloom

On my stroll to the bakery, I spotted a Labour leafleteer. A bleak job, if ever there was one. Moments after he dropped his message of doom (sorry, 'appeal for votes') through their letter-boxes, two neighbours both erupted out of their front doors into the street. "I've had enough of these fucking pamphlets!" one rasped, hurling the red and yellow scrap of paper into the street and under my eagerly trampling shoes. With less community spirit, and more of the 'good neighbourliness' of apartheid South Africa, the women gave each other a look of disgust, then retreated back into their homes.

On the way back (my bag bulging with tasty treats) I noticed the leafleteer talking to one of the women. How he snaffled this interview, I have no idea. "So even you admit it - there were some good things happening under Labour" he said, er, labouring a point. His robust interlocutor gave a gesture of such disdain, I almost lost my footing.

Could someone remind me what elections are for? Nowadays most people vote for parties that hover around what used to be called the centre-right. And when, in the unusual case that a party or person of any distinction gets votes, such as the BNP, Hamas, Le Pen or Ahmadinejad, everyone starts howling.

Possibly dogmat's most foolish escapade

I was lounging in front of the computer, poring over Bergson's Mutter and Murmuring, when I recalled a galling incident (much like a boating incident, with less water). Towards the end of high school, I did some work for a small cycling magazine. One issue was especially poorly organized, and I was roped in to help with the layout - the headlines, in particular.
Flicking through the magazine after publishing, to check on everything, a centimetre-high caption caught my eye: "The Three Muscateers"
I assure you, "The Three Aromatic Grape Men" is not what I intended to call them (nor "The Three Omanis", in case you were wondering). Oh, the shame!

Vivre sa vie

European thought comes to Coventry

There's good news and there's bad news.
The good news is that we've got Luce Irigaray and Frédéric Worms coming to give lectures here this term.
The bad news is that we've booked them both at the same time, on the same day.
What in the blazes!?

Mylittle-Pony

Is this the dogmat we all know and love?

Cynosarges - first home of the Cynics:
"They rejected the social values of their time, often flouting conventions in shocking ways to prove their point. They challenged their listeners to get in touch with their 'natural' animal side [...] disrepute and poverty are advantageous in so far as they drive back the man upon himself, increasing his self-control and purifying his intellect from the dross of the external. The good man (i.e. the wise man) wants nothing: like the gods, he is self-sufficing; 'let men gain wisdom—or buy a rope'; he is a citizen of the world, not of a particular country [...] The very essence of their philosophy was the negation of the graces of social courtesy; it was impossible to 'return to nature' in the midst of a society clothed in the accumulated artificiality of evolved convention without shocking the ingrained sensibilities of its members." (Wikipedia)

Police detectives

I hate to love them. Watching Twin Peaks this weekend has reminded me of the very special feelings I have for certain sorts of policemen. Those men and women in the pages of books or on the tv screen, who embody a certain quiet seriousness, who are regular to the point of metronomy. It always comes down to rhythm, doesn't it? Inspecteur Maigret and his little habits, the subtle charm of reliability. Lieutenant Columbo, shuffling around in the same old coat, driving the same old car, tiredly berating the same old naughty dog. "My wife loves murder mysteries..." he repeats. "Oh, one more question sir..."
Maigret and Columbo, so often investigating those wealthy, dissolute folk whose very lack of regularity is their downfall. The calmness which grows out of the cultivation of habits would have made murder impossible. Instead those unfortunate souls drift from tennis games to cocktail parties without realizing their weariness is in the soul, not the body.

What better to express the rhythm of a person than their eating habits. Agent Cooper with his pie and coffee, the Twin Peaks police station with their nightly doughnut smörgåsbord. Foucault was right: the soul is the prison of the body. With the precise mind which befits a bizarre FBI operative, the body cannot but fall into line. Doughnuts, pie: it is not a question of hunger - they'll get eaten one way or the other, because the desire does not emanate from the stomach.

Sartre and Merleau-Ponty

De Beauvoir: You were very standoffish with people you didn't like. Merleau-Ponty, for example. You were on very bad terms with him, weren't you?
Sartre: Yes, but even so I once protected him from some men who wanted to beat him up.
De Beauvoir: You were singing obscene songs, and being pious he tried to stop you?
Sartre: He went out. Some fellows ran after him - there were two of them - and they were going to beat him up because they were furious. So I went out too. I had a sort of liking for Merleau-Ponty. There was someone else with me. We overtook them and said, 'Come on. Don't beat him up. Leave him alone and let him go.' So they didn't do anything; they went off.
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbSimone De Beauvoir, Adieu: A Farewell to Sartre p256

In the news

Are these people insane? Cutting off Palestinian Authority funding cos no-one likes the cut of their jib. Very mature. Of course we may not have to face the consequences of this foolishness if Iran steps in to 'resolve' the situation. With their nukes (I'm not obsessed - I promise).

My attention was also drawn to this article, in yesterday's paper, about the fugitive Mafia boss and the love-letters he sent to his wife. How fascinating: this is what newspapers should be all about.

Work

I am writing this in a state of joyous agitation. I have made a breakthrough in the Bergson/Merleau-Ponty project (you know the drill: 'if I told you I'd have to kill you'). The moment when it all comes together. They say it has similar physiological characteristics to an orgasm. Or is that sneezing - I can never remember. I know for sure it is just as good as that first sip of espresso. I wouldn't know about an orgasm anyway, cos, well...(Hi mom. Hi dad. Glad you're reading!) That's a joke, in case anyone's wondering (Hi mom. Hi dad.). I have to make that clear, since there has been some suggestion in the comments that I'm a mormon. Is it the Bataille? Or maybe just a spelling error...

Tuesday love

g
On the eve of an Iranian nuclear strike on the very fabric of civilization itself, newsreaders across the world capture the mood: 'It's WAR!'

The last few days

Unisex Middleversity: where 'ethnic minority' doesn't mean Chinese students paying top-yuan for the privilege. I took a trip to London last week, passing by the campus to see some of the Dictionary of Unrepentant Terms seminar. I had terrible hayfever throughout, but was cheered somewhat by the lightheartedness of proceedings. Prof De Libera, in particular, contributed to the jocularity with odd remarks - at one point he called Prof Balibar méchant, which means 'naughty' or 'wretched'. Sadly, that comment fell on unappreciative ears.

I was there for the two talks on subjectivity. I shan't try (and inevitably fail) to summarise them here. Interestingly, Balibar was to supervise the dictionary entries concerning politics, but instead requested the opportunity to write about 'the subject', because, as he said, "I don't know much about this." It was remarkable: he is not exactly a young philosopher casting around for an area of expertise - it seems he just wanted to work on something more original than is expected of 'someone who once collaborated with Althusser'. His career was made long ago, but he wants more. What a radical notion! We might even import it over here one day (but don't bet on it).
I became increasingly amused every time Balibar mentioned "philosophy of mind", or "Davidson" or "possible worlds" (ok, that was in relation to Leibniz, but still) or when he cried out for "a comparative study of Deleuze's Logic of Sense and analytic accounts of action"... (That's enough Conference Report. Ed.)

My eyes are aching. I'm stuck in the arm-pit of Phenomenology of Perception, where Merleau-Ponty is talking about monocular and binocular vision. Naturally, when he refers to the research findings, it is necessary for me to repeat the experiment myself (this involves much squinting of the eyes, and changing focus). One experiment which I did had a quite remarkable result: stand about two yards from a plain white wall looking straight at it, and, with an outstretched arm, raise your index finger to just below your line of sight, maintaining focus on the wall. Once you can see 'in the corner of your eye', the index finger unclear and double, turn your focus to the finger completely. Not only will the finger appear to 'flesh out' or 'materialize' as it comes into focus, but you will notice that the finger actually feels like it has transformed from a phantasm into a thing. I'm almost blind from doing this over and over again.

Speaking of Merleau-Ponty, I saw Lila in London too. I am convinced she could be the next Schneider (the World War I casualty who took the 'thought' out of 'thought experiment'). After a short stop at the neurologist we walked around Camden telling each other slanderous stories about fellow students and teachers. Jolly good.

ps. Here is Zizek's diagnosis of the 'liberal communist'.

Feel the magic, hear the roar: Thundercats are loose!

On the left, logo for marvellous 80's cartoon Thundercats. On the right, the emblem for crime-fighters Serious Organised Crime Agency. Miaow.

To find out how to turn your criminal friends over to the law, click here (but remember - snitches are not long for this world).

Tuesday love

Today, I would like to sing the praises of the engineering department. They happen to take their coffee in Raffles, so I get lots of opportunities to 'accidentally overhear' the stuff they talk about.
There is one professor who repeatedly expresses his concern about lazy teachers and generous marking. He has high expectations of students, an unusual trait for lecturers these days (and something which, as a student, I find very encouraging).
On another occasion, I heard a lecturer calling for there to be no difference in pay between secretaries and professors. That is probably the most revolutionary thing I have heard come out of anyone's mouth for a long while.

Madness and incivility

I've been reading about Foucault, and I've taken some concrete steps (it's a mafia thing, mixing metaphors and all. You sleep with the fishes someday dogmat...). On the political front, he had Groupe d'information sur les Prisons. Following the great man, I have started wearing my activist Save Arrested Development teeshirt. Never mind that I watched the show downloaded off the internet for free, and that it has already been cancelled. 'Revolution o muerte' whatever the weather. Concerning technologies of the self, I have been teaching myself to throw with the left arm (which would be good since I am actually left-handed). For some reason right just felt right.

Now I know what you're thinking: "someone showed him that funny bit in Zizek's Orgasms without Bodies about the yuppies reading Guattari and Deleuze."
All I have to say is: we don't call them 'yuppies' anymore - it's now 'pinstriped cnuts', or simply 'the gainfully employed'.

Those conspiracy theories...

Come on. There I was, trying to defend ole Uncle Sam, and then the big fool goes and pulls a stunt like this. Yes, stun belts in court. Three cheers for justice.

Tuesday love

I've hit the mother lode. Have you?

France. Another crack.

I think there is some confusion concerning my attitude towards the revolting French students. If you are a regular reader, you will probably know that I support violent protest by default (particularly if it 'turns nasty').
All I wanted to do was point out that some manifestations of resistance are less significant than others. We all remember the mother featured in Fahrenheit 911 grieving her dead soldier son. We can also recognize that this sort of thing has the potential to change attitudes in a country like the United States. But in the end, we snort with derision at people who all-of-a-sudden turn pacifist coincidentally at the same time as they lose a loved-one at war. Magically Tony Blair and George Bush become liars when Private Johnny gets blown to pieces in a ditch somewhere in terrorist-land.

And so with the students. Not a peep from them in November (even Socialist Worker struggled to find evidence of this). Then: oops, laws concerning their immediate financial future get changed and suddenly it's 'solidarité!'

I still support them. I still dislike 'reform' or 'modernization' (ie. becoming more American). Nonetheless - and perhaps it is the tiny anarchist hiding inside me - I was far more encouraged when the banlieus erupted, spontaneously, last year.

Mis-spent youth

I watched the Commonwealth Games cycling road-race on Saturday night. It was quite nostalgic: the South African team was made up of some of the lads who used to thrash me in the high school league. While everyone else was reading Camus and self-harming, I was struggling along in the gutter behind these bastards. I remember how frightening some of them used to be. He was rumoured to ride his mountainbike in the sand dunes for strength training. And he had a spell riding with Lance Legstrong at US Postal.
We mustn't forget that this is the only race where South Africans and Australians can seem so fast, since there are no Italians, Spanish, French, Belgians (or Americans, for that matter) to worry about. God Save the Queen indeed.

Thought for the day

"No one is accountable for his deeds, no one for his nature;
to judge is the same thing as to be unjust."
vcvbctnnhe Friedrich Nietzsche Human, All too Human I §39.

France

What are the French students up to? Does this really surprise anyone? The banlieu protests were, to my mind, far more interesting. Imagine if the chavs rose up and started a revolution!
Students on the other hand; who gives a toss - that's what they do (or at least, that's what they should do).
My hope for the latest unrest is a little less of this:

and a little more of this:

Going postal

I'm spending a lot of time in the post office these days. The book business is booming. Well, I've sold three, but you gotta start somewhere.
Yesterday, I happened upon Eeshandazadeggi, and we had a good talk. It was funny: at one point he was struggling to say something like 'untotalitizing totality' when a post office customer intervened (her first mistake): "do you mean 'totalitarianism?'"
"No no no" he mumbled, waving the interferer away.
Mostly our discussion consisted in him talking about a book he'd read, and me saying that I didn't know anything about that thinker. Lukacs...Heidegger...Baudrillard.
I couldn't resist making fun of Baudrillard though. He's kind of like Zizek, someone who, in one of Lewis's possible worlds gets taken seriously, but who just gets laughed at in this world. A kind of Walter Mitty character, if you will (it amuses me that this is considered an insult; I would love to be a fantasist).
Speaking of which, I am trying to construct a conspiracy theory about how I am surrounded by conspiracy theorists. Leaving the post office with Eeshandazadeggi, we stopped to talk to P. Interestingly, the initials of my interlocutors spelled 'ESP' (coincidence? - I think not, my friend!). I am also alarmed by the fact that the two clevererest undergraduates in the philosophy department believe the 9/11 Twin Towers extravaganza was laid on by the CIA. Now I know their reasoning processes are probably fatally flawed, given that they both love Heidegger and Wittgestein, but still...

In other news, I am finding ever new and inventive ways to entertain myself while reading. To begin with, I laugh out loud every time Renaud Barbaras uses the word 'rigorous', which is about twice every page. When the espresso twitches get especially bad, I amuse myself by emitting loud and bizarre noises, over the blaring Mahler, then imagining with glee the look of consternation on my elderly neighbours' faces.
Now before you get to thinking that I am some sort of yob, I would like to point out that these aren't your ordinary elderly neighbours. Mr Respectable wears a leather jacket and pilot sunglasses. In the quietest, loneliest loneliness, it is possible to hear the soothing rhythms of machine-gun fire issuing from his Playstation. One foot in the grave he is not.

Tuesday love

"In Heaven, Everything Is Fine.
In Heaven, Everything Is Fine.
In Heaven, Everything Is Fine.
You've Got Your Good Things, And I've Got Mine.

In Heaven, Everything Is Fine.
In Heaven, Everything Is Fine.
In Heaven, Everything Is Fine.
You've Got Your Good Things, And You've Got Mine."
asdfasdfasdfadfasdfadsfadsfadfsddddd (Eraserhead)

Zones of indetermination

Nothing much to report. I am engaging in a little endeavour called 'work'.
Reading Matter and Memory til my eyes bleed. Scrutinising Merleau-Ponty til my hope gives out.
The beauty of scholarship: I have already composed two poetic footnotes to enliven the study I have yet to write.

Tuesday love

I had a nice little walk in the countryside around campus earlier today. There is nothing better than cold air and bubbling brooks to stimulate the mind. So let us exalt 'taking a stroll in the greenery'. On this point I find myself closer to the views of logging expert Martin Heidegger, than to those of Michel 'I hate the outdoors' Foucault - quite a turn up for the old books.

Continental Eclecticism: an idiosyncratic report

Friday was a good day. I listened to some talks, I met some new people, I realised that you cannot plagiarise if you do not understand. There was a conference at my university (organised, in part, by Glueboot, if I am not mistaken). We had the honour of a keynote speech from a Paris professeur.
In the bar afterwards, I asked him what he thought of an American student's presentation, which covered his area of expertise.
"Shall I be honest? Well, since I wrote on this material ten years ago, I felt a little surprised and annoyed that she didn't appear to know my work! That is my narcissistic answer. Otherwise, I was glad that her attempt wasn't as good as mine."
A little later, I suggested to him that, if I had been her, I would have been very nervous, since he is the leader in this field of research (ie: go easy, man).
"I don't look terrifying do I? Ok, ok, I was a bit hard, but only because she seemed to have all the answers - 'you want ontology, I'll give you ontology; you want epistemology, I've got it too' - so I thought I would ask a difficult question, concerning external relations, which should cause Deleuzians some difficulty..."
A fascinating character, though I admit that I am easily seduced by French philosophy teachers (and, increasingly, French philosophy students). An alarming trend, I have noticed, is the wish for continentalists from the continent to come to England to work on continental philosophy. All is not peaches and cream t'other side of the channel after all.

Friday was also remarkable in that I had one discussion about Heidegger and technology, and one discussion about Husserl and 'doing phenomenology'. Tome had just read Barbaras' Desire and Distance, a short book which I am using for the Bergson/Merleau-Ponty endeavour. We had a long discussion about whether it is worth embarking on the vast project of trying, not to read, but to do, phenomenology.
I also had the opportunity to talk to Fargone the Farsi. It is funny - every time I speak to him he seems to be going through a 'Lacan phase'. A year ago, he was talking about mirrors and development, and the other evening his catchphrase was 'nom du père'. We had a short discussion about Nietzsche, but didn't get far since he was trying to talk about complexity in psychoanalytic terms, and I wasn't. It was interesting nonetheless.

Carry on up the Amazon

I have been selling some of my books on Amazon marketplace. I made my first sale on thursday, a copy of that great work, An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology. As I was packaging the tome, I couldn't resist slipping a bonus book into the envelope. So I sent off this marvellous epistemology text along with André Gide's The Vatican Cellars, plus an offensive note ('Philosophy is love of wisdom: there is more wisdom on one page of Gide than in a whole book of Dancy').
I know that this kind of tomfoolery isn't exactly in the spirit of entrepreneurship, but the thought of someone receiving such a package fills me with endless wonder and fascination.

Sartre, Club Maintenant, and 'the people'

"Right from the beginning of the street the crowd were pushing and shoving to get into the hall where Jean Pulse Heartre was going to give his lecture.
People were using all kinds of tricks to needle through the eagle eye of the chastity belt of special duty policemen who had cut off the district and who were there to examine the invitation cards and tickets, because hundreds and thousands of forgeries were in circulation.
One group drew up in a hearse and the coppers stuck a long steel spike through the coffin, crucifying the occupants to the elm for eternity. This saved having to take them out again before the funeral and the only trouble caused was that the shrouds would be all messy when the real dead men came to use them. Others got themselves parachuted in by special plane. There were riots and fighting at Orly too to get on to the planes. A team of firemen took them for a practice target and, unlacing their hoses, squirted them straight in the bull's-eye of the battle where everybody was miserably drowned. Others, in a desperate attempt, were trying to get in through the sewers. They were being pushed down again by hob-nailed boots which jumped heavily on their knuckles every time they gripped the edges of the man-holes, trying to get a hold. The sewer rats took over from there. But nothing could dampen the spirits of these aficionados."
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkknnnnnnnkkkkbbkkkkkkkBoris Vian, Froth on the Daydream p93.

Being with the Other

"The interval between the other and me can never be overcome. It has to be cleared of a prioris, freed from prescribed or solipsistic certitudes, arranged as a reserve of silence appropriate neither simply to me nor simply to the other, space between us where we are going our way toward one another through the gesture (of) speaking."
ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddmdjdddddLuce Irigaray, The Way of Love p66.

Tuesday love

Today I would like to celebrate the art of Pierre Klossowski - thinker, writer, artist, and French translator of Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche.

Above: Scene with the young Ogier and the Commander of St. Vit, 1982.
Below left: Lahire and the young Ogier, 1972. Below right: Le petit Rose.

Back to the Future

Axel and I were watching the German possible-worlds scenario film Run Lola, Run when we got to thinking about time-travel. Naturally, our discussion required that we accept a common sense, spatialized conception of time, if only to give the screenplay writers a fighting chance; reading Bergson and listening to Elusive-Hyphen's diatribes against "Hollywood's obsession with time-travel" made this fairly difficult.
Axel's opening view was that, if we accept a strong determinism, then it is not inconceivable that our irruption into the causal chain, when we go back in time, is always already part of the 'causal account'. That is to say, our actions as a time-traveller in 1975 would be determined, but determined by states of affairs in 2006.
I objected by saying that, given our assumptions (ie, our commonsensical, simple-science fatalism), a problem arises because, from these very assumptions, it follows that the state of affairs in the world at any moment is determined by that of the prior moment. And since on our simple model time unfolds in a 'straight-line', we encounter the same difficulty as Kant did on the question of free will: how does anyone, or anything, intervene in the causal chain, since causal determinism is true a priori (or in our case, by definition)?
To clarify - my problem with time-travel has to do with the magical appearance, in the causal order, of undetermined events, even though we know that they are determined by events in the future. To accept this outlook, we must adopt the view that all of history is simultaneous. The problem now is that our claim that 'every state of affairs is caused by the state of affairs immediately prior' loses all meaning, since we have no way in which to grasp such a temporal understanding of causality.

Our concerns developed from thinking about what would happen if you travelled back in time and murdered the 'young you'. Would the later 'you' simply evaporate? Would you find it impossible to kill the 'younger you'? These are pressing questions. But I think it is high time I recommend taking a look at Bergson ('how is forgetting possible?').

The shoe store

Listening to a lecture on Franz Kafka, I drifted off into reminiscences of the time I spent working in a shoe store. There were some characters: the second generation Pole whose only remaining outward signs of polishness were his blonde hair, and much-parodied tendency to pronounce 'a' like a 'u', as in 'Buttersea Bomber!' (his oft-repeated refrain).
Our assistant manager, part Moroccan, maintained a reassuring serenity, punctuated by moments of anger or jollity. His physique was notable for its slightly bandy legs (such as one might find on a cowboy).

Power/Knowledge

"I believe that anything can be deduced from the general phenomenon of the domination of the bourgeois class. What needs to be done is something quite different. One needs to investigate historically, and beginning from the lowest level, how mechanisms of power have been able to function. In regard to the confinement of the insane, for example, or the repression and interdiction of sexuality, we need to see the manner in which, at the effective level of the family, of the immediate environment, of the cells and most basic units of society, these phenomena of repression or exclusion possessed their instruments and their logic, in response to a certain number of needs. We need to identify the agents responsible for them, their real agents (those which constituted the immediate social entourage, the family, parents, doctors etc.), and not be content to lump them under the formula of a generalised bourgeoisie."
aaaaacontent to lump aajjaaaaMichel Foucault, 'Two Lectures', in Power/Knowledge p100-101.

Commentariat

Man, Colonel Chabert had me laughing into my keyboard with this comment:

"The longest threads on this site came from mocking or dissing someone's
favourite tv shows - its got to be the most unacceptable thing you can do. You
can abuse Palestinian militants or feminists or altermondialist actions all you
like, call them fascists working for the Man, but disrespect the television!
That's too far! Moralizing, killjoy...its really remarkable. Yet it's not hard to
find out what every hour we each spend in front of the tv is worth to the
Masters. So the radical refusal of destructive, market greasing activity will be
put off indefinitely, while the radical refusal of constructive action will
remain the default position, as ever...."

Guilty as charged guv: when I do have a tv in the house, I can't resist a bit of 70's film action ('twas Smokey and the Bandit last sunday - diamond).

Colloquium

I've spent the evening at the expense of the philosophy department, in the company of a fairly eminent French thinker (as a clue to his identity, we can say that a dumbass nouveau philosophe might call our man a 'deckhand on the ship of fools').
During his talk, he spoke about Masoch, and how Deleuze, in breaking up the sadist-masochist unity, articulates an account of masochism which is deeply subversive. At dinner, he distinguished himself as uncompromising, yet warm. He returned the wine, and left most of his meat untouched; delicate french tastebuds recoiling from Coventry cuisine.

Unfortunately I was a little too overwhelmed to have anything interesting to say to him. I felt less like an interlocutor and more like an anthropologist (see this rare species! a genuine thinker! what books does he read? what films interest him?)
When I did talk, I expressed an interest in attending a module based on his current research, rather than him regurgitating old Mademoiselle Plateaux material - a remark which seemed to impress him. I, in turn, was impressed when he explained why he teaches in England ('it is a question of deterritorializing...', 'they let me do what I like...') .

Otherwise, there was department gossip, but I refuse to report it here, since I am trying to kick the habit. I have something of an antipathy towards forming a 'continental bloc' - I would rather simply commit a grievous bodily harm offence against the person in question. Of course, my concern is that, once in prison, I will be compared less to causes célèbres Negri and Genet, than to Schlick's mad student murderer...

A project

What would you say if I told you I was (physiologically, rather than psychologically) addicted to a certain substance, even though I have never ingested that substance?

Tuesday love

Here are two pieces of music composed by Friedrich Nietzsche. For now, I shall say that I love them insofar as they exist and can be listened to, rather than insofar as they are masterpieces.

The first: "An early Allegretto for piano, on which Nietzsche worked off and on from 1858 until it found its final form during his Leipzig study period. In it, Nietzsche used Beethovenian material, which becomes particularly apparent in the slow passage in the last third, which is reminiscent of the so-called 'Moonlight' sonata. In this recording, you can hear Michael Tannenbaum in a concert at the Evangelical Academy at Hofgeismar, Hessen, which took place there on October 28, 2000" (thanks to Nietzsche and Music).
The recording doesn't sound too good, but we shan't let that bother us.

From the same site, we have another piano piece: Hymnus an die Freundschaft (1874), written for his friend Franz Overbeck. Later he adapted the hymn to be performed with Lou Salomé's poem Prayer to Life.

A caffeine-induced state of mind

Such wonderful feelings I had last night at around three. I was sitting in the living room, Bach Cello Sweets (taste the sad) unfolding in the background, with a small cup of espresso in my belly. I was reading Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, and it was going smoothly.
I thought back to Sartre, sitting somewhere in Paris, 82 years ago. His eyes passing over the very same forms that were before me on the page.
I thought, along the lines of Beauvoir's attempt to become a coat by concentrating on it hard enough: 'if you immerse yourself completely in the sentences, dogmat, if you allow the words to fill your consciousness, you could be Sartre!'

Sociality

"You're just saying that cos Elusive-Hyphen was making fun of Heidegger and Wittgenstein in his lecture the other day!"
How not to make friends in philosophy. Luckily, I was talking to Mon and P, so it was more a question of 'how much can I alienate these two lovable lads?'

P is getting in the habit of telling me to "stop taking cues from M," which is becoming(-?)irritating since I don't believe he realises the extent to which my views differ from M's.
Speaking of whom...

M introduced me to a friend of his, who gave me an easy ride until 10pm, then asked "what is your relation to women?" Uh-oh. I am not effusive on this topic at the best of times, let alone around someone I'm trying to impress through an (over)use of thoughtful silences.
She had found me lacking in character, a defect I tried at once to deny and defend. That was foolish.
"I'm not so-and-so, and if I am it is only because of such-and-such," I crumpled.

Small alterations

As you may have noticed, there have been a few changes round here. I hope you enjoy the new look (which may well be tinkered with over the next days).

Formfilling

What a fun day! I met two of my lecturers to discuss my year-essays. For Dr Ampere, I shall be working on late Lyotard and the sublime, which will involve investigating the Levinas connection. We also discussed next year's modules, and he gave encouraging signs (I naturally get excited when the words 'Foucault', 'philosophy' and 'module' are mentioned in the same breath).
Elusive-Hyphen steered me away from a 'Bergson vs Sartre on freedom' essay, towards a Bergson and Merleau-Ponty comparative work. This is a project to which I am especially looking forward, since I am itching to investigate properly what distinguishes Bergson from phenomenology. Plus I can't wait to carefully and painstakingly describe 'the Image' in all its shimmering beauty.

Artists and philosophers

"Through having reached the percept as 'the sacred source,' through having seen Life in the living or the Living in the lived, the novelist or painter returns breathless and with bloodshot eyes. They are athletes - not athletes who train their bodies and cultivate the lived, no matter how many writers have succumbed to the idea of sport as a way of heightening art and life, but bizarre athletes of the 'fasting-artist' type, or the 'great Swimmer' who does not know how to swim. It is not an organic or muscular athleticism but its inorganic double, 'an affective Athleticism,' an athleticism of becoming that reveals only forces that are not its own - 'plastic specter.' In this respect artists are like philosophers. What little health they possess is often too fragile, not because of illnesses or neuroses but because they have seen something in life that is too much for anyone, too much for themselves, and that has put on them the quiet mark of death. But this something is also the source or breath that supports them through the illnesses of the lived (what Nietzsche called health). 'Perhaps one day we will know that there wasn't any art but only medicine.'"
Perhaps one day we will know that perhapsll hlealthFelix and Gilles, What is Philosophy.

Grauniad: corrections and clarifications

"Our obituary of George Psychoundakis declared that his memoir, The Cretan Runner, was translated "with inimical lyricism" by Patrick Leigh Fermor. Inimitable, we meant."

Friday

There was a party on friday night. At Hades and B. It was fun, though I did go around - in a rather higgledy-piggledy fashion - telling everyone why a dose of Nietzsche makes radicalism so much more fun.
Hades and I considered the ways in which the appearance (or name, etc) of a thinker affects the extent to which we open ourselves to their thought. Hades began by saying that he took an instant dislike to David Hume, because he hasn't a nice name. We agreed on the need to complicate this, since A.N. Whitehead has possibly the ugliest name in philosophy, and yet his late works make him seem marginally interesting, enigmatic, and cutting-edge.
I put forward that old favourite of mine: that it is possible to gather a lot about someone not by their looks but by their countenance, their bearing, their facial expressions, the way in which they hold themselves, and the 'look' on their hands. This view was bolstered, I thought, by an interview - which I saw last week - with Francis Bacon. Up 'til that point, I had only ever seen still photographs of him (ok, and self-portraits, but that is another matter). Frankly, his face repulsed me, in an astonishingly powerful way. Yet when I got to see it animated, talking, quaffing red tea, I fell in love with that face.

Tuesday Love

Isn't it marvellous that the study of philosophy allows room for quaint anecdotes about doddering old men? Dr Ampere regaled the class with tales of his neighbour, "who must be about ninety," going for his daily walk with the regularity of a metronome and the grace of a gnome. What's more, this wasn't just to pass the time, but served to illustrate Deleuze's Bacon.

I also love the ineptitude of The Times hatchet job on P.F. Strawson and analytic philosophy. Two wrongs don't make a right - newspapers pissing on Strawson's grave is not going to make forgetting the Derrida obituary fiasco any easier.

Come on baby, do the locomotion

I was cycling onto campus this morning, when I saw a man with a camera standing on the footbridge which crosses the railway line. A real live trainspotter! What a treat. I observed him closely as the time came. The eye of the duck, we might call it.
Along the track, I saw an unusual looking engine approach. Ah. Our anorak raised his camera, poised to strike. At this very moment (Richard Branson bless his heart) a Virgin Trains express hurtled past, completely blocking any view of the old locomotive. To his credit, the trainspotter remained calm, looking deadpan.

A bit of birthday Bosch

Attack of the Killer Bees

I found this strange 'game' - it involves directing a swarm of bees around a badly characterised cityscape. Endless hours of joy. Here.