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 The same principle applies generally to other items 'withdrawn' from consciousness because of their extreme size and longevity.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 Precisely because the hyperobject is withdrawn—it is mathematizable to humans as reams and reams of data—its appearance is in doubt: its appearance as cancer, its appearance as sores covering the body of a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
Idiots of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your digital profile?
Thoughtful and succinct, this essay first advances a critique of Marxism Idiots of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your digital profile?
Thoughtful and succinct, this essay first advances a critique of Marxism from the left:
But counter to what Marx assumed, communist revolution cannot resolve the contradiction between forces of production and relations of production. The contradiction admits no dialectical Aufhebung. Capitalism can always escape into the future precisely because it harbours permanent and inherent contradiction.
That is, “The Marxist scheme […] will prove to have been yet another illusion.”
Neoliberalism has forced us out of Foucault’s disciplinary society and its biopolitics. Rather, instead of compelling disclosure and enacting intrusive surveillance, digital society features seeming voluntary self-disclosure that requires no surveillance, a psychopolitics. The computer phone is its “rosary”: “The smartphone is not just an effective surveillance apparatus; it is also a mobile confessional.” This is not a matter of coercion, but rather “The neoliberal ideology of self-optimization displays religious – indeed, fanatical – traits.”
There’s definitely something to this line of critique, not against capital itself but the segment thereof termed ‘Big Data,’ but I’m not persuaded that one segment has superseded the entire system. The notion that neoliberalism represents something qualitatively different with an alleged absence of classes based on auto-exploitation (an incoherent construction) strikes me as somewhat silly. I get that it’s not an empirical observation, but the abstraction is at best premature. Classless society is not even emergent. There is further nothing new about independent contractor sole proprietors who do not employ wage laborers—that’s a pre-capitalist form of petit bourgeois organization that has persisted into capitalism proper—rebranding it as a new form just because some of its practitioners are no longer selling dry goods or performing light construction work for homeowners but instead take pictures of themselves on Instagram with the expectation of pay therefor isn’t very impressive, except that the social media influencers just seem to make the world a worse place in general. So maybe new capitalism gets dumber, but that’s merely a quantitative matter.
Anyway, there’s plenty going on in this short text. It’s generally smart and lively. Definitely of interest for left theory types....more
It's fine, with nothing disagreeable about the primary argument, which concerns equitable division of household labor on the basis of gender. That parIt's fine, with nothing disagreeable about the primary argument, which concerns equitable division of household labor on the basis of gender. That part shouldn't be controversial, though we can assume there're plenty of troglodytes who will think it too radical. It is however not at all radical, but is rather very basic liberal feminism, updated with some intersectionality ideas. Probably much of the argument could've been a tight essay rather than a full book. A lot of the bulk comes as examples drawn from couples therapy or corporate consulting or whatever. The value here arises out of the specific analyses of the gender politics of very small, very regular interactions.
Where I get kinda annoyed is with the notion of 'cognitive labor,' which is divided into "four categories: anticipating needs, identifying options, making decisions, and monitoring the outcomes" (23). Okay, so far, so good. I imagine if there's someone who doesn't do these things, they are at best acting like an employee who takes no initiative around the house, and merely awaits being told what to do, which can get tiresome for the person supervising. (She examines the dynamic of supervisor/employee at one point.) However, the notion that this mental component is the really oppressive part of the double shift pushes the limits of credulity. Like, it takes about three seconds to determine that the kitchen is a trainwreck when I get home from work, and then probably a good fifteen minutes to put it in order. The anticipating, identifying, deciding, and monitoring collectively amount to a trifle compared to the time and effort involved in the actual physical work. I don't regard the cleaning task as particularly oppressive, either, but thinking about it for three seconds isn't even a blip on the radar.
The objective time and effort are one thing. Where this gets complicated is the subjective component: "Anyone who monitors processes in their home or at work understands that doing the actual task is only a fraction of the work. The bulk of time is spent worrying, planning, strategizing, feeling anxious, deciding, and problem solving before and after the task is complete. it is the sum total of these invisible tasks that constitutes the emotional burden" (id). This strikes me as an exceedingly poor argument. The ultimate thesis is that the female role is often burdened with disproportionate cognitive load in even progressive homes where the male role takes on equitable shares of work otherwise. That is, equal division of household work can still go awry if one person worries about it less. This seems to set up the same problem as the less effective variants of privilege arguments, wherein it almost wishes for someone who does not have a mental health problem to develop one in solidarity with the other person who worries all the time about things that really aren't very worrisome. I'm not sure if this is a cruel desire or not.
I'm furthermore having a difficult time seeing any of the quoted components as actual work--like, who worries about vacuuming the floor or feeding the dogs or dusting the shelves? Who strategizes groceries? Who plans carrying out the trash? What anxiety is experienced over laundry? What does it mean to problem solve low chlorine in the pool? I'm just not seeing any of these cognitive items as parcel to the actual tasks involved in running a household, and if they are routinely experienced as anxiety-inducing work by the person filling the female role, that says less about equitable division of labor in the household than about the effects of patriarchy on persons who occupy that role in general. No one should be feeling anxiety about some dirty dishes, after all. My favorite is the notion that one 'researches' what to buy--that's called 'shopping' FFS and it's often done by typing some inept questions into a search engine.
The argument gets really out of hand thereafter in an example of taking a child to music lessons:
I anticipated the need for instruction, initiated conversations with her once in a while to gauge which instrument she was interested in, and made sure to talk to her about the responsibility that came with taking lessons. In the summer before first grade, I began identifying different ways to take lessons. I looked into music schools and private teachers in the neighborhood. I called her school to see if they had recommendations. I compared prices, sent some emails, and figured out which options were the best fit for our family's weekly timetable. Then I made a decision about which situation was best, signed a contract, and sent a check. Throughout the year, I took her to lessons about 80 percent of the time, always evaluating the relationship between her and her teacher. I made sure to know which weeks were canceled for whatever reason, and I constantly checked with my daughter and her teacher on their progress. (23-24) (underlining added to emphasize bullshit tasks and bold added to note real work)
I scan this list and think that a disparity appears in taking the kid to lessons four times out of five, which constitutes the most time-consuming part. I can't count how many hours I spent taking my kid to martial arts, ballet, gymnastics, swimming, and piano lessons, all of which involved time spent not only in driving but in waiting for the lesson to finish. This is of course for what parents sign up, so no complaints here--but the mental components involve in aggregate less than 1% of the total expenditure of time and effort.
The listing of cognitive load components reminds me of bullshit attorney billing. Say I need to send a medical records request to a hospital in an injury case. Realistically, the task takes about a minute to update a form letter and HIPAA authorization, print, sign, copy, stuff the envelope, post, and file the copy. The whole thing, if it is considered a billable task at all, would be billed out at the minimum increment of 0.1 hours for the entire process. But if the attorney wants to be a prick, that minute of work can be subdivided into many distinct responsible attorney tasks, each filling a minimum increment, to wit:
0.1 Legal analysis of plaintiff's burden of proof on the issue of damages 0.1 Assessed file posture in order to determine which medical records are necessary to discharge plaintiff's burden of proof on the issue of damages 0.1 Analysis of current file contents to determine which medical records need updated 0.1 Determined that plaintiff's attending physician records are out of date because plaintiff continues to treat and has not reached maximum medical improvement 0.1 Completed HIPAA compliant authorization to disclose protected health information for plaintiff's attending physician 0.1 Drafted cover letter for same 0.1 Produced file copies of same 0.1 Evaluated proper postage for mailing of same 0.1 Caused cover letter and HIPAA authorization to be placed in U.S. post prepaid 0.1 Annotated file report to reflect completion of task 0.1 Calendared return date for records 0.1 Set in motion payment process with office manager for record custodian's invoice
I think that's over an hour of bullshit billing entries (each reflecting a necessary step in the task actually performed, even if only for a couple seconds each) for a letter that would take at most two minutes for any half-competent person. Some firms add a subpoena duces tecum, or a notice of records deposition, or--gods help them--both to the HIPAA request, even though only one of the three is strictly necessary. If both are added, triple the ludicrous entries, supra. Back in the golden age of attorney billing, the minimum increment was quarter-hours, which meant write two letters and clock out.
Anyway, this is the vibe I'm getting from the 'cognitive labor' argument in this text....more
I like this author--he's involved in a number of worthy projects, such as assisting soldiers returning from war and working on racial trauma.
This parI like this author--he's involved in a number of worthy projects, such as assisting soldiers returning from war and working on racial trauma.
This particular text is fine. It takes some ideas familiar otherwise (such as the primary point that confrontation is necessary for qualitative development, which seems reasonably hegelomarxist) and applies them to domestic management. I didn't care much for central Frankenstein conceit, and the buddhist-sounding 'five anchors,' which are the principal technique for making use of confrontations, are mentioned early but explained late, and perhaps too thinly.
The main objection to them and overall here is my normal objection to popular psychology books: the normal layperson (i.e., me) can read the words and be deluded into the belief that the words have been understood, a regular dunning-kruger operation. Use of the psychological knowledge very likely should be subject to an experience derived from proper instruction backed by clinical correlation. Otherwise, such texts can be perilous. That is, the text itself is not harmful, but dumbasses can do harm with it.
The case studies/examples contained within the argument are illustrative and compelling, but that's the effect of trojan horses....more
This collection of snappy essays features insights drawn through the tools of biographical criticism, for the application to a reader's life, self-helThis collection of snappy essays features insights drawn through the tools of biographical criticism, for the application to a reader's life, self-help style, mostly from In Search of Lost Time. Light and witty....more
The essays lack a sense of logical development or rigor, relying more on gnomic proclamation followed by musings without citation to and analysis of oThe essays lack a sense of logical development or rigor, relying more on gnomic proclamation followed by musings without citation to and analysis of other writers. The essay on Shakespeare, say, quotes a couple lines and limits itself to speculation about the relation of the author’s biography to a metaphysical notion of genius, inter alia. The famous essays on ‘The American Scholar’ and ‘Self-Reliance’ are underwhelming, almost embarrassing, though of course there are worthwhile points to be drawn from all of the essays. Probably should be read as foundational for American literature, though the almost attention-deficit skipping from subject to subject is wearisome....more
A mix of classic statements (such as Freud’s) and more recent items through the 1990s, this text presents a lively discussion. The original meaning ofA mix of classic statements (such as Freud’s) and more recent items through the 1990s, this text presents a lively discussion. The original meaning of the term is biological in the sense that a species can be bisexual, i.e, have two sexes. Assuming we accept the underlying abstraction, we might call it sexual dimorphism now. Another old meaning involved a person expressing both alleged masculine and purported feminine characteristics. That’s fairly 19th century.
More recently, the term came to refer to preference, which then escalated to orientation, and thence to full blown identity—all abstractions from a set of affections or practices that go in multiple directions. I think the notion is destabilized by the critique of sex and gender we find in Judith Butler and Foucault, but this volume does present the issues well. The entire third section seeks to transform the concept into an epistemological perspective, which is not bad at all. By the end, we're looking at ways to split binaries, which have grown to include the bisexual retort of 'monosexual,' which despite its slickness is a hierarchizing binary....more
The anti-Augustine, an anatomy of the confession form itself, maybe, to use Frye's terms, worming its way inside the form and then borrowing out, not The anti-Augustine, an anatomy of the confession form itself, maybe, to use Frye's terms, worming its way inside the form and then borrowing out, not nasty like a xenomorph but civilized like an attorney.
This might be some sort of heretical internecine genre war when the narrator proclaims that his reading preferences "ceased to like anything but confessions, and the authors of confessions write especially to avoid confessing, to tell nothing of what they know" (120). This is likely because "truth is a colossal bore" (101). In fact, "it's very hard to disentangle the true from the false in what I'm saying" (119). His typology is to "divide human beings into three categories: those who prefer having nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden. I'll let you choose the pigeonhole that suits me" (id.). The ultimate goal is a nihilistic conversion of ethics into aesthetics wherein "I haven't changed my way of life; I continue to love myself and make use of others. Only, the confession of my crimes allows me to begin again lighter in heart and to taste a double enjoyment, first of my nature and secondly of a charming repentance" (142).
This conversion of ethics into aesthetics exists at the root of the genre, insofar as Augustine regards the end of faith to be true happiness (q.v.). We know he's gunning for St. Augustine with this faux confession when he states that "God's sole usefulness would be to guarantee innocence, and I am inclined to see religion as a huge laundering venture" (111). But the repeated invocation of 'indifference' (Diogenes' adiaphora) places an additional menippean target on cynicism, which is fairly amusing, considering that menippean satire is cynic in origin. We also see other connections, prospectively, such as Saramago picking up on the argument about Christ's guilt (112) for his own Gospel.
Recommended for the enlightened advocates of slavery and those living on the site of one of the greatest crimes in history....more
You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You t
With passages such as
You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours. (X.xxvii)
it's manifestly plain that this text is the original theophiliac deomance.
Some items of interest, such as the nuanced interpretations of Genesis and the interaction of Plotinus with scripture--but on the whole, a self-indulgent and dogmatic presentation that simply assumes its conclusions and pursues them recklessly in circles, such as in the dismissal of contrary opinion, e.g.:
This is the utterance of madmen. They do not see your works with the help of your Spirit and do not recognize you in them. (XIII.xxx)
We see the regular conflation of ethics with merely aesthetic ends in statements such as "I travelled much further away from you into more and more sterile things productive of unhappiness" (II.ii). There is also a tendency to equivocate through figure, however rhetorically elegant it may be: "Your omnipotence is never far from us, even when we are far from you" (id.)....more
Probably it's best to keep one of this text's final points in mind while reading the whole--"Basing legitimate defense on reasonable fear is not, by dProbably it's best to keep one of this text's final points in mind while reading the whole--"Basing legitimate defense on reasonable fear is not, by definition, a sufficient criterion for determining where legitimate defense ends and paranoid murder begins" (178)--insofar as this distinction haunts all of the various items under examination: Rodney King, the Black Panthers, the Warsaw Ghetto, medieval arms bearing, the black codes, the French Revolution, women's suffrage, the Kishinev pogrom, the State of Israel, vigilantism, lynching, the Stonewall rebellion, and more.
One can see the influence of Foucault, Fanon, and other left luminaries. I'm a bit of an agambenian, so I find those sort of concordances throughout the text. The notion that reasonable fear, for instance, is merely necessary but not sufficient to identify legitimate self-defense helps us mark out the limits of those societies that routinely arm their lumpenized antisocial nihilists. One place is how lynching is where "civil society became a mob that, as if by magic, was invested with the responsibility to commit a just crime" (98). Or, perhaps, "as this world of predation generalizes, everyone is transformed into prey" (177)--the "reduction to prey" a similarity to the process of the camp in Remnants of Auschwitz.
Overall, not quite the same problematic--maybe the reverse side of the coin--as found in Derrida's Force of Law, Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence,' Camus' Rebel, and Agamben's State of Exception--or, say, in Mao and Che respectively on guerrilla warfare. Those texts concern the contours of legitimate violence foundational to the state; this text by contrast examines those contours within civil society....more
Perhaps I'm not convinced by his predictions yet, as it may be too early to know how the world will develop. For instance, it may well be true that "'Perhaps I'm not convinced by his predictions yet, as it may be too early to know how the world will develop. For instance, it may well be true that "'social distancing' (as it has been euphemistically termed) will be society’s new organising principle." But perhaps not. Perhaps medicine is a new religion, such that
The cultic practice no longer concerns taking medications, being visited by a doctor, or undergoing surgery. Rather, the entire life of human beings must become, at every instant, the site of an uninterrupted cultic celebration. The enemy (the virus) is omnipresent and must be fought constantly and ceaselessly.
Or perhaps not. Changes to universities could be "the end of student life as a form of existence," or maybe not. Time will be the test.
He makes some uncautious remarks, normally in defending himself from interlocutors who mistake his nuanced approach for straight trumpian mendacity. That said, I'd advise against saying "The instructors who agree—as they have done en masse—to subject themselves to the new online dictatorship and to hold all their classes remotely are the exact equivalent of those university professors who, in 1931, pledged allegiance to the Fascist regime." That's a bit much.
Definitely some useful preliminary analysis of the political significance of Covid pursuant to his normal concepts....more
Some of Agamben's signature concerns on display here, regarding law and theology, post-skepticist implosion of antimonies, and the exigencies of homo Some of Agamben's signature concerns on display here, regarding law and theology, post-skepticist implosion of antimonies, and the exigencies of homo sacer--always interesting to watch his mind work through centuries of conceptual archaeology.
Otherwise, a strong showing here for the agon examined by this text on the Top Ten Mythical Trials of Ancient Literature list:
1) the trial of Socrates on the charge of being too awesome in Plato's Apologia 2) the trial of Orestes for matricide in the Eumenides 3) the trial of Adam and Eve pursuant to indictment for capital fruitarianism in Genesis 4) the trial of Christ in the Greek scripture 5) the trial of Helen for being abducted as part of a divine genocide in the Troades 6) the trial of the refugee claim of the children of Heracles in the Heracleidae 7) the trial of the asylum claim of the Danaids in The Suppliant Maidens 8) the trial of the protagonist for violation of the stasis in Oedipus at Colonus 9) the trial of the divorce claim in the Medea 10) the trial of Job for allegedly being too pious in the Hebrew scripture...more
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