paperwaste

wilders en austin.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:33:00 +0000

de omstreden politicus geert wilders veroorlooft zich relatief controversiele opmerkingen met betrekking tot de islamitische nederlander (de kut-marokkaan, de straatterrorist, de drager van een inferieure cultuur, etc). maar ter zelfder tijd rent wilders keer op keer naar de rechtbank wanneer hij bedreigd wordt. hij is voorvechter voor het "vrije woord" en de vrijheid van meningsuiting, die hij zelfs belangrijker schijnt te vinden dan de wet tegen discriminatie. maar aan de andere kant lijkt het hem een goed idee de islam, die naar zijn zeggen oproept tot geweld, te verbieden. wat voor taalbegrip ligt aan de basis van deze schijnbare tegenstrijdigheden?

alles mag gezegd worden, zolang men niet expliciet oproept tot geweld. het systematisch demoniseren van bepaalde bevolkingsgroepen wordt echter niet als oproep tot geweld gerekend. hiermee impliceert wilders een expliciete scheiding tussen het oproepen tot geweld in de zin van commando's, en het bijdragen aan de totstandkoming van voorwaarden die geweld mogelijk maken.

john austin introduceerde een onderscheid tussen twee verschillende typen performatieve taaluitingen. de ene, de illocutionaire taaluiting, valt samen met een handeling; het paradigmatische voorbeeld is de priester die door te zeggen "u bent getrouwd" ook daadwerkelijk een huwelijk voltrekt. de andere, de perlocutionaire taaluiting, is een taaluiting die weliswaar tot een handeling leidt, maar daar niet mee samen valt; een commando is een perlocutionaire taaluiting, maar datzelfde geldt voor bepaalde vormen van hate speech.

problematisch wordt dit onderscheid wanneer we althusser's notie van interpellatie in deze theoretische constellatie integreren. interpellatie duidt op het feit dat onze subjectiviteit ons van buiten opgedrongen wordt; wij worden op een bepaalde manier aangesproken, en de manier waarop we als subject in de wereld vastgepind worden hangt daarmee samen. wanneer ik aangesproken word met "fuck you" zal ik een andere relatie met betrekking tot de sociale realiteit waarin ik me op dat moment bevind innemen dan wanneer een ober me vraagt of ik nog wijn wil.

interpellatie is een illocutionaire taaluiting; de interpellerende taaluiting constitueert het geadresseerde subject, en deze constitutie valt temporeel samen met de taaluiting.

hoewel het voor een rechtbank wellicht anders ligt, lijkt het me op theoretisch vlak zeer moeilijk te beargumenteren dat bepaalde uitingen van de PVV geen hate speech zijn. de interpellatie van een bevolkingsgroep (die wellicht expliciet in zijn heterogeniteit erkend wordt, maar op rhetorisch vlak toch onvoldoende gespecificeerd is om van een werkelijke erkenning van heterogeniteit te kunnen spreken) als "straatterroristen" leidt tot bepaalde effecten voor de constitutie van de subjectiviteit van diegenen die deel hebben aan deze bevolkingsgroep - of dit nu antagonistische, subversieve, of toestemmende effecten zijn.

tegelijkertijd wordt de nederlander voortdurend aangesproken als slachtoffer van de islamisering en de "linkse elite aan de grachtengordel." dit discours gaat er vanuit dat er een "echte nederlander" is, wiens plaats in de symbolische werkelijkheid van de nederlandse cultuur verdrongen is door niet-"echte nederlandse" elementen. (zoals foucault laat zien in "society must be defended" is dit een zeer oude discursieve structuur, die tenminste teruggaat tot de franse historicus boulainvilliers, die de rechten van de franse aristocratie voor de opnieuw opkomende monarchie wilden verdedigen. deze structuur ligt aan de basis van een veelheid aan nationalistische discoursen.) deze "echte nederlander" wordt in zijn slachtofferrol geinterpelleerd, en duidelijk gemaakt wie hem deze rol heeft toebedeeld.

wanneer geert wilders benadrukt dat er een verschil is tussen discriminerende uitingen en het aanzetten tot haat, kent hij het perlocutionaire aspect van taal een overdreven grote werkingskracht toe, terwijl hij de illocutinaire zijde, zoals die in interpellatie verwerkelijkt wordt, en het discursieve geweld (dat op ontologisch vlak natuurlijk niet van lichamelijk geweld te scheiden is) dat daarmee gepaard gaat, niet in beschouwing neemt. uiteraard is dit een retorische techniek om zijn politieke tegenstanders tot stilte te brengen - maar besloten in deze techniek ligt een sterk vereenvoudigd idee van de mens - die blijkbaar niet in staat is een aanzet tot geweld te negeren, maar wel immuun is voor de gewelddadige effecten van interpellatie.

parody of structuralism.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:55:00 +0000

we live our lives beyond the pleasure principle, in full knowledge of the construed nature of the principles that determine whether something gives us pleasure or not. by and large, this knowledge negates the pleasure it takes as its object. (have you ever experienced an orgasm solely by looking at the monitor that reproduces your brain activity, blotting out all subjectivity?) yet we continue, we follow paths of which we know they were laid out in advance - or at least determined by exterior factors - we fall into recurrent patterns, taking the way with the least resistance (the only possible way to take). yes, we have social lives; but not because we like it. (to like something - such a primitive idea!) the only reward for this way of living (for the moment assuming this problematic notion has an objective reality) (which it does not) is our clairvoyance and cynicism (in which we take no pleasure whatsoever) - we are not led by the illusions that guide the others. when i write these lines, i am fully aware of the apparatus that interpellates me, projects me into the author position, which is retroactively constituted as prediscursive, concealing the fact the origin of these words lies elsewhere - further and further back - "until the notion of origin ceases to be pertinent."

to stare this knowledge in the eye, and to continue living - this is our ambiguous accomplishment.

the confusion surrounding democracy.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:07:00 +0000

much may be written about the various meanings of the word democracy. it seems to me this term functions in at least three different semantic fields.

1. democracy as a state form. here, democracy means "rule by the people", and is contrasted to "monarchy", "aristocracy", "oligarchy" and "meritocracy" (there may be more). interestingly, these alternatives are not considered viable these days - the general acceptance of democracy as the best form is even implied by the semantic peculiarity of the word. (the literal english translation of the japanese word for democracy would be "democratism" - and whereas -isms imply the choice between a variety of doctrines, -y's lack this explicit plurality). this normative universality stands at the basis of the second register in which the term operates.

(it needs to be noted that we are not living in a democracy according to the original definition of this state form, in which there was no need for representation. as soon as the inhabitants don't fit into a single room, it is inevitable to turn democracy into representative democracy. we might be living in a representative democracy - although the democratic nature of our current society is severely compromised by the problems surrounding democracy in the third sense of the term.)

2. democracy as a signifier without a signified - a purely rhetorical invocation used to justify mostly foreign policy. when the united states attacked iraq, one of the justifications for this war was the perceived need to introduce democracy into this area. without relapsing into the often heard (but therefore not less truthful) states-bashing, it seems safe to say the term democracy in this particular public discourse did not cover any content - it seems overall much more logical to place this war in the long tradition of economically motivated and US-supported coup d'etats in south america, in which perfectly valid democracies were replaced by military dictatorships.

3. the third meaning is, for me, currently the most interesting one. here, democracy is the movement or tendency that is diametrically opposed to privatization. when the state, for instance, renounces the minimum wage levels, leaving wages to the market, it reduces the sphere of its influence, thereby effectively compromizing the importance of the state form democracy (and reducing the influence of individual voters). clearly, the tendency to privatize compromises the people's power, and increases the power of an oligarchy that operates beside the official democracy, and is of a particular importance on a global level, because there is no global democracy to counter its movement (laws are national, not transnational - so powerful nations may take protectionist measures on their foreign market, while enforcing a laissez-faire liberalism on subaltern states). but on the national level too, a state that leaves all decisions to the market ought not to call itself democracy. if the state form democracy needs to be of any value, the public domain must constantly be wrought from the corporation's hands.

the interplay of these three domains, and the possible existence of even more meanings of the word democracy (such as the meaning propagated when one speaks of the "democracy" of language - the free floating nature of the written word (what jacques ranciere calls literarity)) might be something i'd like to write more about in the near future.

on tourism (especially modern exoticism):

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:40:00 +0000

our belief in the authenticity of local cultural practice is not unlike the suspension of disbelief that facilitates and constitutes the pleasure we derive from cinema. "oh, to eat bugs, just like the thai." surprise - only tourists eat bugs. (virtuality: the tourist is interpellated as a tourist with particular orientalist conceptions. the masochist host, eager to make money, creates an implosion of real and virtual in this process.)

aforementioned orientalist conceptions follow a fairly rigid pattern. we want the other to be authentic, but not too different - for we are scared of difference. (of the thai way of greeting, for example.) difference is uncanny, makes us uncomfortable - unless it fits into the rigid scheme imposed on us by the simulacra circulating in western media.

when perceived difference fits into these pre-established schemata, the tourist gaze can succesfully disavow underlying structural differences and its uncanny potentialities - this type of difference is reduced to its own surface, and has no potentialities - our death drive and our mediated world have eroded these and transformed them into the stereotyped Other.

(rethink terminology above.)

-how to look at the indigenous?
our look at the indigenous is invested with residual power structures. there's a double bind at work here: one can look with the colonialist gaze, rooted in the hegelian tradition; or with the orientalist gaze, rooted in rousseau. both presuppose a binary distinction into us and them that seems undeniably present, and that renders a dialogue starting from an equal basis a mere impossibility. we are still walking in the zoo.

however, these problems are only hyperboles of the general problem of intersubjective communication in an era that doesn't recognize sovereign guarantors/guarantees of knowledge. (in colonialism, at least we thought we were right - now, the concept of being right seems an absurdity.) as sloterdijk says, every act of communication is a small dying. and as wittgenstein says, we only notice linguistic difficulties when they appear as misunderstandings - there's no way of verifying whether two subjects engaging in dialogue distill the same meaning, until they don't. we'll have to take these difficulties for granted, and just keep trying.

when the indigenous returns our gaze, we feel discomfort; we become the monkey being watched, by someone that doesn't speak a language we understand. the zoo looks back at us.

we interpellate the host with to-be-looked-at-ness (this is badly formulated and a misplaced reference). therefore, the host succumbs to practices that fit within the frame of what he expects the visitor to expect. (ritual dances are not performed without a paying audience.) likewise, the visitor is interpellated (reciprocal interpellation that produces two virtual modes of subjectivity - one looking and one looked at) as one who wants to indulge in the virtual cultural experiences (preferably expensive) that the host country has to offer. they are interpellated as a simulation of themselves; we are interpellated as idiots - rich idiots who believe in simulations.

what appears, on the surface, to be an inversion of the colonial situation (they extract money from us now), is really a reproduction of colonialist class distinctions (even when thailand was never a colony). they can, by definition, never make nearly as much as us - they only get the money a small minority doesn't really need anyway - or gain any agency on a global level - for they remain subjected to and constituted by our gaze. their economic inferiority could easily be calculated (less tourists than hosts, and tourists mostly go to cheaper countries - if they get too rich, tourism will diminish).

thaiboxing. when we denounce certain elements (particularly the age of the participants) of a spectacle like this, we leave the impression to propagate a certain kind of cultural imperialism: "let them kids play football, just like our kids do." but things lie different here: we are perfectly able to accept and value the otherness of the other, but here, this otherness is founded on the desire of the tourist. the audience was almost completely western - without us, 8-year olds wouldn't fight in thaiboxing matches. a naive spectator could conclude that in spectacles such as this the country shows its monstrous, but real face. the face we see, however, is the effect tourism can have on economically unstable regions.

of course, here too, ultimately, the villain is global capitalism; a system i do not want to reject for lack of alternatives, but of which i do not want to neglect the malicious effects. these effects appear in full glory in the poorer regions of a globalized world in which rich people travel.

in future of a revolt, kristeva defines two kinds of freedom; the freedom to do well within a system, and the freedom to question the structures underlying a certain system. she identifies the second type as being typically european.

were i to act according to the rules derived from the first type of freedom, and define happiness as financial prosperity (the only definition that is universal and appears to find solid ground in this instance - paradoxically enough, even the wretched of the earth appear willing to accept this definition by fighting for pecuniary emulation), i would be a typical tourist, visiting every temple and snake-show along the way. this would make a decent income for the host-country, and everybody would appear happy, lest we look at the underlying structures and analyze their potential to change for the better.

were i to act according to the rules derived from the second type of freedom, things look different. i sincerely believe tourism is hurting the country - in fact, isolationism may be the best option for a poor country, for in relation to itself, no country is poor. the problem is that one tourist less won't change any of this. when we judge our actions according to a categorical imperative, however, tourism would no longer be an ethical option.

is there an effective balance between these two lines of action?

tom tom club (did they read faust?)

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:25:00 +0000

...

Words in papers, words in books
Words on tv, words for crooks
Words of comfort, words of peace
Words to make the fighting cease
Words to tell you what to do
Words are working hard for you
Eat your words but dont go hungry
Words have always nearly hung me

...

mots pressés, mots sensés,
mots qui disent la vérité
mots maudits, mots mentis,
mots qui manquent le fruit d'esprit

...

on the precedence of fact over theory.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:12:00 +0000

in 2008, an exhibition about the künstlermythos was initiated in the hamburger bahnhof museum. i have not seen this exhibition, but the description promised a deconstruction of the romantic myths surrounding our conception of the artist.

one would be tempted to think this exhibition tried to contribute to this deconstruction. however, there is no need to contribute to this; over the past decennia, the conception of the artist has shifted from that of a romantic and secluded hero, a genius even, to that of someone in tune with the all-pervasive media environment, who interweaves with this environment and becomes a conscious agent in it. an exhibition like the one in hamburger bahnhof is not a contribution to, but a symptom of this development.

we are easily led to believe theory (and the offspring of theory, such as exhibitions like this) influence social developments, whereas they usually just notice them. perhaps the entire field of postmodern theory can even be seen as symptomatic of the diminishing relevance of boundaries, caused by transnational capital. of course, there is always a reciprocal influence involved here - theory and object interact. but to stipulate theory is always one step ahead seems disputable.

we may live in what is, as far as i know, the most introspective culture that has existed up till now. we theorise everything, and comment on all that happens. and so we should. the humanities are a field of phronesis; it comments and sometimes dares to make moral judgments, but there's no steady line of progress, as is the case in the predictive theories that make up the episteme of the hard sciences. foucault too recognizes this, when he distinguishes authors of discursivity (marxism, psychoanalysis) from authors of theory - the former work in a field that knows no linear progress, the latter work in a field that does, and are forgotten when a more encompassing or more accessible theory is available. but if theory in the humanities has little or no objective progress, and if its predictive value is negligible, what distinguishes it from historiography?

does not theory have an inherent propensity or urge to predict? here we stumble upon an interesting question; if the social sciences are merely descriptive, why aren't they annexed by the field of history? wherein lie the methodological differences between historiography and theory - other than in their choice of objects? (another question would be: does history have a predictive value? we do learn from the past, now don't we?)

Faust I

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:46:00 +0000

Mephistopheles: [...] Im ganzen: haltet Euch an Worte!
Dann geht Ihr durch die sichre Pforte
Zum Tempel der Gewißheit ein.
Schüler: Doch ein Begriff muß bei dem Worte sein.
Mephistopheles: Schon gut! Nur muß man sich nicht allzu ängstlich quälen;
Denn eben wo Begriffe fehlen,
Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.
Mit Worten läßt sich trefflich streiten,
Mit Worten ein System bereiten,
An Worte läßt sich trefflich glauben,
Von einem Wort läßt sich kein Jota rauben.

about yaks.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:33:00 +0000

a yak has five functions:

-it can carry goods through mountains.
-it gives milk.
-its fur can be used for clothes.
-its blood can be drank as nourishment.
-its manure can be burnt (yaks go where trees don't grow).

antiproduction.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:05:00 +0000

"... it is not the same money that goes into the pocket of the wage earner and is entered on the balance sheet of a commercial enterprise. in the one case, there are impotent money signs of exchange value, a flow of means of payment relative to consumer goods ans use values, and a one-to-one relation between money and an imposed range of products ("which i have a right to, which are my due, so they're mine"); in the other case, signs of the power of capital, flows of financing, a system of differential quotients of production that bear witness to a prospective force or to a long-term evaluation, not realizable hic et nunc, and functioning as an axiomatic of abstract quantities... measuring the two orders of magnitude in terms of the same analytical unit is a pure fiction, a cosmic swindle, as if one were to measure intergalactic or intra-atomic distances in meters and centimeters. there is no common measure between the value of the enterprises and that of the labor capacity of wage earners. that is why the falling tendency [of the rate of profit, the rate of surplus value to total capital] has no conclusion." (deleuze & guattari, anti-oedipus, p. 248-250)

in capitalism, there are two kinds of money. because capitalism only functions by way of exploitation, and the factory owner always earns more than his workers, money tends to flow from the wage earner's pockets to the balance sheets, thereby becoming inert. roxa luxemburg concluded from this that capitalism has an inherent tendency towards imperialism - it needs to subjugate ever more territory in order to survive, or to deepen the level of exploitation of existing sublimations. d&g, on the other hand, suggest antiproduction, which is immanent in the productive machine, might help capitalism realize its surplus value - by battling the inertion of the kind of money that occupies the balance sheets. i consider antiproduction one of the most tangible and useful concepts i've encountered in d&g so far.

"on the one hand, [antiproduction] alone is capable of realizing capitalism's supreme goal, which is to produce lack in the large aggregates, to introduce lack where there is always too much, by effecting the absorption of overabundant resources. on the other hand, it alone doubles the capital and the flow of knowledge with a capital and an equivalent flow of stupidity that also effects an absorption and a realization, and that ensures the integration of groups and individuals into the system. not only lack amid overabundance, but stupidity in the midst of knowledge and science; it will be seen in particular how it is at the level of the State and the military that the most progressive sectors of scientific or technical knowledge combine with those feeble archaisms bearing the greatest burder of current functions." (deleuze & guattari, anti-oedipus, p. 256)

and here we find a perfectly rational explanation for the destruction of surpluses, for perpetual war, for religion, and for companies that invest the larger part of their budget into marketing. a horrifying thought: the system needs inefficiency and stupidity in order to absorb surplus value, to keep the wheels turning. it seems certain utopian political agendas are militant in their opposition to various types of antiproduction; by declaring religion the "opium des volkes", marx denounced two types of antiproduction: religion and opium (for the latter case, i think of the politically induced addiction of the chinese - although in order to classify this case as antiproduction, one needs to accept the premise that antiproduction need not be induced by the own state - a disputable thesis that would greatly confuse our notion of antiproduction and demands further inquiry). however, it seems communism does not function without reviving antiproduction in a different form: by installing a ubiquitous police apparatus. our efficiency creates the necessity for antiproduction. nevertheless, it is urgent to distinguish between two types of antiproduction: on the one hand, those forms in which surplus value is absorbed by institutions on behalf of the people; and on the other hand, those in which the surplus value created by the people is absorbed by institutions of the state. although this opposition is clearly a simplification, the latter type currently appears to predominate.

"If modern man’s producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, why then, in the United States to-day, are there fifteen million people who are not properly sheltered and properly fed? Why then, in the United States to-day, are there three million child laborers? It is a true indictment. The capitalist class has mismanaged. In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the cave-man, and that his producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, no other conclusion is possible than that the capitalist class has mismanaged, that you have mismanaged, my masters, that you have criminally and selfishly mismanaged." (jack london, the iron heel, 1908)

although the utopian fantasy of a land of abundance with an 8-hour work week is certainly a theoretical possibility, it might be impossible to get around antiproduction, especially when we assume that d&g's conception of antiproduction need not be limited to flows of capital, but can also be used to analyze flows of desire - for there is no valid ground on which to establish an unambiguous ontological separation of libidinal and financial economy. (note that this suggests an analogy between inert money and inert bodies when seen from a global perspective.) due to technological progress, we have achieved a level of efficiency that implies either antiproduction or unbearable boredom. however, with regard to the suffering global periphery, the distribution of antiproduction today seems seriously flawed.

on the male obsession with anal sex.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:03:00 +0000

the current prevalence of anal sex in pornography lends justification to the assumption of a collective obsession with the asshole. it is my belief that this obsession can be explained by psychoanalytical doxa and the success of feminism.

the holy grail of freudian psychoanalysis - the oedipus complex - is certainly susceptible to a certain amount of criticism. by relegating desire to the familial sphere, it resurrects the incest forbidden for the higher classes by the church and keeps sexuality within the family, thereby placing the responsibility for a productive, non-perverted sexuality in the familial sphere (foucault). moreover, in its rejection of non-oedipal desire, it uses force to inscribe the multidirectional desiring-machines in an oedipul framework, thereby severely limiting their revolutionary potential (deleuze). on a more pragmatic note, the oedipus complex is inherently misogynistic and fails to account for bisexuality. nonetheless, in an oedipalized culture, social repression enlists the family as an agent of psychic repression in service of the socius, thereby framing each individual as a corner of the oedipal triangulation (mommy-daddy-me) - the formation of the subject is interpellated as oedipal in nature, and in this way oedipus functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

the oedipus complex leads to the psychological assumption of one's own sex through a process that begins with an awareness of sexual difference and eventually leads to castration fear in boys and penis envy in girls. penis envy is connected to a rejection of the mother and a desire for the father, whereas castration fear leads to a refusal of subjection or indebtedness to other males. karen horney posited womb envy (a concept that gained new relevance with the recent case of thomas beatie) to balance the sexism inherent in freud's penis envy, suggesting penis eny may just be more visible due to the overall greater power wielded by men in society. it is here, i think, that we may find reasons for the current obsession with anal sex.

of course, social and economical equality of the sexes for now remains a fantasy - but our society is no longer grounded on the implicit inferiority of women. the penis is no longer a guarantee of social power, and the vagina has become an active phallic presence itself. in this framework, the vagina no longer signifies an absence that leads to fear of castration, but a presence that leads to fear of competition and needs be disavowed in order to reaffirm male superiority. this socio-economical development coincides (and is indubitably correlated) with the sexual liberation of women, who are now entitled to their own active sexuality. when the vagina is no longer defined as the absence of a penis, but as the presence of a powerful and enigmatic organ, it provokes anxiety rather than contempt.

anal sex is an effective means of suppressing this anxiety, for several reasons:
-it bears strong connotations of submission (to inflict pain is to subject), thereby reiterating male superiority.
-the anus is less enigmatic, hence less threatening than the vagina - for men have one themselves.
-anal sex is (perhaps wrongly) seen as less pleasurable for women than vaginal intercourse - so in the male imaginary, the female right to sexual pleasure is denied.
-our culture has an aversion towards everything wet, slimey and hairy - in kristeva's sense, wetware is abject. (which may be due to the association of wet and hairy with animality and our fascination with technology.) this is the reason women often shave their pubic hair or circumsise their outer labia - but it may just as well cause a rejection of the vagina altogether.

(disclaimer: before you exclaim: "i am not obsessed!" - not all particulars can be susbsumed under the general. in the same vein, not all anal pleasure need be based on domination. but the disproportion between the prevalence of anal sex in porn and the relative rarity of anal sex in private leads me to believe this collective obsession is at least partially founded on a male desire for dominance - which is certainly true for actors like max hardcore.)

(of course it might be that this obsession existed long before emancipation, but gained visibility in pornography only recently with the diminishing restrictions of the genre. but this would be a far more boring hypothesis.)

from gombrowicz's ferdydurke.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:28:00 +0000

"you have a headache, bobkowski? excellent! here before us we have an interesting maxim de malis capitis which most aptly fits the situation. what? you feel an imperious need to leave the room? but, my dear bobkowski, why? for that too we find a precedent among the ancients. i refer you to the famous passage in book V in which caesar's whole army, having eaten bad meat, found itself in the same predicament. the whole army, bobkowski! why do you wish to do the same when you have at hand such a classic description? these books, gentlemen, are life, life!"

transnational agreements.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:22:00 +0000

the conventions and international agreements that have the purpose to ensure the international recognition of fundamental human rights (such as the geneva convention) are mostly framed in the terminology pertaining to the anachronistic dominance of nation-states and wars between nation-states. "terrorism" perpetrated by groups that do not have nation-states behind them is not or hardly covered by these documents, and hence almost by definition illegitimate. the "humane treatment" of the perpetrators is not legally enforced.

the nation-state is clearly becoming ever more obsolete in the light of multinational corporations that defy national boundaries. this leads to a different public consciousness, in which the relation between hegemon and subaltern cannot be framed in terms relating to the nation-state paradigm. what we are seeing today is that the Left takes up a sympathy for these non-national subaltern subjects (palestinians, illegal immigrants, national minorities), whereas the right sticks to the nation-state paradigm, and thereby deems the violence committed on behalf of these minorities illegitimate (or even considers it an act of terrorism - a term that bears the illegitimacy within itself and preemptively rules out sympathy). within this framework, state violence appears as a legitimate reply. the Left currently engages in the conflicts that occur and are phrased within the terms belonging to the nation-state paradigm by placing itself in a dialectic in which the right defends the state, and the left tries to defend minorities from the right and its institutions. this dialectic knows little progress (as michel serres recognized, dialectics seldom do), for leftist activists are interpellated as terrorists (or at least, as dangers to the order of the state), and willfully encounter this interpellation with a hatred of police (in the young radical left) and such. this situation remains problematically inert.

in order to advance in this dialectic, the Left will need to rephrase the terms of the debate. when international agreements (or not international, but universal, for the term international implicitly refers to the old paradigm) speak in terms of universality rather than nationality, or try to establish new boundaries and modes of belonging that are not construed in relation to the nation-state paradigm, the non-national minorities will be granted solid ground from which they can claim their so desired rights. this new terminology might be better suited to deal with contemporary conflict situations (the guantanamo case and the indefinite detention there clearly show the old agreements are not effective in each modern situation), and might blow up the nation-state system from within, by forcing nation-states to recognize that their institutions are, by and large, anachronistic.

who will be the subjects signing these agreements currently remains unclear.

on ketamine.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Wed, 06 May 2009 08:19:00 +0000

even burroughs seems at one point to have gotten tired of his heroin addiction, and longed for a drug that "opens up, rather than narrows down" (or something similar - i'm citing from memory). he found this in yage, or ayahuasca. i believe to have found it in ketamine.

in the past the hypothesis has been uttered (and refuted) that the psychological activity induced by a dose of ketamine is comparable to the psychological activity registered in schizophrenics. therefore, it should come as no surprise that this drug has a clearly deleuzian feel to it - it deterritorialises our senses and perceptual apparatus, thereby offering new lines of flight, and opening us up (((in sharp contrast to the drugs that close us down, such as benzodiazepines, cocaine, alcohol, and in nearly all occasions, softdrugs))).

after taking ketamine, i (the singular is imperious here, for the problem with drugs remains the difficulty of establishing intersubjectivity - although this may only be a magnification of a problem that pervades all social sciences) - i, that is, may have the experience of looking at pure time, not time as an immanent concept pervading something else. more commonly, i lose all experience of my own body - my ego dissolves, having no stable ground to stand on, and is overwhelmed by something that can only be called pure (though distorted) perception, which substitutes itself for the i. (in the same way the ego of a child that has not yet gone through the mirror stage cannot be separated from its senses - i hope my use of lacan and deleuze in a single post is acceptable.) ketamine is less superficial than 2c-b, less bewildering than salvia, less visual than lsd - and for me, more philosophical than all of them.

sometimes, after a relatively large dose of ketamine, i may believe to be looking at the process of looking itself - and although this is clearly a mystification of my senses, i do believe this mystification may teach us a phenomenological lesson. i see structures that make the act of looking possible - and although these structures may be severely distorted (or better: deterritorialised), the knowledge of their (potential) existence opens up new lines of thinking about the process of perception in its common state. i leave consensual reality, but hesitate before calling the entered reality merely illusory - there are no hallucinations, no aberrative thought, no monomania - merely another way of being in the world.

after a k-hole, restratification takes place - but the shaking up of the patterns underlying our perception is not without consequences; by opening new ways of thinking, ketamine awakes me (us?) from my (our?) slumber.

ketamine does not lead to any ontological insights; no big revelations, it teaches nothing about the essence of life. (drugs don't teach these things.) however, it may induce an indirect insight into the process of perception by fundamentally altering it. by seeing how perception could function, we realise how it does not - hence, an entire field of potential and realised perceptual patterns is opened. when we learn 3 is not 2, we know more about the nature of both 2 and 3.

although one should resist ontology and beware of other traps that lead to a pompous and shamanic reading of a ketamine experience, i believe a further phenomenological investigation of this drug is warranted.

bartleby and sisyphus - two kinds of pity.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:44:00 +0000

bartleby and sisyphus, two radically opposed literary characters, united only in the causes for their struggles and the pity they evoke. the former denies labor with the simple sentence: "i would prefer not to." confronted with the exogenous forces defining his own life, he crawls back into his shell, denying all activity for the sake of denial - apparently an absurd hero avant la lettre. the latter, in camus' interpretation, embodies the absurd condition that defines conscious man; all is in vain, but we are forced to create meaning - and so we make rocks to push up mountains.

according to camus, the absurd condition is defined by a constant striving for understanding/sinngebung, co-existent with the realisation that the world is beyond that. the believer is not absurd, for he leaps over the second element of the definition. bartleby is (despite initial appearances) not absurd in the camussian sense, for he forsakes the first element, and lives life without meaning (alles menschliches ist ihm fremd). camus investigated whether the realisation of the vanity of the world necessarily led to suicide, and concluded this need not be the case - but for our anti-human bartleby, it is.

the pity we feel for bartleby originates in his loneliness, and perhaps in a shared inclination to resist the exogenous practices enforced on us, the weight of tradition - in short: life. confronted with the incomprehensibility of life, he retreats, isolates himself, and succumbs to the second law of thermodynamics. (hardt & negri are too optimistic: although bartleby may be lovable, he is not revolutionary, but suicidal. if he resists capitalism, he does so only in the sense in which certain animals (and arguably: terrorists) exhibit self-destructive practices in captivity (as explained by baudrillard) - resisting authority through the only means left to them: suicide.)

the pity we feel for bartleby remains provisional. the pity we feel for sisyphus is of a fundamentally different nature: whereas bartleby is life-denying, sisyphus is life-affirming in his wretchedness - and pitiful because we recognize ourselves in him. with one we feel connected because we admire his denial. with the other because we know that denial isn't ours.

kein mensch ist ohne religion.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:50:00 +0000

heidegger: "kein mensch ist ohne religion." science too is a system of knowledge founded on principles (such as: the law of non-contradiction) that are fundamentally irrational, but merely regarded rational by virtue of their widespread acceptance and apparent functionality. this certainly doesn't mean they are imaginary and can easily be ignored - what it does imply is one must recognize the belief in rationality.
of course, psychological religious propensities did not just disappear with the demise of religion - they were sublimated. it doesn't seem credible that 200 years ago, nobody liked going to church, but everybody went in order not to piss off god. it seems more likely man tends to tell himself he really likes doing what he does. before, this was going to church; now, for many, church has been replaced by sports, ecology, art, parties, etc. ((("jeder mensch steigt in gewisser weise über sich hinaus; das heisst, jeder mensch ist verrückt."))) all of these cultural phenomena have their rituals, their laws and conventions, their relics and their idols and their bliss. also, in all of these cases, these spectra are grounded not on reason, but on belief - which is why they can hardly be criticized with logic - one prays or parties just the way one has to. (make no mistake: party is religion. counter-argument: religion strove for happiness in the after-life, parties are meant to bring happiness now. refutation: what causes happiness is based not on innate desires, but constituted in relation to the law.)

two differences, however (there are more):
1. the new mythologies (in the traditional, non-barthessian sense of the term; historically constituted narratives) appear rather bleak compared to the traditional religious ones. the legendary drug use of villalobos seems hardly comparable to the legendary strength of samson.
2. particularly partying bears an aspect of rebelliousness, which appears absent from religious doxa. due to the rapid development of our world, generation gaps play a significant role - probably more so than before - and the younger generation is interpellated as rebellious clubber by the older - in a way that is superficially derisive, but only to be acceptant on a deeper level. ("you guys shouldn't drink so much" means: "we already accepted that you do.") there is an interplay between this explicit rejection/implicit acceptance and the ambiguity of terms that denotate wildness/craziness; explicitly derisive, but there is a positive element in them, most likely added by the younger generation (which may be due to the same process of reappropriation that turned terms like queer and nigger into a means of self-empowerment). us wild kids are interpellated as rebels, but the rebelliousness allowed for always remains marginal, for it is forced upon the rebels, and never defined in relation to itself. (of course, this is so by definition.) (the spatial metaphor implied by the word marginal may be a simplification and deserves further investigation.)

de problematiek van het naamwoordelijk gezegde.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:17:00 +0000

ik geloof dat zowel de in het modernisme beginnende proliferatie van stromingen als de schizofrenie die onze huidige identiteitsconstructie kenmerkt zijn oorzaak heeft in een van oorsprong linguïstisch probleem. hoewel ik niet op de hoogte ben van de geschiedenis van het specifieke gebruik van het naamwoordelijk gezegde dat het onderwerp van een propositie gelijkstelt aan een aspect van de identiteit van dat onderwerp (bijv: "ik ben een derridiaan"), lijkt deze constructie me de boosdoener te zijn - of in elk geval symptomatisch voor de culturele constellatie die deze gelijkstelling (die ook op het niveau van de signified functioneert) mogelijk maakt.

een identiteit is opgebouwd uit oneindig veel facetten, en de metonymische constructie die een identiteit gelijkstelt met een (vaak ideologisch) aspect van die identiteit is problematisch. "zwei seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner brust", schreef goethe. nu, het zijn er geen twee - het zijn er twee miljoen. de "ik ben"-constructie is in dit opzicht een grove simplificatie van een gecompliceerde realiteit.

(dit probleem heeft een bijzondere relevantie voor de seksuele Ander. mensen met een seksualiteit die als afwijkend wordt gezien schijnen er vaak moeite mee te hebben hun identiteit niet te laten overwoekeren door hun seksuele voorkeur. de propositie "ik ben homo" roept al gauw een spectrum aan associaties op die nader beschouwd niets met seksuele voorkeur te maken hebben.)

in filosofisch discours is dit probleem gerelateerd aan een ander fenomeen. in het ideale geval kent filosofisch discours geen subjectposities (net zoals bijvoorbeeld het geval is bij wiskundig discours). dit fundamenteel democratische aspect van filosofie is afhankelijk van de rationalistische methodologie, die in principe beschikbaar zou moeten zijn voor iedereen (dit is disputabel).

het naamwoordelijk gezegde is uiterst effectief in het creëren van subjectposities die door associatie een zekere autoriteit kunnen verwerven. (overigens lenen ook andere grammaticale constructies en discursieve strategieën zich hiervoor: "de autoriteit van de voetnoot.") hoewel ik politiek niet in democratie geloof, geloof ik wel in het nut van een filosofische discursiviteit zonder subjectposities. de fetisjistische projectie van de identiteit van het sujet parlant lijkt me in dit opzicht schadelijk voor de democratie van de filosofie. er is geen reden de identiteit van de auteur al te zeer op de voorgrond te laten treden; als hij niet dood is, is hij irrelevant.

abduction of the left.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:11:00 +0000

it seems to me the political left is primarily defined by two central elements:
1. it is anti-establishment. (one might oppose: what about the soviet union and other communist states? but do these really have that much in common with the left we currently see in the western world?)
2. it is in solidarity with the proletariat. (the main goal of the left is to improve the conditions of the working class.)

as pasolini saw in '68, these two elements can contradict each other. when anti-establishment sympathies turn into a blind hate for all institutions that represent the establishment, it can prevent the leftist "figli di papa" from seeing that the groups that function as a focal point for these sentiments represent not only the establishment, but also the proletariat.

following marx and hegel, the proletariat should not be defined in terms of working conditions or poverty, but in terms of a subjectivity deprived of symbolic / material substance. does this notion of the proletariat not coincide completely with the institution of the police - made up of individuals who fight for assigned causes they may not even understand? (pasolini's argument.) do the two elements of the left in this case fight each other?

i believe this is the blueprint of a mechanism that is nowadays emerging in many forms, that might go under the name of salon-sozialismus - a movement fighting for some leftist ideals, but thoroughly alienated from the harsh reality of the (international) proletariat. (the anti-establishment motive might in this case also emerge in the green agenda - for this too opposes itself to the dominant market incentives, and this agenda too neglects the financial strength of the proletariat.) it is internal contradictions like these that render much of the leftist battle ineffective - as was the case in the greek insurgency.

despite the righteous causes this branch of socialism fights for, it too lacks substance - and it is even less effective than the working class insurgency, for salon-sozialismus doesn't recognize this lack. in order for a new uprising to be effective, the left will desperately need the generative force of the proletariat, that realizes and combats its lack of substance, and knows what it is fighting for. in the current postmodern environment, in which power is unrecognizable and fluid, this may seem impossible - who is the proletariat in a world filled with intellectual labor, and who should it be fighting? nevertheless, one should recognize that the economic subaltern MUST speak for itself, and cannot be represented by those who have lost all sense of the real aims of the proletariat. if the proletariat has not only lost its material substance, but also the possibility to represent itself (because this position is taken by salon-socialists), its members will seek refuge in other political allignments (as is already happening), and the left will gradually lose touch with what was originally its primary objective: improving the conditions of the working class.

against beauty.

noreply@blogger.com (dennis) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:06:00 +0000

we may have inherited the ineluctable responsibility for our own lives from existentialism, but this responsibility appears to have gotten out of hand over the last decade. there seems to be an increased focus on looks, and one has to constantly invest in them to get along. when one refuses to do so, one has to bear the consequences and suffer; "if we invest time, money and pain in the way we look, we cannot let you get away with being ugly and happy."

if you're ugly and miserable, it's your own fault - if you adapt, you'll get happy. the only way out of the deadlock is subjugation to the normative ideal. that's why we wear schmuck and makeup (as simmel noted, never for ourselves). only by giving in to the hegemonic values that formulate what is beautiful, normal, and what deserves the right to happiness, can one establish authority over these values. those that create the values, are the ones that subject to them (so revolution is not possible; revolution would only be desirable for the ugly hordes, who are, much like the modern proletariat, deprived of their symbolic substance and incapable of causing revolution). this gives rise to paradoxical urges to both rule over the dominant aesthetic ideology as well as to subjugate to it - or to fall within the range of subscription and intelligibility, while maintaining particularity and creativity. (this is called style, and it protrudes all aspects of society and art.)

(the larger and more general the social scene, the narrower the ideal - the intelligible spectrum is small, and style is relatively homogenous. this is why the aesthetic ideology (like all categorisation) is essentially repressive, and must be deconstructed by people that (defy categorisation and) have style in a broader sense - broader and broader, until the boundaries are gone. the grotesque body and the styleless freak threaten the repressive social order, and should resist proper symbolisation. in this sense, self-confident ugliness is a desirable social threat.)

we have to become average in order to become happy. the ideal is essentially democratic - but only those who fit within the boundaries of the normal can participate in this democracy. the ugly (voiceless) / beautiful (with voice) antagonism is of course an illusory binary that suggests there is only one way in which the voiceless can acquire a voice (become beautiful). it is impossible to deconstruct this binary by subscribing to its internal logic - new ways cannot be found here. the currency of acquired beauty is only valuable within the system that values beauty - and the voice of the newly beautiful will automatically reiterate this exclusive system, in which the ugly can never represent itself. therefore, striving for beauty is essentially repressive.

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=68
"ME: SWF, 23, YOU: non monogamous, interested in overthrowing the hetero-normative ownership paradigm. not ugly."

what this work tells us is that fucking someone ugly is in fact the most subversive act thinkable - even more subversive than the parodied self-proclaimed rebel is willing to commit. the hordes of the ugly can lawfully claim their place beside the criminals and the illegal immigrants in the ranks of the homini sacri. and they will not be noticed.