Crusader vs nomad

In my last review I used the word crusader and to be honest I’m a little uncomfortable with it – what for all its historico-religious undertones. Not to mention it sounds a little more aggressive then I’d like it to express. Nonetheless, I'd like it to go further than the ambivalence of the Deleuzian "nomad":

"Nomadism" is a way of life that exists outside of the organizational "State." The nomadic way of life is characterized by movement across space which exists in sharp contrast to the rigid and static boundaries of the State … The nomad, is thus, a way of being in the middle or between points. It is characterized by movement and change, and is unfettered by systems of organization.

The dichotomy between nomad and state is an insightful and very fruitful one, but it falls apart in practice – especially when another of Deleuze’s juxtapositions are taken into account: the major and the minor. What happens to the major within the nomadic group? Is it simply impossible? Or do we constantly have to try and overcome it, just as any other group might want to try? I think the latter is more likely. Obviously the nomadic lifestyle seems to produce greater opportunities for this overcoming, mainly due to its disequilibrium – it may even require this constant overcoming in order to sustain itself – but nonetheless some authentic idea (to cheat Derrida) must be maintained. A progressive truth requires a progressive body – likewise a progressive body requires a progressive truth ... a transitory body – a transitory truth etc. Hence my call for trajectory, or directional orientation. The crusader seeks something – to some extent in blind faith – but nonetheless he seeks. He is going some place, he is overcoming something, he is in transition. He may wish to change where he’s headed at some point, but nonetheless he is always in a state of transition: dog’n it out in the "intermezzo." But let’s return to Derrida for a second – and the messianic promise. What? "Blind faith," I already spoke of, and history is there too. Maybe this crusader necessarily does contain the kind of historico-religious undertones I slighted above. Maybe this word is adequate. Maybe it’s actually the history of religion that has tarnished this figure. Anyways – I’m done.

A review of a review

So far what I’ve read, and seen, of Slavoj Žižek hasn’t really impressed me, but alas, perhaps I have been mistaken. At least so far as the direction an anonymous reviewer of his latest work, Organs Without Bodies: on Deleuze and Consequences, I seem agree with him on some points. Of course I won’t go into much detail here, the review is long and dense – so dense I, an undergraduate, am left feeling a little overwhelmed. But I would like to touch on a couple of points that really stood out for me, by offering up some important quotes. I’ll close by lofting a few criticisms that immediately come to mind.

First,

Yet, philosophy and politics constantly risk becoming disassociated in the academy. In Organs, Zizek explains how intellectualism gets "caught up in the academy" through the fetishistic splits performed by academics. A prevailing assumption in the academy across disciplines (from literature studies in the humanities to anthropology in the social sciences to quantum physics in the hard sciences) espouses the "necessary" split between one's "theoretical" academic work and one's life, between one's theory and one's practice. Instead of somehow unleashing our intellectualism, the split produces a spatial gap and a temporal lag that affords capitalism the space-time to further self-revolutionize.

This is a point that those that know me well, know I like to emphasize. It’s generally summarized in brief statements like, “we have to begin by assuming that NOTHING is not normative.” Even if this normativity is negative: via apathy, or passivity – the lines of communication are to omniapparent now for anyone to deny that there is suffering. If you are not trying to do something about it, then you are lame (Of course this does not call for blind action – you might try and figure things out.), and you are onl contributing to its prolongation. The neutrality that so many academics seek is so much the driving force of “late capitalism” (that’s Jameson, and the reviewer does a great job of integrating him into his review). Postmodernism, at least as it is most broadly practiced seems to fall flat on its purportedly emancipatory face. The origins of my distrust lay in two places: firstly, Jameson was the first theorist I ever read; secondly, my own uneasy ascent from poverty into the bourgeois academic establishment. I disliked intellectuals then, and I do now – either you have some goal in mind, and in this respect you are a crusader (for whatever cause), or you are a lifer, and a parasite on society. Why? I can only use this terminology in retrospect, but a crusader has a clear becoming – they are someone, a trajectory for instance, I can speak to.

Also, Zizek will argue in tandem with Lacan,

Only a new and original form of collective social life can overcome the isolation and monadic autonomy of the older bourgeois subjects in such a way that individual consciousness can be lived - and not merely theorized - as an 'effect of structure' (Lacan).

Interestingly I’ve been saying some similar things lately, only I derive my analysis from Foucault. It is rooted in the onto-epistemic triangle I have already outlined in a previous post. Truth, and this means any critical claim also (whether or not any ‘absolute’ truth is possible by the means of critique), is rooted in man, in society, and in the world; it manifests itself always and everywhere, at any given moment. It cannot, ‘exist’ in itself – it cannot be reified; it can only occur in practice. Practice being the becoming, the presencing, the processing of the process we’ve already described. Practice, because none of this is anything without the active subject. If we wish to alter truth, we can only do so by altering the system, the society, or the body that manifests it. Hence the call for a structural shift – as long as we are not trying to overcome it, we will produce truth conducive to (this epoch of) capitalism. The trouble lies in just how we are meant to overcome this – and apparently our determinism as a part of this system. Zizek seems to think this might be accomplished by returning to some of the tenements of psychoanalysis. He thinks Foucault’s model is great at describing the current situation, but lacks libratory content. The unconscious holds what remains hidden, and hence it is here that we must look to find alternatives. (I think I might look to Spinoza – but this is for another day.)

Today I got back from Trios-Rivieres Quebec

So recently I read Island by Aldous Huxley, and what a fantastic book it was. Basically it’s about a journalist that is paid by some oil baron to go and investigate the potential merits of some resource rich tropical island paradise, and try and convince the local leadership to join in the industrious ways of the rest of the world. Of course the theme has been visited many times by many authors and filmmakers, this conflict between nature and paradise and man and industry, but in this story the island people are so much more then benign savages. They are actually quite developed scientifically and culturally, but where they really shine, and what really sets them apart from the rest of men, is their uncharacteristic sensitivity to the dynamism of man. Their mantra, rather then efficiency, is to develop human beings. All men have potential and it can be realized – as man changes so too does the way in which he experiences himself and the world around him. As such, they have, more or less, rejected truth. In some ways they allude to Heidegger and Foucault as they denigrate the onto-theology and clinical psychology of the West. It is up to man to recognize his situatedness in a world worlding as he himself becomes, and it is up to him to recognize how he effects this process in constructions of truth yadda yadda. Man has an extraordinary power to shape himself and his own society and all the rest – but how romantic it all is in this lovely tropical setting. It’s one thing to speak abstractly of these things, but reading Huxley’s attempts to synthesize an account of the real thing – how it might take place – is an absolute delight, and nothing short of motivating. Something that really stood out for me is their emphasis on forming the body (though at times the story seems to drift eerily near to eugenics), something real, if not the most rudimentary of components, but something I often tend to overlook.

Aah! This post blows, but read the book anyways for a loose account of how I’d build the society I’d like to build, should that be an option that any of us could actually have. Furthermore, although utopian, as someone that has studied all of this junk, what surprised me about Huxley’s account was that it seemed oddly possible. However, perhaps this only attests to his skill as a writer.

A joke

I over heard this joke while anxiously waiting for my logic final to begin the other day. It just about leveled me – but this may have been due more to my frail condition as a result of having spent the last two days maniacally studying and finishing various assignments. Alas, I’m done for the term, and already bored out of my fucking skull. Please say hello. Oh… yeah… here’s the joke – apparently it won a prize for the best joke at some philosophers conference.

What’s brown and sticky?




…A stick.

[Edit] Someone has pointed out to me that everyone has already heard this joke – surprisingly I don’t think I have. Nonetheless, what makes this joke really funny to me, is not so much the joke itself, but the fact that it was chosen by philosophers as a deliberate jibe at themselves. Of course it alludes to our tendency to make up and modify words – sometimes, and especially, when it isn’t called for ;)

On the meaning of life

As a philosophy major I’m often asked this question – it’s basically the epitome of the token questions that you ask some poser cerebral type. Here I will provide a few equally token replies.

1) This is the first, and probably most obnoxious response. If you get it from me, it means I’m probably not that interested in talking at the moment. It basically goes like this: “What is the meaning of life? Why are you asking me this? You are totally committing violence against me. You ask me what the meaning of life is and you assume I think there is one! Why should there be?” So much for discourse…

2) The second is a little less severe, but the kind of reply you would generally expect from a philosophy guy. “What is the meaning of life? Well you seem to assume that we both already agree on the definition of the words ‘meaning’ and ‘life.’ What is meaning? What is life? Furthermore, what about the ‘what’? You are asking me a question, but have we any idea what a question is? Moreover, what constitutes an adequate response? Perhaps we should start with something a little simpler then the meaning of life… Let’s begin with Socrates…”

3) Finally, this is the reply you’re most apt to get – mostly because of the sociology side of me. I understand you probably came to me with some good intentions, and I’m empathetic enough to not want to let you leave empty handed and disappointed. Furthermore, depending on how you reply to this, I may even learn something very valuable about you. It goes something like this: “What is the meaning of life? Well [drawn out pause for effect] … that’s a very difficult question, and it means many things to many people, and I’m not really sure that I’m the one to tell you. I’d rather not deprive you of the opportunity of seeking the answer for yourself. Nonetheless, in formulating my own meaning I have drawn on many sources, of which many have been other people’s accounts. It helps to read the great philosophers, most of which spent considerable time thinking about this very question. Plato thought the meaning of life was eternal, and beyond our temporal grasp, but nonetheless we should seek it by the means of reason. Many agreed with him. I situate myself nearer to Marx, and possibly Levinas a little (Though I’m not terribly familiar with the latter – my knowledge of Levinas is more or less hearsay.). With Marx I agree that men realize themselves in their labour – their creative ability to engage in their material world, their social relations, and themselves. Meaning is derivative of production, though this production simply means to actively engage ones historical situatedness creatively (I’d probably clarify some of this later on). Furthermore, following Levinas, I think we all carry an immense responsibility to the Other. By Other, I mean our fellow creatures, perhaps even our natural world. But all this is very brief, and my knowledge of the meaning of life is more practical then it is intellectual. I understand I’m on the right trajectory when I can stop and enjoy a beautiful sunny day. It’s up to you to find your own take, but I do maintain the belief that you’re most apt to find the most fruitful results by seeking learning and experience, and by always remaining reflexive. What do you think?” Of course I have totally bagged the question. To me meaning is a personal quest for meaning, through intellectual endeavor and heterogeneous experience. My conclusion that this is the best way of finding the meaning of life only affirms my own project. Clever eh? Moreover, there is a conflict of interest here. It is of my own normative opinion that if more people thought this way, my life would be easier … Woops, I mean the world would be a better place.

I propose we 'bag' the question instead

On the controversy surrounding the use of the expression, “begging the question.” Very few people realize they use it wrong, but everybody seems to – that is except for a few pedantic philosophers and academics. Ever since a prof pointed out to me the correct usage, I’ve been noticing it every time I see or hear it. I’ve concluded that the entire literary establishment – and by literary establishment I mean the popular press – uses it to mean something along the lines of, “Our discussion has brought us to a point where we’ll have to ask this other question.” For example any discussion about winning the Iraq war begs the question, “Is the Iraq war winnable?” The correct usage implies a logical fallacy along the lines of, “The premises of the argument already posit its conclusion.” For example if we were still discussing the war in Iraq, “There’s only one way to win the war in Iraq and that’s by force. We could try some more diplomacy, and even talk more with the troops. We’ll even talk to Iran, but we’re going to have to deploy more troops.” The first premise that force is necessary presupposes the conclusion that we’ll have to send in more troops.

Since I’m hardly a purist I kind of like both usages. In fact, I often find myself tempted to make the wrong usage. I mean, there needs to be an expression for this activity – “raising the question,” is so passé. I think from now on I‘m just going to use both whenever I like. But what if I were to distinguish the two by changing the root word in beg. “Bag” looks and sounds just about the same, only it is just different enough to be distinguishable. The only problem is then deciding which gets to maintain the word beg, and which has to change. The latter usage seems the most like bagging the question to me. The argument actually seems to contain the conclusion … as though it were enclosed within … or bagged. Now if I could only get the rest of the world to agree with me on this…

What is evil?

I’d rather not address this question directly, as I feel to do so might sell us all short. In fact it begs the question – it assumes that I already believe that there is already some thing such that it is evil. Heidegger would probably have me ask how is evil, but I’m not sure I’m going to take that train of thought either. Nonetheless, in a truly phenomenological spirit, I am prepared to juxtapose my idea of this so called evil with my thoughts on the becoming of the good. How is the good? Here I ascribe to Spinoza, when I say that the good is activity – it is rigorously and incessantly enacting ones reasoning and critical powers. But I will waver from Spinoza’s as to where I suggest this critical application might take us. Whereas Spinoza sees truth in nature, I see no truth except in man’s nature – a nature not posited in god, his essence nor his thought, nor in any eternal anything for that matter – but in the very becoming of his being and hence the becoming of his goodness. Now I know all this probably doesn’t make any sense, but it does in my head, and besides it makes me feel good about myself. Where I’m going with this is good for goodness sake, where man is already good in as much as he is actively seeking goodness.

Now goodness has no center, in fact it’s a sort of Foucaultian truth. Goodness is arrived at when one approaches an understanding of where one thinks one’s goodness is headed in the first place. Thus an account of the good also requires an account of itself. It is the accounting itself from which we derive goodness. The process of seeking, of performing an archeology on our good, is precisely the point from which goodness blossoms – as we open up other more fantastic or mundane possibilities. Goodness grows. In our search for the good, we create the good – but we only become aware of this creation by formulating an awareness of how we feel this goodness grows. The point here is the formulation itself – an occurrence that can only play itself out in activity. Hence the arbitrary expositing of the good for goddness sake, and for the sake of activity.

Now, as long as there is becoming, an activity, there is no evil. On might call passivity evil, as Spinoza does, but I don’t think this is the case. Passivity is just neutrality. You see, with no obvious final destination, to not strive for this destination is not a problem, merely a missed opportunity. For Spinoza there is some ultimate truth. The truth in my understanding is completely derivative of man in relation to himself: individually, socially, and materialistically. And to follow Marx, always changing.

Anyways, that’s all for now – maybe I’ll take this up again another day.

Foucault's ontico-epistemic dance

The bellow is an excerpt from a paper i recently finished.

[...]

Moreover for Foucault the right also plays an integral part in the process of the production of truth. As such it is impossible to take a position such that one is able to normatively decide which exertions of power are legitimate or not. He explains that we ought to think of the relation between power, right, and truth, as a triangular one, and inextricably bound up with one another.

I have tried, that is, to relate [power’s] mechanisms to two points of reference, two limits: on the one hand, to the rules of the right that provide formal delimitation of power; on the other, to the effects of truth that this power produces and transmits, and which in turn reproduce this power. Hence we have a triangle: power, right, truth (93).

[...]

Foucault’s triangle does not occur in the ether. It is intended to play out between, and be constitutive of, very real relations among men, societies, and discourses of truth. Let us begin with society. “There are manifold relations of power which permeate, characterize and constitute the social body” (Foucault, 1980, 93). Furthermore, “these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse” (93). This discourse is invoked as an “economy of discourses of truth” (93). Thus what we have here is a society, constituted by relations of power, and organized according to the relations of an economy of discourses of truth. These economies order society according to the truth, giving legitimacy to a certain right, and the social body imposes its rule according to this right. In this respect the society renders the orderings of the right. Power permeates, but society and truth gather up unto themselves, and in relation to one another. Society manifests itself empirically as technologies and institutions, orderings and classes – truth manifests itself transcendentally as concepts, discourses, languages and signs. Now let us consider man. “We are subjected to the production of truth through power” (93). I will speak of man here as an agent. The agent feels the effects of truth. I am willing to say this is because of the way in which this truth disseminates itself in discourse and constitutes the social. The agent is subject to his or her situatedness within the broader institutional and technological complex, ordered by the right, and hence subject to its power. Furthermore, we “cannot exercise power except through the production of truth” (93). The agent exercises his or her own power through the production of truth. In this respect the agent reconstitutes the economy of discourses of truth, and to some extent the social as a result.



It is important to note that power permeates, and is constitutive of all three points of the triangle. Furthermore the various stages, and their powers occur in continuum and not at intervals. Foucault is illustrating a structure, one of which could not be conceived of without all its parts. Thus, the social, the agent, and the discourses are in some sense, one and the same – constitutive of one another. Likewise the power that permeates, in every conception is also permeated itself by the truth and the right, and visa versa. The unity of the whole lies beyond definition, but seems to allude to Spinozian like conception of nature (I think it would be exceptionally interesting to take this digression up with regards to Spinoza’s understanding of freedom and will. Could such an argument be used against accusations of determinism and objectivism in Foucault’s schematic?).