Enjoyable. A number of speculations on the narrative of the Odyssey. Clever, inventive, cool. My favorite was the epic as the dream of a blinded cycloEnjoyable. A number of speculations on the narrative of the Odyssey. Clever, inventive, cool. My favorite was the epic as the dream of a blinded cyclops, inventing the tale of his unknown assailant, but all of them are fun....more
Plato might say that the general purpose of human life is to contemplate the idea of the good, whereas St. Augustine might contend that the purpose isPlato might say that the general purpose of human life is to contemplate the idea of the good, whereas St. Augustine might contend that the purpose is to glorify god. No one can know, really, and that mystery might cause no small amount of anxiety to those who bother to contemplate it. In this text, however, the students of the special school that makes up most of the setting know precisely their purpose, i.e., (view spoiler)[spare parts for sick people (hide spoiler)], and in that knowledge they of course find no respite or solace. It also does not stop them from conjuring up additional mysteries about the meaning of their efforts or whether they might receive some sort of parole or redemption at the end. The text is thus a study in the fabrication of systematic religious ideas, which apparently persist even when the purpose of one's life is known and planned out. I suppose the inference is that even the condemned believe in their eventual deliverance.
If it weren't for the whole everyone-is-toast problem that permeates the story, it'd be a sort of slow and subtle teen sex comedy, Ferris Bueller's Slay Off or Fast Times at Fridge Count High....more
Successful in being both reasonably comical as well as serious and compassionate. Urges both secular and theistic arguments for tolerance, forbearanceSuccessful in being both reasonably comical as well as serious and compassionate. Urges both secular and theistic arguments for tolerance, forbearance, and sympathy--a gloss on both Matthew 25:40 as well as on The Merchant of Venice V.i.90-91. Clever that the mental health treatment that the narrative highlights, both in presence and absence, comes not only through therapist consultations but also other settings wherein one is constrained to listen to the statements of another--such as police custodial interrogations and hostage events....more
The title piece presents a phenomenology of being a poet, an immanent exploration of its eidos zoe, as the speaker on her morning walk probes the limiThe title piece presents a phenomenology of being a poet, an immanent exploration of its eidos zoe, as the speaker on her morning walk probes the limits of her own interior through notes to self, draft haikus, translations of Rilke and Inge Christensen, speaking things that can't be written (and yet of course are written), and so on. It's something like Benjamin's flaneur wandering through Paris, but here it's post-Ida, post-pandemic New Orleans, by "all the raised houses" (29) from Katrina. She wonders "what do i know of anyone's inside lives?" (31). That knowledge is exposed as a "neighborhood still alive inside me" (59) as she strolls through the neighborhood.
The focus is often on parenting, both upward and downward from the speaker, seemingly about the speaker's own parents and own child--and yet "poetry is not memoir" (39, 59, 69); rather "poetry is a / scintilla of doubt" (39, 46, 72, 78), a deconstruction of "forgetting" (56-57, 58), if the text of the poem constitutes a remembrance, such as how professor Derrida suggests that writing is a prosthesis. As the speaker advises, "I remember" (61).
The text storms off the page but shines even more in a live reading. Hembree presents well and should be heard as well as read. This text also contains some lagniappe writings from years past.
A short dialogue by our friend Psellus, a merger of the classical idea of daemon as some sort of supernatural sentience with the parallel idea of supeA short dialogue by our friend Psellus, a merger of the classical idea of daemon as some sort of supernatural sentience with the parallel idea of supernatural malevolence. Often the latter is just the allegations of church propaganda regarding rival theologies.
The interlocutor with knowledge to dispense in this dialogue presents much of it as originating from a third person who can't be cross-examined--so it's hearsay--a favored technique of dialogues going back to Plato, and even then, this source is corrupted: "I was not very solicitous, my good sir, to retain either the substance or arrangement of that conversation, nor can I now recollect it" (68). The third party is "a monk in Mesopotamia, who really was an initiated inspector of daemonic phantasms: these magical practices he afterwards abandoned as worthless and deceptive, and having made his recantation, attached himself to the true doctrine, which we profess, and assiduously applying himself, underwent a course of instruction at my hands" (67). I assume that the reference to 'magical practices' points to the same tradition on which the Key of Solomon was based. We note that the abandonment of witchcraft was not for principled reasons but rather practical ones. Had it worked and the kindly monk were able to provoke unlawful love and discover hidden treasures within the massy entrails of the earth, what then?
The title, regarding the 'operation' (i.e., work/labor) of demons, indicates the general thrust of the entire project--both angels and demons were considered workers of magic and miracles (as discussed at length in the introduction, which also lays out the scriptural and linguistic basis to avoid conflating such spirits with Satan proper--the linguistics are distinct). The specifics on supernatural bodies, sexes, sexual practices, coprophagia, possession, and the like are more or less familiar, though this is likely one locus classicus for those familiar ideas.
Recommended for those impelled to unlawful and unnatural lusts....more
As I noted on the final volume of the Hunger Games, these sort of heroic endings defeat the purpose of the dystopian subgenre. I get that in part posiAs I noted on the final volume of the Hunger Games, these sort of heroic endings defeat the purpose of the dystopian subgenre. I get that in part positive presentations of resistance is a good thing, and ultimately there is a negative corollary presented through the ochlocratic impulses of the resistance. That said, the first person narrative discipline stretches credulity when the protagonist's secret plans are made between scenes and then not presented for the reader until sprung on the villain. A coy narrator is a form of cheating, much like a philandering spouse, though it might be forgiven if one is swept along in the action--as when that same spouse returns home and makes lubricious amends with all the accumulated techne of lust--which certainly occurs with this story, despite the otherwise annoying fact that twentysomethings are somehow the most competent people in the setting. Like, as if—but that’s the main selling point for YA.
There's plenty of references and debates presented along the way to keep it somewhat cerebral--it's not all space knights with nuclear swords.
Machiavelli and Plato by way of Virgil: "To create a union where it is safer for subjects to follow than to fight. That is the role of Sovereign. Be loved by a few, be feared by the many, and always know thyself.”
An economic truism or a fascist hyperbole: "if no one sacrifices, then no one survives."
Fromm/Adorno: "The old power is dead. See how they flock to the new."
Plenty of critique of right political thought: "what unites all masters who have ever been: what if the slaves take my property for their own?" "And that is the evil of demokracy. That noble lie that all men are created equal." "Isn’t that civilization? Order? Denying animal impulse for stability?"
Clausewitz: "I believe in war only insofar as it is an effective tool of policy."
Orwell: "Slavery is not peace."
Rousseau: "Man was born free, but from the ocean shores to the crater cities of Mercury to the ice waste of Pluto down to the mines of Mars, he is in chains."
Reagan joins the revolution: "No. I am not an anarchist, a communist, a fascist, a plutocrat, or even a demokrat, for that matter. My boys, don’t believe what they tell you in school. Government is never the solution, but it is almost always the problem. I’m a capitalist. And I believe in effort and progress and the ingenuity of our species." Nevertheless: "But business in a crony-capitalist society is the craft of sharks."
An indication of the deliberate anachronism, as influenced by Dune: "A robot. As illegal as EMPs."
Left economic critique: "Wage slaves who work fourteen-hour days, six days a week, suspended between the megalithic towers that puncture the Hive, welding metal and praying they never suffer a workplace injury [...] These slags just got unlucky on the job. Lost legs. Arms. Company doesn’t cover prosthetics, least not decent ones."
Agamben: "These people are not living. They’re all just trying to postpone the end."
The atheist's imperative: "There is nothing but this world. It is our beginning and our end. Our one chance at joy before the dark."
Recommended for readers who are less demons than falling angels....more
Styled as a letter from Solomon to his son, this text is basically the Anarchist's Cookbook of the renaissance, filled with recipes for how to summon Styled as a letter from Solomon to his son, this text is basically the Anarchist's Cookbook of the renaissance, filled with recipes for how to summon creatures from the netherworld and conduct other rituals banned in most countries at the time. Each text contains as its respective primary purpose a set of instructions that don't make for lively reading but nevertheless strike at the contextual norms in which it was written. Both further feature, as expected, interesting bits on the margins that affirm the substance of the challenged contextual norms.
The text purports to pass along the mysteries delivered to King Solomon, “when I was beginning to close mine eyes, the Angel of the Lord, even Homadiel, appeared to me” (2). We should note that Homadiel’s entry in Davidson’s Dictionary of Angels cites only this text for authority regarding the angel. Solomon is to be delivered these secrets because he had prayed “neither for long life, nor for much riches, nor for the souls of thine enemies, but hast asked for thyself wisdom to perform justice” (id.). Definitely not a dream as he was dozing off, definitely an angel.
The first person narrative told by Solomon shifts inexplicably and narrates his death; the person who finds the manuscript thereafter can’t understand it, as “the secrets of Solomon appear hidden and obscure” (3), until an angelic interpreter carries out the regular hermeneutic function such that “he saw that the Key of Solomon was changed, so that it appeared quite clear unto him plainly in all parts” (4). One object of the text is to “render the Angels familiar” (5), with the corollary that one may “abuse not this privilege by demanding from them things which are contrary to their nature” (6). So far, so good and pious. What about other creatures, though with different, non-angelic natures? Maybe that "contrary to nature" clause has a Mephistophilis-sized loophole in it.
There follows the Key proper, which opens with charts of planetary hours. These are used to determine when specific praxis might proceed. For example, “In the Days and Hours of Saturn, thou canst perform experiments to summon the Souls from Hades, but only of those who have died a natural death” (10). It seems like this should be more of a thing in daily life.
It’s striking that it’s all presented as very devout, at least upfront. Everyone must for instance “abstain with great and thorough continence during the space of nine days from sensual pleasures” prior to running an ‘experiment’ (14). Most sections contain multiple prayers, seemingly biblical. That’s all window-dressing, though—there’s no general rule to abstain from pleasure with thorough continence—just for the days leading up to summoning the dead. The main goal of communicating with spirits is open-ended: “that ye may come immediately to execute our desire, whatever it may be” (24). So, sorcery is just a cipher for the inchoate capitalist will to dominate.
The sacrilege, I suppose, here, aside from the sorcery itself, is the implication that Solomon was a magus as well as Moses and other biblical protagonists: “Come ye at once without any hideousness or deformity before us, come ye without monstrous appearance […] by the Name Tzabaoth, which Moses named and invoked, and all the ponds and rivers were covered with blood throughout the land of Egypt” (27)--many biblical supernaturalisms are presented as sorcerous invocations directed by a person, rather than miracles from the heavens. Wrestling with spirits however gets rough at times: “if ye contravene and resist there follows many different prayers to compel spirits, who are us by your disobedience unto the virtue and power of thus Name Yiai, we curse ye even unto the Depth of the Great Abyss, into the rich we shall cast. Hurl, and bind ye” (28-29). Many prayers follow to compel spirits, who are vulnerable to “constancy” (32). Ultimately, one might “reduce ye unto nothing in Hell”(35). One wonders if the rhetoric of slave ownership developed out of this sort of talk, or if the causation flowed the other direction.
There’s rules for giving spirits the “license to depart” as well as for making a “Book of virgin paper, and therein write the foregoing conjuration, and constrain the Demons to swear upon the same book that they will come whenever they be called” (38). Faust is starting to look kinda amateurish, if all this can be done without signing one’s soul away.
A lengthy section on making pentacles follows—“the whole Science and understanding of our Key dependeth upon the operation, Knowledge, and use of Pentacles” (39). There’s lotsa drawings of these, regarding inscriptions. Pentacles are made “for the purpose of striking terror into the Spirits and reducing them to obedience” (56). It presents spells for finding stolen property, invisibility, provoking love, enchanting items for fast travel, and so on. Often these involve using specially prepared tools to kill an animal and whatnot. These particular invocations seem to be common sorcery ideas, insofar as they show up as specifically prohibited by the Witchcraft Acts in England.
The theme should be apparent: sorcery is about labor-saving technique or reducing others to forced servitude. However, “this Science is not a Science of argument and open reasoning, but that, on the contrary, it is entirely mysterious and occult” (57). Therefore: “Accursed be he who understandeth our Art without having the qualities requisite to throughly understand our Key” (id.). I'm thinking that the techniques of power want to operate in secrecy.
The second book of the text concerns how to make the protective circle, how to consecrate companions (mostly exploitable disciples but also “a faithful and attached dog” (77) is recommended to the discerning sorcerer), and the making of various tools, incenses, papers, and so on. It is further recommended that experiments be conducted in “desolate and uninhabited” venues (84), to “hide them from the sight of the foolish, the ignorant, and the profane.” Or maybe to avoid getting burned by the writ de haeretico comburendo. Either way. One gets a bit deep into the text before the warning that “the use of blood is more or less connected with Black Magic” (99), whereas a number of the items foregoing involve killing animals in their manufacture. Thereafter, it becomes clear that “in many operations it is necessary to make some sort of sacrifice unto the Demons”(108), inclusive of animal killings. Talk about burying the lede (as well as the Mephistophilis-sized loophole).
The whole thing ends with a cosmological fragment that details various demonic personalities: “The Devil is ever a God of refusal. Discredited idolatries are religions in their time” (113).
Recommended for readers of Goethe, Dante, and Milton....more
A one-volume writing course, charming and witty. Its key concepts are good advice (bad first drafts, one-inch frames, writing out of vengeance, and soA one-volume writing course, charming and witty. Its key concepts are good advice (bad first drafts, one-inch frames, writing out of vengeance, and so on), but my favorite bit is:
We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you'll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you've already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and turn the unspeakable into words. (198)
Fair to say also that the "moral obligation" to "tell the truth" as a "revolutionary act" (226) has an undeniable appeal....more
This text traces a common thread from Senator McCarthy through former president Trump, while noting antecedents from before the origin of the United SThis text traces a common thread from Senator McCarthy through former president Trump, while noting antecedents from before the origin of the United States, of how an excitable populist section of the electorate was considered by the party that sought its votes to be a dangerous asset to be tamed for voting and campaigning purposes but also a liability to be disavowed for the sake of electability. The danger came not from its policy preferences, which were mixed along each axis of the political spectrum and could thus find a political home almost anywhere, but rather from its intolerance for discussion and disagreement, its credulous belief in any cynical innuendo, and its hunger for allegedly secret knowledge that might explain a complex world wherein all that is solid melts into air. Disagreements over policy positions, themselves secondary, become personal within this fringe, contrasting with the regular attitude of 'I disagree but we'll let the voters decide, and then live with the decision,' adopting instead the dangerous attitude of 'You are an evil traitor conspiring with secret enemies, and if you win, most likely by cheating, you will destroy the republic.'
The argument builds from Hofstadter's 'paranoid style' essay, with consideration of early apocalyptic conspiracism, often rooted in class difference, such as how "tension and increasing rivalry between Salem Village and the more affluent Salem Town" is part of the explanation of the witch trials. The masons, the jacobins, the illuminati, the papists each make an early appearance. One popular conspiracism was that "Lincoln's assassination had been a Catholic plot." We see that the main characteristic of the anti-masonic cause was "its appeal to the less privileged, less educated, more ecologically isolated rural population." Whatever the cause, these early paranoias of the republic are explained as "cynical politicians were harvesting hyperbolic paranoia." The notion that political paranoia is an asset to be procured like any other product is the key insight of this text--we see that the rightwing fringe is not best characterized by its policy preferences but by the apocalyptic conspiracist beliefs that make it very motivated and easy to manipulate. Repeatedly we find regular conservatives who seek to control the motivated cult fringe while realizing its danger. The text lays it out as "a common practice in American politics: establishment elites enlisting popular resentments and fears."
It continued in the 20th century. The 1918 pandemic was blamed by some conspiracists on the Germans; bolsheviks were the new illuminati. By the time of World War II, some on the right "were driven by a fear of communism and viewed Nazi Germany as a bulwark against the Bolshevik threat. But conspiratorial paranoia infected the isolationist movement." Regarding the war itself, "conspiracy theories had arisen regarding Pearl Harbor and the dubious allegation that Roosevelt had allowed the attack to happen to provide cause for America’s entry into the war." We see both returning for the HUAC years. Conspiracism: "The true threat, McCarthy alleged, came from inside. From the elites. From the people in charge. From fellow Americans who were disloyal." Apocalypticism: As early as 1936, GOP candidate Landon "declared that the nation’s existence was at stake and that only his election would preserve 'the American form of government.'"
Senator McCarthy, of course, is the godfather of the dangerous attitude: "As Hofstadter observed several years after McCarthy’s demise, 'The real function of the Great Inquisition of the 1950s was not anything so simply rational as to turn up spies or prevent espionage or even to expose actual Communists, but to discharge resentments and frustrations, to punish, to satisfy enmities whose roots lay elsewhere than in the Communist issue itself.'" They learned some valuable lessons in the time period: "many of McCarthy’s party colleagues sought to benefit from his crusade, as he demonstrated how tapping paranoid fear could be politically profitable."
Nixon assumed the role of the GOP’s chief pitchman of paranoia. He claimed the Eisenhower administration had uncovered and fired “thousands” of subversives in the government. (The head of the civil service later said none had been found.) Nixon also shared a terrifying revelation: The administration, upon taking office, had discovered “in the files a blueprint for socializing America.” Asked to produce a copy of this bombshell document, Nixon explained he had only been speaking metaphorically.
McCarthy had argued that "Our only choice is to impeach President Truman and find out who is the secret invisible government.” In what should also sound familiar to the present moment, McCarthy alleged Truman to be “'captive' of the conspirators and a 'satisfactory front' for this blackhearted plot who was 'only dimly aware of what is going on.'"
Between Nixon as HUAC enforcer and Nixon as president, the big name was Senator Goldwater, who "claimed new federal health care programs would end freedom in America." Reagan, in campaigning for Goldwater, "presented a stark choice for the election: either 'preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth' or 'sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.'" Goldwater's campaign had events such as “a monster three-hour concentration of pure venom on television… in which the patriots suggested again and again that the United States was largely peopled by traitors.” Goldwater's "strategy for reaching voters: 'We want to just make them mad, make their stomach turn, take this latent anger and concern which now exists, build it up, and subtly turn and focus it.'"
Goldwater wanted to use the Birchers, but didn't want anyone to know it. There's good reason for that: the Bircher founder "sent out a mailing to his members saying civil rights protests were part of a communist plot to establish a 'Soviet Negro Republic'" He thought that "that the “Zionist conspiracy… was the father of the International Communist Conspiracy.” As inspiration for Dr. Strangelove, he "pronounced the fluoridation of water a communist plot." JFK was a "blueprint for socialism." He accused Eisenhower fo being a communist. His manual for the Birchers had "no mystery: Everyone, it turned out, was a communist." If only. Suffice it to say that "the fundamental construct of the John Birch Society was fact-free paranoid extremism." This should sound familiar to anyone in the present moment of 'alternative facts.' Of course all of the predictions were false.
Examples thereafter abound, from the usual suspects. Reverend Falwell "proclaimed that if abortion was not outlawed, 'then America will not survive'"; he also claimed at another point that "gay people threatened the existence of the United States." Reagan and his people took part in the process, too. His role was to mobilize the dangerous crowd without making it seem like he agreed with them: "At a victory celebration, he stood before a banner with a slogan that had been cooked up by a Madison Avenue advertising agency: LET’S MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN." His fundraising letters "were aimed to 'make them angry' and 'stir up hostilities.' They advanced the fundamental theme of McCarthyism: Diabolical evil liberals were out to destroy America." Nixon in his time came to "believe his own tale of an America bedeviled by conniving, underhanded, and disloyal internal enemies." He engaged in "classic demagoguery: These think-they-know-best elites were the enemy within, and they were destroying the nation." Nixon had previously "declared that enacting programs like Medicare would lead to the end of freedom in the United States." Again, in case it needs to be noted, these predictions of doom were false.
During the Obama years, we see continuity. Regarding his initial candidacy, one Christian right leader "warned that with an Obama victory, 'America as we have known it will no longer exist.… [It] will be replaced by a secular state hostile to Christianity.' Another numbnut likewise "feared that Obama, once in office, would establish a Gestapo and impose a communist dictatorship." Obama as president, “we’re basically going to be… in the throes of a socialist revolution." Obama's health care law was described as “government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society.” Senator Santorum prophesied that an Obama re-election would mean that “America as we know it will be gone.” Rupert Murdoch lamented when Obama was re-elected that “Our nation is ruined.” Trump, one-note even then, commented “This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!” Again, all false and stupidly so. FNC manager Roger Ailes himself drank the Kool-Aid, believing that the Obama administration followed him with black helicopters.
We see the dangerous attitude work itself out repeatedly. During the Trump years, we get Representative Biggs declaring that Democrats "are not just an opponent. They’re an adversary that’s trying to wipe this country out and change it forever.” Senator Scott similarly "claimed that Democrats and the 'militant left' had a 'plan' to destroy patriotism, capitalism, free speech, and the nuclear family, and he asked, 'Is this the beginning of the end of America?'" Senator Vance "asserted, 'The professors are the enemy.'” Trump himself predicted that Biden winning "would lead to far-left antifa protesters and terrorists flooding suburban America. He raised the prospect of vicious thugs subsuming white neighborhoods and 'crime like you’ve never seen before.'" Previously, he had suggested that "Clinton could be targeted for assassination by 'the Second Amendment people,' if she were elected president" because 'our very way of life' was threatened." The party wasn't immune to anti-Trump catastrophism within the far right itself, as Glenn Beck "warned that Trump was a possible 'extinction-level event” for American democracy and capitalism,'" and Sentaor Rubio "prophesized catastrophe should Trump succeed." We note with no small amount of mockery that every one of these predictions was wrong.
The broad arc here is "a familiar tactic: the enemies-within scare-mongering that Republicans and right-wingers had recklessly employed since McCarthyism." By the time we get to 2020, "Trump and his paranoia had become a theology." That is, "A party that had long maintained a relationship with extremism—and that had managed since 1968 to not be defined by this—now had an undeniable extremist as its presidential nominee."
Trump appeared on Jones’s online talk show, and Jones hailed him as a modern-day George Washington who could save the nation before it collapsed, calling his campaign “epic.” Trump repaid the compliment, telling Jones, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” The man leading the Republican parade had endorsed one of the country’s biggest kooks.
This occurred because "Trump knew the Republican base better than the party’s leaders. For decades, the GOP and the conservative movement had encouraged and capitalized on the apprehension, anger, paranoia, and grievance that existed on the right." The secret was known inside the party itself: “'Trump voters are exceedingly low-information voters. They do not read the Washington Post or even conservative blogs. They do not watch cable news rigorously.' But these voters knew they were angry."
The method is important. Apocalyptic conspiracism doesn't simply exist out there, and it doesn't spontaneously erupt. It is a product that must be manufactured. The way to get it out there is fairly straightforward:
Allegations planted with these organizations would then receive coverage by more respectable conservative publications—the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post—and bounce across the new world of the internet. Then GOP-led congressional committees would announce they were examining the latest twist, and mainstream media would cover this “real” story.
Usually this meant "harnessing traditional conservative extremism and blending it with the power of the New Right. An appeal to divisiveness, an embrace of hard-edged cultural politics, a cultivation of resentments, an adoption of sharp tactics and rhetoric—here was a winning formula." We see it developed by Gingrich in the 90s, such as his list of “'contrasting words' to be employed “'to define our opponents.' It included: traitors, liberal, radical, sick, anti-child, anti-flag, betray, bizarre, incompetent, pathetic, self-serving, lie, steal, disgrace, and they/them." He told colleagues that the left “has to be fought with a scale and a duration and a savagery that is only true of civil wars.”
That's all fine, very persuasive. I get a bit annoyed about application of the term psychosis in a political debate. In part, it is drawn from establishment republicans who refer to the Birchers and mccarthyists and whatnot as 'kooks' and 'crazies.' But this just removes the mystery one step. We should accept the basic proposition that we often pathologize things that we don't understand--assuming for instance that someone is crazy when we can't discern the rationale for their conclusions--and there is something to understand in how there's a consistent cult-like fringe in US history that is susceptible to believing the dumbest things. This text tries to make a perfunctory psychological argument about use of the term, such as the thesis that "shared psychosis, in which people in proximity to a person suffering psychosis—that is, a person experiencing delusions or engaging in conduct indicating a detachment from reality—start to experience the same symptoms." Or how "They were guided by what Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway once called “alternative facts.” It was as if they were infected by a psychosis. That is a condition when the brain does not properly process information. This can lead to detachment from reality. A person undergoing psychosis might see, hear, or believe things that are not real." These observations are merely tacked on and not serious. The true value here is in the accumulation of evidence on the historical continuum.
Recommended for all you communists out there while you're taking a break from destroying the republic....more
Very strong. A critical examination of forms of forced servitude, east and west, during the era of Napoleon. There’s a hint of the supernatural, but tVery strong. A critical examination of forms of forced servitude, east and west, during the era of Napoleon. There’s a hint of the supernatural, but the narrative doesn’t turn on it....more
The interpretation of this text trips up on Poe's law to the extent that the narrator's opinions are so silly it is difficult to decide if it is merelThe interpretation of this text trips up on Poe's law to the extent that the narrator's opinions are so silly it is difficult to decide if it is merely parody of right misanthropic primitivism or a bona fide expression of the doctrine thereof.
Sometimes the narrative concerns a numbnut bro chasing tail, drinking, or wasting time on the beach. At other points, the story is the same numbnut bro committing acts of terrorism. He seems to think that mass power outages will cause sufficient civil war for Florida to secede. I don't know what the big deal is--we can happily negotiate Florida's peaceful expulsion from the US. But that's all the minority of the novel; the majority is the narrator's reflections on various points of rightwing nihilism or ecofascism or whatever the beliefs might be.
Those beliefs include anti-feminism on the ground floor (37), an injunction to "feed the dead to the homeless" (45), piling atheists in mass graves (52), routine technophobia (69), and transgender panic (77). The narrator blithely contends that "it doesn't matter how you agree with us, just as long as you do" (71), an unimpressive totalitarianism. The religious credulity is not without a bit of enlightened false consciousness: "whether the stories of the ancients are as true as we've been told, we can do no wrong in taking from them" (id.).
It's laden with silly inconsistencies, such as anti-consumerism juxtaposed with somewhat serious notes on fashion (83). There's religious dogmatism on every other page, but then the narrator also believes that the Bible has been doctored by pacifists to remove positive presentations of violence (90). The narrator complains about government and law, but nevertheless internalizes routines (114), a theofascist's discipline for fighting enemies.
Though there's lotsa scenes where the narrator engages with women and boasts in the cliche masculine way, he indulges in anti-sex recitations (e.g., 131) and lionizes female virginity. He balances that against shooting women at abortion clinics (100). The misogyny is almost the point: he endorses having eight wives (112), thinks that rape jokes are told for the benefit of men (126), and contends that contraception strips women of their maternal spirit (149). The narrator states that "all of my sexism, as dark as it may sometimes get, rests on a stable foundation of loving and understanding women" (151).
His race politics are equally barbaric: the narrator dislikes cities because of the race mixing (very Gobineau), for instance (102). Not only is race natural (148-49), "the price of minor convenience in a post-white America is the blood that pools around you" (140). He is pro-Confederacy in the US civil war, which he believes was caused not by the issue of slavery but by the South not wanting to pay "Lincoln's 50% tax" (141). Please be advised that Lincoln's tax was raised after the war started and taxed 3% flat on incomes greater than $800; it expired after ten years and did not return until the 20th century.
Though the narrator has money to invest, he is never shown working, except at insurrectionary acts. He expresses a disdain otherwise for wage labor (113).
The narrator endorses killing police (120-21) and then kills some (137-37), seeming to revel in violence for its own sake. The goal is destroy the established society and "install new order" (138), creative nihilism, if we want to be charitable--though the vision to be created is simply neo-medievalist and mystical. The narrator has dumb ideas about World War I, and is pro-NSDAP in World War II (142).
The narrator believes that the law doesn't apply to pirates (118), not realizing perhaps that pirates were considered even in ancient times to be hostis humani generis and were thus subject to the universality principle of jurisdiction, wherein the obligation to hang pirates applied erga omnes as a jus cogens peremptory norm of international law.
Viruses are the self-generated cleansing solution to a weak body (129), but also simultaneously violence is a vaccine (170) against viruses. Needless to say, the narrator is an antivaxxer, linking it to autism (152). That said, "Ex-autism death squads will roam the rotted plains of the American waste" (153).
Nevermind the ubiquitous raw milk fetishism and obnoxious anti-vegetarianism in the quack nutritional epilogue. Nevermind also the fetishism of mythical hyperboreans (155) and Atlantis (168). Nevermind the endorsement of the allegation that the moon landings were faked (51). Nevermind likewise the glib beliefs that history and maps are faked, that they had rifles in time of Christ, and that the Romans founded America (157). Nevermind further that he doubts whether Lincoln existed or if he was assassinated (141-42). What's important overwhelmingly is the aggressively prescriptive primitivism, presented in utopic visions of living an "Amish lifestyle" (166-67)--but with guns and bombs.
Overall, "the line between a normal day and complete terror is much too thin to see" (138-39), indicating an overestimation of the efficacy of rightwing violence and an underestimation of the resiliency of civil society. The 'gothic violence' of the title comes across in the repeated refrains that enemies must be killed. Enemies are apparently anyone who disagrees. It's not like left primitivists (e.g., hippies) who would sod off and live on a commune. Right primitivists like this narrator insist that everyone who does not agree is an enemy to be killed.
Consider the stream of consciousness that appears occasionally:
Shaved the hair off my arms and legs so I could absorb more sunlight. Was Saturn the first sun? Maybe our current one replaced it. IS the moon just a reflection of the Earth? I should tell my parents I love them. Many horseshoes often grow into waves of oscillation. It's okay to litter in major cities. I am not where I need to be, but I act like I am. Always will act like I am. Where I am is the place to be, until it is not. If you're in a restaurant with green and tallow walls, you're probably in Miami. Not okay to litter there, too close to the Holy Atlantic Ocean. Some humans are litter. China used more concrete in three years than America used in the whole of the twentieth century. Ninety percent of the news is spook-generated. I spend every day of my life arguing with myself. Inside of my head, arguing with my own thoughts. Full conversations with resolutions, agreements, new outcomes. Considering erratic boulders. Various evidence of the Flood. Thinking out the cube and missile crisis. (27-28)
That last malapropism doesn't help decide whether this is parody or not.
Musset's version of his affair with Sand is different than hers. The trip to Italy, for instance, so central to hers, is almost entirely absent in hisMusset's version of his affair with Sand is different than hers. The trip to Italy, for instance, so central to hers, is almost entirely absent in his, only hinted at inchoately. It focuses rather on the narrator's internal experience as an arch-romantic through various domestic disputes. For example, when asked about a past mistress, the Rosaline to Sand's Juliet, “Is she your first love?” the narrator replies, falsely as it turns out, “she is my last.” He is definitely a nauseating adolescent in this regard, who "wished never to see her again; but in a quarter of an hour I returned." He "cursed her" but also “dreamed of her." His response to her is absolutist: "I would not take you back as my mistress, for I hate you as much as I love you. Before God, if you wish to stay here tonight I will kill you in the morning." He is aware that "One of the most unfortunate tendencies of inexperienced youth is to judge of the world from first impressions," but then loses track of the principle in noting that "an incident occurred which made a deep impression on me."
The text opens with the injunction that "A poet has no right to play fast and loose with his genius." Fair enough. That is precisely what happens, however, in this text, right from the start. Whereas Sand in very focused and controlled prose lays out her version of their confrontation, Musset can't help but begin with ruminations on Napoleon, Goethe, and the malady of the age. To wit:
The fall of Napoleon was the last flicker of the lamp of despotism; it destroyed and it parodied kings as Voltaire the Holy Scripture. [...] Men in taking leave of women whispered the word which wounds to the death: contempt. They plunged into the dissipation of wine and courtesans. Students and artists did the same; love was treated as were glory and religion: it was an old illusion. [...] Goethe, the patriarch of a new literature, after painting in his Werther the passion which leads to suicide, traced in his Faust the most sombre human character which has ever represented evil and unhappiness. [...] Byron replied to him in a cry of grief which made Greece tremble, and hung Manfred over the abyss. [...] Then formed two camps: on one side the exalted spirits, sufferers, all the expansive souls who yearned toward the infinite, bowed their heads and wept; they wrapped themselves in unhealthful dreams and nothing could be seen but broken reeds in an ocean of bitterness. On the other side the materialists remained erect, inflexible, in the midst of positive joys, and cared for nothing except to count the money they had acquired. It was but a sob and a burst of laughter, the one coming from the soul, the other from the body. [...] Already the children were clenching idle hands and drinking in a bitter cup the poisoned brewage of doubt. Already things were drifting toward the abyss, when the jackals suddenly emerged from the earth. [...] the French character, being by nature gay and open, readily assimilated English and German ideas. [...] It was the paroxysm of despair, a nameless appeal to all celestial powers; it was a poor, wretched creature squirming under the foot that was crushing him; it was a loud cry of pain. Who knows? In the eyes of Him who sees all things, it was perhaps a prayer. [...] In reading the history of the fall of the Roman Empire, it is impossible to overlook the evil that the Christians, so admirable when in the desert, did to the State when they were in power. [...] Montesquieu might have added: Christianity destroyed the emperors but it saved the people. It opened to the barbarians the palaces of Constantinople, but it opened the doors of cottages to the ministering angels of Christ. [...] The antagonists of Christ therefore said to the poor: 'You wait patiently for the day of justice: there is no justice; you wait for the life eternal to achieve your vengeance: there is no life eternal; you gather up your tears and those of your family, the cries of children and the sobs of women, to place them at the feet of God at the hour of death: there is no God.' [...] All the evils of the present come from two causes: the people who have passed through 1793 and 1814 nurse wounds in their hearts. That which was is no more; what will be, is not yet. Do not seek elsewhere the cause of our malady.
Amidst the general theorizing, there's some layering in of faustian ideas, such as how we have inside us "two occult powers engaged in a death-struggle: the one, clear-sighted and cold, is concerned with reality, calculation, weight, and judges the past; the other is athirst for the future and eager for the unknown." But the narrator also thinks of the two-souls-warring as a "terrible combat between my youth and my ennui," and "Thus spoke and groaned within me two voices, voices that were defiant and terrible; and then a third voice cried out! 'Alas! Alas! my innocence! Alas! Alas! the days that were!'" Ultimately, it is a medieval religious cliche in how "you must choose between your soul and your body; you must kill one or the other."
He interposes some thought on the art of his writing, how "Before the history of any life can be written, that life must be lived; so that it is not my life that I am now writing." However, he is focused only certain aspects in support of his general ruminations: "These were happy days, but it is not of these that I would speak."
Rather, he explores the unhappy aspects of his affair, deriving somewhat sophomoric inferences from his failures. "Take love as a sober man takes wine; do not become a drunkard"; "Love does not exist" but instead "Love is faith, it is the religion of terrestrial happiness." Ever a heretic in despite of affection, he "tried to make of my heart the mausoleum of my love." Ultimately, "there is a certain sort of liaison that has neither beginning nor end; when chance ordains a meeting, it is resumed; when parted, it is forgotten."
Part of his problem is bad gender ideology. He believes, for instance, it foolish "to try to get the truth from a woman," a fundamental mistrust that drives everyone away from him. He regards the George Sand analogue's jealousy as "the expression of her desire for despotic power." At the same time, "the sight of women caused me intolerable pain; I could not touch a woman’s hand without trembling. I had decided never to love again." In admiring her, he is "convinced that such a woman was either an angel or a monster of perfidy." His mistrust is ultimately m0onstrous: "In order to break her sealed lips and force her to speak I would give my life and hers."
It's not so simple to dismiss him as a misogynist, which he certainly would be by modern standards. Rather, the narrator has a masochistic streak that complicates his relation to women. Finding "ecstasy in vertigo," he wears a barbed necklace whereby "the sharp points pierced my bosom with every movement and caused such strange, voluptuous anguish that I sometimes pressed it down with my hand in order to intensify the sensation." When she is jealous, "I can hardly describe what I felt; it was both pleasure and pain." His relation to her, laden with mistrust, triggers the masochism: "Of all torments uncertainty is the most difficult to endure." Ultimately, his manner of interacting with her dovetails with the self-affliction: "To see, to doubt, to search, to torture myself and make myself miserable, to pass entire days with my ear at the keyhole, and the night in a flood of tears, to repeat over and over that I should die of sorrow, to feel isolation and feebleness uprooting hope in my heart, to imagine that I was spying when I was only listening to the feverish beating of my own pulse; to con over stupid phrases, such as: 'Life is a dream, there is nothing stable here below;' to curse and blaspheme God through misery and through caprice: that was my joy," his "precious occupation."
Regarding 'occupation,' perhaps understood best as Agamben's form of life, the narrator proclaims initially that "I will be a man, but not any particular kind of man." This seems like a nihilistic intent to survive, without more. But he also states "I did not understand what else there was to do but love, and when any one spoke to me of other occupations I did not reply," indicating that his form of life is being a lover. Doubtful that he'd become a sex worker, of course, but "My only treasure, after love, was reserve. In my childhood I had devoted myself to a solitary way of life, and had, so to speak, consecrated my heart to it." "Wherever I happened to be, whatever my occupation, I could think of nothing but women." Lacking other interests doesn't help him very much in his primary one.
Though the narrator is wound too tightly, he interacts briefly with a woman who is Castiglione's model of sprezzatura. This character "took pleasure in nothing and did not seem to be annoyed by anything. It appeared as difficult to anger her as to please her; she did what was asked of her, but no more. I thought of the genius of eternal repose." He can't "understand such a woman; she seemed to experience neither desire nor disgust," in "her habitual attitude of nonchalance."
The pious opening is no mere window dressing. The narrator confides that "Between the man who doubts and the man who denies there is only a step. All philosophy is akin to atheism." By the end of the narrative, he contends "Poisoned, from youth, by all the writings of the last century, I had sucked, at an early hour, the sterile milk of impiety," and the resolution of the affair has theological implications. This sort of resolution might well be weak and unpleasant, the figments of theistic reasoning.
Recommended for those who've made deserts of their hearts....more
Part of the same subgenre as To Kill a Mockingbird, this text is set during the Babangida years in Nigeria. The opening line ("Things started to fall Part of the same subgenre as To Kill a Mockingbird, this text is set during the Babangida years in Nigeria. The opening line ("Things started to fall apart at home when [...]") evokes Achebe fairly plainly; however, the powerful local gentleman is not a tribal traditionalist who resists the British colonialists and Christian missionaries, as in Things Fall Apart, but is rather a dogmatic Christian convert who runs several successful capitalist enterprises--in some ways the main local cheerleader of western civilization.
The novel draws a concordance between oikos and polis when the capitalist aforesaid discusses his children with the editor of an anti-government newspaper he owns:
'They are always so quiet,' [the editor] said, turning to Papa. 'So quiet.'
'They are not like those loud children people are raising these days, with no home training and no fear of God.' Papa said, and I was certain that it was pride that stretched Papa's lips and lightened his eyes.
'Imagine what the [anti-government newspaper] would be if we are all quiet.'
It was a joke. [The editor] was laughing, so was his wife [...]. But Papa did not laugh. (57-58)
This equivalence of authoritarian state and cruel father carries all of verbal and physical domestic abuse as well as all of the state violations of civil liberties that follow.
The portrait drawn of the father is complicated by his genuine desire for democratic governance at the level of the polis despite his despotic control of the oikos, as well as by his generosity and other virtues. His complexity heads back up the metaphorical relation to the state, insofar as the Babangida regime came into office unlawfully and committed grave abuses of citizen's rights, even while holding specific developmental goals steady (by contrast with the later Abacha regime, say).
Recommended for those traveling to where there is no indigenous culture to pacify....more
As though Jonah cogitated upon the nature of the world in which his whale travels and realized not only that it's also very like a whale but further tAs though Jonah cogitated upon the nature of the world in which his whale travels and realized not only that it's also very like a whale but further that worlds and whales are emptiness.
A bit nebulous at times, this text works through a manner of talking about abstractions that relies on the impossibility of knowing them completely or with certainty. That's an appealing project. We can't see global warming as an entirety, but rather divine its import through various metrics (subject no doubt to Wilfred Sellars' critique) and limited perceptions (subject to Kant's 'phenomenological gap'). The same principle applies generally to other items 'withdrawn' from consciousness because of their extreme size and longevity. The practical implications emerge through a legal example:
We do not need to keep on parsing the data like Chevron, the defendants in the lawsuit on behalf of the people affected by the contaminated soil. Such parsing of data would be using the very same tactic as the gigantic corporation, the strategy of producing endless maps and graphs. What we need is more like what Judge Nicolás Zambrano finally did in the case, which was to suspend the endless construction of (necessarily incomplete statistical) data, and specify that precisely because there is a gap in our knowledge—what do these heavy hydrocarbons do exactly?—to determine that the best action is to act as if the threat were real. [...] The tactic of Judge Zambrano was in effect to specify the oil as an entity in its own right rather than as an assemblage or set of relations: an object-oriented tactic. Precisely because the hyperobject is withdrawn—it is mathematizable to humans as reams and reams of data—its appearance is in doubt: its appearance as cancer, its appearance as sores covering the body of a newborn baby. And for precisely this reason, precaution must be the guiding principle. No further proof is required, since the search for proof is already contaminated by an unwillingness to acknowledge the hyperobject, an unwillingness we may readily call denial. The burden of proof is shifted to the defendant: Chevron must now prove that oil does not have a harmful effect. [...] Reasoning as the search for proof only delays, and its net effect is denial.
As an epistemology or ontology, maybe this makes some sense. But the difficulty arises from trying to use the principle. It's easy to see its virtue in the case of pollution and cancer clusters, as in the Ecuadorian case, supra, when one's conclusion is 'contaminated by anunwillingness to acknowledge the hyperobject.' But change the facts: what if the alleged hyperobject is eternal damnation in the fires of perdition? I have an extreme unwillingness to acknowledge that hyperobject and no doubt my search for proof on that question is contaminated thereby. I am not about to rehearse Pascal's wager and act as though the threat were real, and I respectfully decline to bear the burden of proving that it does not exist.
The further problem, of course, with the Judge Zambrano example is that, after he awarded the plaintiffs $9B , an international tribunal found that he had been bribed and the plaintiffs' lawyers had ghostwritten the judgment (key witnesses in that second judgment have recanted, however). That doesn't vitiate the argument about hyperobjects presented here, which relied on the legal principle in the judgment as aspirational ecologically--but it does complicate the analysis because such scientific assessments are not only difficult but subject to intentional corruption. We already know that the the defendants' alleged science tends to be goal oriented rather than truth oriented, but we normally expect the judge to at least try to get it correct.
All that said, there's plenty of interesting comments here on Heidegger and the arts and environmentalism and quantum mechanics. It's not quite kitchen sinked but there may be something for everyone....more
At one point the narrator invokes Arendt with the notion that the ruling caste endeavors to “spread the blame so there is no villain.” And yet some chAt one point the narrator invokes Arendt with the notion that the ruling caste endeavors to “spread the blame so there is no villain.” And yet some characters are viciously racist on the basis of an imperceptible metaphysical distinction (a la Gobineau) against a character who is physically indistinguishable from them but nevertheless individually superior at the belligerent tasks valued singularly in the setting. That's the thinking, if it can be thus designated, of the protagonists of The Turner Diaries, incidentally, race loyalty for its own sake.
The protagonist identifies himself as the foundational violence discussed by Benjamin: “A thousand, a million bright minds will be needed to answer what you’ve asked me. That’s the point of this. What I can do, what I am good at is tearing down the men and women who would keep those minds shackled,” homo sacer who creates anomic space wherein revolutionary praxis can function.
The coolest bit is one eichmannian bureaucrat’s recitation about the technologies of power, regarding “the proper method of quelling dissent as laid out in section three, subsection A of the Department of Energy’s Guide to Mine Management. I have docked their rations, cracked down on enforcement of legal violations, and discredited leading thought-makers by luring them into liaisons of homosexuality. I have even introduced the recommended scenarios from On Defusing Rebellion. Over the past six years I’ve introduced Plague and Cure, Rebellion and Suppression, Natural Disaster, Pitviper Migration, and even considered the Extraplanetary Government Upheaval package!”
Overall it glides right along, mostly lightly. It suffers from the normal problems of science fiction frozen in the present moment through deliberate anachronism, such as space battles that look Napoleonic (capital ships trading broadsides and boarding parties) or 20th century (dogfighting planes and flak cannons), dueling with swords by armored knights, lack of meaningful surveillance, a polity focused on a monarch, and so on. These features makes it consistent with the genre, and thus generic, I suppose....more
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