Long Sunday

Open Memorial?

A friend of mine has an interview with Peter Eisenman, architect of the new Holocaust memorial in Berlin, published in The Nation.  I've excerpted one bit, but the whole thing is rather worth reading.  One aspect of the memorial that strikes me is the apparent concern for irregularity, in particular for irregular distances, or steps.  (Agamben counterposes the "memorable" to the "unforgettable," where the "unforgettable," as represented by the tombstones, is that which resists closure or archival.)  While neither a uniform, sterilized graveyard nor purely ostentatious and inaccessible (nor excessively immune), the site suggests the opposite of what might be described as any essential distance.  Perhaps.

You once said in an interview that when you travel to Germany you go as a New Yorker and you return as a Jew. What did you mean by that?

I think that's really part of the problem. The Germans treat me with so much deference, and that makes me feel Jewish, right? They step all over themselves to be nice. Nobody treats you this way in New York. In New York a Jew is a Jew, an Italian is an Italian, a Muslim is a Muslim: Nobody's going out of his way to treat you in a special way. I really don't even think of myself as being Jewish except when I'm in Germany. And that's what we're trying to get over. The Germans should stop pretending that they love all Jews.

backlash era, how it lingers

Thomas Friedman speaks in a certain identifiable tradition of American grandeur and conceit, to be sure, often in coy or generally evasive dialogue with all the proppings of male authority and expertise that comes with such a...___ (you fill it in).  He's a sly marketeer, in that he allows himself just enough show of humility, just enough willingness to pander to ambiguity when confronted, at ease amidst a barrage of sexy soundbite talking points gleaned from cocktail parties with those "in" power, that often those who waste money on his books are the first to say, "Oh I know, it's only one opinion."  To which I often reply, as I take their money, "huh."

Such shadow-wrestling as Friedman's and countless others, not so much with big ideas as with great swaths of time poorly understood or dishonestly portrayed, betrays in its "success" a ready-made market for gross generalization and half-baked speculation just barely clever enough to appear contrarian (so long as it conforms in the end)—this much seems obvious.  I've been considering lately a bit of Walter Benjamin.  Or rather, in the words of Wendy Brown (reading also Stuart Hall) on "Resisting Left Melancholy:"

The 'I' word

Link: The 'I' word - The Boston Globe - Boston.com - Op-ed - News.

THE IMPEACHMENT of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, should be part of mainstream political discourse.

"Should"--yes, that's true. But, if we imagine this so-called mainstream discourse, what might it look like?

"Hindsight's always 20/20. Now we need to get behind the President and support our troops."

"Well, just think how bad the war would have been had Saddam actually had WMDs! It was good thinking to get in there before he developed them."

'Isn't the world better off without Saddam Hussein?"

"Impeachment? What? George W. Bush is a good man with strong convictions. You must hate America."

Response and exposure

Is there an ethics of blogs or a blogging/bloggers' ethics? It seems to me that blogs might help us think about responsiveness and perhaps even a duty of response.

An overly quick presentation juxtaposes two ethics: discourse ethics, that is, the giving of reasons and offering of justification before a community that includes all others, and, perhaps the ethics of the Other such that one is forever indebted to the the call of the Other; one must always respond, the demand of response is absolute.  Neither seems particularly useful in thinking about blogs--the former reduces exchanges to reasons, eliminating all sorts of play; the latter is too demanding, too much. We might say it turns thought over to trolls, eliminating the conditions in which thinking occurs.

In  Precarious Life, Judith Butler considers the ethical significance of exposure, of the fact of exposure that conditions all our lives. It sometimes seems to me that her account of exposure leans toward embodiment, but it may be that this leaning is more an element of my poor reading. At any rate, I wonder if this condition of being exposed might shed some light on blogging ethics.

Mirror stage photo set

Stage (seven)
Originally uploaded by Kren.

This is part of a photo set on Lacan and the mirror stage. If not exactly a thorough introduction, it is quite amusing nonetheless.

(Click on the photo to be brought to its home at Flickr.)

Constitution?

Well the voting is underway.  I don't mean to belabor this, and neither do I pretend to be an expert on the subject, but maybe the referendum is not the “pseudo-democratic aberration” Paul Virilio recently claimed it to be (while gushing, it must be noted, over Blair's infinite wisdom) (via).  That is, perhaps the “pseudo-democratic aberration” is the constitution itself!  Is it even correct to call this thing—500 pages of detailed trade agreements— a constitution?  I have not read it, no, but from what I've been able to understand, not least of all regarding the eventual prospect of a privatized BBC (and a FOX News for Europeans?), I'm very inclined to insist:  let us hope they succeed in voting this abberation down so that a genuine constitution may be written; one more responsive to the needs of the working class, one capable of leaving itself open to alternatives to an unchecked neoliberal world order.  One can only wonder what a Lacanian would make of Virilio's rather exemplary, closing remarks:

We are moving from a democracy of opinion toward a "democracy of public emotion", where what is desired of voters is less a free choice, a firm affirmation by a sovereign people, than a "limp consensus", a friendly solution in the name of a population subjected to all possible forms of brain washing after the excesses of the polls. In the meantime, after the progress of electronic democracy in real time, we are seeing the era of virtual democracy, inspired by the most outrageous marketing strategies, as exemplified by the election of the current governor of California.

In any case, Blair is about to get off the hook, which I imagine he has some mixed feelings about.  Is the far left up to this fight?  We had better hope so.

Old Etonians

Whilst the Young Turks are reading Žižek, the Young Hegelian is reading an Old Etonian, Henry Hobhouse, and his wonderful book Seeds of Change: Five Plants that Transformed Mankind. A book for those who suspect that man’s material needs and the reproduction of his means of subsistence have played a not inconsiderable part in human history. Those five plants, in case you were wondering, are: quinine, sugar, tea, cotton, and the potato (spelled without an 'e', Dan).

A couple of quotes to whet your appetite:

“[Sugar] was, and is, in absolute terms, a not especially cheap source of human energy. In the eighteenth century it was much more expensive in real terms than cereals. Before the sixteenth century the whole of the European world had managed with miniscule quantities of sugar, a mere pinch per head for the whole of history. The glories of the Renaissance were created on the basis of a teaspoonful per head of sugar every year. Sugar is unnecessary to any endeavour, but it is addictive. In the years 1690-1790 Europe imported 12 million tons, which cost, in all, about the same number of lives. Today, Europe’s consumption is well over 12 million tons a year, a hundred times as much. There are no slaves except consumers.”

And of the slave ships in the sugar trade:

“Zeal was needed. Losses at sea were now higher, and ships were faster. Slavers were prizes, even in peacetime, so that every man’s hand would be against them, and the slave ships therefore avoided contact with other vessels by using tortuous routes. Disease was rampant. One slave ship was found by the Royal Navy, floating inert, its entire complement, black and white, slave and crew, blinded with opthalmia, and only able to grope about the vessel. Not unnaturally, they were starving in the midst of plenty.”

The only thing that lets down this (library) edition is an embarrassing recommendation on the back by (probably) another Old Etonian, Sir William Rees-Mogg. It would have immediately put me off if I hadn’t known the content of the book:

“Marx didn’t invent the dialectic – Freud did not invent the subconscious – Mr Hobhouse has not invented vegetable history. But he has seen its significance. Why was President Kennedy an American? Because of the potato. Why was Martin Luther King an American? Because of cotton. The vegetable kingdom is one of the great long-term causes of human history. This is the most exciting book I have read for years, and I believe it will be one of the most influential.”

Dorothea Lange

An arresting photograph collection, courtesy of the honorable s lot, who also links this week to several enticing articles well deserving of a more patient blog post sooner or later.  Does anyone have suggestions for an image to join the rotation in our header (this blog aspires, after all, to radical democracy).  Anyway if so please do be sure to suggest how your image may gloss our title (and group statements).

'Sarcasm' brain areas discovered

Link: BBC NEWS | Health | 'Sarcasm' brain areas discovered.

Scientists say they have located the parts of the brain that comprehend sarcasm - honestly.

By comparing healthy people and those with damage to different parts of the brain, they found the front of the brain was key to understanding sarcasm.

This seems important. Maybe they'll also find the areas for gullibility, craveness, and failure to find GWB repulsive. Or maybe they'll find that Halliburton puts stuff in the water to damage sarcasm comprehension sectors. What I really want to know is if scientists can distinguish between brain that can tell the difference between sarcasm and irony.

I'm no f&cking Buddhist, says Bjork & Zizek

Link: Revenge of Global Finance, by Slavoj Zizek.

I like this article from Zizek. Watching the stupid film I turned after Yoda's 'let go of everything' speech to someone or rather, and said to a friend: "fucking Buddhist". I like the "fucking" here, for it in itself announces a passionate dislike - itself an attachment, and one I refuse to let go of despite seeing my amigos one by one succumbing to the true Dark side. In this very attachment I announce my desire for the Other, my desire to refuse this capitalist supplement of meditating after a hard day's work. Instead I have a Guinness and blog (pardon the self-referentiality at this exact moment).

But I'm a copycat here: Bjork said it first, no doubt because many confused her as such.
"I’m no fucking buddhist, but this is enlightenment" (from "Alarm Call").

Zizek's `most interesting' point, I think, is that the reason the Revenge of the Sith seemed so bland, so narratively inferior, is because Anakin's transformation into Darth Vader was not, as it should have been, because he became Evil precisely because of his zealousness to battle Evil, but simply because he was weak-willed. Boring, especially if Lucas really wanted to make a political point... (though I'd say Bush's handlers are Evil from the get-go, not that they are perverted in their very quest for `rooting out' Evil - or if so, they were perverted a long, long time ago...). Anyway, this explains why it lacked "the proper tragic grandeur... Anakin should have become a monster out of his very excessive attachment with seeing Evil everywhere and fighting it".

ADDENDUM (for those not familiar with Zizek's understanding of Christianity, i.e., for those who aren't aware that he is, in fact, an atheist):

Part of the logic in the background of this article is that to be an atheist (as Zizek is), one must pass through the Christian experience.

Christianity is the only religion where God dies. When Christ dies on the Cross, God dies too. God only remains, then, through the faith of Christians (in the Holy Spirit, the community of believers). Obviously, then, Christians are likely to waver in their faith. This can lead to extreme violence towards others in the desperate attempt to `shore up' one's wavering faith.

It can also lead to atheism. We can only be atheist because of Christianity. If we just reject the Christian legacy tout court, we are only presupposing a dumb pagan or Buddhist God from which we cannot find a path to atheism.

There is, then, nothing more regressive than denying `our' Christian legacy.

(Of course, if you get this confused with the neocon agenda, I shall have to bonk you over the head.)