A Dimly-lit Ambivalent Tableau of Culture and Curiosities.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
A Little Road Trip
When K. and I planned this trip to Belgium, we intended on swinging down to Spain for four or five days. When we remembered that we were poor, though, we opted for a short road trip around western Germany -- anywhere between Dusseldorf and Stuttgart. So, in other words, I'll be out of commission for about a day. I'll be sure to buy postcards and gifts for each of you.
The truth about George Bush, Jr. has been uncovered by Matthew Yglesias: he's an Iranian secret agent. Matt makes such a good case that you almost wish it were true, if only to lend some method to the madness.
'It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws.' (V. I. Lenin)
A friend of mine sent me the link to a paper written by Irving Goh, a doctoral candidate at the European Graduate School. (Damn damn damn, I wished I'd known about this PhD program prior to starting mine!) The premise is that philosophy's task is to rip holes in ruling hegemonies (and, thus, too State-sponsored ideologies) -- and that, as such, philosophy (as represented by, amongst others, Deleuze and Guattari, Baudrillard, and Derrida) should be in danger of being repressed as dangerous. There's a lot to recommend here. However, I am increasingly doubtful of philosophy's revolutionary task. The revolution, so to speak, will always be televised -- just ask Che Guevara.
I'm certainly not opposed to the notion of 'heterogeneities' (can we speak of a plurality as a 'notion'?), but there does seem a problem when we start associating it with a 'not-yet' principle -- something that always remains on the horizon, and thus something to which we can only strive. The idea here is that revolution, because it will inevitably be appropriated into some kind of hegemonic market or system or State (either because of its 'structure', a la Derrida; or because of technological advances, a la Baudrillard), should be supplanted by a more disembodied idea that keeps us suspicious of these markets, systems and States. Such is the possibility of a revolutionary revolution -- Revolution In-Itself. It's not that this is simply academic, Leftist posturing, though it sometimes is. The more significant deficiency in this thinking is that it misses the far more 'difficult', contrarian thought that revolutionary difference / the possibility of new horizons and heterogeneities of thought is itself the result of the State's desire for hegemony -- i.e., that the revolutionary is not some external possibility, but rather the inherent element that the State cannot accommodate and, thus, disavows. What if, in other words, the revolution has always already been televised, and the revolutionists are not prophetic visionaries of what could be, but simply those who happened to be paying attention to what already is?
One more post before I'm finally off either to bed or another chapter in The Recognitions, whichever is easiest to achieve....
Two Dana Milbank articles in one day is perhaps overkill, but I cannot resist. His column today highlights one of the many things I truly loathe about the current administration: its unabashed love of the strawman.
On May 19, Bush was asked about a plan by his Democratic opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), to halt shipments that are replenishing emergency petroleum reserves. Bush replied by saying we should not empty the reserves -- something nobody in a responsible position has proposed. "The idea of emptying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would put America in a dangerous position in the war on terror," Bush said. "We're at war."
The president has used a similar technique on the stump, when explaining his decision to go to war in Iraq in light of the subsequent failure to find stockpiles of forbidden weapons. In the typical speech, Bush explains the prewar intelligence indicating Saddam Hussein had such weapons, and then presents in inarguable conclusion: "So I had a choice to make: either trust the word of a madman, or defend America. Given that choice, I will defend America every time."
Missing from that equation is the actual choice Bush confronted: support continued U.N. weapons inspections, or go to war.
Now, of course, both sides do this -- this is why it's called it's called a 'rhetorical technique', and not simply Republican obfuscation. But there comes a point at which one man's rhetoric becomes another man's deep cynicism and disregard for intelligent political discourse.
As is normally the case, I am a day or two behind the times when it comes to U.S. political headlines. Nevertheless, I cannot, what with this renewed blogging energy pouring through my fingers, pass up the opportunity to pass up linking to Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei's frontpage story about Bush's 'Unprecedented Negativity'. I'm not sure it's news to anybody, but it's nice to be reminded from time to time:
Last Monday in Little Rock, Vice President Cheney said Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry "has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all" and said the senator from Massachusetts "promised to repeal most of the Bush tax cuts within his first 100 days in office."
On Tuesday, President Bush's campaign began airing an ad saying Kerry would scrap wiretaps that are needed to hunt terrorists.
The same day, the Bush campaign charged in a memo sent to reporters and through surrogates that Kerry wants to raise the gasoline tax by 50 cents.
On Wednesday and Thursday, as Kerry campaigned in Seattle, he was greeted by another Bush ad alleging that Kerry now opposes education changes that he supported in 2001.
The charges were all tough, serious -- and wrong, or at least highly misleading. Kerry did not question the war on terrorism, has proposed repealing tax cuts only for those earning more than $200,000, supports wiretaps, has not endorsed a 50-cent gasoline tax increase in 10 years, and continues to support the education changes, albeit with modifications.
[. . .]
In early March, Bush charged that Kerry had proposed a $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget that would "gut the intelligence services." Kerry did propose such a cut in 1995, but it amounted to about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget and was smaller than the $3.8 billion cut the Republican-led Congress approved for the same program Kerry was targeting.
[. . .]
On March 30, the Bush team released an ad noting that Kerry "supported a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax" and saying, "If Kerry's tax increase were law, the average family would pay $657 more a year." But Kerry opposes an increase in the gasoline tax. The ad is based on a 10-year-old newspaper quotation of Kerry but implies that the proposal is current.
Other Bush claims, though misleading, are rooted in facts. For example, Cheney's claim in almost every speech that Kerry "has voted some 350 times for higher taxes" includes any vote in which Kerry voted to leave taxes unchanged or supported a smaller tax cut than some favored.
[. . .]
Meanwhile, Kerry was greeted in Oregon and Washington state with television ads paid for by the Bush campaign that underscore what ad analysts call the negativity and misleading nature of many of the Bush TV spots. One titled "Doublespeak" pulls quotes from several major newspapers to argue that Kerry has waffled on major issues and has often said one thing and done another. The quotes, however, are often from editorials, sometimes from opinion pages hostile toward Kerry, such as that of the Wall Street Journal.
[. . .]
It is true Kerry has voted numerous times to eliminate weapons systems and opposed the 1991 Iraq war. But Cheney voted against many of those same weapons systems, and Kerry has voted for several defense increases, especially in recent years.
I probably exceeded the reasonable quote length there, but you get the point.
The Moscow Procurator�s Office has indicted Yuri Samodurov, Ludmila Vasilovskaya and Anna Mihalchuk under Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, accusing them of actions "intended to incite hatred and hostility toward a group of people and to humiliate them on the basis of their national identity or their religion."
Human rights advocates have sought in vain the application of Article 282 against fascists and all kinds of Black-Hundred types and racists. Instead, it is now used against people of democratic conviction, museum employees and a poet, who are charged with the organization and conduct of the exhibition "Caution! Religion". The concept of the exhibition - to give artists an opportunity to freely express their ideas concerning the problems of religion and also concerning the positive and the negative sides of the activity of religious institutions -was suggested by the exhibition�s curator and participant, Mr. Zulumyan, a citizen of Armenia. The exhibition, which displayed works of more than forty artists (including persons from Armenia, Germany, Georgia, Cuba, the USA and Japan), lasted for only four days in January 2003. On the fifth day a group of Russian Orthodox fanatics wrecked it. The majority of works were destroyed or damaged, and some that the Procurator�s Office took from the artists have still not been returned.
[. . .]
This constitutes a direct attempt by the Moscow Patriarchy�s Department of Foreign Relations to regulate secular culture and to "privatize" images of Christ, the Holy Mother, and the saints despite the fact that for centuries their images have been the property not just of the Christian churches and Christian believers, but of all civilized people, including atheists, Buddhists, Confucianists, and others, who may not believe that Christ was the Son of God or even that he was an historic personage, but nevertheless consider his image very important and significant for world culture and for themselves personally. These images are used in business as well.
[. . .]
It seems that the Russian Orthodox Church, as part of civil society, should not try to dominate its other parts, but should find and support more appropriate and modern ways to resolve the problems of religion in a secular state. In particular, it is desirable and should be possible for the religious and secular institutions of civil society to collaborate in order to find solutions to such urgent and acute problems as ending the bloodshed in Chechnya, reducing social inequality, lowering hostility towards migrants, assisting disabled persons and war veterans, defending the rights of communicants of other faiths, supporting modern religious art, and so on. As to works of art and exhibitions strongly opposed by the Church, it would not be difficult to solve this problem if good will existed - priests could recommend to their parishioners not to attend such exhibitions, while museums and curators could specify which exhibitions contain works that make use of religious symbols in unconventional ways, and suggest that persons who may be upset by this should avoid these exhibitions.
As to that last paragraph . . . that would completely miss the point of contemporary religion, now wouldn't it? *sigh*
This was, surprisingly, the first I'd heard of this.
So, in my ongoing bid to solidify my place in hell, I've been playing with the notion of 'theological materialism' -- wherein, for instance, God (as Eternity / Freedom / the Absolute) is only God inasmuch as He is not Himself, i.e., that He is neither eternal, free, or absolute; that, in fact, God, to be God, must become -- a la Christ -- human. (I will spare you the details, having learned that nobody cares about them but me. Suffice it to say, I'm interested to present the God of theology as some kind of pathological twist to/in reality, versus some otherness from Beyond.)
The paradoxical economy of self-generation I'm mulling over, particularly last night whilst flinging a frisbee to K., is perhaps not as nonsensical as it might on the surface appear. As a matter of fact, the related notion of having to lose something in order to win something greater is such a natural commonplace as often to be simply taken for granted. Consider, for instance, the clich�s of 'no pain, no gain'; the romantic idealizations of artistic madness -- i.e., the tortured artist who either commits suicide or dies prematurely, thus solidifying his or her place as a legend; or the special veneration most ascribe to martyrs like Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., or, even Jesus. Much can be said, too, of the Hollywood archetype exemplified by George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, who only truly knows himself at all when he is presented with what would have happened had he, per his expressed desire while weighing the decision as to whether he throw himself from a bridge, to never have been born. Do we not have here a story of redeemed identity, in which wholeness is snatched from the abyss of a self-shattering loss? The story of good old George Bailey is a modern myth, to which millions of weary Christmas and New Years celebrants each year appeal as a temporary respite from the family and friends who probably are not nearly as compassionate and helpful in the end as Bailey's; and thus, too, as a ritualistic dream for something better than the oppressive (capitalist) ideology that Mr. Potter represents, for the personal wholeness, health, and safety of a (socialist) salvation in which the value of family and friends is greater than that of money.
Now, looking ahead, we face another irony. To earn their own freedom, the Iraqis need a victory. And since it is too late for the Iraqis to have a victory over Saddam, it is imperative that they have a victory over usIf the future textbooks of a free Iraq get written, the toppling of Saddam will be vaguely mentioned in one clause in one sentence. But the heroic Iraqi resistance against the American occupation will be lavishly described, page after page. For us to succeed in Iraq, we have to lose. This means the good Iraqis, the ones who support democracy, have to have a forum in which they can defy us. If the insurgents are the only anti-Americans, then there will always be a soft spot for them in the hearts of Iraqi patriots.
In other words, for the United States' (stated) goal of freedom and democracy to be achieved in Iraq, authentic anti-Americanism must not only be allowed, but also actually fomented. What I wish to suggest is that, appearances, my own personal politics, and undoubtedly Brooks' conservative revulsion to my conclusion based on his editorial notwithstanding, we are more justified in thinking of this ostensibly cynical suggestion, in a theoretical sense, as a more profound example of theological love than the depiction of self-redemption in, to wit, It's a Wonderful Life.
The key difference is that between desire and love. According to Friedrich von Schelling, before 'the Beginning' -- of being and time -- there was 'mere craving or desire'; that is, the drive of (addiction to) the In-Itselfness of Absolute Freedom. Which is to say, before 'the Word', from which symbolic differentiation and self-conscious identity emerges, 'there was the hunger for the Word' . . . the hunger to be. Drive, in other words, is desire In-Itself, i.e., unactualized in the subjectless fury of the Absolute, in which there is only the indifferent flux of Freedom, and, thus, no free, conscious subject as such. With the 'eternally past' advent of the Word, the Self that emerges is free only inasmuch as it is not completely itself; it is, rather, an embodied spirit, marked by finitude, death, and decay. Insofar as it is not itself, the spirit / Self; according to Schelling, is made ravenous flesh:
The spirit is consequently nothing but an addiction to Being. . . . The base form of the spirit is therefore an addiction, a desire, a lust. Whoever wishes to grasp the concept of spirit at its most profound roots must therefore become fully acquainted with the nature of desire . . . for [desire] is a hunger for Being, and being satiated only gives it renewed strength, i.e., a more vehement hunger.
Constituted as a free subject by virtue of its inherent lack of self-closure, the desirous Self cannot be satisfied. On the contrary, its desire, because historical and subjectived, is 'always and by definition unsatisfied, metonymical, shifting from one object to another since I do not actually desire what I want.' Be careful of what you wish for, so the saying goes, because you just might get it. The same logic is at work here: 'What I actually desire is to sustain desire itself, to postpone the dreaded moment of its satisfaction.'
If desire is related to an absent (menacing) identity and wholeness -- i.e., the hard, indecipherable kernel of our being that makes us objects of desire -- love is related to the emergence of the free Self that is not itself. After the Word, the quintessential, eternally past moment of love and freedom, the desire for wholeness can only ever be frustrated by the love that, as with Brooks' depiction of the United State's military operations in Iraq, knows how to truly lose. It is in this sense of love as 'loss' that we can suggest a truly perverse gospel: in which salvation of self is theologically less redemptive than the sin that sets us free..
A colleague (hee... it's fun to say that while still a student) pointed me to Frank Rich's latest article in Sunday's New York Times, 'It Was the Porn That Made Them Do It'. A pretty interesting, if incomplete, look at the far-right's current efforts to blame the abuses of Abu Ghraib on pornography and the sexualization of American society. Well-worth reading.
Incidentally, this same colleague had some very interesting thoughts on Saturday afternoon, linking, in a very unpretentious, non-wanky way (amazing, really, for an academic) the images of violence in The Passion with those in Iraq -- qua two sides of the same fundamentalism bent on 'generative violence' (i.e., the violence that heals).
They [images of violence]capture us because we need them. And we need them because we need to feel we master them. But of course by needing to feel we master them we don�t master them. This America has been forced to realize all too disturbingly: the violence they claimed they went in to master in Iraq turns out to be the violence they succumb to and deliver themselves, as brutally and as barbarically. And the same with Gibson�s film: the violence many Christians feel they master by the blood of Christ, the violence religious conservatives have repeatedly decried in Hollywood films and video games, becomes the violence they embrace in the Hollywoodized rendition of Gibson�s Passion.
I've nothing to add to this, really. Just saying to be saying . . .
Friends and family of Silentio may well remember that it is normal for me to spend an inordinate amount of my summer in Belgium. Far be it from me to actually enjoy the only season in Scotland worth sticking around for. Well . . . this year is no different. Yesterday, K. and I hopped on a flight bound for Charlerois, and then a car bound for the Belgian/Dutch border -- just in the nick of time to watch Belgium beat the Netherlands in a friendly (the Dutch, as has been their way the past couple of years, could hit everything just around the goal but the net). Anyway, for the next couple of weeks I'll be spending my time re-learning how to type on a Euro -- i.e., AZERTY -- keyboard (the letters, by the way, aren't nearly as difficult to remember as the obscure punctuation like brackets and such), reading William Gaddis' The Recognitions, and tidying up my thesis' new, souped-up first chapter, 'On Beginning to Characterize: An Introduction'. In the meantime, I might also steal out into the Belgium night, to enjoy a fine beer and a movie. Perhaps even, per Scott Martens' acerbic review, I might just need a beer to make it through The Day After Tomorrow. (I remember seeing the preview for this one when I saw The Passion, and even that sphincter-tighteningly bad of a movie didn't make this thing look good.) And yet, because one can only see so much of the Olsen twins -- one of their movies, is as a matter of fact, on tv right now, and I definitely remember cringing at the television show when it was on over here last summer -- and Belgium is where I shell out the Euro to see shitty movies, I will very likely buy myself a stinky kebob ball, a cone of frites, and enjoy myself as New York City and Donnie Darko are frozen over.
That's roughly how many words, as of this afternoon, I have written for my thesis. All of them -- er, most of them -- pretty good words, too. Spelled correctly and everything.
I tell you this now simply to flag up the fact that I had a very uncommon (for me) burst of creative energy this past week. Upon returning to my introduction, which I've taken to calling, for lack of a better name, 'chapter one', I realised where I was getting bogged down. Namely, I no longer believed the central philosophical premise that I spend forty pages presenting there; in fact, I believed the exact opposite. This sounds a bit more dramatic than it was is, though. One thing I've learned is that the 'opposite' of anything is normally much more similar than we might be disposed to think possible. It is when you begin with entirely different (versus 'opposed') premises that you begin to get into trouble. Anyway, without going into detail about the change, suffice it to say the reversal has energised my production. 'Tis a nice thing, indeed, to have sufficient confidence to say, without hint of irony: 'I know what I'm talking about here!'
A friend of mine took advantage of this very odd exuberance on my part and talked me into submitting a proposal for a creative conference in late-June. Here's what I've come up:
I want a voice . . .
Such is the theme of the original material / reflections that I have in mind for the first annual Scottish Conference of Creative Writing. I am a third-year PhD student in the Centre for the Study of Literature, Theology and the Arts, studying the strange contagions of love, comedy and madness that infect our philosophical / theological thinking.
I propose that God, too, 'wants a voice' -- that it is in speaking that God / Eternity IS. The comedy / madness (depending on how you look at it) is that God is not Himself, and that true religious love is the acceptance of this 'damaged' deity. Or, in other words, that it is only in 'original sin', the fall from God, that God is at all. My proposed pieces for this conference are a mixture of original verse and prose -- verse-in-prose -- and short reflections on what I perceive to be parallel in the condition of the writer (w/ regard to 'writing'). Wherein, popular thinking notwithstanding, the writer does not lose herself in writing -- the truth / identity of writer and writing deferred -- but actually produces herself, IS at all, in 'the Fall' / the 'original sin' of writing. Such is the anxiety of the writer who stops writing, who loses her voice, and thus loses herself.
Now, of course, regular readers of this blog know that I do not have a very good track record for getting papers accepted to conferences. So, who knows. You'll know when I do.
What does the becoming-man of God in the figure of Christ, His descent from eternity to the temporal realm of our reality, mean for God Himself? What if that which appears to ous, finite mortals, as God's descent toward us, is, from the standpoint of God Himself, an ascent. What if, as Schelling implied, eternity is less than temporality? What if eternity is a sterile, impotent, lifeless domain of pure potentialities, which, in order fully to actualize itself, has to pass through temporal existence? What if God's descent to man, far from being an act of grace toward humanity, is the only way for God to gain full actuality, and to liberate Himself from the suffocating constraints of Eternity? What if God actualizes Himself only through human recognition?
We have to get rid of the old Platonic topos of love as Eros that gradually elevates itself from love for a particular individual, through love for the beauty of a human body in general and the love of the beautiful form as such, to love for the supreme Good beyond all forms: true love is precisely the opposite move of forsaking the promise of Eternity itself for an imperfect individual. (This lure of eternity can take many forms, from postmortal fame to fulfilling one's social role.) What if the gesture of choosing temporal existence, of giving up eternal existence for the sake of love -- from Christ to Siegmund in Act II of Wagner's Die Walkure, who prefers to remain a common mortal if his beloved Sieglinde cannot follow him to Valhalla, the eternal dwelling-place of dead heroes -- is the highest ethical act of them all? The shattered Brunnhilde comments on this refusal: "So little do you value everlasting bliss? Is she everything to you, this poor woman who, tired and sorrowful, lies limp in your lap? Do you think nothing less glorious?" Ernst Bloch was right to observe that what is lacking German history are more gestures like Siegmund's.
We usally claim that time is the ultimate prison ("no one can jump outside his/her time"), and that the whole of philosophy and religion circulates around one aim: to break out of this prison-house of time into eternity. What, however, if, as Schelling implies, eternity is the ultimate prison, a suffocating closure, and it is only the fall into time that introduces Opening into human experience?
Hee . . . Belle Waring has a hilarious post over on Crooked Timber about the dissonance between the Trojans of antiquity and the Trojans of modernity (i.e., the University of Southern California, and the ubiquitous condom manufacturer).
Re: USC Trojans.
Now, there is just one story cycle involving the Trojans and conflict, and in it the Trojans decisively, utterly lose. I'm not saying they're losers, per se; I'm always rooting for the Trojans because I love Hector. But imagine a coach giving an inspirational speech along these lines: "Guys, I want to you get out there and fight with all your hearts, only to see all you hold dear destroyed. At the end of this bowl game, I want you to feel like the original Trojans did when the saw their ancestral altar run red with the blood of aged Priam, beheld the pitiful spectacle of little Astyanax's body broken on the walls of Troy, and heard the lamentations of their daughters, mothers and wives as they were reduced to slavery in a foreign land." It's not exactly "win one for the Gipper," is it?
Re: condoms.
What do you think of when you hear the word "Trojan"? . . . Probably, you think: Trojan horse. So consider the context. There's this big...item outside your walled citadel, and you are unsure whether to let it inside. After hearing the pros and cons (and seeing some people eaten by snakes), you open the gates and drag the big old thing inside. Then, you get drunk. At the height of the party, hundreds of little guys come spilling out of the thing and sow destruction, breaking "Troy's hallowed coronal," as they say. Is this, all things considered, the ideal story for condom manufacturers to evoke? Just asking.
Update: I cleaned up this post, by the way, upon noticing that a lot of weird coding got included when I was copying & pasting.
