tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40152175485343739622024-03-15T11:03:49.107-07:00The Third Carriage AgeWheels in the HeadDon Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.comBlogger173125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-84303243263331032882024-03-15T11:03:00.000-07:002024-03-15T11:03:04.871-07:00A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 9<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjMEDr0QgLUb85WTN8cZZDPx8xvmONnfeoLmUPN3hfoa3jqhrldlLkcLNJqyhIVhc2ucpu4GGIh9jE8EooXX1f07Yd7TYl4zRlaPXhHeQzR4calfYaB_RjUS8BSn_4TMAcsjI4umzM2_YmRXOs7yF45PTLVRVCUyvaqtQJy_tT_VrC1Oq7Wsk_3olcsyc/s600/atp.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="401" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjMEDr0QgLUb85WTN8cZZDPx8xvmONnfeoLmUPN3hfoa3jqhrldlLkcLNJqyhIVhc2ucpu4GGIh9jE8EooXX1f07Yd7TYl4zRlaPXhHeQzR4calfYaB_RjUS8BSn_4TMAcsjI4umzM2_YmRXOs7yF45PTLVRVCUyvaqtQJy_tT_VrC1Oq7Wsk_3olcsyc/s320/atp.jpeg" width="214" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter 9: 1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In this chapter, D&G expand upon the Foucauldian concept of micropolitics, and quite significantly transform the anthropological concept of political segmentarity. As Eugene Holland emphasizes in his chapter of <i>A Thousand Plateaus and Philosophy</i>, the chapter draws heavily on, and adapts, the terminology from the preceeding chapter on lines (Holland 2018). The year 1933 refers to the date the Nazi party took power in Germany. The image for the chapter is Fernand Léger’s <i>Men in the City</i> of 1919.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They begin by delineating three kinds of segmentation: binary (into dualisms), circular (into circles, or rather [centers and peripheries], and linear (along lines, “of which each segment represents an episode or ‘proceeding’” (209)). Naturally, these three types overlap and are “bound up” with one another. They note the origin of the concept of political segmentarity in anthropology (the key text they cite is <i>African Political Systems</i>), but they are expanding this beyond the non-state tribal form to any kind of human society, including and particularly states: “The classical opposition between segmentarity and centralization hardly seems relevant” (209-10). [After all, the metaphor of “centralization” invokes the “circular” type of segmentarity they have just defined]. Modern states thus work as much through segmentarity as do pre- or non-state societies, the only difference being that the state works through [or most noticeably through] rigid, rather than supple, segmentation.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They then discuss how “primitive” supple and “modern” rigid segmentarity work through each of the three kinds of segmentation, relating this back to concepts such as faciality from the previous chapter.; they summarize three “principal differences” between rigid and supple segmentarity:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. “In the rigid mode, binary segmentarity stands on its own and is governed by great machines of direct binarization, whereas, in the other mode, binaries result from ‘multiplicities of <i>n</i> dimensions’” (212).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. In their discussion of circular segmentation, they argue that with the state’s rigid segmentarity the circles become “concentric,” and importantly they <i>resonate</i> with each other; there is still a diversity of power centers, but they resonate together to create centrality/State power (as an effect, thus, of segmentation, rather than its opposite; Foucault’s “disciplinary archipelago” might be relevant here), whereas in primitive societies supple segmentarity had inhibited such centralization (cf. Evans-Pritchard, Clastres, etc.).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. “Finally, linear segmentarity [as it becomes more rigid] feeds into a machine of overcoding that constitutes <i>more geometrico </i>homogeneous space and extracts segments that are determinate as to their substance, form, and relations.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They tie this to their much earlier distinction between the two distinct processes of arborification (rigid segmentarity) and rhizomaticity (supple segmentation), and reiterate that the codes and territorialities of primitive societies act to prevent resonance, while rigid state societies replace these with overcoding and “specific reterritorialization” (213).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Nevertheless, they insist, it is not enough to distinguish between centralization and segmentation, nor between supple and rigid segmentarity, as these all exist in all kinds of states, with “nuclei of rigidity or arborification” in pre-state societies, and supple segmentation forming a “fabric” in state societies that makes rigid segmentation, in fact, possible. They now relate the two segmentarities to their molar (rigid) vs. molecular (supple) distinction, both distinct and inseparable; “every politics is simultaneously a macropolitics and a micropolitics.” Molar/macro aggregates are based on a molecular/micro flow, in the case of the macro binary division of male and female sexes, on “a thousand tiny sexes;” in the case of social classes, on the much more amorphous and molten movement of masses. “Mass” is irreducible to “class,” because formed by supple rather than rigid segmentation, although classes [as molar categories and sets of relations] do form out of masses by <i>crystallizing</i> them; masses in turn are “constantly flowing or leaking from classes.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They discuss their particular theory of fascism, and distinguish it from the totalitarian state, per se. “Doubtless, fascism invented the concept of the [macropolitical, molar] totalitarian State, but there is no reason to define fascism by a concept of its own devising” (214). Not only are there non-fascist totalitarian states, but fascism itself pre-existed the totalitarian state, created it (in 1933) out of its network of pre-existing, micropolitical, molecular organization. [Their stance on Fascism seems to draw largely on the work of Jean-Pierre Faye, known better in English for the stupidly reductionist “horseshoe theory.”] The “cancerous” molecular flow of microfascism is much more dangerous than the totalitarian state, which is why the capitalist states were willing to side with Stalinist Russia against Hitler. The parable of fascism allows D&G to ask (215) “the global question: Why does desire desire its own repression, how can it desire its own repression?” This cannot be explained away as some [<i>unmündig</i>] submission by the masses, masochistic [death drive], nor ideological credulity:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Desire is never separable from complex assemblages that necessarily tie into molecular levels, from microformations already shaping postures, attitudes, perceptions, expectations, semiotic systems, etc. Desire is never an undifferentiated instinctual energy, but itself results from a highly developed, engineered setup rich in interactions: a whole supple segmentarity that processes molecular energies and potentially gives desire a fascist determination.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This micro-level of desire as flow is one reason why even if you are “antifascist on a molar level, you might “not even see the fascist inside you,” i.e., how fascist/[reactionary] stances, etc., can persist inside progressive movements (e.g., how patriarchy, homophobia, and racism can manifest within class movements, racism or transphobia within feminist or sexual liberation movements, and so on [although calling all of these inequalities “fascism” still seems overly simplistic to me]).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Their point in calling out the molecular aspect of fascism is, once again, to point out that the state is not just some macro/molar entity, opposed to some kind of anarchistic, free-flowing, and inherently liberatory desire. They delineate four errors which should be avoided when thinking about molecular supple segmentarity:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. <i>Axiological</i>, the expectation that a little more suppleness will necessarily be good; but supple segmentarity can be fascistic.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. <i>Psychological</i>, the assumption that the molecular is just a matter of the imagination or personal psyche, and thus not really important; however, it is every bit as real as the molar.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. <i>[Size]</i>, the molecular is not really “smaller” than the molar, though it works on a smaller scale; both are equally coextensive with the social field. [Though one would think the molecular in fact penetrates further, goes beyond what the molar can envision or grasp?]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">4. Fourth, there is not some incommensurability or inability to interact due to the radical difference in scale, the molar and molecular are constantly interacting and influencing each other.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They discuss the interrelationships of molar and molecular, the stronger the molar organization, the more dependent it is on molecularization. They counter the Marxist concept of society as being defined by contradictions, saying this applies only at a molar level; at the molecular level, it is defined by lines of flight. To the molar <i>segmented line</i>, they pair the molecular <i>quantum flow</i>, with a “power center” that links them and effects “relative adaptations and conversions … between the line and the flow”<i> </i>(217). [In other words centralized power is not about molar per se, but about a relationship between molar, rigid segmentarity, and supple molecular quantum flows]. They discuss capitalism and banking in terms of this rigid control up to a point, dependent on what is actually not controlled; “That is why power centers are defined much more by what escapes them or by their impotence than by their zone of power.” They reference Foucault’s “microphysics of power” from <i>D&P</i>.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They use this terminology to discuss religion, states and warfare, and the debate between Tardean and Durkheiman sociologies. They provide a historical account from the Middle Ages through the emergence of capitalism, as the flow of various masses, introducing the concepts of <i>connection</i> (“the way in which decoded and deterritorialized flows boost one another, accelerate their shared escape, and augment or stoke their quanta” (220) and <i>conjugation</i> (the “relative stoppage” of flows, “like a point of accumulation that plugs or seals the lines of flight, performs a general reterritorialization, and brings the flows under the dominance of a single flow capable of overcoding them”). Through connections, then, different flows amplify and extend each other, effecting deterritorialization; through conjugations, these flows are brought under the control of, and made use of, by the State, capitalism, etc. They note that (in Chapter 7) they had already established that the most deterritorialized element is the one on which reterritorialization takes place; in the formation of capitalism this is the bourgeoisie (as mass, not as class). They discuss further the relationship between mass and class and include a footnote (537n20) detailing how their usage differs from the traditional mass/class distinction.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They tie into their tripartite typology of lines from Chapter 8:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. “a relatively supple line of interlaced codes and territorialities; that is why we started with so-called <i>primitive</i> segmentarity, in which the social space is constituted by territorial and lineal segmentations” (222);</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. “a rigid line, which brings about a dualist organization of segments, a concentricity of circles in resonance, and generalized overcoding; here, the social space implies a <i>State</i> <i>apparatus.</i> This system is different from the primitive system precisely because overcoding is not a stronger code, but a specific procedure different from that of codes (similarly, reterritorialization is not an added territory, but takes place in a different space than that of territories, namely, overcoded geometrical space);”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. “one or several lines of flight, marked by quanta and defined by decoding and deterritorialization (there is always something like a war machine functioning on these lines).”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It should not be taken from this ordering that “primitive” supple segmentarity is originary or first, and the others come after in some kind of historical development; rather, each could be seen as primary, or better, all as simultaneous and present in all kinds of societies, though interacting differently. [Cf. the argument made by Clastres, etc. that “pre-State” societies are in fact militantly anti-Statist, already organized to prevent the emergence of the State as a mutation of their own social organization.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They illustrate the entanglement of the three kinds of lines by discussing three aspects of “power centers,” aka “focal points of power.” First, power centers in the form of army, church, state, etc., work through <i>resonance</i> rather than some kind of absolute centralization. Centralization is always relative and dependent on segmentation (as the “focal point” is where lines cross and entangle, and thus not distinct from segmentarity). There are always other power centers which have relative resonance; overcoding brings one line to the fore, gives one power center more resonance. “Thus centralization is always more hierarchical, but hierarchy is always segmentary” (224).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Second, power centers are not just molar but also molecular, that is, they work through micropolitical, interpersonal relations. In an institution, not only the power exerted by the schoolmaster, warden, etc., but that by the best student, dunce, janitor, etc. displays that these roles all have both molar and molecular sides. Foucault’s <i>D&P </i>is again referenced for the concept of “focuses of instability;” [in which passage, F is discussing how micro-powers work on the body of the prisoner/student/solder/subject, and arguing against the repressive hypothesis or the [modal] social contract for his agonistic view of power relations]. “... [M]olar segments are necessarily immersed in the molecular soup that nourishes them and makes their outlines waver” (225).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The third aspect of power centers is as mediators or translators, between quantum flows and rigid segmentation. This in-between is also where the “micro-texture” of micropolitical interactions takes place. Power centers translate quantum flows into rigid segments, this is their “power and their impotence” [cf. Foucault on “conduct”] because they are not the source of power, but a means of its transmission or conjugation. The example is given of capitalists, banks using the money-form to capture flows of desire, etc. They list three “aspects or zones” of every central power (226):</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1) “its zone of power, relating to the segments of a solid rigid line;”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2) “its zone of indiscernability, relating to its diffusion throughout a microphysical fabric;” and</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3) “its zone of impotence, relating to the flows and quanta it can only convert without being able to control or define.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Once again, they emphasize that “We cannot say that one of these three lines is bad and another good” (227), because each has its dangers; they discuss four dangers, Fear, Clarity, Power, and Disgust. Fear is fear of flight, causing us to flee from the line of flight to the rigidity of the rigid line. Their description of Clarity is reminiscent of a drug or fever-induced vision of ultimate certainty; it exists, however, in the line of supple segmentarity and is linked to microfascism. “Instead of the great paranoid fear, we are trapped in a thousand little monomanias, self-evident truths, and clarities that gush from every black hole and no longer form a system, but only rumble and buzz, blinding lights giving any and everybody the mission of self-appointed judge. dispenser of justice, policeman, neighborhood SS man” (228). [I feel the distinction between Fear and Clarity is linked to that between the Despotic and Authoritarian faces/subjectifications].</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The third danger is Power or totalitarianism, which takes place on both the rigid and supple lines at once:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Every man of power jumps from one line to the other, alternating between a petty and a lofty style, the rogue's style and the grandiloquent style, drugstore demagoguery and the imperialism of the high-ranking government man. But this whole chain and web of power is immersed in a world of mutant flows that eludes them. It is precisely its impotence that makes power so dangerous. The man of power will always want to stop the lines of flight, and to this end to trap and stabilize the mutation machine in the overcoding machine. But he can do so only by creating a void, in other words, by first stabilizing the overcoding machine itself by containing it within the local assemblage charged with effectuating it, in short, by giving the assemblage the dimensions of the machine. This is what takes place in the artificial conditions of totalitarianism or the “closed vessel.” (229)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The fourth line of flight, Disgust or despair, is when the line of flight leads to pure destruction (cf. Chapter 6). They emphasize that this is not a “death drive,” because they do not believe in “drives” underlying desire. Rather, like war, it is a mutation in the war machine; the war machine in itself “<i>in no way has war as its object,” </i>because its origin is not in the State but in nomadic societies opposed to the State. [Holland points out that more felicitous names for “war machine” could be “mutation machine” or “metamorphosis machine” (Holland 2018, p. 162).] They promise to return later to the relation between “war machines” and “war.” The end with a discussion of the “paradox of fascism” and its distinction from totalitarianism, which is the ultimately centralized State apparatus.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Fascism, on the other hand, involves a war machine. When fascism builds itself a totalitarian State, it is not in the sense of a State army taking power, but of a war machine taking over the State. A bizarre remark by Virilio puts us on the trail: in fascism, the State is far less totalitarian than it is <i>suicidal.</i> There is in fascism a realized nihilism. (230)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As evidence that fascism boils down to a kind of suicidal nihilism, they cite Hitler’s “Telegram 71” ordering the destruction of German infrastructure (and thus mass suffering for the German people) rather than allow it to fall into the hands of the allies. “<i>A war machine that no longer had anything but war as its object</i> and would rather annihilate its own servants than stop the destruction. All the dangers of the other lines pale by comparison" (231).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Holland, Eugene W. (2018). “Micropolitics and Segmentarity.” In Henry Somers-Hall, Jeffrey A. Bell, and James Williams, eds., <i>A Thousand Plateaus and Philosophy</i>. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-84271990853851623342024-01-23T09:05:00.000-08:002024-01-23T09:05:51.116-08:00Profane Illumination, Chapter 4<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeZpQr-B4YyfDRJitIAnGn9831EtEhU4KIVhXRnPhlhepPpmIVW7EAvSEPWo0b1-BK_oxZnAIuOrovGojewYU5ugnbbUnpGHHtGWo5Ga5QgbNDSADLq7QXNaSnfrC9N08zs4sH_cmVbcpqyiJzrd16GqAZ5csSxQ_IudyhK60HzP6yuEIxZW5N-PcmWw4/s2560/profane%20illuminations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1707" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeZpQr-B4YyfDRJitIAnGn9831EtEhU4KIVhXRnPhlhepPpmIVW7EAvSEPWo0b1-BK_oxZnAIuOrovGojewYU5ugnbbUnpGHHtGWo5Ga5QgbNDSADLq7QXNaSnfrC9N08zs4sH_cmVbcpqyiJzrd16GqAZ5csSxQ_IudyhK60HzP6yuEIxZW5N-PcmWw4/s320/profane%20illuminations.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i><p></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter 4: The Ghosts of Paris</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In this long chapter, Cohen works to distance Breton’s writing in <i>Nadja</i> from several other representational modes. First off is the <i>monumental</i> history critiqued by Nietzsche:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Breton's <i>Nadja</i> offers no such monumental vision of Parisian historical grandeur. Rather than encompassing the city in a panoramic glance, Breton wanders in among its streets, catching enigmatic glimpses of scenes from daily life or dwelling on places singularly tangential to the great structures of collective memory. (79)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She takes as an example the Vendôme column; when Breton visits this location in <i>Nadja</i>, he is immediately reminded of how it had been torn down during the Paris Commune. In terms of monumental history, the restoration of the column means that the revolutionary moment has been erased and the column now appears as “one more image of the bourgeois state’s eternal reign” (79). For this reason, the non-monumental historiographic project “cannot rely on realist methods of representation” (80) (since these would show the literal, physical presence of the column, and not be able to show its former non-presence). [Though it seems to me this is not wholly true. Breton mentions the former overthrow of the column by Courbet and the communards; the memory of this event is still part of the column, so even as it stands it also lies in ruin, inevitably, to any observer who knows the history. THOUGH C is arguing not about the column as an object having various “real” or “unreal” qualities, etc., but about ways of seeing the column; realism privileges the visual, and it is thus according to realism that the column has only the present, visual meaning, not the past, haunting meaning.] [It’s a bit ironic for Courbet to be used in an argument <i>against </i>realism.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“In Nadja Breton explores the possibility of writing surrealist historiography by applying a Freudian paradigm of memory to collective events.” [She is making the move I inferred above, though does the connection to Freudianism lessen the ambiguity and productive ambivalence? of the column being both standing and fallen.] She quotes Benjamin’s description, from his Surrealism essay in <i>Reflections</i>, of Breton’s method in <i>Nadja</i> (though he says it is more of a “trick” than a “method” of substituting “a political for a historical view of the past” [by “historical view” is presumably meant something along the lines of monumental history.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Cohen then explores Parisian panoramic literature of the 1920s, and of some earlier decades, to reconstruct the discourse and [structure of feeling] of the era in which Breton was writing, in order to get a better sense of how a reader of his time would have recognized the various “ghosts” haunting the Paris through which Nadja and Andre travel. She started off doing an exhaustive survey of panoramic literature on Paris from the 20s, but realized this was not necessary as it was all very redundant:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Repeatedly, the same historical associations were identified with Breton's charged Parisian sites, confirming the hypothesis that there did indeed exist a contemporary reservoir of Parisian phantoms that Breton could invoke.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The uncanny effects of Parisian places, Breton suggests, derive from effaced historical memories that continue to cluster around the place of their occurrence in invisible but perceptible form. (83)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Comparing Breton’s text with that of the panoramic literature on the various sites he mentions, C finds that Breton consistently pursues the connections between Parisian bohemia and the history of insurrection at any particular locations; this is “a crucial component to <i>Nadja's</i> attack on orthodox Marxist notions of praxis” (94). Nadja is continuously associated with the side of the revolution that lost out, from the royalists to the Girondins (and Lepeletier, more of a radical, but an early martyr). Acc C, Breton is outlining an opposition to violent revolution, through contrasts or whatever with all these ghosts of failed past revolutions. Reference is made to the Sacco-Vanzetti riots on 1927, which were also failures, because the French Communist party hoped they would spark a more general revolutionary movement.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">For in these experiences Breton finds confirmation for a haunting notion of subjectivity which calls into question the possibility of establishing an enlightened and conscious subject outside of ideology in several ways. Posing the problem of whether there exists a self-present subject at all, Breton also suggests the conscious subject as the locus where the reigning ideology reproduces itself. Ghosts endowed with powers of resistance only surge up in moments when the subject's conscious experience is disrupted by forces coming from a mysterious unconscious realm. In addition, the collective uncanny suggests that history is composed of temporal strata layered as in the situations of individual psychic repression at issue in psychoanalysis. (106)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In contrast to mainstream Marxism, Breton focuses on Bohemians and lumpen as the revolutionary class; “ragpicker as revolutionary” (106ff). Cohen recounts Breton’s annoyance at the shiny happy people on the sidewalk shaking hands, etc. which I had found so amusing; C, in contrast, appears to read this as Breton’s distrust of the working class as having revolutionary potential.</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Rather, against the Marxist interest in mobilizing the proletariat, Breton stresses the need for individual, tactical disruptions of reigning social orders in what he calls “unchaining.” In doing so Breton disqualifies the class from which orthodox Marxism expects revolution, for he suggests as precondition to praxis the subject’s being freed from the material conditions of industrial production. Socially transformative activity becomes instead the province of subjects who no longer define themselves according to their work: (107)</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The key concept Cohen pulls out of Breton’s book is <i>désenchaînement, “</i>perpetual unchaining.” The need for this is his response to Nadja’s insistence that the working class are “good people;” he takes this to mean martyrs for the cause (for work, for the nation in wars, for the CP in revolutionary struggles). It involves an openness to “the marvelous,” “an interest that surrealism itself took over from the Gothic tradition” (107).</p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Chaîne</i> also means assembly line:</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Enchainement</i> is a word resonating not only on the material level but also on the conceptual level, as the enchainement of ideas; the disruption of dominant conceptual structures is an oft-stated goal of surrealist revolution. (108)</p></blockquote><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If Breton appropriates the Marxist liberatory language of “unchaining,” then, it is to displace Marxism's vision of the working class rising up and casting off its chains.</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The inclusion of various lumpen/bohemian characters in the novel is contrasted with Marx’s distrust of this class.</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But precisely its marginal relation to capitalist processes of production endears bohemia to Breton. In its Lumpen constitution and practices, bohemia embodies the unchaining of social hierarchies that surrealism seeks. (109)</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She discusses Breton’s [détournement] of the word “perverse” into something positive (from Latin <i>pervertere</i>, to overturn, C notes]. This “more closely approaches his flea-market vision of social change than does the word <i>revolution”</i> (110). Breton is also interested in bohemia’s links to the libidinal unchaining of the erotic, which is also traditionally distrusted by mainstream marxism:</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In Breton's subsequent theoretical writings he will try to reconcile Marxism with his interest in unchaining libidinal forces, speculating that the seemingly differentiated fields of libidinal and economic production may in fact turn out to be one. (110n58)</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">C turns to criticisms that mainstream surrealism accorded women a secondary status, stating that there are two ways to put surrealism’s treatment of women in perspective; first, by looking back, Cohen notes that the subordination of women in surrealism, even as they were made into “emblems of its power” goes back to the Jacobin revolutionary tradition (110-1). Second, looking forward, she finds that surrealism had some positive influence on feminist theory, through the concept of “subversion.” C provides some interesting comments on the status of “subversion” for “politicized postmodernism” at the time of her writing in the early 1990s:</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">After over a decade, subversion is losing its prestige; touting it as a political practice all too often seems like prescribing snakeoil for gaping social wounds. The pressing critical questions, we have started to feel, are elsewhere (nothing is so profoundly anti-erotic as the recently outmoded, Benjamin remarks), for example in exploring the complex relation of the aesthetic to other forms of social production rather than in denying its specificity or simplistically exalting its effect. I suspect moreover that the death-knell of subversion has, at least for the moment, been sounded with the fracturing of the Reagan-Bush right. Alleviating in some measure the academic left’s sense of social and political marginalization, this fracturing removes a key factor in the appeal of subversion to the politically engaged wing of American critical postmodernism throughout the 1980s. (111)</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In a discussion of de Certeau’s influences, the distinction between Bataille and Breton is neatly summarized:</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But in the case of tactics de Certeau’s view more resembles Bretonian unchaining than the equivalent therapeutic unleashing of the forces of the unconscious onto existing social order prescribed by Bataille. (111)</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Bataille celebrates absolute negation and general collapse through expenditure; Breton and de Certeau are more interested in “small-scale moments of intervention” (e.g., de Certeau’s interest in “tactics”). The <i>trouvaille</i>, or lucky find, is dear to both surrealism and de Certeau. She also finds a link to D&G:</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I think, for example, of Deleuze and Guattari’s “molecular multiplicities of desiring-production,” which owe much to Nadja’s haunting subjectivity; the trajectory here runs from unchaining to deterritorialization. (112)</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Though she notes that “High surrealism is certainly a conspicuous absence in <i>Anti-Oedipus”</i> which prominently cites the Beats and the renegade surrealists of Bataille’s faction.</p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She raises the issue of aestheticization, or the rendering of workers, bohemians, etc. into aesthetic tools via representation, in a way degrading them and stealing their agency: Breton is opposing aestheticization by traditional Marxism, but he himself risks doing it himself, and navigating this takes up most of the rest of Cohen’s discussion.</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Discussing the degraded life of the urban proletariat, Breton points out that to make the worker into an agent of social change is to aestheticize the social realities of the worker’s life. One can certainly argue, however, that Breton’s interest in bohemian practices lends glamour to the dirty business of sifting through society’s trash. … It could equally be objected that Breton glamorizes prostitution and madness. (113)</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">However, according to C, Breton does not in fact aestheticize these positions because “Breton simultaneously narrates his encounters with Nadja in a fashion undoing the bohemian suggestions for revolutionary practice that he proposes” (114).</p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[Fanny Beznos, a character from the book who plays a key in this part of Cohen’s discussion, and who Breton recounts seeing at a flea market selling books, later died in Auschwitz].</p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Cohen’s summary of the plot; Nadja is a stock character from 19<sup>th</sup> century social novels, the newcomer woman to the city who falls into prostitution:</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In this desperate state, she meets a bored, young, married aesthete. Fascinated by her fragile mental health, the aesthete seduces her, driving her to madness; repelled by the sordid details of her life, he eventually abandons her. Later learning that, utterly destitute and alone, she has been institutionalized, he does nothing to help her but only abstractly bemoans her fate. (114)</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This somewhat callous ending has disappointed many critics and indeed, readers in general (Breton comes across as so <i>bourgeois</i> in the end); Cohen, however, sees it as part of what makes Breton’s novel actually revolutionary; he is contrasted in particular to the writers of social novels, such as Eugene Sue, and Zola, and she describes how each would have written the story differently, to elicit particular feelings, so as to prompt readers to support social reforms. Breton denies us these nice cathartic feelings, and further complicates his books relation to the social novel by also bringing in elements of the post-Romantic prose poem a la Nerval or Rimbaud, precursors to surrealism.</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In valorizing the prostitute, for example, Baudelaire’s prose poem redeems as aesthetically fertile her availability to chance and to the unknown as well as her refusal to engage in the forms of behavior which bourgeois morality defines as work.</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Unlike Sue or Zola, Breton’s account of Nadja does not place the reality of prostitution, insanity, etc., under the obligation of communicating “a certain ideological necessity” linked to bourgeois moralizing, like that which Marx criticized in Sue (116). Instead of “replacing the social Nadja with the aestheticized Nadja” Breton problematizes all this with his constant questioning as to “who is the real Nadja?” This also does not romanticize bohemian unchaining, because it can lead to madness, etc. Instead, Breton’s setting up the possibility of unchaining, then showing also its pitfalls, creates for the reader an aporia or aporias, (in the Derridean sense of the word):</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Breton’s generic disruption does not offer transcendence or liberation but rather throws the reader into impasse, aporia, and specifically the aporia of oppressive material conditions which destroy the efforts at ideological unchaining necessary to change them.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Nadja’s fate raises the possibility that surrealist <i>désenchaînement</i> may not only fail to undermine the superior force of the ruling order; it may exist only as an effect of the order it thinks to challenge. (117)</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[The above implication that romantic <i>désenchaînement</i> might be part of the [spectacle] is not pursued any further in this chapter].</p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She notes criticisms that B’s attitude toward the insane prisoners of the asylum is patronizing and condescending, tinged with bourgeois moralism.</p><blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Many readers have expressed disappointment that Breton does not present his and Nadja’s adventures as heady and intoxicating transcendence. Condemning Breton for his final betrayal of Nadja, they link it to his betrayal of the marvelous series of steps the text sets out to take. It seems to me, however, that such betrayal does not mark the failure of the text’s disruptive power but instead its accomplishment. The disruptive force of the betrayal can indeed best be gauged by readers’ persistently negative reactions to it, which bear witness to their own unexamined needs for texts presenting optimistic schemas of social change. (118)</p></blockquote><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Interestingly, Cohen’s defense of Breton here could be said to be similar to his approach in the book: she defends him but also allows cracks and doubts in the edifice, so that Breton can be seen as both brilliant revolutionary and failed, un-self-critical bourgeois consumer of the spectacle, at the same time.</p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-529725179127494012024-01-11T13:10:00.000-08:002024-01-11T13:10:18.126-08:00Labor and Monopoly Capital, Chapter 14<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk1OayEgLdP8mFDmiz1Xz1vyIIoPFoZL34-i087NNG-fPL936CC94fH9BqlrcwbPqcZGjTufqJz-UlzgCfGEIN1smGRMhLvaCjCi2IelqstVZJ3dP1xVCkRR0stPCSjGvJxTnnl8ke2KJ-mrhHo13Flar8Ydg02pa7TBvK21lvf_PrNC1dG-ZcxU6Erzc/s499/braverman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk1OayEgLdP8mFDmiz1Xz1vyIIoPFoZL34-i087NNG-fPL936CC94fH9BqlrcwbPqcZGjTufqJz-UlzgCfGEIN1smGRMhLvaCjCi2IelqstVZJ3dP1xVCkRR0stPCSjGvJxTnnl8ke2KJ-mrhHo13Flar8Ydg02pa7TBvK21lvf_PrNC1dG-ZcxU6Erzc/s320/braverman.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter 14: The Role of the State</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In the most elementary sense, the state is guarantor of the conditions, the social relations, of capitalism, and the protector of the ever more unequal distribution of property which this system brings about. But in a further sense state power has everywhere been used by governments to enrich the capitalist class, and by groups or individuals to enrich themselves. (197)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The state has always played this function, but it is expanded with monopoly capitalism. In the cases of post-war Germany and Japan, the state and the new capital form are created simultaneously; however, in older states such as the US and UK, a more circumscribed role for the state existed earlier, so the transformation to the more interventionist state appeared to be a struggle against capital, though this was only an illusion.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">the maturing of the various tendencies of monopoly capitalism created a situation in which the expansion of direct state activities in the economy could not be avoided.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This is explored under four “headings.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. “Monopoly capitalism tends to generate a greater economic surplus than it can absorb,” leading to periodic stagnation and depressions. Government spending is necessary to buy up the surplus; Braverman points to Baran and Sweezy’s text for a more complete analysis.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. The new, international/trans-national structure of capitalist production, along with resistance movements which arise to oppose it, means that, to police this order, the leading capitalist states need to have a permanent active military. This in turn assists in creating effective demand (per #1) with the added bonus that military spending, unlike welfare spending, does not redistribute income, and is thus more acceptable to the capitalist class. B states this solution originates with the Nazis, and is picked up by the US and other nations after WWII.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. Increased poverty and insecurity under monopoly capitalism lead to a need for welfare spending focusing on cities to render this population manageable; “the disputes within the capitalist class over this issue, including disagreements over the scale, scope, and auspices of the welfare measures to be adopted, offer an arena for political agitation which engages the working population as well, and offers a substitute for the revolutionary movements which would soon gain ground if the rulers followed a more traditional laissez-faire course” (198).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">4. Another new role for the state today is as provider of institutionalized education, replacing the home-and-community-based practical education of yore:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The minimum requirements for “functioning” in a modern urban environment—both as workers and as consumers—are imparted to children in an institutional setting rather than in the family or the community. At the same time, what the child must learn is no longer adaptation to the slow round of seasonal labor in an immediately natural environment, but rather adaptation to a speedy and intricate social machinery which is not adjusted to social humanity in general, let alone to the individual, but dictates the rounds of production, consumption, survival, and amusement. Whatever the formal educational content of the curriculum, it is in this respect not so much what the child <i>learns</i> that is important as what he or she <i>becomes wise to</i>. In school, the child and the adolescent practice what they will later be called upon to do as adults: the conformity to routines, the manner in which they will be expected to snatch from the fast-moving machinery their needs and wants. (199)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The opposition between “learning” (facts, techniques, etc.) and “getting wise” is interesting, and the latter has an interesting link to <i>metis</i>. B’s primary point is that it is the form of schooling which teaches the patterns of obedience, conformity, etc., which is more important than the content of what is taught; there is also the sense in which the actual knowledge that is relevant in this ever-changing work environment is very fleeting and always shifting, so it is more a sense of what is going on and a readiness to adapt, in order to “snatch from the fast-moving machinery their needs and wants,” that students need to obtain.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-77326739245691923972024-01-09T09:49:00.000-08:002024-01-09T09:49:00.397-08:00The Revolution of Everyday Life, Chapter 2<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzzzpRzuP4ZeYxPv_KNJNDmsAiDOI-pt1qG3sbu0_NFQGs161iBCevJQUzbx5p4R61Y7oM6gfzl8tx-aht0bPDy41M2aEkJHBHL8JiqBM2S1vRs4AOqSyZbdY89r3G4DUV0sL2Dz483v6cQ7nkKhERhJ8cPiHHWZL8D9Dmk5xSKeP_beSO5Fhibq8Ox8I/s286/vaneigem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="286" data-original-width="200" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzzzpRzuP4ZeYxPv_KNJNDmsAiDOI-pt1qG3sbu0_NFQGs161iBCevJQUzbx5p4R61Y7oM6gfzl8tx-aht0bPDy41M2aEkJHBHL8JiqBM2S1vRs4AOqSyZbdY89r3G4DUV0sL2Dz483v6cQ7nkKhERhJ8cPiHHWZL8D9Dmk5xSKeP_beSO5Fhibq8Ox8I/s1600/vaneigem.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter 2: Humiliation</i></p><p>This is the first of five chapters on “the mechanisms of attrition and destruction,” which render “participation” “impossible,” through “power” as a “sum of constraints." The five mechanisms are humiliation, isolation, suffering, work, and decompression.</p><p>V’s summary of this chapter:</p><blockquote><p>The economy of daily life is based on a continual exchange of humiliations and aggressive attitudes. It conceals a technique of attrition itself prey to the gift of destruction which paradoxically it invites (1). Today, the more man is a social being, the more he is an object (2). Decolonisation has not yet begun (3). It will have to give a new value to the old principle of sovereignty (4). (29)</p></blockquote><p>He begins with an example of Rousseau being ridiculed by villagers:</p><blockquote><p>Aren’t most of the trivial incidents of daily life like this ridiculous adventure? But in an attenuated and diluted form, reduced to the duration of a step, a glance, a thought, experienced as a muffled impact, a fleeting discomfort barely registered by consciousness and leaving in the mind only a dull irritation at a loss to discover its own origin?</p></blockquote><p>“Humiliation” for V is about the micropolitics of interpersonal interaction, microaggressions in particular, along with the “timid retreats, brutal attacks,” the momentary failures and embarrassments which constitute the sort of war of everyday interaction in a meaningless society.</p><blockquote><p>All we can do is enclose ourselves in embarrassing parentheses; like these fingers (I am writing this on a cafe terrace) which slide the tip across the table and the fingers of the waiter which pick it up, while the faces of the two men involved, as if anxious to conceal the infamy which they have consented to, assume an expression of utter indifference. (30)</p></blockquote><p>There is an economy of insults: “From the point of view of constraint, daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out.” He places this economy of insults in relation to the claimed victory of capitalism over the loss of a sense that the state socialisms formed any kind of real alternative. He calls for an economy of the gift to replace the stale and soulsucking capitalist model of exchange</p><blockquote><p>In fact, a truly new reality can only be based on the principle of the gift. Despite their mistakes and their poverty, I see in the historical experience of workers’ councils (1917, 1921, 1934, 1956), and in the pathetic search for friendship and love, a single and inspiring reason not to despair over present “reality.” Everything conspires to keep secret the positive character of such experiences; doubt is cunningly maintained as to their real importance, even their existence. By a strange oversight, no historian has ever taken the trouble to study how people actually lived during the most extreme revolutionary movements. (31)</p></blockquote><p>There are two sides to the point he is making. On the one hand, the economic relations of life (exchange in capitalism, control in state socialism) are seen as entering into the logic of everyday interpersonal interaction, transforming it to match the image of society. At the same time, everyday life is more the engine of real revolution than the surface form of worker’s councils, etc. Even the “pathetic search for friendship and love” is of the same material or force as revolutionary actions. Cynicism about the importance of such yearnings plays a role in keeping everyone docile and accepting, because there is no alternative.</p><p>He celebrates the violence of anarchist terrorists, but also murderers like Lacenaire, etc. as the “concave form of the gift” motivated by rejection of “relationships based on exchange and compromise” and “hierarchical social community.” V does not agree with murder, but wants to seize the emotional passion and rejection that motivates murderers like Lacenaire. Revolutionary tactics must have collective attraction (not just radically individual like Ravachol, the Bonnot gang, etc.); they must “attract collectively the individuals whom isolation and hatred for the collective lie have already won over to the rational decision to kill or to kill themselves” (31-2).</p><blockquote><p>No murderers – and no humanists either! The first accepts death, the second imposes it. Let ten people meet who are resolved on the lightning of violence rather than the agony of survival; from this moment, despair ends and tactics begin. Despair is the infantile disorder of the revolutionaries of daily life. (32)</p></blockquote><p>[Propaganda by the deed] is effective in that it exposes the workings of power:</p><blockquote><p>Hierarchical social organisation is like a gigantic racket whose secret, exposed precisely by anarchist terrorism, is to place itself out of reach of the violence it gives rise to, by consuming everybody’s energy in a multitude of irrelevant struggles.</p></blockquote><p>The uneasiness of handshakes, of eye contact:</p><blockquote><p>When our eyes meet someone else’s they become uneasy, as if they could make out their own empty, soulless reflection in the other person's pupils. Hardly have they met when they slip aside and try to dodge one another; their lines of flight cross at an invisible point, making an angle whose width expresses the divergence, the deeply felt lack of harmony. (33)</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>A whole ethic based on exchange value, the pleasures of business, the dignity of labour, restrained desires, survival and on their opposites, pure value, gratuitousness, parasitism, instinctive brutality and death: this is the filthy tub that human faculties have been bubbling in for nearly two centuries. From these ingredients -refined a little of course – the cyberneticians are dreaming of cooking up the man of the future. (33-4)</p></blockquote><p>[This is one of several references to “cyberneticians” planning a future perfect society, perhaps what he means when he says capitalism will end in a planned economy, that would put the paltry Soviet model to shame.]</p><blockquote><p>The feeling of humiliation is nothing but the feeling of being an object. Once understood as such, it becomes the basis for a combative lucidity in which the critique of the organisation of life cannot be separated from the immediate inception of the project of living differently. Construction can begin only on the foundation of individual despair and its transcendence; the efforts made to disguise this despair and pass it off under another wrapper are proof enough of this, if proof were needed. (34)</p></blockquote><p>He then adds:</p><blockquote><p>What is the illusion which stops us seeing the disintegration of values, the ruin of the world, inauthenticity, non-totality?</p></blockquote><p>The link between humiliation and this question is objectification: the illusion is happiness—not yours, because you aren’t happy—but that of others, whom you suspect to be happy, and envy.</p><blockquote><p>To define oneself by reference to others is to perceive oneself as other. And the other is always object. Thus life is measured in degrees of humiliation. The more you choose your own humiliation, the more you ‘live’ the more you live the orderly life of things. Here is the cunning of reification, the means whereby it passes undetected, like arsenic in the jam. (34-5)</p></blockquote><p>So being envious of others turns you into an object (you self-objectify), and you thus become a thing. This is the “gentle” oppression of the [post-modern liberal-capitalist state]:</p><blockquote><p>The gentleness of these methods of oppression throws a certain light on the perversion which prevents me from shouting out "The emperor has no clothes" each time my sovereignty over daily life is exposed in all its poverty. (35)</p></blockquote><p>So “My Sovereignty” is perhaps the illusion of agency or heroism, or whatever the belief in the subject is or that it should have (the dream of real liberation or individual sovereignty a la Stirner), but in capitalism, there is only a mockery, a shadow version. Would shouting about the nakedness of “the emperor” (which is you, but in third person, or “your sovereignty” separated from you and treated like an object) be some dialectic of separating the objectified self, of disarticulating the abstract subject? The subject of the statement being separated from the subject of enunciation? In any event he feels this shock of humiliation and objectification is one the one hand the effective means of oppression, but also a first step to the development of [critique] and [the whole master-servant dialectic of liberation].</p><blockquote><p>The new-style police are already with us, waiting to take over. Psychosociological cops have need neither of truncheons nor of morgues. Oppressive violence is about to be transformed into a host of equitably distributed pinpricks. (35)</p></blockquote><p>Humanism is taken to task as more of a [loyal opposition] than a real challenge, and itself a pacifying illusion. He returns to the point that even apparently superficial or minor humiliations and angers are in fact important, perhaps moreso than those that are supposed to me most significant:</p><blockquote><p>There are no negligible irritations: gangrene can start in the slightest graze. The crises that shake the world are not fundamentally different from the conflict in which my actions and thoughts confront the hostile forces that entangle and deflect them.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>Sooner or later the continual division and re-division of aggravations will split the atom of unlivable reality and liberate a nuclear energy which nobody suspected behind so much passivity and gloomy resignation. That which produces the common good is always terrible. (35-6)</p></blockquote><p>Colonialism has played a role as a useful enemy for the left, as an acknowledged evil they can criticize without being able to actually do anything about:</p><blockquote><p>FROM 1945 to 1960, colonialism was a fairy godmother to the left. With a new enemy on the scale of fascism, the left never had to define itself (there was nothing there); it was able to affirm itself by negating something else. In this way it was able to accept itself as a thing, part of an order of things in which things are everything and nothing. (36)</p></blockquote><p>After the “end of colonialism” (which is just a change of stance, since it has not ended). the left has turned to anti-racism, etc.; but V dismisses these concerns as just phenomena of humiliation, which is the core of it all.</p><blockquote><p>Aime Cesaire made a famous remark: “The bourgeoisie has found itself unable to solve the major problems which its own existence has produced: the colonial problem and the problem of the proletariat.” He forgot to add: “For they are one and the same problem, a problem which anyone who separates them will fail to understand.” (37)</p></blockquote><p>On the subject of “sovereignty” he makes a Stirneresque/Nietzschian sort of argument (reminiscent also of the debate on kings in For Whom the Bell Tolls):</p><blockquote><p>Today France contains twenty-four million mini-kings, of which the greatest - the bosses - are great only in their ridiculousness. The sense of respect has become degraded to the point where the right to humiliate is all that it demands. Democratised into public functions and roles, the monarchic principle floats belly up, like a dead fish: only its most repulsive aspect is visible. Its will to be absolutely and unreservedly superior has disappeared. Instead of basing our lives on our sovereignty, we try to base our sovereignty on other people's lives. The manners of slaves. (37)</p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-85719005653711732902024-01-06T14:26:00.000-08:002024-01-06T14:26:32.461-08:00On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Chapter 2<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZOpmdFxO2WT5FSTjJm6rvqc3D5yOxHU7r8_5cWXDFsJgVewIs61LSN1824tgH-sW3VlxS1bA8I8T3GNBtd9lnw2sTKd6PUelv51xhTOrBept3OWg5UdlcpsmC5-C169svdBH1QIXLtVqdxb6yUBydlazdsaJumBAP_qA0ZqjxMJz2QK-7KjyKy2y-Hw0/s768/Simondon.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="575" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZOpmdFxO2WT5FSTjJm6rvqc3D5yOxHU7r8_5cWXDFsJgVewIs61LSN1824tgH-sW3VlxS1bA8I8T3GNBtd9lnw2sTKd6PUelv51xhTOrBept3OWg5UdlcpsmC5-C169svdBH1QIXLtVqdxb6yUBydlazdsaJumBAP_qA0ZqjxMJz2QK-7KjyKy2y-Hw0/s320/Simondon.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter Two: Evolution of Technical Reality; Element, Individual, Ensemble</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>I. Hypertely and self-conditioning in technical evolution</i></p><p>“Hypertely” (or “hypertelia”) is a word with a fascinating history, apparently beginning in Lamarckian evolutionary theory. Many sources (e.g., Merriam-Webster) give definitions such as “an extreme degree of imitative coloration or ornamentation not explainable on the ground of utility,” but those are examples of hypertely, not definitions. The main point seems to be evolution to a degree or direction which is not really adaptive: over-specialization; Pierre Jolivet (2008: 1897) summarizes hypertely as “beyond the bounds of the useful,” while pointing out that alleged cases of hypertely can be better explained by natural selection (and it is thus interesting to consider how Simondon’s thinking on evolution was affected by non-synthesis strands which apparently survived longer in France than elsewhere (Boesiger 1980). The concept seems to have remained much more popular in France than in the US; Baudrillard, for example, uses it to refer to processes like cancer, capitalism, and so on, which have “no other end than limitless increase, without any consideration of limits” (Baudrillard 1990: 52).</p><p>Commentators on Simondon seem to get two related meanings out of his usage, both of which are referenced by Stiegler in Technics and Time. The first, and most broad, is “functional over-adaptation” (53); an example that comes to mind would be a Christmas present of pot-holders that fit over the end of the pot’s handles, thus being specialized and useful in particular circumstances, but less widely useful than square flat potholders, which could be used for the same purpose, and many others. (It seems likely that such hypertely is more common among Christmas presents compared to other objects). The second, more particular, sense, is that in which hypertely “limits the object’s indetermination by leaving it dependent upon an artificial milieu” (Stiegler 1998: 78). Simondon’s example is a transport glider, which can only fly with the assistance of a tow plane (54). “Indetermination” in the Stiegler quote refers to the openness of the technical object to be adapted to a broader range of uses, or to further technical evolution; the “artificial milieu” is a technological milieu upon which the object is dependent, and thus stands in contrast to the associated milieu, which it carries with itself, thus making the technical object more autonomous. </p><p>S starts the chapter (53) by noting that the “schema that constitutes the essence of the technical object” can adapt in two ways: first, it can adapt to the “material and human conditions of production;” and second, to “the task for which it is made.” The second leads to overspecialization and hypertely. S then adds that there are two kinds of hypertely: 1) “a fine-tuned adaptation to well-defined conditions without breaking the technical object up and without a loss of autonomy” (e.g., the specialized pot-holders?) and 2) “a breaking up of the technical object” (54), as in the case of the transport glider and tow plane. He then describes a third kind, of “mixed hypertely,” in which the object becomes dependent on a particular environment to function. This leads to a distinction between two kinds of milieux or worlds: the geographical milieu and the technical milieu (55); the technical object is involved in both, at their meeting point: the two worlds act on each other through the technical object, which is “to a certain extent determined by human choice, attempting to realize the best possible compromise between these two worlds.” </p><p>“The evolution of technical objects can only become progress insofar as these technical objects are free in their evolution and not pushed by necessity in the direction of a fatal hypertely” (58). There thus needs to be a third, “techno-geographic” milieu which allows for the “self-conditioning” of the object, that is, its evolution according to its schema or whatever, instead of imposed external conditions or whatever. Sorry if I sound like I’m not fully buying it here. At the end of this section S takes up the role of human intelligence, which will be explored in more detail subsequently.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>II. Technical invention: ground and form in the living and in inventive thought.</i></p><p>S summarizes his argument so far:</p><blockquote><p>We can therefore affirm that the individualization of technical beings is the condition of technical progress. This individualization is made possible by the recurrence of causality within a milieu that the technical being creates around itself and that conditions it, just as it is conditioned by it. This simultaneously technical and natural milieu can be called the associated milieu. (59)</p></blockquote><p>Thus, individualization is a matter of increased autonomy, the technical object being able to re/act by itself in relation to its “associated milieu.” The “recurrence of causality” within this milieu is what allows for “self-conditioning,” which either means self-maintenance/homeostasis, or evolution, or both (if the former, it is a condition for the latter). The argument is in some ways a more sophisticated development on the cyberneticists’ interest in feedback, adding in the relationship between individual and milieu, and the insistence that these should be understood in time, as part of an “evolution.” </p><p>“Invention” is distinguished by S from gradual development, apparently in line with his [saltationist] vision of technical evolution (the term he actually uses is “serrated” evolution). “The only technical objects that can be said to have been invented, strictly speaking, are those that require an associated milieu in order to be viable; these cannot in fact be constituted part by part via the phases of successive evolution, because they can exist only as a whole or not at all.” The example of the Guimbal turbine, from the previous chapter, is given again here as an example. “The reason the living being can invent is because it is an individual being that carries its associated milieu with it” in the form of culture, material culture, technical knowledge, etc.; this allows the [human] individual inventor to see beyond the present conditions to imagine a not-yet-existent future which then affects the present in a “reverse conditioning in time” (60).</p><p>The translators point out a key pun or word-play in the title of this section: the French term “fond et forme,” which normally means “content and form,” here is used by Simondon as a reference to Gestalt theory, and thus to mean “ground and form.” Much like it is necessary to understand the technical object in terms of its milieu, so is it necessary to understand form as contrasted against its ground; but here (in the case of invention),</p><blockquote><p>the ground is the system of virtualities, of potentials, forces that carve out their own path, whereas forms are the system of actuality. Invention is the taking charge of the system of actuality through the system of virtualities... (61)</p></blockquote><p>[I made a note that articulation in discourse works similarly, on the “form” of the present in terms of possible futures or alternative “systems of actuality.”] S continues to talk about symbolization and alienation, both of which will be returned to later; he ends the section with some remarks on the relations between organs and organisms.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>III. Technical individualization.</i></p><p>In this short section S explores the relations between element, individual, and ensemble, starting by clarifying the distinction between a technical individual (of which the associated milieu is a necessary aspect of its functioning) and a mere “collection of organized individuals” working together, the latter of which is an ensemble. He explores the example of a laboratory as ensemble to show that the ensemble does not have a “truly associated milieu” (65); this appears to be because the different machines, experiments, etc. which are part of or can be done in the laboratory require different setups, cannot be allowed to interfere with each other, and so on, and thus the laboratory-as-milieu for these experiments or processes is adapted or changed in particular ways for each. There are nevertheless “relative levels of individualization” present (64), so the ensemble can contain relatively individualized sub-ensembles. This relativity of individualization extends as well to “infra-individual technical objects” (66).</p><p><br /></p><p><i>IV. Evolutionary succession and preservation of technicity. Law of relaxation.</i></p><p>The “law of relaxation” has to do with causality within S’s theory of the “serrated evolution” of technology, which means evolution that is not continuous but rather proceeds in stages, each of which apparently has its own “solidarity” or coherence or whatever. He illustrates this through the history of energy sources, with the pre- or proto-industrial artisanal stage powered by waterfalls, wind, and animal power (68). Within this era thermodynamic elements are invented, leading to the development of thermodynamic machines/individuals such as the steam engine, resulting in the transition, with thermodynamic ensembles such as factories and industrial centralization, to the succeeding thermodynamic or industrial era. [And it seems that “thermodynamic” applies here not only to the source of power but to the thinking that organizes this era.] Out of the thermodynamic ensemble emerges electrotechnics, which follows the same basic pattern, resulting in a new electrotechnical era, in which (in an interesting observation) the role of the railroad in spatially organizing and distributing production and relations in the thermodynamic era, is now played by high voltage transmission lines [and also of course by highways, railroads, etc.].</p><p>“At the moment in which electrical technics reaches its full development, it produces new schemes in the form of elements that initiate a new phase” (70); this quote reveals the sense in which this phase of “relaxation” spends itself with a “full development” of its potentials or whatever, producing the elements of the new, succeeding phase. Here Simondon explores two related but competing technologies being developed in his day, which he sees as likely to form the basis of the succeeding stage – and, presciently, these are solar and nuclear power. (Though I do wonder what S would think about the fact that, over sixty years after this book was published, the confrontation between these two, and the promise of a new technological system following from this, has yet to have fully played out. Perhaps this is a limitation of the focus on “energy sources” as driving or shaping technological change; he does mention information elsewhere, but does not in this passage foresee the growth of computing and its high energy demands; nor does he mention fossil fuels in his discussion of “electrical technics.” (He drifts from focusing on the power source, to the mode of transmission, and back, without apparently realizing this). And of course we know that the fossil fuel industry and its vested interests would be, in Simondon’s eyes, an “extrinsic cause” like all “economic constraints,” and thus not really of interest for his history of technological evolution.) For all that his discussion of nuclear and solar power as potentially competing, or potentially aligned, visions/power sources for a coming technological era, seems still quite relevant today.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>V. Technicity and evolution of technics: technicity as instrument of technical evolution.</i></p><p>S asserts that, despite progressing in stages, his model of technical progress is distinct from dialectics because there is no negation or negativity playing a role as engine of progress in his model. Instead, negativity, in the form of a lack of individuation, plays a minor role and does not lead to progress, itself. He furthermore distinguishes between progress and change, per se, in that not all change counts as actual progress.</p><p>“For progress to exist, each age must be able to pass on to the next age the fruit borne of its technical effort” (71); this is passed not through individuals or ensembles (which must change more dramatically with each step of evolution), but through elements. He restates a key difference between technical beings and living beings: only the latter can engender other living beings (S dismisses as silly some attempts by cyberneticists to create machines that mimic the process). Technical beings, however, because they have less “perfection” than living beings, have more “freedom” of recombination and transmission of elements (rather than whole individuals); [this is perhaps why the Lamarckian-style evolutionary concepts can be applied to the evolution of technology, even if they don’t work for living creatures].</p><p>The question then becomes what “technical perfection” consists in, and S illustrates this with an adze, which, though appearing fairly simple, has several different parts which have to be forged to the correct strength, etc.; “as if, in its totality, the tool was made of a plurality of functionally different zones, welded together” (72). The point is that:</p><blockquote><p>The tool is made not only of form and matter; it is made of elaborate technical elements according to a certain schema of functioning, and assembled into a stable structure though the operation of fabrication. The tool unites within itself the results of the functioning of a technical ensemble. In order to make a good adze a technical ensemble of a foundry, forge, and quench hardening is required.</p></blockquote><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The technicity of an object is thus more than a quality of its use; it is that which, within it, adds itself to a first determination given by the relation between form and matter; it acts as an intermediary between form and matter …. Technicity is the degree of the object’s concretization.</span></p><p>Even a simple element, like a coil spring, requires a complex and advanced technical ensemble to produce it; “It would not be an exaggeration to say that the quality of a simple needle expresses the degree of perfection of a nation’s industry” (73). “What the element transports is a concretized technical reality” (73-4) of the ensemble that produced it, “just as seeds transport the properties of a species and go on to make new individuals” (74). Technicity as a “positive aspect” of the element corresponds to the role of the associated milieu in constituting the individual (73).</p><p>Since this model of evolution does not have negativity a la the dialectic, invention appears to step in as the added ingredient causing progress. </p><blockquote><p>Invention, which is a creation of the individual, presupposes in the inventor the intuitive knowledge of the element’s technicity; invention occurs at this intermediate level between the concrete and the abstract, which is the level of schemas, and presupposes the pre-existence and coherence of representations that cover the object’s technicity with symbols belonging to an imaginative systematic and an imaginative dynamic. (74)</p></blockquote><p>This appears to refer to not only an “individual” imagination, but a cultural imagination, involving representations and the capacity of prediction of new future individuals and ensembles assembled out of existing or possible elements. S does focus on the inventor as possessor of a particular sensitivity to the technicity of elements; yet the inventor does not give form to new elements and individuals out of the blue or out of their individual genius, but relies on the preexisting elements, ensembles, etc.</p><p>The technicities of elements are stable behaviors, or powers: “capacities for producing or undergoing an effect in a determinate manner” (75). S adds that “the higher the technicity of an element, the wider the conditions of deployment of this element are, as a result of the high level of stability of this element. He gives the example of a spring which can be used at a wide range of temperatures without losing its elasticity. Also, “the technical quality once again increases with the independence of its characteristics from the conditions of utilization;” S provides several technical examples, noting in passing that economic constraints affect the individual rather than the “element as element.” [Because it is at the individual level that cost might result in cheaper parts substituting for better or more efficient ones].</p><p>Simondon starts dropping in one of his key concepts, transduction, for which Barthélémy provides some dense definitions, “the process of individuation of the real itself,” and “a physical, biological, mental, social operation through which an activity propagates gradually within a domain, by founding this propagation on a structuration of the domain that is realized from one place to the next” (Barthélémy 2012: 230). (Ah, well that’s perfectly clear now!) A technical object here plays a “transductive role … with respect to a prior age” (76). Prior ensembles and individuals have become obsolete: but “at certain moments in its evolution the technical element makes sense in itself, and is thus a depository of technicity” that can be transmitted to the succeeding age. S turns to the role of technology in different cultures: there are always elements and ensembles, but pre-industrial tech seems to be characterized by “the absence of technical individuals” (77) (naturally, as it was already stated that the industrial era is that of the individual, while the pre-industrial was that of the element). Humans thus play the role of technical individuals in the pre-industrial era, providing the associated milieu for the various tools, etc, and this applies not only to individual human workers or artisans, but to “men employed as technical individuals rather than as human individuals,” which appears to refer to teams of workers operating together and thus forming one “technical individual” in Simondon’s sense.</p><p>S has an interesting footnote on “a certain nobility of artisanal work” (77n9), and notes that</p><blockquote><p>the existence of separate [i.e., non-human] technical individuals is a rather recent development and even appears, in some respects, like an imitation of man by the machine, where the machine remains the more general form of a technical individual.</p></blockquote><p>However, S argues, this is only a superficial analogy, because machines usually operate very differently than humans; “yet if man often feels frustration before the machine, it is because the machine functionally replaces him as an individual: the machine replaces man as tool bearer.” (78)</p><p>This is the opening to a very interesting discussion which goes a step or so beyond Marx’s observations in the Fragment on Machines. S starts by pointing out that in the artisanal stage there had also been a frequent distinction between the artisan who was “bearer of the tools” and a helper, such as the hod carrier who assists a mason. [Naturally, here is where Braverman (for Ruskin, for that matter) could object that this could have been part of a guild system in which the master’s assistant is an apprentice, learning the trade; Simondon is, typically, disregarding this sociopolitical context.] There is certainly a discourse today that we are to think of ChatGPT, etc. as “assistants” rather than “replacements,” but S acknowledges that it is not only the role of helpers which are taken by machines today; “one could even define the machine as that which bears and directs tools” (78). Humans become disengaged from this direct production, taking roles either as overseers directing one or more machine-tool-bearers, or playing an “auxiliary” role, in which “he greases, cleans, removes detritus and burrs.” What takes S’s discussion beyond Marx’s instrument/machine distinction is the recognition that a human can play both this overseer and assistant role to machines, at once, both “servant and regulator.” [And which of these come into play takes us back to the social relations of production, despite S’s general neglect of these.] (Also cf. Stiegler on technology as pharmakon).</p><p>Simondon then more directly addresses Marx’s instrument-machine distinction, in his own terminology. When “man applies his own action to the natural world through the machine,” this takes the relation man-machine-world; the machine becomes “a relay, an amplifier of movements, but it is still man who preserves within himself the center of this complex technical individual that is the reality constituted by man and machine … the man is the bearer of the machine, while the machine remains the tool bearer” (79). </p><p>S now gives a broad historical overview of the relation between humans and “technical individuals.” With the individualization of technical objects beginning in the industrial era, “human individuality is increasingly disengaged from the technical function through the construction of technical individuals; for man, the functions that remain are both below and above that of the tool bearer, oriented both toward the relation with elements and toward the relation with ensembles.” Because, in the artisanal era, technical individuality had been associated with human individuality, in the industrial era (he appears to be saying), “it became customary to give each individual just one function in regard to work.” [He could be referring to his earlier distinction between mason and hod carrier, but the point would make better sense in relation to discretized factory labor.] </p><blockquote><p>But it now creates unease, because man, who still seeks to be a technical individual, no longer has a stable place alongside the machine: he becomes the servant of the machine or the organizer of the technical ensemble; yet, in order for the human function to make sense, it is necessary for every man employed with a technical task to <i>surround the machine both from above and from below</i>, in order to have an understanding of it in some way, and to look after its elements as well as its integration into the functional ensemble. (80; emphasis added)</p></blockquote><p>S is saying that the ideal, and non-alienating, situation, is for the human to play the above-and-below-the-machine roles, simultaneously, since this is the only way to obtain a full “understanding” of it (and this point appears to link back to the first chapter’s discussion of the need for a science of mechanology to enable this understanding, and the reasons why the situated knowledges of various kinds of worker, engineer, etc. were dismissed as potential foundations for this new science). In fact, S now states that it is wrong to see these two positions as “above” and “below” (or, perhaps, to separate them into an above and a below):</p><blockquote><p>Technicity is not a reality that can be hierarchized; it exists as a whole inside its elements and propagates transductively through the technical individual and ensembles: through the individuals, ensembles are made of elements, and from them elements issue forth. The apparent pre-eminence of ensembles comes from the fact that the ensembles are currently given the same prerogatives as those of people playing the role of the boss.</p></blockquote><p>Historically, work relating to the ensemble has been that of the boss, and work with the element that of the servant; with the middle role of technical individual that of the artisan (and thus with democracy, equality, etc.). However, the modern machine renders all these anachronistic: “Ideas of servitude and liberation are far too strongly related to the old status of man as a technical object for them to correspond to the true problem of the relation between man and machine” today (81). Simondon’s goal is to articulate the necessary new and more accurate understanding.</p><p><br /></p><p>Barthélémy, Jean-Huges (2012) “Fifty Key Terms in the Works of Gilbert Simondon” in de Boever, et al., eds. <i>Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology</i>. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.</p><p>Baudrillard, Jean (1990) <i>Fatal Strategies</i>. Semiotext(e), New York.</p><p>Boesiger, Ernest (1980) “Evolutionary Biology in France at the Time of the Evolutionary Synthesis.” in Mayr and Provine, eds., <i>The Evolutionary Synthesis</i>. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. </p><p>Jolivet, Pierre (2008) “Hypertely.” in John L. Capinera, ed., <i>Encyclopedia of Entomology</i>.</p><p>Stiegler, Bernard (1998) <i>Technics and Time 1</i>. Stanford University Press, Stanford.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-26348735890525423432023-12-15T09:46:00.000-08:002023-12-15T09:46:07.877-08:00A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 8<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzrdOKhhdMgL9gltl-GJEqGIPOsdBMjkIjDgL3KQi5MsHbje2Qerc_zl_qUkoQHDKLumgU9RvDnVOwqKq62MbiZDHdY_IP1C7XYgvSqIZQQIB497Vm5fP2tUWQmmqLtKuedqM3X2kI3fqy_3hk7zchVcA19xjubXnOvjY0rx8_n4_l1e2JMPTovJJCNn8/s600/atp.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="401" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzrdOKhhdMgL9gltl-GJEqGIPOsdBMjkIjDgL3KQi5MsHbje2Qerc_zl_qUkoQHDKLumgU9RvDnVOwqKq62MbiZDHdY_IP1C7XYgvSqIZQQIB497Vm5fP2tUWQmmqLtKuedqM3X2kI3fqy_3hk7zchVcA19xjubXnOvjY0rx8_n4_l1e2JMPTovJJCNn8/s320/atp.jpeg" width="214" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i><p></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter 8: 1874: Three Novellas, or “What Happened?”</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In this brief chapter, D&G use their idiosyncratic definition of “novella” to explore the concept of lines of rigid segmentation, supple segmentarity, and (in particular) lines of flight. The image at the beginning is from a Buster Brown cartoon, <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/-_Buster_Brown_le_petit_farceur_05b.jpg" target="_blank">the complete version of which is here</a>. I haven’t found any explanation of the date, “1874.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They begin with their apparently quite original temporal distinction between <i>novella, tale, </i>and <i>novel</i>. Novellas look back over the past and ask, “What happened?” Tales are progressive, beginning at the beginning and proceeding forward, keeping readers wondering, “What is going to happen?” The novel, for its part, “integrates elements of the novella and the tale into the variation of its perpetual living present (<i>duration</i>)” (192). [Necessarily a reference to the Bergsonian concept.] Characters in the novella enact <i>postures</i> which are like folds, but the tale plays out <i>attitudes or positions</i> that are unfoldings. “The links of the novella are: What happened? (the modality or expression), Secrecy (the form), Body Posture (the content)” (194).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They discuss three novellas, by Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Pierrette Fleutiaux. In each case these involve relations between 1) a molar, macropolitical “<i>rigid line of segmentarity</i>” (195), 2) a micropolitical “<i>line of molecular or supple segmentation</i>, the segments are which are like quanta of deterritorialization” (196); and 3) lines of flight. These correspond to territorialization/stratification, relative deterritorialization, and absolute deterritorialization; rigid segmentation invokes relations between units of a Couple, while supple segmentation those between Doubles. Most of the discussion of the novellas illustrates how these three kinds of lines interact and are not to be judged too simply; the first kind are not dead, but involve life just as much as the others; the line of flight does not necessarily lead to escape but could “bounce off the wall” and lead to a black hole.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In short, <i>there is a line of flight, which is already complex because it has singularities, and there [is] a customary or molar line with segments; and between the two (?), there is a molecular line with quanta that cause it to tip to one side or the other</i>. (203)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They discuss the work on lines of Fernand Deligny (a sometime colleague of Guattari) in relation to schizoanalysis, then delineate four “problems” which arise regarding the three types of lines. First, the <i>particular character of each line</i> (which is not to be taken too simplistically, nor is the clear distinction between each to be assumed to be necessarily clear); second, <i>the respective importance of the lines</i>: rigid segmentation is not necessarily first, nor is the line of flight necessarily last, nor first; though the supple segmentarity does exist between the two, flipping to one side or the other. Third, there is a <i>mutual immanence</i> of the three kinds of lines, and fourth, there are <i>dangers specific to each line</i>, including the line of flight (as mentioned above).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Part of the main point is that we (both as individuals and as groups) are traversed and composed of lines (202), which means much more than written lines, but all kinds of lines. They end with a discussion of written or spoken lines (drawn out of Fitzgerald’s autobiographical <i>Crack-up</i>) that links to the related theme of [articulation]:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When one person says to another, love the taste of whiskey on my lips like I love the gleam of madness in your eyes, what lines are they in the process of composing, or, on the contrary, making incompossable? (206)</p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-33104042880869650362023-12-12T11:09:00.000-08:002023-12-12T11:09:21.050-08:00Profane Illumination, Chapter 3<p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLjNiOzzKq6Lb2IIn9qdjG25csQmgBvBoIzCj-w4JxgKMzZppCokr_N2lsYsxQxUud1g7goD-k-4bBE79TxUTEnDsqIHyKt8qMMcZt2Dc_0CadTSS2zpqr0xBr-LqhjfT0etqxhMsxF2ZJX-shPk7L5nc8nlL7YS-xezirIUAwMY3j8oI97en36ClayXI/s2560/profane%20illuminations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1707" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLjNiOzzKq6Lb2IIn9qdjG25csQmgBvBoIzCj-w4JxgKMzZppCokr_N2lsYsxQxUud1g7goD-k-4bBE79TxUTEnDsqIHyKt8qMMcZt2Dc_0CadTSS2zpqr0xBr-LqhjfT0etqxhMsxF2ZJX-shPk7L5nc8nlL7YS-xezirIUAwMY3j8oI97en36ClayXI/s320/profane%20illuminations.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i><p></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter 3: “Qui suis-je?” Nadja’s Haunting Subject</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In this chapter, Cohen traces Andre Breton’s relation to Freudianism through his novel <i>Nadja</i>. Breton saw connections between Freudianism and Marxism:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">he pursues not only how the Marxist and Freudian forces of determination in the last instance are susceptible to apprehension by each other’s methodologies but also the possibility that they communicate closely (thus the notion of communicating vessels) and may in fact ultimately be indistinguishable. (60)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She traces in particular the concept of the “haunting” self in <i>Nadja</i>.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Breton posits this identity as a sequence of temporally differentiated moments. The I becomes a series of ghosts of its contiguous experience rather than a centered self. (64)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Breton references Rousseau, and C contrasts his writing with Rousseau’s project of portraying himself “as the portrait of an already formed, extratextual subject” in his confessions:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Breton's subjectivity is not anywhere fully present but rather must be constructed through narrative; his textual act of representation resembles the process of self-construction characteristic of the Freudian talking cure. (66)</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Like an analysand’s discourse, Breton’s narration acquires significance not from the accuracy of any event represented but rather “dans son ensemble,” from the relation among the memories narrated, as the narration becomes itself the event that generates meaning....</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Breton’s text lacks a metalanguage that will comment with authority on the events he recounts. Asserting that his self is constituted by a series of haunting I’s, he refuses to grant to any one I a privileged status as the real Breton.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Breton suggests the subject as the ghost of some sort of unconscious realm, simultaneously implying that this unconscious is individual and that it is related to objective factors. Breton emphasizes the objective character of this realm increasingly as his reflections on its content proceed.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">By “objective character,” she means the I as an object:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Alienating the I as the objective myself and then dissociating this objectified self from himself, turning it to “he who from farthest away comes to meet me,” Breton raises the uncertainty of his being able to reconstitute such alien material as a unified self at all. With the introduction of an objective dimension into the subject, the possibility exists that the boundary between subject and object will crumble in the direction of contingency rather than recuperation, and this problem echoes in the final question, “Is it myself [moi-meme]?” (67)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She discusses Sartre’s attack on Surrealist views of the subject, for instance his criticism of automatic writing (which Breton championed) as a sort of eating away at, or erosion of, the subject:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Automatic writing is above all else the destruction of subjectivity. When we attempt it, spasmodic clots rip through us, their origin unknown to us; we are not conscious of them until they have taken their place in the world of objects and we have to look on them with the eyes of a stranger. (Sartre, quoted on p. 68)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Sartre is thus alarmed at the alterity or uncanniness of the self to its self, which the surrealists celebrate. It is interesting to consider why this alarms Sartre (speaking here for the viewpoint of existentialism, and to a degree for traditional Marxism) so much, given that in the traditional Hegelian dialectic, the individual consciousness must in fact go through this phase of becoming an object to itself, in order to become a full “self-consciousness.” The issue, I think, is that the dissolution of subject into object celebrated by the Surrealists such as Breton goes too far, and is not recuperable into the unified and rational self which traditional Marxism desires. Whereas in Marx the worker, for example, sees themself through their product, their own agency mixed with the world, in the case of automatic writing, it is the opposite, some other force intrudes and supplants or replaces our own agency, so our own creations are mysterious and alien to us. [On “action without agency,” see below.]</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Sartre reacts with venom to the surrealist representation of the subject because such a subject is ill-suited to carry out the praxis an existentialist protocol of engagement demands. (68)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Cohen makes much of Breton’s juxtaposition of a photo of himself with the subtitle referring to his envy for “any man who has the time to prepare something like a book”:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">While in a standard documentary photo Breton’s portrait would illustrate the sentence to which it is juxtaposed, Breton constructs this sentence in such a way that he problematizes establishing a one-to-one correspondence between photograph and the textual passage whose extraliterary existence it documents. There are, after all, two parts of the sentence to which the photograph could refer. The subject of the photograph could be identical with the subject of the sentence, “I.” It could also, however, refer to the object of the sentence from which Breton’s subject here differentiates himself, “every man who has the time to prepare something like a book.” (69)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The photo of himself appears in a sense to refer to some other guy who can more confidently write and finish a book. B had presaged this with an earlier reference to a character from</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">a film I saw in the neighborhood, in which a Chinese who had found some way to multiply himself invaded New York [actually San Francisco] by means of several million self-reproductions. He entered President Wilson’s office followed by himself, and by himself, and by himself, and by himself; the President removed his <i>pince-nez</i>. (Breton 1960, 34-7)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Breton states that this film “has affected me far more than any other.” Howard translates the French title <i>L'Étreinte de la Pieuvre</i> as <i>The Grip of the Octopus</i>, but the original English title is in fact <i>The Trail of the Octopus</i> (though how often does an octopus leave a trail?). The self-duplication cited by Breton is achieved through a cinematic trick, which Cohen explores through a quote from Barthes on photography, but is interestingly far from the only example of self-duplication in that rambling, semi-coherent, massively trashy and entertaining silent film serial (the plot makes as much sense as automatic writing). First off, the number of villains (various stock ethnic stereotypes, for the most part) in the film start to multiply, ally, bicker, and fight amongst themselves; there is a Monsieur X (evil French guy) who obscures his face with a mask, but soon there are at least three characters wearing the same mask, posing as Monsieur X. Towards the end Wang Foo (the evil Chinese guy, who can multiply himself) rips the mask off the true Monsieur X, only to find he is one of his own (Wang Foo’s) copies!</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The full potential of this serial’s accidental surrealism has yet to be taken up by scholars, though some exceptions are Mayer 2017 and Ungureanu 2020. Apropos of Breton’s agenda in <i>Nadja</i>, Mayer uses <i>The Trail of the Octopus</i> to demonstrate that “the detective serial maps a world of action without agency,” observing that “nobody is in control any longer, the police, the detective, the villains and the victims each pursuing their own, often discordant, agendas.” The movie also happens to feature disembodied eyes, such as appear several times in the images accompanying <i>Nadja</i>, and Monsieur X’s mask is similar to that which appears in one of “Nadja’s” (Leona Delacourt’s) artworks.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">To return to Cohen’s argument:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This mention of how cinematic reduplication captures a differentiated subject points to a more general similarity between Breton’s ghostly definition of subjective manifestation and what numerous theoreticians of photography have characterized as the ghostly nature of the photographic sign. (70)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She gives a quote from Barthes, which she suggests is influenced by a close reading of <i>Nadja</i>:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In the realm of the imaginary, the Photograph . . . represents this very subtle moment where, to tell the truth, I am neither a subject nor object, but rather a subject who feels itself become object: I then live a micro-experience of death (of parenthesis): I become truly a ghost. (71)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Rosalind Krauss had discussed surrealism and photography as <i>index</i>; Cohen notes this but decides to use the related but more Freudian term, <i>trace</i>.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We might term the ghostly mode of presence that Breton’s haunting subject shares with the photographic image trace-like, borrowing from Nadja’s own description of how she will haunt Breton.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Nadja in fact describes herself as a “trace,” in one of her cryptic statements to Breton. C links this to uses of the term “trace” in Freud:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">For Freud the term designates a sign that represents the subjective activity that produced it in distorted rather than mimetic fashion. (72)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[We can see how “distorted rather than mimetic” will link back to the previous chapter’s discussion of Benjamin and superstructure.] For Freud, the trace in the dream is altered through displacements to avoid censorship by the conscious ego or whatever.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Extending the term from dream to waking experience, Breton uses trace to designate the indexical fashion in which the ghostly subject haunts the tracks of his own experience.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The subject of <i>Nadja</i> is “the obscure realm of which the subject is a ghostly manifestation.” C notes Freud’s theory of the uncanny, according to which this is all the return of the repressed.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She comes now to a very interesting quote in which Breton distinguishes his own method in the novel from that of psychoanalysis. In Cohen’s version:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I would like finally . . . if I say, for example, that in Paris the statue of Etienne Dolet, place Maubert, has always simultaneously attracted me and caused me unbearable discomfort, that it will not immediately be deduced that I am merely ready for psychoanalysis, a method I respect and which I consider to aim for nothing less than the expulsion of man from himself, and from which I expect other exploits than those of a bailiff. (Breton, quoted in Cohen, p. 73)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Her reading here actually caught me by surprise, as being the opposite of what I had thought on reading the novel; I had interpreted Breton as criticizing psychoanalysis by saying that it “expels a man from himself,” but according to Cohen, he is in fact saying that it <i>should</i> do this but does not, instead locking him in like a bailiff. The issue here is that Cohen has departed from Howard’s translation, something she usually indicates but here does not. Here is Howard’s translation of this passage:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">… it will not immediately be supposed that I am merely ready for psychoanalysis, a method I respect and whose present aims I consider nothing less than the expulsion of man from himself, and of which I expect other exploits than those of a bouncer. (Breton, 1960, 24)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The actual word in French is <i>huisser</i>, which can have either meaning, but from the French original we can see that Cohen’s interpretation is correct:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">… on n'en déduisît pas immédiatement que je suis, en tout et pour tout, justiciable de la psychanalyse, méthode que j'estime et dont je pense qu'elle ne vise à rien moins qu'à expulser l'homme de lui-même, et dont j'attends d'autres exploits que des exploits d'huissier. (Breton, 1998, 24)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A pun is being made on the word “exploit;” “exploit d’huisser” means a kind of writ which is served by a bailiff or process server. So the “bailiff”/psychoanalyst is neither confining nor expelling the subject, but serving them a writ to appear in court, which could be understood as another metaphor like Althusser’s “interpellation.” [After all, psychoanalysts are priests, as D&G would say.] A vignette of Breton and Freud’s mutually dissatisfactory encounters at the beginning of the chapter had illustrated Breton’s impatience at Freud’s deeply bourgeois agenda; in contrast</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Instead of using psychoanalysis in the service of the ruling bourgeois order, Breton is interested in pressing it into the service of revolution, although the distance between his conception of this notion and the event as understood by orthodox Marxism remains to be defined. (73)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[Breton has reasonably good leftist cred, but this did make me laugh, remembering a passage in which the narrator/Breton, who repeatedly insists in the novel that he is “not a public person” and wants to disappear, etc., looks at the people of Paris around him, shaking hands and talking on the morning sidewalk, and observes morosely, “No, it was not yet these who would be ready to create the Revolution.” (Breton 1960, 64). Alas! If only it was circa 1991 and I was young, black-clad, and smoking arirangs because they’re too cool for anyone, I could see myself shouldering through a crowd, muttering, “<i>Allons, ce n’étaient pas encore ceux-là qu’on trouverait prêts à faire la Révolution</i>...”]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The novel <i>Nadja</i> is full of contradictions, as numerous scholars have noted and made hay of. To begin with, it is named after the female lead character, but the male narrator begins it by asking, “Who am I?” and this is indeed the primary theme of the book. Breton announces at the beginning his inspiration by Huysmans’ plotless stories, and the novel shares certain features with automatic writing. Much of it revolves around serendipity and coincidence, and the characters wander the streets of Paris in a way that at once evokes the <i>dérives</i> of the Situationalists several decades later, and yet is distinct in that while the Situationalists felt they were exposing and challenging the workings of capitalism and the Spectacle, for their Surrealist forebears it appears to be more about exposing the truly haunting and ephemeral character of the self, or the unconcious. In the light of (for instance) D&G’s discussion of interpellation, Breton’s exploration of the ephemerality of the self, refusing to return it to a unity, and his exposure of its changing nature in relation to Nadja [who serves as his “point of subjectification” in D&G’s terms], seems less like a challenge to subjectification than a cogent understanding, and illustration, of how it works.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I’ll throw in my favorite quote from the book for no special reason; a great summation of life and love in the [second world]:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">How does it happen that thrown together, once and for all, so far from the earth, in those brief intervals which our marvelous stupor grants us, we have been able to exchange a few incredibly concordant views above the smoking debris of old ideas and sempiternal life? (Breton 1960, 111)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Breton, Andre (1960) <i>Nadja</i>. Translated by Richard Howard. Grove Press, New York.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Breton, Andre (1998) <i>Nadja. </i>Editions Gallimard, Paris.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Mayer, Ruth (2017) “In the Nick of Time? Detective Film Serials, Temporality, and Contingency Management, 1919-1926" <i>The Velvet Light Trap</i> 79:21-35.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ungureanu, Delia, (2020) “What Dreams May Come: Marguerite Yourcenar, Van Gogh, Akira Kurosawa.” <i>Renyxa</i> 10:227-44.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-51835359857142504982023-12-05T11:17:00.000-08:002023-12-05T11:17:54.922-08:00Labor and Monopoly Capital, Chapter 13<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9tVqacCf-QC9EpmlEQewg2_R0X9q_S2qs5MgwNloqjsy-l1hAX4tqG_NHCExW9SNBG3ku8jNM3LTDXLSZV7V1xMK20MHCIRDvJC855y4SgjMPpMdfEKVqeZ9GIvZqw9LLgLfRwz4Ww0DuJ8VOX7MPWov2DZZnoNA7uLpcaSPaw-UWYX_B2Fuc_185-m8/s499/braverman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9tVqacCf-QC9EpmlEQewg2_R0X9q_S2qs5MgwNloqjsy-l1hAX4tqG_NHCExW9SNBG3ku8jNM3LTDXLSZV7V1xMK20MHCIRDvJC855y4SgjMPpMdfEKVqeZ9GIvZqw9LLgLfRwz4Ww0DuJ8VOX7MPWov2DZZnoNA7uLpcaSPaw-UWYX_B2Fuc_185-m8/s320/braverman.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter 13: The Universal Market</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This chapter is a succinct, eloquent, and quite accessible iteration of the classic leftist critique of [formal subsumption]. B points out the rapid growth of market relations, percolating into all aspects of social life and reproduction, largely replacing older forms of organization, in particular the family and community. This is the “universal market,” in which everything is for sale.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It is only in its era of monopoly that the capitalist mode of production takes over the totality of individual, family, and social needs and, in subordinating them to the market, also reshapes them to serve the needs of capital. (188)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">All of society transformed into a “gigantic marketplace.” This is contrasted with the more limited range of goods which had been available in early industrial capitalism, many of which were raw materials to be made use of by household, farm, etc. labor (e.g., flour instead of bread). The role of the family remained essential before 1810. Family farms produced own food, clothing, construction work, etc.; even many urban families had some livestock or gardens to supplement income. Most of this work was done by women.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But during the last hundred years industrial capital has thrust itself between farm and household, and appropriated all the processing functions of both, thus extending the commodity form to food in its semi-prepared or even fully prepared forms. (190)</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This conquest of the labor processes formerly carried on by farm families, or in homes of every variety, naturally gave fresh energy to capital by increasing the scope of its operations and the size of the “labor force” subjected to its exploitation.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Women were transformed from housewives into workers, and many of the new, particularly poorly paid jobs, end up done by woman, doing the same work they had done before, but now being profited off of.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">B ties this to the separation of town and country:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">the tighter packing of urbanization destroys the conditions under which it is possible to carry on the old life. The urban rings close around the worker, and around the farmer driven from the land, and confine them within circumstances that preclude the former self-provisioning practices of the home. (191)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The availability of cash makes it easy to buy instead of make, and the cheapening of manufactured goods renders home production uneconomic. This is compounded by social pressure, style, fashion, marketing, educational [propaganda/indoctrination], and the loss of the skills which had been passed down through previous generations. The market becomes a source of individualization/atomization, bringing about</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">the powerful urge in each family member toward an independent income, which is one of the strongest feelings instilled by the transformation of society into a giant market for labor and goods, since the source of status is no longer the ability to make many things but simply the ability to purchase them.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But the industrialization of food and other elementary home provisions is only the first step in a process which eventually leads to the dependence of all social life, and indeed of all the interrelatedness of humankind, upon the marketplace.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Thus the population no longer relies upon social organization in the form of family, friends, neighbors, community, elders, children, but with few exceptions must go to market and only to market, not only for food, clothing, and shelter, but also for recreation, amusement, security, for the care of the young, the old, the sick, the handicapped. In time not only the material and service needs but even the emotional patterns of life are channeled through the market.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It thereby comes to pass that while population is packed ever more closely together in the urban environment, the atomization of social life proceeds apace. (192)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Acc B, this “often noticed phenomenon can be explained only by the development of market relations as the substitute for individual and community relations.”</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The social structure, built upon the market, is such that relations between individuals and social groups do not take place directly, as cooperative human encounters, but through the market as relations of purchase and sale.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Apart from its biological functions, the family has served as a key institution of <i>social</i> <i>life</i>, <i>production</i>, and <i>consumption.</i> Of these three, capitalism leaves only the last, and that in attenuated form, since even as a consuming unit the family tends to break up into component parts that carry on consumption separately.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">...like machinery in the factory, the machinery of society becomes a pillory instead of a convenience, and a substitute for, instead of an aid to, competence. (192-3)</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Work ceases to be a natural function and becomes an extorted activity, and the antagonism to it expresses itself in a drive for the shortening of hours on the one side, and the popularity of labor-saving devices for the home, which the market hastens to supply, on the other.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Corporations come to dominate entertainment and “free” time consumption:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">By their very profusion, they cannot help but tend to a standard of mediocrity and vulgarity which debases popular taste, a result which is further guaranteed by the fact that the mass market has a powerful lowest-common-denominator effect because of the search for maximum profit.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The stress and alienation of this system create a “human detritus”:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Whole new strata of the helpless and dependent are created, or familiar old ones enlarged enormously: the proportion of “mentally ill” or “deficient,” the “criminals,” the pauperized layers at the bottom of society, all representing varieties of crumbling under the pressures of capitalist urbanism and the conditions of capitalist employment or unemployment. (194)</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Thus understood, the massive growth of institutions stretching all the way from schools and hospitals on the one side to prisons and madhouses on the other represents not just the progress of medicine, education, or crime prevention, but the clearing of the marketplace of all but the “economically active” and “functioning” members of society, generally at public expense and at a handsome profit to the manufacturing and service corporations who sometimes own and invariably supply these institutions.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The growth of the service industry</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">brings into being a huge specialized personnel whose function is nothing but cleaning, again made up in good part of women who, in accord with the precepts of the division of labor, perform one of the functions they formerly exercised in the home, but now in the service of capital which profits from each day’s labor.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He discusses the <i>product</i> <i>cycle</i>, “which invents new products and services, some of which become indispensable as the conditions of modem life change to destroy alternatives.”</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In this way the inhabitant of capitalist society is enmeshed in a web made up of commodity goods and commodity services from which there is little possibility of escape except through partial or total abstention from social life as it now exists.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Just as in the factory it is not the machines that are at fault but the conditions of the capitalist mode of production under which they are used, so here it is not the necessary provision of social services that is at fault, but the effects of an all-powerful marketplace which, governed by capital and its profitable investment, is both chaotic and profoundly hostile to all feelings of community. (195)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This is the paradox of expanded social services under the conditions brought about by the universal market:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">As the advances of modern household and service industries lighten the family labor, they increase the futility of family life; as they remove the burdens of personal relations, they strip away its affections; as they create an intricate social life, they rob it of every vestige of community and leave in its place the cash nexus.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The condition of service sector labor is contrasted to the manufacturing sector:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It is characteristic of most of the jobs created in this “service sector” that, by the nature of the labor processes they incorporate, they are less susceptible to technological change than the processes of most goods-producing industries. Thus while labor tends to stagnate or shrink in the manufacturing sector, it piles up in these services and meets a renewal of the traditional forms of pre-monopoly competition among the many firms that proliferate in fields with lower capital-entry requirements. Largely nonunion and drawing on the pool of pauperized labor at the bottom of the working-class population, these industries create new low-wage sectors of the working class, more intensely exploited and oppressed than those in the mechanized fields of production.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There is the irony that by mainstream economic accounting, this represents a massive growth in the economy, even though it is really just a shift in how and where work is done:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The goods and services produced by unpaid labor in the home are not reckoned at all, but when the same goods and services are produced by paid labor outside the home they are counted.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The work of the housewife, though it has the same material or service effect as that of the chambermaid, restaurant worker, cleaner, porter, or laundry worker, is outside the purview of capital; but when she takes one of these jobs outside the home she becomes a productive worker. Her labor now enriches capital and thus deserves a place in the national product. This is the logic of the universal market. (196)</p></blockquote><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-5755832602683029642023-12-02T12:05:00.000-08:002023-12-02T12:05:05.864-08:00The Revolution of Everyday Life, Chapter 1<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW0f-j1oL7U3ZRmJ9NeKEgyXEbvxOvRhi8WlLVrjodH62hV2c9XDSm6qV27kH7o_fGtny8ytreT4gxUiLudyiqsOx-1tPnMoaeZVz716ph2Uw35QHHAI6RTpRqoX7vHgrxjrLF0J6JO-uIdrkkiKgpjFXqXMpP44TJRBWa2c1qSRd_CSRVLJkb9By95iM/s286/vaneigem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="286" data-original-width="200" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW0f-j1oL7U3ZRmJ9NeKEgyXEbvxOvRhi8WlLVrjodH62hV2c9XDSm6qV27kH7o_fGtny8ytreT4gxUiLudyiqsOx-1tPnMoaeZVz716ph2Uw35QHHAI6RTpRqoX7vHgrxjrLF0J6JO-uIdrkkiKgpjFXqXMpP44TJRBWa2c1qSRd_CSRVLJkb9By95iM/s1600/vaneigem.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i><p></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter 1: The Insignificant Signified</i>.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The title is a play on semiotic terminology. Vaneigem provides his own brief summary of each chapter, and here is this one's:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Because of its increasing triviality, daily life has gradually become our central preoccupation (1). No illusion, sacred or deconsecrated (2), collective or individual, can hide the poverty of our daily actions any longer (3). The enrichment of life calls inexorably for the analysis of the new forms taken by poverty, and the perfection of the old weapons of refusal (4).</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Similarly (not surprisingly) to the premise of the <i>Society of the Spectacle</i>, the opening falls into the Death-of-God, disenchantment-of-the-world tradition. V writes that we are like cartoon characters who have rushed off a cliff and have yet to notice. “Lucidity” is an awareness that the spectacle/etc. is not satisfying, that there is something wrong; that we are off the cliff and falling. [The potential felicitous connection with “lucid dreaming” does not appear to be invoked.] “Everyday life” appears as both an illusion and an unnoticed or underappreciated source of potential understanding or inspiration: “There are more truths in twenty-four hours of a man’s life than in all the philosophies” (21). Philosophers see everything upside down (a very Marxian reversal-style criticism, favored also by Debord).</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The analyst tries to escape the gradual sclerosis of existence by reaching some essential profundity; and the more he alienates himself by expressing himself according to the dominant imagery of his time (the feudal image in which God, monarchy and the world are indivisibly united), the more his lucidity photographs the hidden face of life, the more it 'invents' the <i>everyday</i>. (22)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The Enlightenment accelerated the “descent towards the concrete.” [It would be great if this was a continuation of the falling metaphor; that does not seem to be the case.] Science exposes the fallacy of mysticism, pops its bubble:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I have little inclination to choose between the doubtful pleasure of being mystified and the tedium of contemplating a reality which does not concern me. A reality which I have no grasp of, isn't this the old lie reconditioned, the highest stage of mystification?</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This is to be asked to choose between “the false reality of gods or ... the false reality of technocrats.” [i.e., the technocrats support their order by exposing the previous order of mysticism, but they simply ask us to have faith in a new order [which furthermore is beyond our senses, dependent on technology to grasp?]]</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Docility is no longer ensured by means of priestly magic, it results from a mass of minor hypnoses: news, culture, city planning, advertising, mechanisms of conditioning and suggestion ready to serve any order, established or to come. (23)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There is a reference to the “living reality of non-adaptation to the world:” [with an almost hauntological language of a double or shadow?]:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Art, ethics, philosophy bear witness: under the crust of words and concepts, the living reality of non-adaptation to the world is always crouched ready to spring. Since neither gods nor words can manage to cover it up decently any longer, this commonplace creature roams naked in railway stations and vacant lots; it confronts you at each self-evasion, it grasps your shoulder, catches your eye, and the dialogue begins. Win or lose, it goes with you.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Non-adaptation” seems to be used usually (e.g. by Leroi-Gourhan, Steven Jay Gould) as a synonym for cultural adaptation, or reliance on technology. V might mean that, or (more interestingly) he might mean a sense of discomfort, of inability to adapt or conform to the mediated world of the spectacle. [It is probably the former, given how often V will speak of "adaptation" throughout the rest of the text.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Individualism and collectivism are “two apparently contrary rationalities" which "cloak an identical gangsterism, an identical oppression of the isolated man.” -Isms are falsehoods:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The three crushing defeats suffered by the Commune, the Spartakist movement and Kronstadt-the-Red showed once and for all what bloodbaths are the outcome of three ideologies of freedom: liberalism, socialism and Bolshevism. (24)</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The great collective illusions, anaemic from shedding the blood of so many, have since given way to the thousands of pre-packed ideologies sold by consumer society like so many portable brain-scrambling machines. Will it need as much bloodshed to show that a hundred pinpricks kill as surely as a couple of blows with a club?</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Modern consumerism is less bloody than the great ideologies of the past, but it is also weaker, less enthralling, more dependent on constant change and novelty, and this means its illusion grows threadbare:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">... to consume without respite is to change illusions at an accelerating pace which gradually dissolves the spaces behind the waterfall of gadgets, family cars and paperback books.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">... people are not really tired of comfort, culture and leisure, but of the use to which they are put, which is precisely what stops us enjoying them. (25)</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The affluent society is a society of voyeurs.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[In his many references to the technologically-enabled illusions of modern consumerism, it is easy to find imagery applicable to smartphones, e.g.,:]</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">To each his own kaleidoscope: a tiny movement of the fingers and the picture changes.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But the kaleidoscope of consumerism is just a new kind of monotony:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The monotony of the ideological spectacle makes us aware of the passivity of life, of survival.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Class struggle grew as a response to this, a refusal; contra mainstream Marxism, V argues that not just workers should be considered as revolutionary, but also artists; he lists various romantic poets and asks, “wasn't this also poverty and its radical refusal?” it was a mistake for revolutionary Marxism to “turn its back on artists,” especially now:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What is certain is that it is sheer madness a century later, when the economy of consumption is absorbing the economy of production and the exploitation of labour power is submerged by the exploitation of everyday creativity. The same energy is torn from the worker in his hours of work <i>and</i> in his hours of leisure, and it drives the turbines of power which the custodians of the old theory lubricate sanctimoniously with their purely formal opposition. (26)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The importance of the revolutionary potential of art and poetry, etc., have to do with the importance of the everyday as a potential subversive realm:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints – such people have a corpse in their mouth.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-35936082394945933012023-12-01T14:40:00.000-08:002023-12-01T14:40:18.308-08:00On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Chapter 1<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5pHClKbb7EyONxkVNWycX5tOd18JMQg7KkCXkd6bc7WigqYhMlT79apKM-F70HndPwPO3-kR9Wd1hAVKmPWwJQpen6w2QeAqIsyUBnEI-w7kkQZfS439KCC3mqqtcOufyrheH8zG9dSa6RzP6dfjsdQdxGqwEYC1xi5usSdHSWGWFSM4xz76jqwn-k4Y/s768/Simondon.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="575" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5pHClKbb7EyONxkVNWycX5tOd18JMQg7KkCXkd6bc7WigqYhMlT79apKM-F70HndPwPO3-kR9Wd1hAVKmPWwJQpen6w2QeAqIsyUBnEI-w7kkQZfS439KCC3mqqtcOufyrheH8zG9dSa6RzP6dfjsdQdxGqwEYC1xi5usSdHSWGWFSM4xz76jqwn-k4Y/s320/Simondon.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter One: Genesis of the technical object: the process of concretization</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">From previous experience with Simondon I expected him to be very dense and hard to follow, but at least in this chapter he was not. He comes straight at you with his precise and distinct terminology (“concretization,” “individualization,” etc.) but always provides definitions for his terms, often multiple times. Much of the chapter is taken up with detailed description of diodes, tetrodes, and so on, which the reader can either 1) follow, if they understand it, or 2) ahem, sort of glaze over it, and wait for him to get around to saying, “and the moral is...,” which he reliably does. The chapter is also handily divided into four sections, each of which makes its own basic argument.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>I. – The abstract technical object and the concrete technical object</i>. Concretization is the process of change from the abstract technical object to the concrete (or more concrete) one. Abstraction corresponds at the same time to the representation of an engine (for example) on a blackboard as it is explained to students (27), and to the “primitive” stage of technology in the system of artisanal production. Each of the elements of the engine, in the abstract stage, performs one particular function, and there is no cohesion as a whole:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In the old engine each element intervenes at a certain moment in the cycle, and then is expected no longer to act upon the other elements; the pieces of the engine are like people who work together, each in their own turn, but who do not know each other.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The abstract machine, with these separately acting parts, is inefficient in that certain possibilities are unexplored, and also because the different parts cause various kinds of interference, etc. so that they have to develop “defense structures” to protect their own zone against the action of the other parts. In contrast, the concrete machine is illustrated by cooling fins, which originally had performed the sole purpose of cooling, but have evolved to also add strength to the cylinder head, allowing for a lighter, thinner construction; “this unique structure is not a compromise, but a concomitance and a convergence” (28). The elements of the concrete machine thus play multiple functions as part of the same machine, interacting with other parts in unison or cooperation, instead of each playing their own separate functions.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In outlining the process of concretization, as machines become more concrete, S is opposing the idea of simply categorizing them according to species and genera, and also to taking some given object, frozen in time, as the form in itself.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The gasoline engine is not this or that engine given in time and space, but the fact that there is a succession, a continuity that runs through the first engines to those we currently know and which are still evolving. (26)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">To understand machines, then, we need to understand them as moments of this process of concretization.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>II. – Conditions of technical evolution</i>. “Technical evolution” and concretization are about fulfilling potentials that are already existent in the technical object or technology; thus, “it is not the production-line that produces standardization, but rather the intrinsic standardization that allows for the production-line to exist” (29). There are two points being made here. First, S is distinguishing between “extrinsic” causes and internal causes, as factors shaping the evolution of objects; his point is that “internal necessity” is the more important. Secondly, he is arguing that concretization tends to reveal or approach the essence of the object, which is that underlying, “intrinsic standardization” which replaces the “made-to-measure” variation of the artisanal era. Hence, the development from artisanal production to industrial production is driven by concretization, and a better understanding of a more evolved and “coherent” technical object (or system of technical objects). He gives the example of a customized automobile; this will, in its essence, be the same as any other automobile as far as the important parts are concerned, all that will be different are unimportant, superficial aspects: “what can be made to measure are inessential aspects, because they are contingent” (30). Too much of this frivolity can even hurt the car and make it less functional: “The made-to-measure aspect is not only inessential, it goes against the essence of the technical being, it is like a dead weight being attached from the outside.” This again ties back to the contrast between extrinsic causes (adding dead weight) and intrinsic functioning (which which the development of the machine approaches its essence).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Not unlike Wiener, Simondon seems to view capitalism, not as a key factor in modern industrial production, but as a somewhat unfortunate delusion or add-on, which complicates things frivolously, interfering with the serious work of engineers and scientists. He contrasts “economic constraints” (extrinsic) and “technical requirements” (intrinsic) in the development of technology, and notes that “it is mostly within the domains where technical constraints prevail over economic constraints (aviation, military equipment), that become the most active sites for progress” (31). [Yet somehow the presence of war, and of the State as a funding agent (removing in wartime, as in the cold war development of the computer, etc. the issue of “economic constraints” so that “technical constraints” can be explored) is not itself to be considered as an “extrinsic” factor? What would Virilio interject here?] “Economic causes are not pure, they interfere with a diffuse network of motivations and preferences that attenuate or even reverse them (a taste for luxury, … taste for very apparent novelty, commercial propaganda)” to the extent that “the technical object is known through social myths or fads in public opinion.” This results in irrational (and non-concretizing) design decisions influenced by marketers and the need to always project an image of novelty. His example is the elimination of a hand-crank as a backup way to start a car; this elimination actually involves making the engine more complicated, and is thus an unnecessary complication, not an improvement; yet the lack of a crank is presented as new, and a “nuance of ridicule is thus projected onto other cars” which continue to have cranks. “The automobile, a technical object charged with psychic and social inferences, is not suitable for technical progress” (32); the auto becomes a kind of technological leech, borrowing developments from less fettered domains, instead of being the site of development itself.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">S outlines his arguably [saltationist] view of technological evolution, wherein concretization is not a continuous process, but proceeds through “successive systems of coherence,” “due to the progressive perfection of details resulting from experience and use”:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><blockquote><i>the play of limits, whose overcoming constitutes progress, resides in the incompatabilities that arise from the progressive saturation of the system of sub-ensembles</i>… (32, emphasis in original)</blockquote><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Saturation” will be discussed later in the chapter, but it seems to basically mean the filling out of the potentials of the technical object. The primitive technical object is non-saturated, because its possible lines of development and improvement remain abstract, unfulfilled. Saturation is thus part of the process of concretization but not identical with it, as it also leads to “incompatibilities” within each “system of coherence,” which need to be resolved by evolution to a new stage.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It is important that these difficulties get resolved rather than merely avoided (33), the latter of which involves the insertion of new palliative elements in a misguided attempt, a reversal to abstract thinking. “Genuine progress” involves stabilizing functioning without adding new structures: “The adjunction of a supplementary structure only constitutes genuine progress for the technical object if this structure incorporates itself concretely into the totality [<i>ensemble</i>] of dynamical schemas of functioning” (35).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The term <i>axiomatic </i>is used: “the dynamic system closes in on itself just as an axiomatic saturates” (36). According to Barthélémy’s glossary, “In Simondon, this notion does not designate a formal system as in the case of logico-mathematical axiomatics, but simply a set of principles, or first propositions, that enable the linking of fundamental concepts” (Barthélémy, 2012: 208). The axiomatic thus relates to what will be called later the “essence” of the technical object, and its working-out through concretization. The distinction between abstract and concrete is revisited, with a clear articulation:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">in the abstract technical object, [each structure] only fulfills one essential and positive function, integrated into the functioning of the ensemble; in the concrete technical object, all the functions fulfilled by the structure are positive, essential, and integrated into the functioning of the whole; the marginal consequences of the functioning, eliminated or attenuated in the abstract technical object by corrective measures, become stages or positive aspects in the concrete object... (39)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">S turns to the subject of “universal scientific knowledge,” which appears to be the sum total of scientific understanding at a given point in history (?). “The difference between the technical object and the physico-chemical system studied as an object only resides within the imperfection of the sciences,” a presaging of a later point he will make at the end of the chapter, regarding mechanology as a science that studies technical objects, the way physics, etc., study natural objects. The imperfection of scientific knowledge is linked to the unfinalizability of the process of concretization: “the technical object is never fully known; for this reason it is never fully concrete;” basically, concretization does not come to a conclusion, it simply continues endlessly (“unless it happens through a rare chance occurrence”).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There could have been a nice little debate between Braverman and Simondon over the role of science in the development of technology: S states that concretization is a “narrowing of the interval that separates the sciences and technology” (40), with the primitive artisanal stage showing a wide gap, and the industrial stage a narrower one. “The construction of a determinate technical object can only become industrial when this object has become concrete,” linking back to the earlier argument that the production line is made possible by “intrinsic standardization,” not standardization by the production line.\</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>III. – The rhythm of technical progress; continuous and minor improvements; discontinuous and major improvements</i>. The point of this section is to distinguish between major improvements, which “modify the distribution of functions, increasing the synergy of functioning in an essential way,” and minor improvements, which “without modifying this distribution, diminish the nocuous consequences of residual antagonisms” (42). The former constitute true progress towards concretization, but the latter “obstruct major improvements, because they mask the technical object’s true imperfections” with incomplete and temporary solutions which will need to be swept away for the next stage of coherence to be reached. “The path of minor improvements is one of detours” (43); they “hide behind a pile of complex palliatives” and “entertain a false consciousness of continuous progress” which is demanded by the “false novelty” of commerce and the market, not by the actual, discontinuous progress of actual concretization. The latter only occurs in “leaps,” in the form of “mutations.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>IV. – Absolute origin of the technical lineage</i>. Simondon now raises the question as to whether an origin can be determined, as to when the progress of any technical object actually began. To be honest, I assumed the answer would be a resounding no, because of the antipathy of later scholars influenced by Simondon (viz., Deleuze and Guattari) to the idea of origins. However, Simondon is quite happy to talk about origins, and of essences to boot. So, the answer is yes, and he gives the example of the invention of the first diode as the “absolute beginning” that contained the <i>technical essence</i> of all the later inventions which would develop on, yet share the “technical essence” of, the diode (the technical essence of which is “assymetrical conductance” (45)). S reiterates a point he had made back at the beginning of the chapter, that it is not the context of <i>use</i> that determines the essence of the technical object, because often an object with a completely different history of development could be substituted, or an object can be adopted to a new use. Instead, it is the lineage of objects sharing this “<i>pure schema of functioning</i>” which form the technical object over time, as an object of mechanological study. The non-saturation of the initial invention gives it “fecundity,” meaning a large progeny or posterity of inventions that will proceed down the path of greater saturation. He defines <i>technical essence</i>:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A technical essence can be recognized by the fact that it remains stable across the evolving lineage, and not only stable, but also productive of structures and functions through internal development and progressive saturation ….” (46)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There is a lot of use of language I can’t help but think of as mystifying/fetishizing, after the manner of Marx’s wooden table that creates itself instead of being created by human labor: “the technical object alters and changes its structure,” it “evolves by generating a family.” He is of course trying to emphasize how this path of development is not due (or not due solely) to the chance whims or insights of human inventors and tinkerers (as could perhaps have been said for the artisanal era), but unfolds according to its own intrinsic causality, or essence. But when he calls this “<i>natural technical evolution</i>,” this sounds a lot like one of those schemes of cultural evolution which, though modeled on the status and model of the theory of evolution by natural selection, share one major difference from it, which is that the latter is completely non-teleological. For all Simondon’s numerous disagreements with Aristotle, it is interesting that he here seems to clearly adopt a concept like that of <i>telos</i>, to the extent that the technical object develops, in accordance with its intrinsic essence, from abstract to concrete, in much the same way as Aristotle’s acorn becomes an oak tree.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He concludes the chapter by showing how the previous discussion is meant to ground the proposed science of mechanology, and improve upon the insights of the cyberneticists. “Concretization gives the technical object an intermediate place between the natural object and the scientific representation,” (49), i.e., between the natural world and abstract knowledge. Natural objects have an inherent coherence; concretized technical objects also have a coherence, although this has been developed over time, yet this means the concretized technical object “comes closer to the mode of existence of natural objects” than does the primitive object or scientific abstraction. He tangents into an interesting discussion of artificiality, how, for example, a greenhouse plant that has been modified to produce flowers but no fruit counts as an artificial, not a natural object, in a path of development which is the opposite of that of concretization: “Artificialization is a process of abstraction within the artificial object.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In any event, “By existing, [concretized technical objects] prove the viability and stability of a certain structure that has the same status as a natural structure,” because obviously made possible by natural laws, even if they had to be brought into existence through human invention instead of being found in nature (50). This is what makes them fitting objects of mechanology. However, it is important to understand that these technical objects are still distinct from natural objects, and particularly from living beings. This is the heart of his disagreement with Wiener and the cyberneticists, who reasoned by analogy from automata to posit that machines and living creatures are all simply types of self-regulating systems. (Simondon is also against this kind of reasoning by “external” analogy). Cybernetics is “partially inefficient as an inter-scientific study” due to its “initial postulate concerning the identity between living beings and self-regulating technical objects” (51). However, this is to confuse natural objects, which “are concrete to begin with,” with technical objects which only become so through the process of concretization, and the study of this process itself (rather than jumping to the end and treating them like natural objects) needs to be part of their study.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-5936609358866719472023-11-25T15:52:00.000-08:002023-11-25T15:52:10.488-08:00Lyon, Rhythmanalysis, Introduction<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMf-78j7XgRSCfG-B9zns9WOeyw6uV-aMqPYBmVlag-DgTRLBzTE-DNrSd7GSIASV4_0z7a8zC2qJag0bsGaQy2I_F0W4Z2cMGNisNVI1CJ-9cdINVjvXLGI7zsZs8UhvpPCrjVZjQ2CA5bQk4Cg3p01hVStA9NHye0IHSyWopkwhPAe7hnkW8e2oUb-I/s1130/ra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1130" data-original-width="750" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMf-78j7XgRSCfG-B9zns9WOeyw6uV-aMqPYBmVlag-DgTRLBzTE-DNrSd7GSIASV4_0z7a8zC2qJag0bsGaQy2I_F0W4Z2cMGNisNVI1CJ-9cdINVjvXLGI7zsZs8UhvpPCrjVZjQ2CA5bQk4Cg3p01hVStA9NHye0IHSyWopkwhPAe7hnkW8e2oUb-I/s320/ra.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Dawn Lyon, (2022) Introduction: Rhythm, Rhythmanalysis, and Urban Life. In <i>Rhythmanalysis: Place, Mobility, Disruption, and Performance</i>. Emerald Publishing, Bingsley, UK.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Summary</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Dawn Lyon, author of <i>What Is Rhythmanalysis</i> (2018), introduces this edited volume on rhythmanalysis by situating its contributions in relation to the development of the concept by Lefebvre and Régulier, as well as to other recent volumes and works. She discusses L’s focus on the interaction of linear and cyclical time, and the factors of repetition and difference in any rhythm, which introduce “cracks” which contain “the potential for social transformation” (3). In conversation with recent volumes by Edensor, Smith and Hetherington, and Crespi and Manghani, and others, she raises the relation of Lefebvre’s concept of <i>dressage</i> to Simmel’s blasé metropolitan inhabitants. She notes that, while drawing on Lefebvre and Régulier’s work, many contemporary invocations of rhythmanalysis go beyond what they had outlined; Lyon lists five “possibilities of rhythmanalysis” explored in this volume, among other recent works. These are rhythmanalysis 1) as analytical tool (separating out and interrelating various rhythms and types of rhythms), 2) as conceptual tool (as mid-range concept connecting sensed and unsensed, or immediate and distant rhythms; and as critique), 3) as a method, or research strategy orchestrating a range of methods, 4) as “embodied and sensory practice,” and 5) as “urban poetics” (7-11). She then introduces the rest of the chapters organized along themes of place, mobility, disruption, and performance.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-46328955593345694182023-11-17T11:08:00.000-08:002023-11-25T15:52:30.926-08:00A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 7<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm5zwiUmUuG1YAkFNbiEMvB5ZZpbY_QFBZbE_rPYmkWipQxt3Of9VWE_y0kkW27BMghRViH2rbjW5psOk4lnETuFmbfqeOZEpNbrt8TRYbqhA2tuAS_H9DRZlLsipOO1MY13rv2pt13rZAmkuzenJ7TyWAQhkHT7odqYgSUauxxJaiPc1UkBwrORWSjsI/s600/atp.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="401" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm5zwiUmUuG1YAkFNbiEMvB5ZZpbY_QFBZbE_rPYmkWipQxt3Of9VWE_y0kkW27BMghRViH2rbjW5psOk4lnETuFmbfqeOZEpNbrt8TRYbqhA2tuAS_H9DRZlLsipOO1MY13rv2pt13rZAmkuzenJ7TyWAQhkHT7odqYgSUauxxJaiPc1UkBwrORWSjsI/s320/atp.jpeg" width="214" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Review of Chapter 7: Year Zero: Faciality</i></p><p>In chapter 5, the concept of faciality had briefly been discussed in relation to the two RoSs, signifiance and subjectification. That chapter had also identified those two RoSs, along with the body or organism, as the three “principal strata binding human beings.” The main point in this chapter is to explore faciality as an abstract machine operating in the mixed semiotic (signifiance/subjectification) of modernity, and their relation to the third stratum of the body, which is subordinated. The year refers to the founding of the Anno Domini calendar based on the presumed death of Jesus (though of course, that would have started with a year one; perhaps the zero could be taken to refer to some kind of lack or black hole at the heart of the system, a zero inside the one, but they don’t explore this.)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This chapter gets a lot of mixed reactions from readers; Dave Harris, for instance, confesses, “I grew seriously weary reading this though and I don’t recommend it to anyone really,” and yet still managed to write not <a href="https://www.arasite.org/TPch7.html" target="_blank">one</a> but <a href="https://www.arasite.org/deltrans12facty.html" target="_blank">two</a> fairly lengthy expositions.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The face is a “white wall/black hole” system, in which the white wall corresponds to signifiance and the black hole to subjectification. They note that “the wall could just as well be black, and the hole white” (169), but later on they identify the white wall/black hole system explicitly with racism and the imperialist world order. The face is not natural, it is something that has overcoded the body/head and covers the head like a hood. The face is more powerful than the gaze, which is secondary.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They delineate four “Theorems of Deterritorialization, or Machinic Propositions:”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. “One never deterritorializes alone,” there must be at least two terms, “hand-use object, mouth-breast, face-landscape ...” (174). This of course makes sense with all that we learned about deterritorialization in past chapters. Reterritorialization is not a return to the past; this will become an important point later on.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. Deterritorialization has to do with intensity, not speed.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. “the <i>least </i>deterritorialized reterritorializes on the <i>most</i> deterritorialized.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">4. “The abstract machine is therefore effectuated not only in the faces that produce it but also to varying degrees in body parts, clothes, and objects that it facializes...” (175).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Faciality is linked to imperialism and racism; it is formed through “the collapse of all the heterogeneous, polyvocal, primitive semiotics” into the modern capitalist mixed semiotic of signifiance and subjectification (180), in the course of which the body (as the third of the three principal strata) is “decoded.” Faciality works similarly to (or can be viewed as a corollary to) the Althusserian notion of interpellation: this is explored through <i>limit-faces</i>, representing the despotic and authoritarian aspects of faciality. They draw on a number of literary, psychological, and artistic sources in making these distinctions, but a key source appears to be the art historian Jean Paris, whose work has not been translated into English. Drawing on Paris, they give as an exemplar of the despotic face that of the judgmental, Zeus-like Christ Pantocrator staring down from Byzantine church ceilings – “with the black hole of the eyes against a gold background, all depth projected forward;” for the authoritarian or pastoral face, that of Christ calling his disciples in a Duccio painting, “faces that cross glances and turn away from each other, seen half-turned or in profile...” (184-5). The despotic face thus commands, puts you in a state of submission; the authoritarian face, in contrast, draws you into a narrative that is also that of the loved one (etc.) as point of subjectification (as discussed in chapter 5), the narrative of loss and redemption, betrayal and hope, etc., of the modern subject. “This authoritarian face is in profile and spins toward the black hole,” (184) which could identify the black hole with the vanishing point in the Renaissance image. Numerous other links are made, of the despotic face with the proliferation of eyes in magic images, the role of closeups in the films of Griffith and Eisenstein, and the way objects are used in a way akin to that of film closeups in literature; liberal helpings of Henry Miller and Proust; as well as the Arthurian romances of Percival, and of Tristan and Isolde, mediated, it seems, through the works of Wagner.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The face, in their account, is not a natural or inevitable, nor even a truly human [but rather an uncanny] phenomenon; it is tied to the origin of the modern state and subject, and to racism, the history of imperialism, and the capitalist world order. How, then, to escape its power?</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">if human beings have a destiny, it is rather to escape the face, to dismantle the face and facializations, to become imperceptible, to become clandestine, not by returning to animality, nor even by returning to the head, but by quite spiritual and special becomings-animal, by strange true becomings that get past the wall and get out of the black holes, that make <i>faciality traits</i> themselves finally elude the organization of the face... (171)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They warn that this is not about a return to the past; you cannot escape modernity by going back to the pre-modern condition of “primitive heads” (before the separation of the face from the head and body). The escape is not backward, but forward:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Only across the wall of the signifier can you run lines of asignifiance that void all memory, all return, all possible signification and interpretation. Only in the black hole of subjective consciousness and passion do you discover the transformed, heated, captured particles you must relaunch for a nonsubjective, living love in which each party connects with unknown tracts in the other without entering or conquering them, in which the lines composed are broken lines. (189)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The point is to try to make use of the abstract machine of faciality, to get out of the trap of arborescence and relative and negative absolute deterritorializations (which it regularly produces) to positive absolute deterritorializations (which it sometimes produces, or is capable of producing). There have been references throughout the chapter to a bouncing ball, from a Kafka short story, which as Dave Harris points out, stands for a complete lack of significance or interpretability; they also point to failed attempts to break through the wall (of signifiance), much like those failed attempts at creating a BwO in the previous chapter; Christ himself is an example, having “bounced off the wall” instead of making it through (187). Successful attempts to break through the wall, in contrast, transform into “probe-heads” (<i>têtes chercheuses</i>, “guidance devices”), that destroy strata, binaries, etc. to attain the plane of consistency. They then end nevertheless with a question (191): “Must we leave it at that, three states and no more: primitive heads, Christ-face, and probe-heads?"</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-56656426745569228262023-11-01T10:54:00.001-07:002023-11-01T10:54:21.967-07:00Profane Illumination, Chapter 2<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Q_5rwi2sTk6XwT3nCUIC5BVPNUd8YhtZlMjHVHWARz81kMWheKUBnmjs5YCMNR-OasNJElHJdxSHIuCAEnVQMaVDNO9aiy05EmEudE_RSpFIjFvIzvbx3OIjnboIa2Ae5zHvymkHxWCvuEOE5DB1-ZJNBjbMzpS8fxDdvLCHOrq7v6ZazoJRw1SAeqg/s2560/profane%20illuminations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1707" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Q_5rwi2sTk6XwT3nCUIC5BVPNUd8YhtZlMjHVHWARz81kMWheKUBnmjs5YCMNR-OasNJElHJdxSHIuCAEnVQMaVDNO9aiy05EmEudE_RSpFIjFvIzvbx3OIjnboIa2Ae5zHvymkHxWCvuEOE5DB1-ZJNBjbMzpS8fxDdvLCHOrq7v6ZazoJRw1SAeqg/s320/profane%20illuminations.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter 2: Benjamin’s Marxisms</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This chapter takes on the question of the relationship between material relationships of production, and “remoter realms of the superstructure, including art” in Marxism, and how this was a central question for Benjamin; he saw the relationship as “a series of mediations, as it were transmissions” between base and superstructure (17). B opposed vulgar Marxism, which sees the base as simplistically determining, but what actual alternative he put forward has been debated; C notes his response is “maverick,” “Gothic Marxism” that attempts “to fuse Marxism with all manner of non-Marxist discourses” (18).</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Benjamin turns to psychoanalytic vocabulary to conceptualize a revision of base-superstructure relations which he both grounds in Marxist theory but finds Marxism unable to describe because of its own immersion in Enlightenment concepts of representation and causality. (18-9)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She focuses on the incompleteness of the Arcades Project, and Adorno's criticisms of B. Adorno’s criticisms will be addressed in relation to the concept of wish-image, from the second Paris Capital essay. The term “wish image” refers to “products of the superstructure from the inception of industrial production,” which “came into contact with deep-seated collective desires” (e.g., for a classless society), and which thus “could be put to socially transformative ends” (21). B considers these collective wish-images to be hidden in something like the unconscious, and his view of the cultural critic is based on the Freudian psychoanalyst, though working at a cultural rather than an individual level. He bases his wish-image concept in part on the Freudian theory of dreams. Adorno was skeptical of this. B also described wish-images in terms of phantasmagoria, a term taken from Marx’s discussion of commodity fetishism; A has no quarrel with this.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">From the expose’s unconceptualized use of phantasmagoria it seems that Benjamin applies this term to those products of the superstructure where negative ideological mystification prevails. (23)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">However, B does not specifically articulate the relationship between “these two forms of manifestation taken by the superstructure” (dream versus phantasmagoria). This is related to another “slippage” in B: “When discussing ideology, the Passagen-Werk often collapses the question of how ideology mystifies material relations into the question of how the superstructure transforms the base.” B is uncertain whether the superstructure can be experienced outside of ideological distortion.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">B is interested in the subjectivity of the dialectical image; A wants to purify it of subjectivity, as an insight into or reflection of “objective conditions.” A’s Hornburg Letter has framed much subsequent discussion of B, with arguments coming down either on his side or on A’s. C discusses a quote from Konvolut K “that has become a <i>locus</i> <i>classicus</i> in Benjaminian interpretation” (28), in which he suggests that the superstructure cannot be a <i>reflection</i> of the base, since it involves ideological expression; instead, the superstructure must be an <i>expression</i> of the base:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The economic conditions of a society's existence come to expression in the superstructure, just as the over filled stomach of someone who is sleeping, although it may causally determine the dream content, finds there not its reflection but its expression. (B, quoted in C, 28)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She gives a reading by Habermas as one end of the debate: H seems to largely agree with Adorno’s criticism. Buck-Morss, in contrast, defends B against A’s charges using the same passage. She argues that B is in fact very materialist and ties the collective dream to the class interests of the bourgeoisie. Cohen, however, wants to outline B’s position, not as a reaction to the dialectics of the Frankfurt School (and A), but to those of surrealist Marxism.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But Benjamin’s divergence from Frankfurt School Marxism must be read as his orientation toward another recognizable Marxist position rather than as his turn away from Marxist thought. (30)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She traces this influence of surrealist Marxism through Althusser, first; quoting from <i>Reading</i> <i>Capital </i>on the problem of defining/describing the “structural causality” (or “metonymic causality”) of base/superstructure-ideology relations; acc Althusser, this needs to be done in a more complex and adequate way than Marx had been able to, given the terminology etc of his time. Althusser thus incorporates Saussure, also drawing on Lacan and Freud; psychoanalysis is used to characterize base/superstructure relations, such that the economic appears “disfigured” in a superstructure which has its own material reality (32).</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">That Benjamin simultaneously insists on dream determination as adequate to his displacement of a vulgar Marxist base-superstructure model indicates that "expression" is a misleading phrase for the complexity of the concept toward which he strives. (34)</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Benjamin describes the literary superstructure here as the sublimation of the contents of collective consciousness, which he qualifies not as libidinal impulses but rather as economic activity. While this repressed economic content could, as Buck-Morss suggests, be read as a class’s repressed wishes that focus on economic matters, it could also be read as the realm of economic production itself.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">C shows links in the ways Althusser and B both argue for a psychoanalytically informed way of explaining base-superstructure relation. B cites Marx’s concept of “uneven development;” Althusser uses this as well in developing his own concept of overdetermination.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Althusser and Benjamin have different ways of situating/interrogating Marxism in its 19<sup>th</sup> century origins. For A, this is about rescuing Marxism as a science from these ideologically limiting origins; B’s aim is “more ambiguous,” but involves also seeing Marxism “not as a science but as an important nineteenth-century form of <i>expression</i>” to be investigated in relation to other such forms of expression (37). B is also interested in the therapeutic potential of psychoanalysis, “how the psychoanalytic recasting of the base-superstructure problematic may not only diagnose the complexity of current social relations but also provide models for socially transformative activity.” B is also, obviously, more eclectic; B furthermore has a very different (theologically influenced) linguistic theory than A.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">C invokes Benjamin’s “spleen and ideal” as contrasts, spleen somehow illuminates the absent ideal? Much like the fallen word (which must signify to have meaning) somehow echoes the self-sufficient prelapsarian, unified word [BwO?] In 1933, in “On the Mimetic Faculty”, B develops the concept of “nonsensuous similarity”, “concerned with the traces left by divine language in the postlapsarian world” (39). According to graphology, handwriting conceals/contains unconscious images, and B hypothesizes this might have been significant at the origins of writing: “Script has thus become, like language, an archive of nonsensuous similarities, of nonsensuous correspondences.” (B, quoted on p 39). B thus complicates his earlier linguistic theory (regarding how words from different languages have some “nonsensuous similarity” to their shared referent, and to each other (?), bringing in the concept of repression, the relationship is now seen as overdetermined.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">B sometimes says “nonsensuous similarity” and sometimes “nonsensuous correspondence;” C explores this. Examples of “profane illumination” (flashes of clarity?) in B are discussed; the notion of the collective dream or “wish image” is traced through the various drafts of the Paris essay.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If the products of the superstructure take the distorted form of dreams, Benjamin suggests, it is because they are doubly determined, not only by material forces but also by a nonmaterial collective agency that Benjamin names the collective unconscious. Benjamin ties the collective unconscious to some form of buried libidinal experience when he relates it to classless society from prehistory (<i>Urgeschichte</i>). (42)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The collective has a “need to give the new imagistic form.” How the distant/mythic past appears in images of the new (as contrast to recent past):</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In addition, these wish images manifest an emphatic striving for dissociation with the outmoded – which means, however, with the most recent past. These tendencies direct the imagistic imagination, which has been activated by the new, back to the primeval past. (B quoted on page 43)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A footnote on the influence of the surrealist Mabille gives some perspective on how B is trying to distance himself from Jung’s timeless use of archaic images as “archetypes,” which he sees as reactionary.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Social products are incomplete (they can’t deliver what they promise), and the social order of production is unjust, limiting, and exploitative: “Responding to the insufficiencies of material conditions, the collective unconscious produces images where unsatisfactory material conditions are set to right” (44). Thus the distortion of the base by the superstructure is a result of overdetermination: the superstructure is not just determined by the base, but also “by multiple nonmaterial imperatives that he characterizes in libidinal, symbolic, and ideological terms.” This in turn complicates the simple base-superstructure relation/distinction [because aspects of the superstructure are being seen as productive]</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Why these determining noneconomic forces are subject to collective repression is, however, a question that Benjamin does not address. (45)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The difference of Cohen’s position from Adorno’s:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Benjamin does not employ “the notion of collective consciousness . . . to divert attention from true objectivity and its correlate, alienated subjectivity” ... Rather, he devises it to propose a link between base and superstructure going beyond either linear or dialectical causality as well as to differentiate the appearance of the superstructure from its material workings. Benjamin seeks to use this notion to explain how the forces of the superstructure can have an obscured effect beyond the phenomenal forms in which they appear. In addition, he opens up the possibility for therapeutic formulations of social intervention. (46)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She discusses the concept of “construction” in Freud, whether analyst reconstructs from the pieces of the past, or constructs anew, is left ambiguous.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The gauge of the accuracy of the new construction is not only its faithfulness to what has been forgotten but also its therapeutic effectiveness in the present; Freud simultaneously stresses that this gauge is far from confirming that the construction ever existed as such. (47)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">B in turn distinguishes “critical construction” from “reconstruction” and from historical processes/dialectics; the wish image or utopia is in a non-place. Adorno seeks to remove/dissolve ambiguity, to uncover objective processes; B seeks to use it. C however thinks “ambiguity” is a weak term and a “strategic error” on B’s part, preferring Althusser’s “overdetermination,” which she seems to argue is the concept that B is grasping for. (Which A further is distinguishing from Hegelian dialectics, something B does not do?)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">B’s method and use of psychoanalysis, though, is meant to allow for “graphicness” (<i>Anschaulichkeit</i>) which is lacking in regular Marxist method; he will bring in montage to achieve this. B’s model is incomplete; the question of the relation between collective and individual consciousness remains, as well as relationship between phantasmagoria and base.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She turns to Benjamin’s use of the metaphor of “awakening:”</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I want here to ask only one last question: How does our awakening from the world of our parents relate to our own implication in a collective dream? More specifically, given Benjamin's libidinal notion of critique, why does he describe the critical moment with a vocabulary of awakening at all? (52)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This seems problematic because the language of “awakening” sounds more like Adorno’s Enlightenment approach, re “awakening” from the illusion of superstructure to objective awareness. Surely B does not mean this? C argues that B uses the term “awakening” for two reasons: 1) due to the influence of surrealism, which will be explored in future chapters; 2) simply because “awakening” is the natural discursive opposite of “dream,” which B has already committed to. Nevertheless he does mean it as the simple opposite of dreaming or sleep.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Benjamin focuses specifically on the language of dream in this endeavor in part because it seems to provide an elegant pivot from materialism to psychoanalysis. This language, central to psychoanalysis, is also one that Marx employs from time to time. (53)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[Unfortunately Cohen’s book is just too early to have been able to engage with Derrida’s <i>Specters of Marx</i>.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The Freudian account of dream, which B is drawing on, is more complex than the Enlightenment account, and “loaded with affect and ... the ambivalence of desire and fear” (53). For B, “awakening is not waking but rather a moment that, in its access to repressed processes, must be conceived of as close to the form of experience that reigns in the world of dream” (54) B “deconstructs” the relationship between sleep and waking, seeing rather “an infinite variety of concrete states of consciousness, that are conditioned by all conceivable gradations of awakened-hood in all possible centers (B, quoted on p 54).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">B abandons dream terminology in the 1939 exposé, instead using the concepts of phantasmagoria and <i>shock</i>, “the moment making the overdetermination regulating social processes accessible to the individual subject.”</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Can it be that awakening is the synthesis whose thesis is dream consciousness and whose antithesis is waking consciousness? Then the moment of awakening would be identical with the ‘Now of recognizability’ in which things put on their true-surrealist-face (B, quoted on p. 55)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">To summarize: Benjamin breaks with established Marxist views of his time by complicating the base-superstructure relationship in a way that Adorno misconstrues as idealist; B is, however, actually pursing this relation in a way informed by psychoanalysis, similar to what Althusser later does as well. (Which is why Cohen argues we can use concepts from Althusser to elucidate Benjamin). The concept of “awakening,” is not a simple opposite of dreaming, a waking-into-the-real-world a la the simplistic Enlightenment opposition as used by Adorno; it is rather a dialectic, moving from the “waking” world of the establishment, through the dream world of wishes for a revolutionary future as imaged through the past, to a new “awakening” which is similar to Freud’s “construction,” which is not necessarily a reconstruction of the actual past but more importantly, has therapeutic power in the present.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-88696224738707852952023-10-14T17:20:00.000-07:002023-10-14T17:20:23.451-07:00Labor and Monopoly Capital, Chapter 12<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7qbvLoFML7E5zNWypB4zBGRSItDB3hnga9zg2TVfEikEEW_Q2vm8xslXz8N42mWee4gd7W8BZCtmhPNINc3s4e5iJD9_SxNm1ka95tnO9YfNoteFRVWoxy8MxKBjV-qmu9koiSr0GpVKJ0D5RTjGW4rKV8Y64dOMqCvCidN1uUzPJ8wJ0tDGUtdC7jFo/s499/braverman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7qbvLoFML7E5zNWypB4zBGRSItDB3hnga9zg2TVfEikEEW_Q2vm8xslXz8N42mWee4gd7W8BZCtmhPNINc3s4e5iJD9_SxNm1ka95tnO9YfNoteFRVWoxy8MxKBjV-qmu9koiSr0GpVKJ0D5RTjGW4rKV8Y64dOMqCvCidN1uUzPJ8wJ0tDGUtdC7jFo/s320/braverman.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Summary of Chapter 12: The Modern Corporation</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The first of the forces transforming modern capitalism which Braverman will discuss is the modern monopolist corporation, and how it has been formed by the concentration and centralization of capital in fewer hands. Before the invention of the modern corporation form, capitalist enterprises were limited by the scale of the “personal fortunes and personal capabilities” of individual capitalists (179).</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It is only in the monopoly period that these limits are overcome, or at least immensely broadened and detached from the personal wealth and capacities of individuals.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This makes vast amounts of wealth available (from stockholders, etc.), and largely replaces the individual owner with a “specialized management staff.” “Owner” and “manager” are two aspects of the ruling capitalist class; “as a rule, top managers are not capital-less individuals, nor are owners of capital necessarily inactive in management. But in each enterprise the direct and personal unity between the two is ruptured.” The limiting personal form of the past has been replaced with an institutional form. The existence of a managerial element within the ruling class gives an opening for those from lower classes to rise by virtue of ability, through “a process of selection... having to do with such qualities as aggressiveness and ruthlessness, organizational proficiency and drive, technical insight, and especially marketing talent” (180), which abilities are co-opted by the capitalist organization; nevertheless, managers are usually drawn from within the ranks of the ruling class.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">B discusses the large number of jobs which go by “manager” in the census, most of these are much lower positions than the ones he is talking about. The expansion of upper management corresponds with a great expansion in scale and also diversity of departments in modern capitalist enterprise vs earlier family-run firms.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">However, this emergence of management as a part of the corporation is perhaps outstripped in importance by the role of marketing. B traces the development of transportation networks which allowed corporate products to reshape city life: “cities were released from their dependence on local supplies and made part of an international market” (182). The food industry (e.g. Gustavus Swift’s refrigerator railroad cars) played an important trailblazing role: “the industrialization of the food industry provided the indispensable basis of the type of urban life that was being created;” this industry was also important for developing the “marketing structure” of modern corporations. Specialty and electrical equipment need not only distribution but maintenance and service available in urban markets, this affects corporate structure and marketing network; example, auto industry.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Finance is discussed as another important division; subdivisions are formed within these divisions, because each division may require its own accounting division, personnel, etc. “Thus each corporate division takes on the characteristics of a separate enterprise, with its own management staff” (183). This is made yet more complex by vertical and horizontal integration. This “pyramiding” in turn creates a need for decentralization, resulting in the “modern decentralized corporate structure” of the 1920s through Braverman’s day. Each division is relatively self-governing and contributes to the corporation as a whole.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">From this brief sketch of the development of the modem corporation, three important aspects may be singled out as having great consequences for the occupational structure. The first has to do with <i>marketing,</i> the second with the <i>structure</i> <i>of</i> <i>management,</i> and the third with the <i>function</i> <i>of social</i> <i>coordination</i> now exercised by the corporation. (184)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. Marketing</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Marketing becomes of great importance as a means of reducing uncertainty in business, by inducing demand. Braverman quotes Thorstein Veblen extensively on the “fabrication of customers” (185). Marketing also reshapes manufacturing, with styling, design, and packaging, as well as planned obsolescence and the idea of a <i>“product</i> <i>cycle:</i> the attempt to gear consumer needs to the needs of production instead of the other way around.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. Change in overall structure of management</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The proliferation of divisions represent the “dismemberment of the functions of the enterprise head;” each takes over “in greatly expanded form a single duty which he exercised with very little assistance in the past. Corresponding to each of these duties there is not just a single manager, but an entire operating department which imitates in its organization and its functioning the factory out of which it grew. … <i>Thus the relations of purchase and sale of labor power, and hence of alienated labor, has become part of the management apparatus itself.</i>” (185-6)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This means we can now look at labor relations, and exploitation, within this realm of “management:”</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Management has become administration, <i>which is a labor process conducted for the purpose of control within the corporation</i>, and conducted moreover as a labor process exactly analogous to the process of production, although it produces no product other than the operation and coordination of the corporation. From this point on, to examine management means also to examine this labor process, which contains the same antagonistic relations as are contained in the process of production. (186)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. The corporate function of social coordination.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The complex division of labor which has emerged with modern capitalism comes with an increased need for “social coordination” or planning. Because our society resists the rational emergence of this, it is left to corporations to play much of the role of social planning in our society. This is irrational, because corporate planning is limited to seeking returns on capital, at the expense of all other motivations. [This is the same argument made today by the “planned degrowth” school.] As long as the corporations play such a huge role in investment, and control of resources, personnel, etc., government in fact plays a secondary role in social planning, filling “the interstices left by these prime decisions” 187).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-76957947626312952392023-10-12T13:46:00.002-07:002023-10-12T13:46:16.499-07:00The Revolution of Everyday Life, Prefaces and Introduction<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLtS4jV1ob1ImKPjF3R97qQ8aKBDH3UgsUbyemPaRsNSMuaIovR-a2PHbroXFeI1JPO_6-d9P7R4QkQUONNKrYxphR9TztkibuwAWfHDwBMUBSahUaH76GkPp1ujSYdBy-aoeW6OlC85tlXsMSOSoHybqCyy7TInJTfwKTUckSyY7xNnnnOsA8e0IBoXQ/s286/vaneigem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="286" data-original-width="200" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLtS4jV1ob1ImKPjF3R97qQ8aKBDH3UgsUbyemPaRsNSMuaIovR-a2PHbroXFeI1JPO_6-d9P7R4QkQUONNKrYxphR9TztkibuwAWfHDwBMUBSahUaH76GkPp1ujSYdBy-aoeW6OlC85tlXsMSOSoHybqCyy7TInJTfwKTUckSyY7xNnnnOsA8e0IBoXQ/s1600/vaneigem.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><p>Raoul Vaneigem, (1967[2001]) <i>The Revolution of Everyday Life</i>. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Rebel Press, London</p><p><br /></p><p>[I first read portions of this excerpted in <i>AJODA</i>, then took out a library copy in 1989. I read the line "we have nothing in common except the illusion of being together" to my roommate Ducky Heins (RIP), and he laughed and called it "pseudo-intellectual." That is a bit unfair, however.]</p><p><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Translator's Preface</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Nicholson-Smith thanks earlier translators he has relied upon, and notes that the title is not the best, “I would have preferred <i>The Rudiments of Savoir-Vivre: A Guide for Young Persons Recently Established in the World</i>, or more simply <i>The Facts of Life for Younger Readers</i>” (5). Nevertheless he sticks with the old name under which the work has become familiar in English. He embarks on a defense of his relation to the SI, since he was expelled in 1967, though he feels this “parting of the ways” was mutual. </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>French preface from 1991/2:</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In the 1990s preface, Vaneigem gives his take on the failure of 69:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In the end the economy picks up whatever it has put in at the outset, plus appreciation. This is the whole meaning of the notion of ‘recuperation.’ Revolutions have never done anything but turn on themselves at the velocity of their own rotation. The revolution of 1968 was no exception to this rule. The commodity system, finding generalized consumption more profitable than production, itself speeds up the shift from authoritarianism to the seductions of the market, from saving to spending, from puritanism to hedonism, from an exploitation that sterilises the earth and mankind to a lucrative reconstruction of the environment, from capital as more precious than the individual to the individual as the most precious capital. (10)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“Even the critique of the spectacle has now been travestied as ‘critical’ spectacle.” Nevertheless he insists that the 1968 revolution, unlike all previous, more violent revolutions, did not fail because it did not ever really end; the system responded with “the official world’s recognition of pleasure – so long, of course, as the pleasure in question was a profitable one, tagged with an exchange value and wrested from the gratuitousness of real life to serve a new commodity order” (12). Besides pushing capitalist recuperation into a new, presumably less stable position, the 1968 revolution also gave birth to a new, anti-hierarchical form of mass movement, which poses new problem for authority/power: “a coming together of individuals in no way reducible to a crowd manipulable at will” (13).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He describes his work and writings as “the persistent attempt to create myself and reconstruct society at the same time” (13). He notes with optimism the conditions for revolution in the 1990s: the falling rate of profit continues, the various dissatisfactions of the present day.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Something is taking place today which no imagination has ever dared speculate upon: the process of individual alchemy is on the point of transmuting an inhuman history into nothing less than humanity’s self-realisation. (14)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Introduction</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The introduction sets up a list of related binaries, listed here with the preferred term first:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>subjectivity, objectivity</li><li>living, survival</li><li>positive, negative</li><li>transcendence, power</li><li>freedom, oppression</li></ul><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Vaneigem claims “a humility that should not be hard to see” and notes various limitations in his work, and his attempt to intervene with it in this world (17). Perhaps this book can contribute to the ideas in it becoming someday better and more clearly formulated, and thus more effective. His point is not about creating novelty, but since everything has already been said, he means to put this to use, to “escape the commonplace by manipulating it, controlling it, thrusting it into our dreams or surrendering it to the free play of our subjectivity.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He notes that while his argument is largely subjectivist, it will have impact beyond this: “Everything starts from subjectivity, but nothing stays there” (18).</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The struggle between subjectivity and everything that corrupts it is about to widen the terrain of the old class struggles. It will revitalise it and make it more bitter. The desire to live is a political decision. Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom?</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He seems to see the modern subject of his day reduced to a “man of survival,” “ground up in the machinery of hierarchical power....” However, this subject of survival is also one of self-unity, of “absolute refusal;” there is a constantly-experienced contradiction, for this modern subject, of oppression and freedom, as the capitalist system attempts to deliver on promises it simply cannot fulfill. The rest of the book will have two parts, “Power’s Perspective,” and “Reversal of Perspective,” but this order is purely for convenience; V wants the reader to see them as synchronic, and wishes that “a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.”</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This work is part of a subversive current of which the last has not yet been heard. It constitutes one contribution among others to the reconstruction of the international revolutionary movement. Its significance should escape no one; in any case, as time will show, no one is going to escape its implications.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-15760083819488411902023-10-09T11:55:00.000-07:002023-11-25T16:12:10.651-08:00On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Introduction<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEp5RhoGMxtaboJF9LrkTa9Y2OowtkjkiCKqzdftqKc7ouuGEOfa0HdHnRyPY41Gav5CA9Zi8dhyphenhyphenZAV2ifuhPIcyUbphNmJ8_diMkst-omRcRsX2qz8ofl9fz1p5cYD18I2ZkoiWaawiOiiva7fLd8Ss2JuMmamqFr9UfVKOSTFACVjCS9F7UwK6u46Cw/s768/Simondon.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="575" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEp5RhoGMxtaboJF9LrkTa9Y2OowtkjkiCKqzdftqKc7ouuGEOfa0HdHnRyPY41Gav5CA9Zi8dhyphenhyphenZAV2ifuhPIcyUbphNmJ8_diMkst-omRcRsX2qz8ofl9fz1p5cYD18I2ZkoiWaawiOiiva7fLd8Ss2JuMmamqFr9UfVKOSTFACVjCS9F7UwK6u46Cw/s320/Simondon.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p>Gilbert Simondon (2017 [1958]), <i>On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects</i>. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.</p><p><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Summary of Introduction (and other prefatory matter)</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Simondon lays out his agenda, which is “introducing a knowledge into culture that is adequate to technical objects” (xv). S sees culture largely in terms of a regulatory function:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">a culture establishes regulatory communication among those who share that culture; arising from the life of the group, culture animates the gestures of those who ensure the command functions, by providing norms and schemas. (19)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The problem is that our cultural vision of technical objects is outdated, and needs to be brought up to date. However, certain illusions or prejudices prevent this from happening. “Culture is unbalanced” because while some objects (viz. aesthetic objects) are privileged, others, in particular technical objects, are seen as only having a “utility function.” A false opposition is set up between “man and machine” (15), which results in two somewhat diametrically opposed misconceptions. The first is <i>misoneism</i>, or fear of the new; S asserts this is really a rejection of the foreignness which the machine is mistaken as; in reality, the machine is “the stranger in which something human is locked up, misunderstood, materialized, enslaved, and yet which nevertheless remains human all the same” (16).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The opposite error is technofetishism, which, failing to find a proper way to understand the technical object, comes to treat it as a sacred object. S has some choice words for this “idolatry of the machine,” and its associated “technocratic aspiration to unconditioned power”:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The man who wants to dominate his peers calls the android machine into being. He thus abdicates before it and delegates his humanity to it. He seeks to construct a thinking machine, dreams of being able to build a volition machine, a living machine, in order to retreat behind it without anxiety, freed of all danger, exempt from all feelings of weakness, and triumphant through the mediation of what he invented.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">However, this machine-as-substitute for the human, which Simondon terms <i>the robot</i>, is a myth, a mere illusion: “the robot does not exist.” Both those who celebrate it and keep trying to bring it to life, and those who fear it and its presumed “hostile <i>intentions</i> toward man” (17) are mistaken based on their respective misunderstandings of the mode of existence of technical objects.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">S bases this argument in part on a distinction between <i>automatism</i> and the <i>margin of indeterminacy</i>. Automatism he sees as a closed system, in which a machine completes a predesignated task without any further input. Such a closed system “must sacrifice a number of possibilities of operation as well as numerous possible usages.” In contrast, the <i>margin of indeterminacy</i> is the openness of the machine to outside information. Part of his point is thus that automation limits, rather than fully enabling, the productive and progressive capacities of machines. There is presumably a continuum between relative automatism and relative openness; otherwise S’s terminology would have a hard time accounting for modern machine learning, etc. In any event the openness or margin of indeterminacy of machines are what makes machines amenable to interconnection or communication between machines, which S calls an <i>ensemble</i>; he imagines humans as necessarily involved in the management and operation of these by humans, as the “permanent organizer” (17) and “interpreter” (18). Simondon appears to take for granted that there will necessarily always be a ["human in the loop."]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">S goes through several subject positions, arguing why each is incapable of coming up with a new and more accurate “awareness of technical reality,” to disseminate into the culture: workers who work with machines, managers who oversee them, and technically-oriented scientists are all dismissed. What is needed is a social scientist, someone who will be like “a sociologist or psychologist of machines” (19). Simondon thus proposes the new science of <i>mechanology</i>, the goals of which will be to remove the man-machine divide as a source of alienation, and restore the regulatory function of culture in regard to machines. This will be done through an exploration of the three “levels” of technical objects: element, individual, and ensemble (20). An understanding of these three levels corresponds to stages in the historical development of modern technology:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. The level of <i>element</i> does not cause anxiety; it corresponds to the “climate of eighteenth century optimism, and the idea of constant progress or technical improvement.” <i>Tools</i> apparently fall under this category; “man had centralized technical individuality within himself at a time when only tools existed” (21).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. The <i>individual</i> level, however, “becomes for a certain time the adversary of man, his competitor” (21). Unlike the tool, the machine replaces the human worker. This goes along with a [dominant ideology] with a ‘dramatic and impassioned notion of progress, which turns into the rape of nature, the conquest of the world, and the exploitation of energies.” With this last, White’s Law or the Kardashev scale spring to mind, though S goes on to locate this ideology in “the technophile and technocratic excesses of the thermodynamic era,” and it is not clear from his usage here if that refers to the 19<sup>th</sup> century industrial revolution only, or refers to that as a sort of foundational era on which the present is premised. [Because surely this “rape of nature” is still ongoing!].</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. <i>Ensembles</i> come into existence in the 20<sup>th</sup> century, and the supplanting of the “thermodynamic energeticism” of the previous level is replaced by information theory [and cybernetics]; it seems that the proper mode of understanding of this level is yet to come, through the success of mechanology, and the spread of its insights through the education system.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So to provisionally summarize, we as a culture understand the first level, but are stuck there; we misunderstand the second level, resulting in all kinds of alienation, anxiety, and environmental destruction; finally, we have not yet (as of S’s writing, in 1958) grasped or adequately imagined the final level of the ensemble. The point of mechanology is to get us there:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The machine, as an element of the technical ensemble, becomes that which increases the quantity of information, increases negentropy, and opposes the degradation of energy; the machine, being a work of organization and information, is like life itself and together with life, that which is opposed to disorder, to the leveling of all things tending to deprive the universe of the power of change. The machine is that through which man fights against the death of the universe; it slows down the degradation of energy, as life does, and becomes a stabilizer of the world.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Reputedly this book is in part a rejoinder to Wiener’s writings, and we can see here the same theme of life as order, opposed to death as disorder. There is also the same anxiety regarding this whole “death of the universe;" ironically, given that S’s critique of technofetishism evoked a certain anxiety of the alienated technophile to create a robot to hide behind. The difference appears to be not that the anxiety has been resolved, but that it has become collective (“man” and “universe” as opposed to selfish individual subjects), and that it is based on an accurate understanding of the three levels. So far, many of the concerns and issues which S promises to address are strikingly relevant to the current day, and now and then it is easy to forget that this book was written in the 1950s.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-4076834961888838272023-10-06T12:06:00.005-07:002023-10-07T09:39:46.304-07:00Ruskin, The Nature of Gothic<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUcE0PHD6XfjqXxdMn4iIVXWkOgfEuj9pnn2zzIN7zObdCVVhpCdqJpf6GJoHu2y1h1IlsVLLqLVBJlqQ5oGHeq_kUuNI2BXSuIsA9seax9hE5sM4lUIlLoaupl2ymjLgwxIjZ5sG-78b3vR1j8uQi91uBb-Fz3W4GbGy07EeG3YfA6uFM-587NLi6-WI/s1320/Portrait_of_John_Ruskin_Wellcome_L0002304_(cropped).jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1320" data-original-width="1033" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUcE0PHD6XfjqXxdMn4iIVXWkOgfEuj9pnn2zzIN7zObdCVVhpCdqJpf6GJoHu2y1h1IlsVLLqLVBJlqQ5oGHeq_kUuNI2BXSuIsA9seax9hE5sM4lUIlLoaupl2ymjLgwxIjZ5sG-78b3vR1j8uQi91uBb-Fz3W4GbGy07EeG3YfA6uFM-587NLi6-WI/s320/Portrait_of_John_Ruskin_Wellcome_L0002304_(cropped).jpg" width="250" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Ruskin (image from <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a>)</td></tr></tbody></table><p><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">John Ruskin (1900). <i>The Nature of Gothic: A Chapter from the Stones of Venice</i>. George Allen, London.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Summary:</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Seeing as Cohen did not provide any definition of “Gothic,” in her discussion of Gothic Marxism, beyond a general suggestion of the <i>noir</i>, I thought I would turn to its most famous commentator, the fascinating and deeply problematic John Ruskin (Cohen does not cite Ruskin, and most likely did not have him in mind). It is of course somewhat anachronistic to try and modernize the political alignments of a person from another era, but Ruskin’s thoughts on the value of independence in labor can be read alongside, and contrasted to, such later arguments as the anarchist “abolition of work” argued for by Bob Black and others. Ruskin certainly had an influence on the anarchist and socialist tradition, as witnessed by the introduction to this volume, by William Morris; nevertheless he himself was, at least in this text, firmly conservative in the old sense of the term, pining for an idealized feudal order in which there is mutual respect up and down the rungs of a naturalized class hierarchy. Parts of his argument can also be read, somewhat against the grain though not completely, as an argument for a DIY punk aesthetic, along the lines of my (ahem) old band Yellow #5's aptly named 1987 debut album, <i>Everybody Doing Their Own Shit At The Same Fucking Time</i>.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Part of Ruskin’s charm, and his ability to write so many very long, multi-volumed books, is apparently his ability to go off on long tangents that would make Edward Gibbon envious. This chapter, from volume II of Ruskin’s three-volume survey of the architecture of Venice, starts off addressing the question of the form Gothic architecture took in Venice, leading to the question of how to define and evaluate Gothic in general; this leads on into discussions of the qualities of good art and architecture in general, on how and why architecture reflects the social order which produced it, and thus on the form of the ideal social order. That last topic is the one which has made this “chapter” (of 150 pages in the original text) so famous, and I read a version published as a separate book (though it was unfortunately lacking the plates, so I had to find and refer to a full copy of the <i>Stones of Venice</i>, anyway).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So: the question of Gothic architecture in Venice, leads to the question of how to define the Gothic in general; this is not just a question of various “Gothic” elements which may or may not be present, but of a unity they form; we all already have some idea of what we understand by “Gothic.” His plan is “tracing out this grey, shadowy, many-pinnacled image of the Gothic spirit within us” (3). If the reader has a different idea than Ruskin, “I do not ask him to accept, but only to examine and understand, my interpretation.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ruskin takes an approach akin in some ways to the “principles and elements” in discussing art: he focuses first on internal aspects (“certain mental tendencies of the builders”), before moving on the the mere external forms (arches, etc.)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Thus, the mental characteristics of Gothic, in order of importance: </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. Savageness</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. Changefulness</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. Naturalism.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">4. Grotesqueness.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">5. Rigidity.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">6. Redundance. (4)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Those are characters of the buildings themselves; to them correspond the following characters of the builders:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. Savageness or Rudeness</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. Love of Change</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. Love of Nature</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">4. Disturbed Imagination</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">5. Obstinacy</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">6. Generosity</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> In any given building, a few of these can be missing, but take away too many, it ceases to be “Gothic.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I. <i>Savageness</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The name “Gothic” originated as a reproach for buildings with “a degree of sternness and rudeness” looked down on by commentators in the south (5). Should the name be replaced with something more fitting and respectable? No need, says R.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It is true, greatly and deeply true, that the architecture of the North is rude and wild but it is not true, that, for this reason, we are to condemn it, or despise. Far otherwise: I believe it is in this very character that it deserves our profoundest reverence.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He gives a highly poetical climate-based argument for cultural and artistic differences between northern and southern Europe; there is a “look of mountain brotherhood between the cathedral and the Alp” (8). But savegeness is even better if it reflects religion, not just climate – this is part of his deeply Christian analysis: what is key to the Gothic is that it reflects the Christian belief in the sanctity and equality of every soul.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This leads him into his most interesting argument. He distinguishes between servile, constitutional, and revolutionary traditions of architectural ornament. <i>Servile</i> ornament characterizes the schools of ancient Greece, Nineveh, and Egypt, who subordinated enslaved workmen to rigid rules, and confined creativity and artistry to the overseers [shades of Braverman]. <i>Revolutionary</i> or <i>Renaissance</i> ornament involves some kind of overskilling – every worker is equally schooled and skilled, but the result is that “his own original power is overwhelmed, and the whole building becomes a wearisome exhibition of well-educated imbecility” (9).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Constitutional</i> ornament is the Gothic one, and it reflects a double aspect of Christian thought: first, that every soul is equally of value and not to be subordinated; second, that imperfection is inevitable. “That admission of lost power and fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevite felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly, contemplating the fact of it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God’s greater glory.” The Christian exhortation is thus, “Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, not your confession silenced for fear of shame.” Gothic schools of architecture thus “receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection in every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole” (10). [It is not clear to me whether Ruskin would have been aware of the corollary concept of <i>wabi-sabi</i> in Japanese art.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A desire for perfection should not lead us to “prefer the perfectness of the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher;” we are “not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower the level of our aim, what we may more surely enjoy the complacency of success.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In every manual laborer there are “some powers for better things,” some level of higher thought, which is not allowed to develop under the current system, in which they are made to act like machines.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Understand this clearly: You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool. (11)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[There is a lot to unpack in that; the assumption the worker is somehow asleep like an automaton, that has to awake into manhood [definitely this is more about “manhood” than “humanity?”] “You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both.” [Granted this is in the language of one upper-class person talking to another about the plebs below, but it still beats Taylorism.]</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool.” Once he starts to imagine on his own, he loses his precision and becomes unreliable; “but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him.” [So what exactly is this “majesty?” For Ruskin it seems to be the sovereignty of the free, Protestant, [male] individual.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ruskin argues that factory work is even more degrading and dehumanizing than slavery or feudal serfdom, on the familiar existentialist argument that even in slavery you can remain “in one sense, and the best sense, free” (12). His argument seems to be that even manual labor, done by hand, requires some intelligence, and thus allows the worker to develop their own intelligence, and thus be “free” in their minds, despite being enslaved. Factory work, in contrast, will “smother their souls with them,” and make their skin “into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with.” By being tied to, and thus dependent on, machinery, workers lose even their intelligence; the perfection of modern English products is a measure of this enslavement. In contrast, the imperfections of old Gothic architecture are “signs of the life and liberty of every workman who struck the stone; a freedom of thought and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which it must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her children.” (13)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[It seems R feels that subordination to machinery is more degrading than social subordination, even in such a condition as slavery. This can clearly be contrasted with Marx’s position in the <i>Grundrisse</i>; Marx agrees that automatic machinery reduces workers to “conscious linkages;” nevertheless what is most important is not the worker’s relation to technology, but the class relation that organizes production. R’s position in this light seems to be more in the line of “compassionate conservatism.”]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ruskin is not against hierarchy, and feels that to “obey another man, to labour for him, yield reverence to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind of liberty – liberty from care.” (13) The man who has to oversee others is the one with more “care” and worry. The current struggles of the 19th Century seem, to R, to be misdirected when they are simply against the wealthy upper class – instead of being against the division of labor per se, we should seek a more just division of labor, in which there is no such degrading labor as exists in factories. Back in feudal times, “the separation between the noble and the poor was merely a wall built by law; now it is a veritable difference in level of standing, a precipice between upper and lower grounds in the field of humanity...”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He goes through a sort of master-and-servant dialectic, which ends somewhat differently than Hegel’s, on the relation between the worker who “reverences” his master, and the master who shoulders all the burden of responsibility:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Which had, in reality, most of the serf nature in him – the Irish peasant who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with his musket muzzle thrust through the ragged hedge; or that old mountain servant, who 200 years ago, at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and the lives of his seven sons for his chief? – as each fell, calling forth his brother to the death, “Another for Hector!” (14) </p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[The reference is to the history of Clan Maclean of Scotland. Perhaps it is not specifically English, but the nature of imperialism, to romanticize the peoples whom you have already colonized and beaten down, more than the ones who are still putting up resistance? The correct answer is that no, the Irish rebel has broken with any “serf mentality” the moment he took up his rifle, and is continuing the same battle against Cromwell, and all he stands for, that the seven Maclean brothers gave their lives in, back in 1651.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So anyway, Ruskin feels that the current working class feels unthanked, their sacrifice in the factory is not honored like the reverent sacrifices of the past generations on battlefields, etc. In turn, the upper class folks who want to help should not teach or preach (presumably the standard attempts of the time; and still common today), since these are basically insulting the intelligence of workers; instead what is needed is a “right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labor are good for men, raising them, and making them happy” (15), and centering the economy on this, giving up the forms of beauty, convenience, etc., which can only be gained by squeezing the life and soul out of workers. R suggests three “broad and simple rules:”</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely necessary, in the production of which Invention has no share.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some practical or noble end.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the sake of preserving records of great works. (15)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. By “invention” he more specifically means <i>inventiveness </i>or creativity, on the part of the worker creating the product. His examples is the manufacture of glass beads, which are “utterly unnecessary” (16), and which involve mindless, repetitive labor. “And every young lady, therefore, who buys glass beads, is engaged in the slave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than that which we have so long been endeavoring to put down.” [the last bit there seems an unnecessary exaggeration. IIRC someone has made an argument somewhere that this frequent assertion in the 19<sup>th</sup> century that factory labor is “worse than slavery” ultimately justified or normalized the existing slavery system.] However, glass cups or vessels can be “the subjects of exquisite invention,” and when we buy and appreciate these, “we are doing good to humanity.” Similarly, wearing cut jewels merely for the sake of their value is wrong, but wearing fine gold jewelry which has been crafted by a skilled artisan is good.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[Ruskin can interestingly be linked to the current arguments for degrowth, on the shared point that we could do away with the production of a lot of useless and wasteful things (though his example is glass beads, not SUVs, etc.). This is also related to a problem with his argument for a return to an artisanal economy, namely that the exquisite glassware, etc. which we can keep can only be afforded by the wealthy, while the cheaper, “useless” decoration he wants us to give up, is that which the working class can afford.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. Ruskin is not against elegance and finish per se, just against it being prioritized over the freedom and thought of the creator. “If you are to have the thought of a rough and untaught man, you must have it ina rough and untaught way .... Only get the thought and do not silence the peasant because he cannot speak good grammar, or until you have taught him his grammar.” (17) “So the rule is simple: always look for invention first, and after that, for such execution as will help the invention, and as the inventor is capable of without painful effort, and no more.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He discusses the difference between English and old Venetian glass: the former is always precise, the latter cruder but also more inventive at its best: “Choose whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a grindstone” (18).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He imagines an objection, that the talented craftsman should be promoted to overseer or designer, and have less talented workers under him, and so we can get “both design and finish.” R replies:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">All ideas of this kind are founded upon two mistaken suppositions: the first, that one man’s thoughts can be, or ought to be, executed by another man’s hands; the second, that manual labor is a degradation, when it is governed by intellect. </p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He defines large-scale architecture on this model as “the expression of the mind of manhood by the hands of childhood” [very much the Kantian “What is Enlightenment” here]. Starting to sound a bit more radical, he argues that the societal distinction between the gentleman thinker, and the working “operative” is a problem:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We are always in these days endeavoring to separate the two [thinking and working]; we want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. (19)</p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">No master [or boss?] should be too proud to do the meanest or hardest work in their profession. So anyway, the rudeness indicated by the term “Gothic” should be seen as a good quality, not a reproachful one: “no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect” (20). [R’s theory of work and art are very appropriate to his own writing, because there is some beauty, depth, and insight there, that shines through a lot of crudeness and error.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ruskin now admits that his use of the terms “perfect” and “imperfect” so far has been inaccurate to his ends:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a misunderstanding of the ends of art.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This is for two reasons:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1) “...no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure;” that is, the truly great artist is always pushing beyond what they can currently do, experimenting instead of staying inside what they can comfortably do, which itself would lead to relative mediocrity. If they strain to actually achieve perfection, they end like Leonardo, spending ten years on a painting, then leaving it unfinished to go on to new projects which will end the same way. The results will necessarily be beautiful but imperfect.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2) Imperfection is in fact essential to life, and is a sign of progress and change in all nature. He provides examples from the natural world: “to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality” (21).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">II. <i>Changefulness</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">From Savageness, he turns to the second quality of the Gothic, <i>Changefulness</i>, or <i>Variety.</i> This is a natural benefit of allowing workers more freedom over their own work. He contrasts the regularity of a properly built neo-classical home, using the correct styles for Greek columns, etc, with buildings that can be read like poetry, because in addition to regularity, they have something else, variety.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The idea of reading a building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the same kind of delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas, never enters our mind for a moment” (23). Architecture and every other art should say new things, not just repeat itself. </p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Nothing is a great work of art, for the production of which either rules or models can be given. Exactly so far as architecture works on known rules, and from given models, it is not an art, but a manufacture... (24)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He turns to the superiority of a pointed over a round arch, as the former has infinite variability; ditto for grouped shafts and tracing in windows. There are, nevertheless, both healthy and “diseased” loves of change. He makes his appeal to nature (and music) for the distinction: monotony and change are best experienced in alternation. The “diseased” love of change is when there is too much change, so it has become monotonous, and we seek “extreme and fantastic degrees of it” (27). Healthy love of change, acc R, led to the rise of Gothic, and diseased love of change led to its fall.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Monotony unbroken, like darkness, is painful (and even at its best it serves as a painful preparation or something for the relief of change): “...an architecture which is altogether monotonous is a dark or dead architecture; and of those who love it, it may be truly said, ‘they love darkness rather than light.’” Yet “transparent monotony” is a good use of monotony; “endurance” of monotony/darkness is a good quality of mind.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">R starts off a great discussion of the superiority of the Gothic by observing that it is “not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble” (28). Because it is not dominated by a rigorous symmetry like Romanesque, etc., it can grow or shrink in width or breadth or function. Gothic builders never let ideas of “outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use and value of what they did.” [in contrast, the miserably boring uniform façades of many European squares comes to mind, particularly those celebrated by A.E.J. Morris.]</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If they wanted a window, they opened one; a room, they added one; a buttress, they built one; utterly regardless of any established conventionalities of external appearance, knowing (as indeed it always happened) that such daring interruptions of the formal plan would rather give additional interest to symmetry than injure it. So that, in the best times of Gothic, a useless window would rather have been opened in an unexpected place for the sake of the surprise, than a useful one forbidden for the sake of symmetry. Every successive architect, employed upon a great work, built the pieces he added in his own way, utterly regardless of the style adopted by his predecessors; and if two towers were raised in nominal correspondence at the sides of a cathedral front, one was nearly sure to be different from the other, and in each the style at the top to be different from the style at the bottom. (28-9)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He gives religious import to the “confession of Imperfection” and the “confession of Desire of Change:” “If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work.” [i.e., it would be hubris]</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It is that strange disquietude of the Gothic spirit that is its greatness; that restlessness of the dreaming mind, that wanders hither and thither among the niches, and flickers feverishly around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in labyrinthine knots and shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not satisfied, nor shall be satisfied. (30)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">III. <i>Naturalism</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He defines naturalism as “the love of natural objects for their own sake, and the effort to represent them frankly, unconstrained by artistical laws” (31) [this seems a problematic formulation]. “Naturalism” was sometimes used as a reproach in his day [in contrast to “Purism”], and he explains why, by distinguishing between composition (of colors, lines, etc.) and representation per se. “Now the noblest art is an exact unison of the abstract value, with the imitative power, of forms and colours. ... But the human mind cannot in general unite the two perfections; it either pursues the fact to the neglect of the composition, or pursues the composition to the neglect of the fact.” (32) Nevertheless, both of these serve their purposes, for communication, and for decoration. </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">R says men are artistically divided into three “classes:” men of design, men of facts, and men of both. Each class has both healthy and unhealthy functions. The unhealthy forms are caused by despite or envy; errors on the side of design only cause inferior art, while errors on the side of facts produce idealogues who ruin everything.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Three more classes: good and evil are mixed in everything, yet one class seeks the good, one the evil, and the third perceives both. He calls these purists, sensualists, and naturalists, respectively.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He excoriates the sensualists at length, but more interesting is his criticism of the purists: “... this vulgar Purism, which rejects truth, not because it is vicious, but because it is humble, and consists not in choosing what is good, but in disguising what is rough, extends itself into every species of art. ... There is nothing, I believe, so vulgar, so hopeless, so indicative of an irretrievably base mind, as this species of Purism.” (44)</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">... the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative of some slight degree of weakness, readiness to be offended, or narrowness of understanding of the ends of things: the greatest men being, in all times of art, Naturalists, without any exception... (45)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He recognizes in passing the ranty and digressive character of this 100+ page “chapter:”</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">the reader may already be somewhat wearied with a statement which has led us apparently so far from our immediate subject... (45) </p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">So anyway, the Gothic workman confesses his own imperfection (rudeness) and that of his subject (naturalism). On page 48, R comes out strongly against historicism in a footnote: “All good art representing past events, is therefore full of the most frank anachronism, and always ought to be. No painter has any business to be an antiquarian. We do not want his impressions or suppositions respecting things that are past. We want his clear assertions respecting things present.” (48)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[Well, Benjamin would have a response, that we can have both, that the image from the past can resonate with the present.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He discusses Gothic vegetation, and how it is far more interested in the actual forms of real vegetation, than many older sculptural styles, which were content with very stylized vegetation as ornament. R links this to the rebirth of scientific inquiry at the close of the Middle Ages. He notes a theory that the Gothic developed out of imitation of nature; he points out this is historically inaccurate, the Gothic only developed to be closer to nature in its most mature form, but this itself reveals how central naturalism is to the “temper” of Gothic builders:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It was no chance suggestion of the form of an arch from the bending of a bough, but a gradual and continual discovery of beauty in natural forms which could be more and more perfectly transferred into those of stone, that influenced at once the heart of the people, and the form of the edifice. (50-1)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">IV: <i>The Grotesque</i>.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">R unfortunately declines to discuss this until the third volume, other than describing it as “the tendency to delight in fantastic and ludicrous, as well as in sublime, images.” (52).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">V. <i>Rigidity</i>.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He immediately admits that the word “rigidity” is not really sufficient; “active rigidity” might be closer: “the peculiar energy which gives tension to movement, and stiffness to resistance.” [“Energetic” would perhaps be the best term]; he refers to the quality of Gothic architecture that uses tension to achieve lightness, instead of having stones just sitting on each other like southern architecture; and also how Gothic ornamentation does not simply sit on the walls but leaps forth, independently. R ties this to the need for people in northern climates to find joy in the cold season, as much as in the warm.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[This is of course belied by Moorish architecture, indeed, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/stealing-from-the-saracens-9781787383050?q=stealing%20from%20the%20saracens&lang=en&cc=us but R is tied down by his geographic determinism" target="_blank">it has been argued, more recently</a>, that Islamic and specifically Moorish architecture influenced Gothic.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He emphasizes the importance of moderation: “The best Gothic building is not that which is most Gothic...” (55).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">VI. <i>Redundance</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Last and least, <i>Redundance</i>, “the uncalculating bestowal of the wealth of its labour” (56). Instead of relying on elegance or economy, “a certain portion of their effect depends upon accumulation of ornament.”</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">For the very first requirement of Gothic architecture being, as we saw above, that it shall both admit the aid, and appeal to the admiration, of the rudest as well as the most refined minds, the richness of the work is, paradoxical as the statement may appear, a part of its humility. No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple; which refuses to address the eye, except in a few clear and forceful lines; which implies, in offering so little to our regards, that all it has offered is perfect; and disdains, either by the complexity or the attractiveness of its features, to embarrass our investigation, or betray us into delight.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[Obviously, he would have some harsh words for modernist architecture.]</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The inferior rank of the workman is often shown as much in the richness, as the roughness, of his work; and if the co-operation of every hand, and the sympathy of every heart, are to be received, we must be content to allow the redundance which disguises the failure of the feeble, and wins the regard of the inattentive.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[There is something in here, despite the classism carried over, regarding the way art could look in an anarchist society based on universal cooperation and sympathy; “failure” in the above just means not meeting certain elite standards or aesthetic expectations. What R is describing is how a more democratic, egalitarian work-process, reflecting a society of the same values, creates art with more “redundance,” or better put, <i>variety</i> of aesthetic judgments and innovations. This stands as a plausible response to Le Guin’s characterization of the anarchist society in <i>The</i> <i>Dispossessed</i> as being drab and uninterested in, or suspicious of, adornment; more likely, there would be greater diversity and “redundance” of artistic style, because there would no longer be any hierarchy of taste.] R then lists several interests in the Gothic “heart” which are quite relevant to this: “a magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it never could do enough to reach the fulness of its ideal; an unselfishness of sacrifice, which would rather cast fruitless labour before the altar than stand idle in the market; and finally, a profound sympathy with the fulness and wealth of the material universe...” (56-7). He goes on about the influence of nature on Gothic artists, that being influenced by nature they necessarily had no fear or revulsion of complexity or richness.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Having covered the six aspects of the inner spirit of Gothic, he turns to outward form. He reiterates that we can’t say that a building is or isn’t Gothic, only that it is more Gothic or less Gothic, depending on the extent to which it possesses those six aspects of inner spirit, and the elements of outward form which he will now enumerate.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He starts, naturally, with pointed arches, then turns to roof construction. Gabled roofs are even more important than pointed arches, being linked to the northern climate, and forming the basis of turret and spire, etc.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“It is not the compelled, but the willful transgression of law which corrupts the character. Sin is not in the act, but in the choice.” (59) This is his way of introducing the point that architects can stray from the rules of Gothic by necessity (shortage of room, etc.) and still be Gothic, it is when they do it willfully that they “sin.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">All of Gothic is developed from the relationship between the pointed arch for the bearing line below, and the gable for the protecting line above (62); he gives an illustration of this shape, basically the star trek insignia, but not off-center.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There are three ways of bridging space, with straight lintel, round arch, and angled gable; the Gothic “pointed arch” is properly speaking a rounded gable. All architectures of the world can be grouped by which means they use to bridge space. Examples: Greek, Romanesque, Gothic.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Per my above comment about Islamic architecture, R does mention a style he calls “Arabian Gothic” (as opposed to “pure Gothic”), of which he states that it “is called Gothic, only because it has many Gothic forms, pointed arches, vaults, etc., but its spirit remains Byzantine, more especially in the form of the roof-mask” (65) (i.e., with domes instead of gables).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Foliation is the inspiration for the trefoil arch, and for tracery: Gothic artists don’t necessarily try to imitate plants per se, but to reproduce their structural or geometrical beauty and the pleasure received from perceiving them.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He provides a final definition of Gothic based on physical characteristics: “Foliated architecture, which uses the pointed arch for the roof proper, and the gable for the roof-mask” (72).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There is now only one point more which he wishes to make, regarding foliation and sculpture, and the highest or purest form of Gothic, versus its final degraded forms. Early Gothic was “noble, inventive, and progressive,” whereas late Gothic was “ignoble, uninventive, and declining” (73) due to how they use foliation and figure sculpture.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He distinguishes between two styles he calls <i>linear</i> and <i>surface</i> Gothic; R gives two examples, one a gable from Abbeville, France, illustrating linear gothic; and the other from Verona, Italy, illustrating surface Gothic. R notes that the Italian example he has provided appears to have been executed less skillfully or expertly, yet this is not important: “The Veronese Gothic is strong in its masonry, simple in its masses, but perpetual in its variety. The late French Gothic is weak in masonry, broken in mass, and repeats the same idea continually. It is very beautiful, but the Italian Gothic is the nobler style” (76). </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ruskin states a principle of economy in art: “a composition from which anything can be removed without doing mischief, is always so far forth inferior.” [Is it churlish to point out that “so far forth” could be removed from that definition, without any undue mischief?]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He provides some rules for recognizing “whether a given building be good Gothic or not, and, if not Gothic, whether its architecture is of a kind which will probably reward the pains of careful examination” (78): </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. steep gable, high above the walls</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. windows and doors with pointed arches and gables over them.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. presence of foliation</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">4. the arches in general "are carried on true shafts with bases and capitals." Exceptions noted for non-religious use.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Those identify Gothic; but is it good architecture? Some more rules of thumb:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. “See if it looks as if it had been built by strong men,” if it has roughness, “nonchalance” mixed with gentleness, as “of men who can see past the work they are doing, and betray here and there something like disdain for it” (79). Mere precision is less likely to clearly indicate that it is of the “noblest” schools.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. Irregularity, with “different parts fitting themselves to different purposes, no one caring what becomes of them, so that they do their work. If one part always answers accurately to another part, it is sure to be a bad building...”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. It has “perpetually varied design” in ornamentation. (180)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">4. “Read the sculpture.” The sculpture on a building should be legible from a distance. “Thenceforward the criticism of the building is to be conducted precisely on the same principles as that of a book” in terms of the knowledge and feeling communicated.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Ruskin would no doubt be depressed and disappointed upon trying to “read” the architecture of today with its almost total lack of sculpture or artisanal ornamentation whatsoever. More importantly, he would note that its ugliness, its drabness and arrogance, directly reflect the dissociation of designers from builders: the problem with modern architecture is that it reflects the hierarchical, exploitative relations through which it was built, and of the deeply unequal society which built it.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-62168681701962505722023-09-26T11:24:00.000-07:002023-09-26T11:24:24.352-07:00Cunning Intelligence, Chapter 10<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGPWhsSgOnkgYOfd67ypce3hw6vJpG8CgS06_w2YHYEOKb1qLnypCpOzol7WcNmr1les0KGFhiELQ-x3ANnhfKEmg38VdfjjyvelsqPA3WHd9QiKFLrjVWlZc10dbdp9LglTObayKWREb5GrfUBAL0C6qHdpCpKp2Rpyoth9nY-POzEtwqkieCe8GnTnk/s499/detienne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGPWhsSgOnkgYOfd67ypce3hw6vJpG8CgS06_w2YHYEOKb1qLnypCpOzol7WcNmr1les0KGFhiELQ-x3ANnhfKEmg38VdfjjyvelsqPA3WHd9QiKFLrjVWlZc10dbdp9LglTObayKWREb5GrfUBAL0C6qHdpCpKp2Rpyoth9nY-POzEtwqkieCe8GnTnk/s320/detienne.jpg" width="208" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p> <i>Summary of Chapter 10: The Circle and the Bond</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They begin their concluding chapter with a discussion of how <i>mêtis</i> is not the possession of one particular god, but being “polymorphic and diverse,” it is shared by many (279). The powers of every god run up against limits embodied by the other gods; they ask, is there a limit on how much <i>mêtis</i> can be possessed by a single god? Zeus is discussed. Certain gods possess <i>mêtis</i> and others do not; this is an important distinction for understanding the distribution of powers in the ancient Greek pantheon; <i>mêtis</i> also sets limits on the powers of each god.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They discuss the various gods who possess <i>mêtis, </i>and the differences between them. Hephaestus and Athena inherit their tech powers from the Cyclopes, but the latter were really just fire gods; Athena and H are more broadly about all human technologies (particularly A). The example of the horse-bit, a mixture of both their particular powers, is revisited. They compare Hephaestus and Hermes, both linked to fire; then Hermes and Apollo as two gods of technology, of whom only Hermes has <i>mêtis.</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They cover stories of the gods behaving in ways which reveal their limitations: particularly Hephaestus’ trap for the lovers, Ares and Aphrodite. Ares maybe faster and more powerful, but Ares has beat him with his trickery. [but per Ovid, iirc? This was a mistake, because now everyone knows about the lovers, and they no longer need to hide.] Aphrodite is the more important and impressive catch, since she has abundant <i>mêtis.</i> Apollo taunts Hermes, who agrees that yes, he would willingly be bound in Ares’s place.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This leads to the question of the meaning of <i>apeir<span style="font-family: Tinos;">ōn</span></i><span style="font-family: Tinos;">, which describes the bonds Hephaestus has used. Per Porphyry, it means “limitless” with “twofold connotation of binding and circularity” (287). [Unfortunately the role of this concept in the philosophy of Anaximander is never raised.] There are modern debates over the etymology of </span><i><span style="font-family: Tinos;">apeirōn</span></i><span style="font-family: Tinos;">; D&V choose two “trends in the semantic field encompassing the pair of words </span><i><span style="font-family: Tinos;">apeirōn-peiras</span></i><span style="font-family: Tinos;">” (287): path, and bond.</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">Referring to Alcman’s Cosmogony, they show how these terms relate to concepts from navigation; showing the synonymity of <i>peirar</i> and <i>Tekmōn</i> (guide-mark); illustrated by usage in the <i>Argonautica</i>:</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: Tinos;">here we find one particular type of path which takes the form of a bond which fetters, and, conversely, the action of binding is sometimes presented as a crossing, a way forward. (291)</span></blockquote><p></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">They revisit the concept of </span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>póros</i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"> from an earlier chapter. There is the interesting example of Xerxes crossing the Hellespont, the bridge of ships is “a yoke cast about the neck of the sea” (291) in Aeschylus. In Herodotus, the same story is a sign of the king’s hubris, and when he tries to whip the sea after it breaks his ships, of the insanity of despotism.</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">Another example, when Odysseus orders Melantheus to be “wound in a plaited rope,” “</span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>Peiraínein</i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"> which means to cross here takes on the sends of winding around...” One wonders how this same conflation or relationship between binding and journeying could be found in English words, e.g. </span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>cross</i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;">, or </span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>wind</i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;">. Because to “wind” can mean to wander, as well as to tie up; because to “cross” could describe travelling an ocean, but also a cross, or a barrier across a passageway (for example); does this mean these concepts of binding and travelling are also themselves one in English, as D&V seem to be arguing they are in Greek? Or are these just two different applications? They argue:</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: Tinos;">For our own part, we believe that the ‘meaning’ of a linguistic form is to be determined by the sum total of the ways in which it is used. (291)</span></blockquote><p></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">But my question is, is that “meaning” supposed to have some unity, as they are implying? Or could it be just a diverse set of applications-in-context?</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">Anyway, from seeing <i>peirar</i> and <i>apeirōn</i> as interlinked opposites, they move to them as a combined paradox, <i>peîrar apeíron,</i> “an impassable bond and an inextricable path.” Their example is Tartarus:</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-family: Tinos;">Tartarus is not only a prison from which there is no escape; it is itself a space which binds; the expanse of it is indissociable from inextricable bonds. Tartarus is a space from which there is no exit and which, being devoid of guide-marks, without </span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>peîrar</i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;">, it is impossible to cross, so it is also seen as a gigantic bond without beginning or end for whoever is imprisoned within its sphere. (294)</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">It is “in a sense the opposite of organised space”</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">They discuss related technologies: the hunting or fishing net, weaving and snares; various animal traps; and the ancient sea-battle tactics of </span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>períplous</i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>diékplous. </i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;">The circularity of basketweaving is an expression of the </span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>craftiness</i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"> involved in it:</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-family: Tinos;">But whether it be a net or a piece of jewellery the circular bond with its rejection of the imposition of any limit to its polymorphism is simply an expression of one of the fundamental characteristics of </span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>mêtis</i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;">.” (300)</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><span lang="en-US">They discuss Hermes as a god of </span></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><span lang="en-US"><i>mêtis</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><span lang="en-US">; then riddles; then return to the question of </span></span><span lang="en-US"><i>mêtis</i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><span lang="en-US"> in relation to power:</span></span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>Mêtis</i> cannot be fully deployed without this fundamental combination of the bond and the circle. To exercise all its powers the intelligence of cunning needs the circular reciprocity between what is bound and what is binding.” (305)</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">Yet by swallowing Metis, his first wife, Zeus transformed the meaning and operation of <i>mêtis</i> so instead of working to undermine or destabilize the order, in his hands it works for that order, is deployed by it.</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: Tinos;">The disorders brought about by the power of Metis when she was left to her own devices are thus eliminated from the world ordered by the gods of Olympus.</span></blockquote><p></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: Tinos;">By swallowing her he has made her a part of his own sovereignty. Being, as she is, inside Zeus, Metis makes it possible for him to meditate in advance upon all the cunning tricks which might be devised in the future by men, gods, or monsters yet unknown. (306)</span></blockquote><p></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">They list several types of “men of <i>mêtis</i>;” the example of the doctor as a man of </span><i style="font-family: Tinos;">mêtis</i><span style="font-family: Tinos;"> [this reminds me of an anecdote a student recently told me: she was working as a student nurse in a hospital when an unusual situation developed, after which the doctor asked her, “When you hear hooves coming, what animal do you expect?” She answered, “A horse,” and he replied, “What about a zebra?” The moral being that a medical professional has to have </span><i style="font-family: Tinos;">mêtis...</i><span style="font-family: Tinos;">]</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">The concept of <i>mêtis </i>was of great importance and explanatory power in ancient Greek thought:</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-family: Tinos;">Over ten centuries the same, extremely simple model expresses skills, know-how, and activities as diverse as weaving, navigation, and medicine.... Its domain is a veritable empire and the man of prudence, of <i>mêtis</i>, can assume ten different identities at once.” (307)</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">The question then is, why has this super-important concept been neglected by later scholarship? The answer of course begins with the philosophers, and their culture war against the sophists, so Plato and Aristotle are discussed.</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">According to Plato and Aristotle, “<i>mêtis</i> proceeds obliquely, that it comes straight to the point in the shortest way, that is, by taking a detour” (308). It has two key qualities:</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">1. <i>agchínoia</i>, quick-wittedness, in a short, almost imperceptible space of time; Aristotle gives the example of midwife sensing when to cut the umbilical cord (309). [So this is “knowing” in the sense of awareness, timing, and sensing.]</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">2. <i>eustochía</i>, the good eye. “A sharp intelligence is never aimless, it implies an ability to reach a desired goal.” (310)</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">The link is emphasized between the art of taking aim, <i>stocházesthai</i>, and the modern concept of the <i>stochastic</i>; “the <i>stochastic </i>nature of practical intelligence”. To “conjecture” is <i>tekmaíresthai, </i>“to open up a path for oneself with the aid of guide-marks and to keep one’s eyes fixed on the goal of the journey just as the navigators do ….” According to Alcmaeon of Croton, humans have this “oblique, stumbling knowledge” in contrast to the certain knowledge possessed by the gods (311). Medicine and politics were closely associated domains in the Greek mind, both requiring <i>mêtis.</i></span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">Plato condemned “knowledge and skills based upon the stochastic intelligence” (315); rhetoric is “found guilty of owing its success to intuition and a good eye,” and so is “neither an art nor a rational form of knowledge.” P furthermore distinguishes between certain and uncertain forms of knowledge (the latter D&V call “stochastic arts”); he privileges the former, valuing calculation (<i>arithmós</i>), measuring (<i>métron</i>), and weighing (<i>stathmós</i>). “Only that which is measurable can belong to exact science, to <i>epist</i><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>ēmē </i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;">and the domain of truth.” (D&V note that he makes an exception for the art of building, “no doubt through respect for its impressive tools”).</span></span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">Plato restricts </span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>sophia</i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"> from its earlier, broader application as any kind of knowledge including craft, to “contemplative wisdom.”</span></span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">Plato is at pains to give us a detailed description of the components of <span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>metis</i></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;"> in order to lend added weight to his reasons for condemning this form of intelligence. He goes to considerable lengths to expose he wretched impotence of devious methods and of cunning involved in making guesses. (316)</span></span></blockquote><p></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">Ironically he is the one who brings this all into stark representation, contrasted with scholarly wisdom.</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">Aristotle is more subtle, more open to the oratorical and sophistic tradition. [ A’s concept of “virtue” includes more of the kairos, etc. and responsiveness that had apparently been missing from Plato.] </span>Nevertheless A distinguishes between <span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>phrónēsis </i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;">(prudence) and</span><span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i> deinótēs</i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;">, “cleverness.” T</span>he man possessing the latter is a <span style="font-family: Tinos;"><i>panoûrgos, </i></span><span style="font-family: Tinos;">“ a sly one or a rogue” (317) [a definition Rabelais was perhaps influenced by]. </span>There is a discussion of Aristotle’s difficulty given that, even after excluding “cleverness,” prudence, one of the virtues, involves <i>mêtis</i>, and that both prudence and <i>mêtis</i> are said to be possessed by some animals, which breaks down the key Aristotelian distinction between human and animal intelligence. D&V state that “Aristotelian thought accepts that there can be a type of knowledge bearing upon what is inexact even if, like its subject, this knowledge can itself only be inexact” (317). It can never be a science, but A does at least recognize it as a form of intelligence.</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Tinos;">They conclude with two reasons why cunning intelligence has been for so long neglected as a subject of study: 1) for Christian thought, it became even more essential to maintain the difference between humans and animals, which the concept of <i>mêtis</i> erodes; and 2) “the concept of Platonic Truth, which has overshadowed a whole area of intelligence with its own kinds of understanding, has never really ceased to haunt Western metaphysical thought” (318).</span></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-50790351212399595732023-09-21T09:18:00.000-07:002023-09-21T09:18:31.760-07:00A Thousand Plateaus, Chapter 6<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4r7q46fQ3MoI--u88nRWCsTBEbmf9Hntobw6Ebq4eyGAEbjwJywfCmba66WJkoGI78Sf5JWbEUuhdBSB9z1myaDF45UqLVTZQXl3ZoTAXCK4lHq9UHdKyMwfQ26UiY2NqtxSniSFAD5S3a3WVrOdJ6NhWokAkJgN_UAIJ4dblHxK3xbEn5mdb0g3Eeqo/s600/atp.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="401" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4r7q46fQ3MoI--u88nRWCsTBEbmf9Hntobw6Ebq4eyGAEbjwJywfCmba66WJkoGI78Sf5JWbEUuhdBSB9z1myaDF45UqLVTZQXl3ZoTAXCK4lHq9UHdKyMwfQ26UiY2NqtxSniSFAD5S3a3WVrOdJ6NhWokAkJgN_UAIJ4dblHxK3xbEn5mdb0g3Eeqo/s320/atp.jpeg" width="214" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter 6: November 28, 1947: How Do You Make Yourself A Body Without Organs?</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The concept of a “body without organs” is essentially a reversal of the death of Chaos, that moment at the beginning of time when the other gods stabbed Chaos to create organs, and Chaos then died. At the same time, as Hakim Bey puts it, “Chaos never died,” and the BwO continues to exist, as the plane of consistency which [feeds and devours] the strata, as the Earth itself on which we live and circulate like vermin. The BwO is thus preexisting, already present, and easy, difficult, and impossible to create, as it is a limit, something you can’t reach but are already attaining. The date for this chapter refers to the date Antonin Artaud recorded <i>To Have Done With the Judgment of God</i>, in which he introduced the concept of the BwO.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They start off discussing various failing or limited attempts to reach the BwO, which tend to create “sucked-dry, catatonicized, vitrified, sewn-up bodies” instead of fully alive, vibrant BwOs (150). These include various forms of insanity, drug use, and masochism. On page 151 a detailed set of instructions to a dominatrix lays out what D&G assert is a <i>program</i>, not a <i>phantasy</i> (distinguishing it from ideology or hallucination, and linking it to the formation of strata (to which the machinic/programmatic refers; this is bound to be complicated later). The point of this program is that it has two distinct phases, one of which creates the BwO, and the second of which sends something circulating in or on it (in this case, pain).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The BwO and desire:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The BwO is the <i>field of immanence</i> of desire, the <i>plane of consistency</i> specific to desire (with desire defined as a process of production without reference to any exterior agency, whether it be a lack that hollows it out or a pleasure that fills it). (154)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The give a parable of a priest cursing desire, by invoking lack, hedonistic pleasure, and the Lacanian <i>manque-à-jouir </i>(lack of enjoyment/lack to be enjoyed), the last identified with phantasy (these are later described as the “three phantoms” of internal lack, apparent exteriority, and higher transcendence). In reality, desire is immanent and does not need any of these external standards or objects, which would attempt to subordinate it, hierarchize it, explain it away in terms of something other than itself. The psychoanalyst is this kind of priest.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">There is, in fact, a joy that is immanent to desire as though desire were filled by itself and its contemplations, a joy that implies no lack or impossibility and is not measured by pleasure since it is what distributes intensities of pleasure and prevents them from being suffused by anxiety, shame, and guilt. (155)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They describe the becoming-animal of a masochist imitating a trained horse; giving up instinctive forces for transmitted forces (of training; link to Canettian cyst?). Courtly love, and ancient Taoist sexuality are discussed as ways of achieving BwOs; there is an intimation of multiple BwOs having some mass effect; this is the plane of consistency (157).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They distinguish:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1) different types of BwOs, with varying attributes (drugged, masochistic, etc.). “Each has its degree 0 as its principle of production <i>(remissio)” </i>(157). For remission, <a href="http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/pdf/Deleuze%20and%20Guattari,%20Ontological%20structure%20of%20the%20Body%20Without%20Organs.pdf" target="_blank">Alexander Galloway</a> provides the translation “a returning, releasing, abatement; similar to Deleuze’s “repetition,” or the concept of the fetish.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2) What happens in or circulates in each type of BwO, <i>latitudo</i>. (Galloway: “breadth, width, freedom; similar to Deleuze’s “difference””).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3) “The potential totality of all BwO's, the plane of consistency,” <i>omnitudo</i>, or “the” BwO. [<i>Omnitudo realitatis</i>, or the sum total of reality, is a Kantian concept.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[Galloway adds that this triad corresponds to that of attribute, mode, and substance from Spinoza.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They raise the question of the possible linking or conjugation of all the different BwOs, and tie this to the concept of <i>plateau</i> from Bateson, “continuous regions of intensity constituted in such a way that they do not allow themselves to be interrupted by any external termination, any more than they allow themselves to build toward a climax” (158); thus linking to the title of the book (A thousand plateaus = a multitude of BwOs, the plane of consistency).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In a discussion of more works by Artaud, they reveal that the BwO is not really defined against <i>organs</i> per se, but against the <i>organism</i>, which is the unity of the body, bound by the judgment of God. They then expand on this: the BwO opposes the three great strata that most directly bind humans: “the surface of the organism, the angle of signifiance and interpretation, and the point of subjectification or subjection” (159). To the articulations of these strata the BwO opposes disarticulation, “or <i>n</i> articulations.” They reiterate their call from before that caution is needed; it seems the search to become a BwO is to be distinguished from death; though one perhaps courts death in the process, death is itself nevertheless not the desired state.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">You have to keep enough of the organism for it to reform each dawn; and you have to keep small supplies of signifiance and subjectification, if only to turn them against their own systems when the circumstances demand it, when things, persons, even situations, force you to; and you have to keep small rations of subjectivity in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality. Mimic the strata. You don’t reach the BwO, and its plane of consistency, by wildly destratifying. (160)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The goal is not an emptying of organs, but to “momentarily dismantle the organization of the organs we call the organism” (161).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They discuss the concepts of nagual and tonal from Carlos Castañeda, then return to Artaud, to articulate more on the dangers to avoid in trying to become a BwO: in addition to the “full” BwOs on the plane of consistency, and the previously described “empty BwO’s on the debris of strata destroyed by a too-violent destratification,” there are also “cancerous” or “fascist” BwOs that function for the strata, as part of the engine of their proliferation (163). They refer to this as the “three-body problem,” a term out of physics, which I suppose evokes an unstable relationship between the three. The BwO is discussed as an egg, and as desire; the organs circulate in the BwO instead of belonging to the organism, indefinite articles are to be used: “an” eye, not “the” eye, “my” eye, or “your” eye. They end with reflections on the similarities and relations between BwOs, and the possibility of a totality of BwOs:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">All we are saying is that the identity of effects, the continuity of genera, the totality of all BwO’s, can be obtained on the plane of consistency only by means of an abstract machine capable of covering and even creating it, by assemblages capable of plugging into desire, of effectively taking charge of desires, of assuring their continuous connections and transversal tie-ins. Otherwise, the BwO’s of the plane will remain separated by genus, marginalized, reduced to means of bordering, while on the “other plane” the emptied or cancerous doubles will triumph. (166)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-3571662839685808892023-09-16T08:25:00.002-07:002023-09-16T08:26:24.199-07:00Profane Illumination, Chapter 1<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNJ3f2riv-A6A416pIFKZC95PPLcWIvC9tmrg-lIpc0ib6F7pMsahQEbTxWfVVrPrSonmBtaaAQhz9rb9mrlQ7o-SggLE8LCWsR2ePZwDTtnqRHMixuLFX2nMxTTu61UoXonqxQXNlgz3MaYbvBLqYKdtudFW7tZH9wwoAIViz_7rgeA3dKVVhTpfP8uQ/s2560/profane%20illuminations.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1707" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNJ3f2riv-A6A416pIFKZC95PPLcWIvC9tmrg-lIpc0ib6F7pMsahQEbTxWfVVrPrSonmBtaaAQhz9rb9mrlQ7o-SggLE8LCWsR2ePZwDTtnqRHMixuLFX2nMxTTu61UoXonqxQXNlgz3MaYbvBLqYKdtudFW7tZH9wwoAIViz_7rgeA3dKVVhTpfP8uQ/s320/profane%20illuminations.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i><p></p><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;">Margaret Cohen, (1993) <i>Profane illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of surrealist </i><i>revolution. </i>University of California Press, Berkeley.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>Summary of Chapter 1: Gothic Marxism</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Cohen introduces the concept of <i>Gothic Marxism</i>, by which she refers to “a Marxist genealogy fascinated with the irrational aspects of social processes, a genealogy that both investigates how the irrational pervades existing society and dreams of using it to effect social change” (1-2). Her two primary interlocutors for the study will be Walter Benjamin and Andre Breton, both of whom struggled with the economic determinism of the “vulgar Marxism” of their day; Breton developed a “modern materialism” which, Cohen argues, influenced Benjamin in his great unfinished Arcades Project, and in his work of bringing Freud into a Marxist vision.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Cohen appears fond of long numbered lists, for instance she summarizes Breton’s influence on Benjamin thus:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We will see Benjamin particularly provoked by (1) the modern materialist appeal to the fissured subject of psychoanalysis to modify the conscious and rational subject dear to practical Marxism; (2) its application of psychoanalytic notions of history to collective history in order to displace a linear or mechanically causal vision of historical process and to break down the base superstructure distinction with appeal to libidinal forces permeating both; (3) its use of psychoanalytic formulations of determination and representation to complicate a reflective model for the relation between superstructure and base; (4) its psychoanalytically informed interest in the everyday, which it uses to revise orthodox Marxist notions of the stuff of history as well as to open possible reservoirs for recuperative experience in damaged life; and (5) its application of psychoanalytic notions of therapy to an Enlightenment view of critique, notably as this application pertains to the dialectical image (p. 6).</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She notes past scholarship on the connections between Benjamin’s Arcades Project and surrealism; this has normally been interpreted as Benjamin importing surrealist influence into Marxist analysis:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In the standard Marxist readings of this relation, informed by the Marxism either of the Frankfurt School or of Brecht, Benjamin's use of psychoanalytic language, notably dream language, has been considered the place where he substitutes the smoke and mirrors of writerly technique for critical analysis. (8)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Breton, in turn, has been dismissed by mainstream Marxists as "lacking in seriousness.” C situates this in relation to the contest between “high surrealism” (Breton) and “renegade surrealists” (Bataille), with the latter being the ones favored by later theorists. She discusses the relation with, and the debt owed to, the surrealists such as Breton, by the later “theoretical avant-garde” of Lacan, et al., who dismissed Breton and the high surrealists. A lot of the rejection by the subsequent generation can be seen as a reaction to the dominance of surrealism for a time: “With the aging of the generation tyrannized by high surrealism, official recognition of the movement is returning” (12n33). </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She situates her project as a form of what Benjamin called “<i>rescuing critique</i>,” that is, a critique that rescues elements of the past through an understanding of their resonance with the presence, but which, by remaining “critique,” does not devolve into nostalgia. She gives another list of the rescued material with which a Gothic Marxism will be interested:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The most suggestive material rescued here includes: (1) the valorization of the realm of a culture’s ghosts and phantasms as a significant and rich field of social production rather than a mirage to be dispelled; (2) the valorization of a culture’s detritus and trivia as well as its strange and marginal practices; (3) a notion of critique moving beyond logical argument and the binary opposition to a phantasmagorical staging more closely resembling psychoanalytic therapy, privileging nonrational forms of “working through” and regulated by overdetermination rather than dialectics; (4) a dehierarchization of the epistemological privilege accorded the visual in the direction of that integration of the senses dreamed of by Marx in <i>The 1844 Manuscripts</i>: “. . . the complete <i>emancipation</i> of all human <i>senses</i> and qualities . . . The senses have therefore become directly in their practice <i>theoreticians”</i> ; accompanying this dehierarchization, a practice of criticism cutting across traditionally separated media and genres as well as critical attention to how and why these separations came to be; and (5) a concomitant valorization of the sensuousness of the visual: the realm of visual experience is opened to other possibilities than the accomplishment and/or figuration of rational demonstration. (11-12)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">To summarize the above:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1) a culture’s “ghosts and phantasms” are not just a mirage, but a “field of social production;”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2) ditto for a culture’s “detritus and trivia,” likewise not to be consigned to the dustbin;</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3) moving beyond critique as a form of argument and opposition to something more like <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>psychoanalytical therapy [this feels very 90s];</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">4) replacing the privilege of the visual with an integration of all the senses; and</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">5) at the same time, valorizing the “sensuousness of the visual” as more than just a stand-in for “rational <span> </span>demonstration.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She notes that she will be linking up to the Gothic Marxism of later French avant-garde thinkers, including Deleuze and Guattari, Michel de Certeau, and particularly Louis Althusser, and concludes with a note on Benjamin’s concept of “<i>fascination</i>” (15), which seems related to the Aristotelian concept of wonder; she quotes Ackbar Abbas, stating that Benjamin “sees in fascination not a will-less affect, not the response of last resort, but a willingness to be drawn to phenomena that attract our attention yet do not submit entirely to our understanding.” This sounds very much like the sensibility of the "modern hero" in Benjamin's Baudelaire book.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p> </p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-83956114191177959172023-09-10T16:25:00.000-07:002023-09-10T16:25:48.164-07:00Labor and Monopoly Capital, Chapter 11<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKcinUsRCgy5SjHoUXgJRTYKrLXRdMJUWninaiuoKMpEKhWreQD_xb3Ag2fASuh-N94JTeznmf_2nxcZbWxfcBdyrJjTFdvCYfQbDpNaHQS6559AdRtY24NR-aqSxKqUSWfTAFcnuxCgyuvN8MQ8yRJw5tXL8rjrtsvfrjqLFrOQPYx7dIKrrVRZVr0Yc/s499/braverman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKcinUsRCgy5SjHoUXgJRTYKrLXRdMJUWninaiuoKMpEKhWreQD_xb3Ag2fASuh-N94JTeznmf_2nxcZbWxfcBdyrJjTFdvCYfQbDpNaHQS6559AdRtY24NR-aqSxKqUSWfTAFcnuxCgyuvN8MQ8yRJw5tXL8rjrtsvfrjqLFrOQPYx7dIKrrVRZVr0Yc/s320/braverman.jpg" width="214" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><i>Summary of Chapter 11: Surplus Value and Surplus Labor</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Braverman starts off this third section of the book, on “Monopoly Capital,” with a very brief chapter of barely four pages, relating the growth of surplus value in financial/monopoly capitalism, to the growth of “surplus labor,” here referring not only to the labor that produces surplus value, but the surplus of labor available in a heavily automated society, and the uses (other than direct production) to which that labor is put.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He begins with the observation that the atomized and competitive capitalist system of Marx’s day has been replaced by something very different. Observers have differed over what to call it: finance capitalism, late capitalism, and so on. Braverman chooses “monopoly capitalism” as the most felicitous, citing Lenin, and Baran and Sweezy, as precursors in this regard (175). Monopoly capitalism had its beginnings in the last decades of the 19<sup>th</sup> century, which saw the end of colonialism (everything had been conquered) and the birth of true imperialist era:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Monopoly capitalism thus embraces the increase of monopolistic organizations within each capitalist country, the internationalization of capital, the international division of labor, imperialism, the world market and the world movement of capital, and changes in the structure of state power. (175)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This also corresponds in time to the scientific-technical revolution, and the birth of scientific management, etc.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He discusses how this book relates to and differs from that by Baran and Sweezy: they focused on the movements of value, whereas Braverman’s emphasis is on the corresponding movements of labor. He cites Marx on the relation between the movements of labor and of value, and how the creation of vast amounts of capital in need of investment goes along with the creation of the reserve army of labor, in need of employment. Marx had described this capital as rushing into old branches of production which it transforms, and into new branches which it creates anew; Braverman adds that both labor and capital are being funneled into new non-productive jobs, similar to what David Graeber called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs" target="_blank">bullshit jobs</a>” which exist just to keep the economy expanding despite the fact that more than enough wealth is already being generated:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In tracing this mass of labor, we will be led not only to “newly formed branches of production” in Marx’s sense, but also, as were Baran and Sweezy, into branches of non-production, entire industries and large sectors of existing industries whose only function is the struggle over the allocation of the social surplus among the various sectors of the capitalist class and its dependents. (177)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This leads capitalism, and commodification, to colonize more and more aspects of social life:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In this process, capital which “thrusts itself frantically” into every possible new area of investment has totally reorganized society, and in creating the new distribution of labor has created a social life vastly different from that of only seventy or eighty years ago. And this restless and insatiable activity of capital continues to transform social life almost daily before our eyes, without heed that by doing so it is creating a situation in which social life becomes increasingly impossible.</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Obviously, many links/contrasts with Bookchin are here available, and no doubt will come up again and again in the rest of the book. For now, he states that his plan going forward is to discuss how the occupational structure of capitalism has changed, and the forces at work in this.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-23555897922675014822023-09-09T16:20:00.000-07:002023-09-09T16:20:11.881-07:00Discourse In the Novel, Part 5<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTAD_16pip1MoEtmrgl4jRqoSLUw2rPz9ks2GN4y3Sows6u9_qaRIrllV2DsaSmF2V4vsbXUoQIf35OZmbwucG9D_eIbxX9fIweGEpwIGOSiOXeBdc76CdBwaYs3HWhi6Ev82G9DbKgQGzzzGltyUThV9525G2gfCTaxd64fIAzOUDZH3vj9jb9-a7Upk/s2560/dialogic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1689" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTAD_16pip1MoEtmrgl4jRqoSLUw2rPz9ks2GN4y3Sows6u9_qaRIrllV2DsaSmF2V4vsbXUoQIf35OZmbwucG9D_eIbxX9fIweGEpwIGOSiOXeBdc76CdBwaYs3HWhi6Ev82G9DbKgQGzzzGltyUThV9525G2gfCTaxd64fIAzOUDZH3vj9jb9-a7Upk/s320/dialogic.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><br /><p><i>Summary of Part 5: The Two Stylistic Lines of Development in the European Novel</i></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This section starts with what might be called Bakhtin’s manifesto of the novel:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><blockquote>The novel is the expression of a Galilean perception of language, one that denies the absolutism of a single and unitary language—that is, that refuses to acknowledge its own language as the sole verbal and semantic center of the ideological world. (366)</blockquote><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[Deleuze and Guattari’s insistence in <i>A Thousand Plateaus</i> that they as authors are not “Gods” comes to mind.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This Galilean, earth-shaking perception “has been made conscious of the vast plenitude” of national and social languages, which are all capable of being “languages of truth” (367). [And this lack of one truth-position is what makes it particularly “Galilean;” later on he will contrast this with the geocentric “Ptolemaic” consciousness.] The novel is a move of “verbal and semantic decentering of the ideological world,” a “linguistic homelessness of literary consciousness,” aware of its own contingency and situatedness in relation to a multitude of social and national languages. The novel is thus revolutionary, it is the “liberation of cultural-semantic and emotional intentions from the hegemony of a single and unitary language,” and the end of language as “myth,” aka “an absolute form of thought.” He then embarks on an investigation of the “specific sociohistorical conditions” that made this consciousness possible in the case of the novel.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What is essential is a consciousness that “begins by presuming fundamentally differentiated social groups” (368). The “sealed off cultural universe” of a unitary, solitary group has to lose its “uncontestably authoritative unitary language” and be thrown into the context of heteroglossia. “It is necessary that heteroglossia wash over a culture’s awareness of itself and its language, penetrate to its core, relativize the primary language system underlying its ideology and literature and deprive it of its naive absence of conflict.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">However, it is not enough in itself that a society recognize itself as being composed of a multitude of languages and groups; the nation itself has to be situated in an “ocean of heteroglossia,” of other competing and mutually influencing national languages. “A deeply involved participation in alien cultures and languages (one is impossible without the other) inevitably leads to an awareness of the disassocation between language and intentions, language and thought, language and expression” (369).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What is important about this “disassociation” is that it destabilizes and disables “mythological and magical thought, which depends on “the absolute fusion of word with concrete ideological meaning;” that is, a fixed, unquestionable reality. [Everything is true, nothing is permissible.] Mythological thinking and language generates “out of itself a mythological reality” that “substitutes itself for the connections and interrelationships of reality itself.” This domination of language by images “fetters” language intentions, and limits flexibility and expressiveness. Disassociation, by contrast, results in a consciousness for which “Language, no longer conceived as a sacrosanct and solitary embodiment of meaning and truth, becomes merely one of many possible ways to hypothesize meaning” (370).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Thus, the novel originates in the “poly- and heteroglot” Hellenistic era, then again whenever there is a “disintegration of stable verbal-ideological systems” (371). B briefly discusses the variety of ancient genres in which he finds “germs” of the novel, in the form of “an orchestration of meaning by means of heteroglossia.” This subject is pursued at much greater length in the Dostoevsky book, and I believe also in the Rabelais book. He begins to lay out the history of how this developed through the Middle Ages into the modern novel.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He discusses sophistic novels (which are covered in more depth in the Dostoevsky book); he notes that parody is not always easy to identify in texts from other or ancient cultures, “without knowing the background of alien discourse against which it is projected, that is, without knowing its second context” (374). B asserts that in world literature “there are probably very few words that are uttered unconditionally, purely single-voiced.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">B now begins to outline his two stylistic lines of development of the novel. The “First Line,” (arbitrarily so named, he states), is stylized and unitary after the manner of the Sophistic novel; it “leaves heteroglossia outside itself.” Yet “even <i>its </i>perception presumes heteroglossia as a background, and … interacts dialogically with various aspects of this heteroglossia.” The Second Line, in contrast, “incorporates heteroglossia <i>into</i> a novel’s composition, exploiting it to orchestrate its own meaning and frequently resisting altogether any unmediated and pure authorial discourse.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The two lines actually interweave and influence each other; they merely represent trends in the balance and interaction of stylization, versus “heteroglot orchestration” (376)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He covers chivalric romance in verse, and the first prose novels; he discusses and defines “style,” making a distinction between “individual consciousness” and the “literary-language consciousness of the epoch” (378). He discusses the effect of the printing press, which acted to “shift and displace” the audience of the chivalric romance, sending it on a “period of wandering between social classes” (379).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He discusses “general literariness,” or the “extra-generic literariness of language,” in a way related to his concept of social language from earlier sections; he seems to be talking about the way a regional or class group or groups will use the writing and reception of literature to form a sort of community, but also the way nation-states create a sense of “Frenchness” and so on. The romance <i>Amadís, </i>for example, spawned derivative texts on how to converse nobly: “The chivalric romance provided a discourse proper to all possible situations and events in life, while at the same time everywhere opposing itself to vulgar discourse and its coarse ways” (384). Cervantes is brought up as an exemplar of the Second Line, who in contrast to the First brings such courtly discourse in the mouth of Don Quixote into stark contrast with the lower-class dialects of Sancho Panza and other characters.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He goes on to the pastoral novel, and in particular the Baroque novel, focusing on the trial or test of the hero, which distinguishes the novel from the epic, in which</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">From the very beginning the epic hero has stood on the other side of the trial; in the epic world, an atmosphere of doubt surrounding the hero’s heroism is unthinkable. (388)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[Obviously this goes against the common doctrine derived from Campbell’s “hero’s journey.” And there are plenty of epic heroes whose initial weakness is integral to the story: Sundiata, Theseus; though I suppose it is true that at no point does the reader really believe those heroes will not succeed; instead, those characters in the story who doubt that the epic hero will succeed are just being foolish, and we readers or listeners laugh at them knowingly.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Anyway B traces the idea of trial through the various historical forms of the novel (sophistic through baroque), on the way making an interesting connection with the Christian idea of confession.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The Romantics go beyond the mere testing of a hero, to his shaping or character development through the story, markedly in the <i>Bildungsroman</i>. Bakhtin contrasts this with the older use of trial/testing in epic and earlier novel forms (which contrast is also a theme of his Chronotopes essay):</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Life and its events no longer serve as a touchstone, a means for testing a ready-made character … now, life and its events, bathed in the light of becoming, reveal themselves as the hero’s <i>experience</i>, as the school or environment that first forms and formulates the hero’s character and world view. (392-3)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This is the concept of <i>Bildung</i>, meaning education or shaping, which becomes more central to the modern worldview than destiny. Testing/trial and <i>Bildung</i> can be combined.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He discusses dialogue in the Baroque novel, and spends a lot of time on “pathos.” The concept of “zones of contact with still-evolving contemporaneity” reappears (395); then, shortly later, the term is used to indicate the pathos or feelings of specific spaces and architectures of interaction, as they are evoked in the Baroque novel:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Public-square and private-room zones of contact and familiarity (“proximities”) are very different, as different, from this point of view, as are the palace and the private home, the temple (cathedral) and the more house-like Protestant church. It is not a matter of scale, but rather of a special organization of space (here parallels with architecture and painting could be drawn). (397)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[The spatial relevance makes it also interesting to consider the idea of “zone of contact” in relation to chronotopes.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He contrasts Baroque and Sentimental novels, and how the use of pathos in the latter is a reaction to the former. Both Baroque and Sentimentalist novels engage in “one-sided dialogism” encountering heteroglossia outside the novel as an opposing, shaping force, but not allowing it into the novel. Still, “social stratification of language in the process of evolution is the basis for the stylistic shaping of discourse even in this First Line of the novel” (399).</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Novels of the First Stylistic Line approach heteroglossia from above, it is as if they <i>descend</i> onto it …. Novels of the Second Line, on the contrary, approach heteroglossia from below: out of the heteroglot depths they rise to the highest spheres of literary language and overwhelm them. (400)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">While the first line novels of the Chivalric era, etc. try to maintain a pure language in contrast to the heteroglossia that surrounds them, the precursors of the second line exist in the “minor low genres, on the itinerant stage, in public squares on market day, in street songs and jokes.” Here we get the representation of the speech corresponding to different stock characters or social positions. “Every discourse has its own selfish and biased proprietor; there are no words with meanings shared by all, no words ‘belonging to no one’” (401). This results in a better understanding of language (from the Bakhtinian point of view) than modern linguistics has:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">When we seek to understand a word, what matters is not the direct meaning the word gives to objects and emotions—this is the false front of the word; what matters is rather the actual and always self-interested <i>use</i> to which this meaning is put and the way it is expressed by the speaker, a use determined by the speaker’s position (profession, social class, etc.) and by the concrete situation. <i>Who</i> speaks and under what conditions he speaks: this is what determines the word’s actual meaning. All direct meanings and direct expressions are false, and this is especially true of emotional meanings and expressions. (401)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Modern linguistics is being targeted here. for always taking this “false front” of meaning at face value, instead of learning from double-voiced discourse, with its “radical scepticism toward any unmediated discourse and any straightforward seriousness;” this kind of writing counters the “lie of pathos” (which B has identified at work in the Baroque and Sentimentalist novels) with “gay deception” practiced by the “merry rogue.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He introduces the fool, who fails to understand everyday conventionality and “prosaic forms of stupidity” (404). The fool is stupid, and renders the stupidity of the conventional world clear. The fool can play the only-one-who-is-not-crazy kind of role, or on the other hand can be a foil, used for exposition, commentary, etc. The narrator can even despise the fool, “but the author needs the fool,” because as a representation of stupidity, it makes “prose intelligence” and “prose wisdom” teachable.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A failure to understand languages that are otherwise generally accepted and that have the appearance of being universal teaches the novelist how to perceive them physically as <i>objects</i>, to see their relativity, to externalize them, to feel out their boundaries, that is, it teaches him how to expose and structure images of social languages. (404)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Next he discusses the clown, a coupling of the fool and the rogue: “a rogue who dons the mask of the fool:” “the clown is the one who has the right to speak in otherwise unacceptable languages and the right to maliciously distort languages that <i>are</i> acceptable” (405). These three figures (rogue, fool, and clown) tie back to the prehistoric roots of prose thought in folklore.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He dwells on the importance of the rogue in the first novel form of the Second line, the picaresque novel; without using the word, he shows how the picaresque is the origin of the [antihero], since earlier first-line novels had to show the main character as either purely good or purely bad; the picaro is the first hero to be both and neither.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The effect of the rogue on popping the balloon of convention:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">All the old links between a man and his act, between an event and those who participate in it, fall apart. A sharp gap now opens between a man and the external position he occupies—his rank, his public worth, his social class. (408)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[On the one hand he is describing the advent of modernity and individualism, the man-made, arbitrary order replacing the eternal god-given one. It is interesting to see this as a gap or disconnection. as he is also describing to some extent the context of the emerging disciplinary society with its interest in interiority; an attention could be paid to the forms such transformation or anxieties might take in the disciplinary to post-disciplinary (aka, circulation to routing) shift of today...]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What had been accepted truth now becomes seen as a mask; B calls this “radical re-accentuation” which at first I had understood as being like revoicing, the words and images which had at first had one “accent” of a given social class within a privileged novelistic discourse relating to that social group, being “re-accented” with the voice of the rogue, himself voicing a different social interest/language. However, from his later discussion of re-accentuation at the end of the essay, it appears the meaning is more like accentuation or markedness in language; a word or image or language which had been marked (accented) as serious (for instance), now becomes comic, and so on.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">B discusses two differences between the First and Second lines, illustrating their different relationships with heteroglossia: 1) their use of inserted genres, and 2) their relation to literariness in the novel. The First line incorporates inserted genres but subsumes them, eliminating their “brute heteroglossia” and replacing it with “a single-imaged, ‘ennobled’ language” (410). The Second line, in contrast, uses inserted genres to bring heteroglossia fully into the text. Second line novels also exist in response to the literariness of the First line, as most clearly exemplified by Don Quixote and other characters who attempt to live life imagined through literature; the First line had thus tried to create and purify a single-voiced literary language, which the Second line brings back into conversation with the world, as just one voice among others.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Around the beginning of the 19<sup>th</sup> century the two lines converge, leading to the 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> century domination of the Second line, which fully makes use of the novel’s potential, allowing it to become “what it in fact is” (414). The “being in itself” of single-voiced language dialectically becomes the “being for itself” of language fully conscious of heteroglossia:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Languages of heteroglossia, like mirrors that face each other, each reflecting in its own way a piece, a tiny corner of the world, force us to guess at and grasp for a world behind their mutually reflecting aspects that is broader, more multi-leveled, containing more and varied horizons than would be available to a single language or a single mirror. (414-5)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[And the Kantian in-itself/for-itself language is fitting, since what B is celebrating here is a form of the Enlightenment consciousness that refuses to be guided by a totalizing single-image worldview, instead preferring to find its own way among heteroglossic fragments.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Situated after the revolutions of the Renaissance and the Reformation, “which destroyed the verbal and ideological centralization of the Middle Ages” (415), the novel is fitting the age of great discoveries and inventions, “that destroyed the finitude and enclosed quality of the old universe;” the novel provides the “Galilean language consciousness” required by such an era. The modern school of “traditional stylistics,” against which B is rebelling, understands only a “Ptolemaic language consciousness,” and is thus incapable of correctly understanding the novel as a form. Lacking a properly Galilean consciousness of heteroglossia, such an approach is limited to trying to describe the “language of the novel,” which is a fool’s errand, because no such unitary language exists. In contrast to this he neatly sums up his overall position:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">What <i>is</i> present in the novel is an artistic <i>system</i> of languages, or more accurately a system of <i>images</i> of languages, and the real task of stylistic analysis consists in uncovering all the available orchestrating languages in the composition of the novel, grasping the precise degree of distancing that separates each language from its most immediate semantic instantiation in the work as a whole, and the varying angles of refraction of intentions within it, understanding their dialogic interrelationships and—finally—if there <i>is</i> direct authorial discourse, determining the heteroglot background outside the work that dialogizes it... (416)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">B makes a form of the argument which in D&G will take the shape of insisting on the primacy of pragmatics in language. In B’s case, this is an insistence on the necessity of understanding the multiple social languages and intentions at work in the background, the “dialogue of languages as it exists in a given era” (417). Our lack of understanding in this regard is why texts in ancient languages, for example, appear flat and lifeless, because we know so little of their heteroglot context; socio-historical research is needed to recreate a “third dimension” in which to better understand these.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The last several pages concern the competing processes of canonization and re-accentuation, which he discusses with great nuance, and a characteristic dearth of concrete examples.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-43578954841027045582023-08-30T11:48:00.002-07:002023-08-30T11:48:37.302-07:00The Human Use of Human Beings, Chapter 11<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-PQ7fT0ofrnMKR8TqVpFivTEK7x2T_CJKpJB1jBUMb72AB_T3YAt7y72RQ-qolM-McLWrQ1Dr7xC22BojL1kHCEezbaXe1RHBqP3t7tC-az4naKpT97-8L9SBARKSQydT0M2xcuTiL6WXn-j19HNYJUaLI1II5FnUrAo-NYKxKuZMArF2QORks3dMGEM/s499/humanuse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="338" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-PQ7fT0ofrnMKR8TqVpFivTEK7x2T_CJKpJB1jBUMb72AB_T3YAt7y72RQ-qolM-McLWrQ1Dr7xC22BojL1kHCEezbaXe1RHBqP3t7tC-az4naKpT97-8L9SBARKSQydT0M2xcuTiL6WXn-j19HNYJUaLI1II5FnUrAo-NYKxKuZMArF2QORks3dMGEM/s320/humanuse.jpg" width="217" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>Summary of Chapter 11: Language, Confusion, and Jam</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This concluding chapter starts off with a promising idea: Wiener states that he will explore the “philosophical assumptions” underlying the work of Benoit Mandelbrot and Roman Jakobson. However, he ends up making no more than passing reference to these two, namely that:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">They consider communication to be a game played in partnership by the speaker and the listener against the forces of confusion, represented by the ordinary difficulties of communication and by some supposed individuals attempting to jam the communication. (187)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[Another thing: Based on the title of the chapter I was really hoping W was going to use the word “jam” in some jazzy/beatnik-derived sense, which would have been adorable and also refreshing. “Jam” in that sense could have been an opening for a positive sense of entropy and/or disorder as something creative, which W is lacking.]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This is based on Von Neumann’s game theory, in which one team tries to communicate a message, and the other tries to “jam” it. He then makes the point that, strictly speaking, in Von Neumann’s theory of games, both sides are pursuing rationally optimal strategies; they will not “bluff” to confuse each other, but are being in a sense perfectly honest and open, despite being opposed. He relates this to a quote from Einstein: “God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.” (188)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The point being that, unlike humans, nature is not deceitful. This means that scientists, used to studying nature, are naïve out of necessity. Scientists are not like detectives, a kind of thinking which has its role in other fields, e.g., “official and military science.” This kind of thinking is counterproductive in actual science, as it is a waste of time:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I have not the slightest doubt that the present detective-mindedness of the lords of scientific administration is one of the chief reasons for the barrenness of so much present scientific work. (189)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">[whatever “barrenness” means]</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Thus, a position of being overly “suspicious” like a detective makes you no good at science, because scientists have to trust that nature is honest, not deceitful. [He does not address this, but his odd anthropomorphizing stance must break down when it comes to the social sciences, which study humans, who <i>can</i> be deceitful.]Another kind of position that is bad for science is the “religious soldier,” who is a follower of propaganda of either the right or the left (he singles out “the soldier of the Cross, or of the Hammer and Sickle” (190)).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">He ties this back to his earlier distinction between Augustinian and Manichaean perceptions of the devil: the first is just a force of nature, in the service of God (and thus equivalent to entropy in his worldview). The second is willfully malicious and in fact has some chance or belief in the chance that it can prevail (like Milton’s Satan). Scientists need to maintain an Augustinian view, but this is difficult because</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The Augustinian position has always been difficult to maintain. It tends under the slightest perturbation to break down into a covert Manichaeanism. (191)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This is because Manichaeanism has more emotional and dramatic attraction; and also because Manichaeanists of the right and left create political conditions which they force upon scientists.</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In this present day when almost every ruling force, whether on the right or on the left, asks the scientist for conformity rather than openness of mind, it is easy to understand how science has already suffered, and what further debasements and frustrations of science are to be expected in the future. (190)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">A Manichaean suspects the world of being dishonest, and so adopts dishonest strategies in turn; this is obviously not good for science and the search for truth. There is an irony that the world created by these Manichaean faiths undermines the possibility of <i>faith</i>, which requires the existence of free choice. Science requires its own form of faith:</p><blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I have said that science is impossible without faith. By this I do not mean that the faith on which science depends is religious in nature or involves the acceptance of any of the dogmas of the ordinary religious creeds, yet without faith that nature is subject to law there can be no science. (193)</p></blockquote><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The needs of science, and of a free and democratic society, necessarily dovetail:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><blockquote>Science is a way of life which can only flourish when men are free to have faith. A faith which we follow upon orders imposed from outside is no faith, and a community which puts its dependence upon such a pseudo-faith is ultimately bound to ruin itself because of the paralysis which the lack of a healthily growing science imposes upon it.</blockquote><p></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-39841151400950987952023-08-22T08:51:00.000-07:002023-08-22T08:51:00.545-07:00Limits of Critique, Conclusion<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY633QVfE0SZGmCOQIoAjtj7CXzu2brVYTBsCia7RJne7CLWZFGp84nsGAuL7JV8XnXiBySJUZUXeD4jRyE4HbqcWc3DLR6lgZQIjPFkFb_qdBchmS_nloy0Gsj3bVk0RSDfY_UGzJihvz8L_OtKzKaYUeSUvNSE42V59jhGU2S040NoKC4iHWp3SAgIM/s1280/felski.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="828" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY633QVfE0SZGmCOQIoAjtj7CXzu2brVYTBsCia7RJne7CLWZFGp84nsGAuL7JV8XnXiBySJUZUXeD4jRyE4HbqcWc3DLR6lgZQIjPFkFb_qdBchmS_nloy0Gsj3bVk0RSDfY_UGzJihvz8L_OtKzKaYUeSUvNSE42V59jhGU2S040NoKC4iHWp3SAgIM/s320/felski.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p>Summary of “In Short”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In her conclusion, Felski reiterates her key points and emphasizes her intentions with the book, which is “motivated by a desire to articulate a positive vision for humanistic thought in the face of growing skepticism about its value” (186). (Though one wonders whether this is best achieved by infighting over terminology). Her target has been the “rhetoric of suspicious reading;” she defines critique as “the hardening of disagreement into a given repertoire of argumentative moves and interpretative methods” (187). This point is well taken so far as it goes, but the question remains to what extent “critique” is the best name for this; also, her attempts to avoid being seen to engage in anything like “critique” as she has defined it, has prevented her, imho, from tracing some of the more interesting <i>attachments</i> and articulations that could be followed in these interesting times of changing terminology. She does provide a backstory on how it was the puzzled responses to an earlier work which motivated her to elucidate the “limits of critique” (192).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She provides a list of what she sees as the most significant “difficulties of critique” (188-90):</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. “Its one-sided view of the work of art” (as something to be criticized rather than appreciated).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. “Its affective inhibition.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">3. “Its picture of society” (aka the ironic stance of againstness and “problematizing.”)</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">4. “Its methodological asymmetry.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The first three criticisms depend on her, in my mind reductive, polemical framing of the meaning of “critique” into a small corner of what it is typically taken to mean, then dismissing any statements to the contrary. The fourth is more interesting but is at least as applicable to ANT, and many other scholarly approaches; it is, for instance, the classic (and arguably unfair) argument against “hermeneutics,” which Felski celebrates.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She clarifies certain points which she is <i>not</i> making:</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">1. She does not argue that critique is a form of “symbolic violence.”</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">2. Nor does she equate it with “faux-radical posturing;” critique has had great and positive cultural and political effects, although “critique’s distrust of co-option and institutions means it is not always well placed to assess its own impact” (190).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">She concludes with a call for more positive and nuanced forms of reading, along the lines of Sedgwick’s reparative reading, and Bennett’s “enchantment,” and reiterates her distinction between “critique” and “criticism.” Granted, Felski is in the field of literary criticism, whose practitioners can be assumed to have a rich and nuanced understanding of what is meant by the word “criticism.” I would argue, however, that for the general public the meaning is reversed, as expressed in the call you are more likely to hear in, say, a college social science class, or art workshop, to “not just be <i>critical,</i> but engage in <i>critique.”</i> Rightly or wrongly, it is “criticism,” not “critique,” that carries the implication, in the general culture, of mere negativity. Even if we refuse that simplistic connotation, and opt for the more cultured sense of “criticism,” this still carries the implication of some particularly knowledgeable expert (possessed of “the good eye,” to quote Gillian Rose), who explains works of art to the masses. In contrast, it is “critique” which, to me anyway, carries connotations not only of more democratic possibilities, but of playfulness and invention (not perhaps totally pertinent, but the scene in <i>Young Marx</i> in which Engels and Marx gleefully announce their “<i>Kritik der Kritischen Kritik!</i>” comes to mind).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">And on that note, Felski does end the book somewhat dramatically and playfully: “The point, in the end, is not to describe critique, but to change it” (193).</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4015217548534373962.post-16431656658755806482023-08-18T10:16:00.004-07:002023-09-26T11:13:14.449-07:00Cunning Intelligence, Chapter 9<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbv5UiS45SOXvq2DsKVqnb12wA8IzwNO-V18MjUYV6Zkq_gxxZxgwKplssvW2y_HEvFI06yIBf5AlLrOZNg-LYtUbTxlfLCcYVSLn0HcSqGuGy8WDedGh-mCyainMpT0xYKANs649b9Ic0LpNcrly2J-vuz-sdIjPAgQN84aDqkAAt8ZSlzUGsRwHNqUk/s499/detienne.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbv5UiS45SOXvq2DsKVqnb12wA8IzwNO-V18MjUYV6Zkq_gxxZxgwKplssvW2y_HEvFI06yIBf5AlLrOZNg-LYtUbTxlfLCcYVSLn0HcSqGuGy8WDedGh-mCyainMpT0xYKANs649b9Ic0LpNcrly2J-vuz-sdIjPAgQN84aDqkAAt8ZSlzUGsRwHNqUk/s320/detienne.jpg" width="208" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>Summary of Chapter 9: The Feet of Hephaestus</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Having spent much of the book focusing on Athena, and to a lesser extent Poseidon, as gods associated with technology, D&V turn now to another [and more obvious] great god of technology, Hephaestus. They approach this through the myth of the Telchines, the original inhabitants of Cyprus, who are sea creatures and renowned metal workers. D&V argue that the Telchines can be identified as, or at least closely linked to, seals, and to the Old Man of the Sea, who they argue is also a seal. Ancient Greek understandings of seals are discussed at length, in particular three sets of ambiguities they embody: 1) they are physiologically both like and unlike humans; 2) the inhabit both dry land and water; and 3) they are both like quadruped mammals, and also like fish. In addition they possess the evil eye, and for this same reason, due to the logic of ancient Greek magic, are also lucky and possess the ability, as amulets, to ward off the evil eye and other dangers.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The one affinity with the Telchines which seals do not obviously possess is metalworking; D&V thus turn to the subjects of crabs, who are strongly associated with Hephaestus. Many homologies in how crabs and seals were written of by ancient Greeks, showing their commonalities; in particular the unusual gait of seals is compared to the unusual gait of crabs. These both, then, link to the deformed legs of Hephaestus, showing that this deformity is a sign of his metic character. Along the way the liquidity and malleability, hence <i>metis</i>, of both water and heated metal are discussed.</p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p>Don Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17000600167696396954noreply@blogger.com0