Long Sunday

You Gotta Have Faith?

"You cannot address the other, speak to the other without an act of faith, without testimony. What are you doing when you testify, when you attest to something? You address the other and ask belief. Even if you lie, even if you are in a perjury you are addressing the other and asking the other to trust you. This 'trust me, I'm speaking to you' is of the order of faith." Derrida at Villanova during a round table discussion/1994

On a Mission!

Well Michael Bérubé sure gets this right:

But the truly astonishing thing is not that we continue to study the literature and culture of the British Isles; outside of Shakespeare, who remains extremely popular on campus and off, most undergraduates aren’t doing too much reading in British literature before 1800. Rather, the astonishing thing is that we devote so little time and energy to the study of contemporary world literatures in English.  I say this not out of self-interest—I know far too little about the field, so little that if I had the capacity for shame I would be ashamed of myself—but simply out of the recognition that while we “English” professors are sitting around squabbling about theory here and rhetoric there and tweaking the undergraduate curriculum just so, the English-language writers of Asia, Africa, and Australia have been coming up with all kinds of stuff. I hear there’s even another English-speaking country on this very continent, but I don’t remember its name.

A question of priorities then, indeed.  In addition to which, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Bérubé––as someone who has actually taken the time to understand Derrida––is here defending close reading per se or as traditionally understood.  It may be politically propitious to turn the rhetorical tables with the slogan that, well, "Derrida was really the closest of close readers, you know."  But the post-structuralist take-down of the New Critics, in the broadest sense, is still as relevant as ever.  That is, the best close readings, as any good deconstructionist knows, also take place at a crucial, if also non-essential distance.  Or rather, as if at a distance from themselves, with a fierce concern for the ways in which they are always, inevitably, re-inscribing distance, or for that matter, proximity.  Recognizing maybe, that true proximity only ever comes from distance.  As in carressing sands, not sledgehammering wood.  Ok, I'll stop.  Just thought I'd throw that out there.  Kuddos to anyone who deigns to comment on such a trite post.  The last thing we need around here is some kind of "mission."

Update:  Just in case you didn't follow that first link in Bérubé's post, I'll go ahead and kindly encourage you to do so here.  It even references an REM lyric––you can probably guess which one.

Only a god can save us?

I have been quite discouraged by recent political events, particularly in the US Senate where the democrats continue to curl up in the fetal position, pee on themselves and ask for forgiveness. Secretary Strangelove and President Nimrod have admitted that the insurgency in Iraq is strong enough to continue for years. And though the citizenry are uneasy, not many people seem to care.

Amidst the current climate this infamous phrase of Heidegger’s came to mind. Of course, it occurred during the notorious Der Spiegel interview where Heidegger is attempting to settle accounts and fabricate more lies about his relationship to the Nazis movement. Without getting into the bottomless morass of that controversy, I wanted to take a moment and think about what is suggested by the phrase. It seems to me that there is something relevant to our current situation:

Philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. That is not only true of philosophy but of all merely human thought and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The sole possibility that is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking and poetizing, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god in the time of foundering; for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder.

Traditionally, this quote has been seen in one of two ways. The obvious reading is that Heidegger has given up and thrown in the towel, that the overwhelming technological domination of the globe has taken hold to such degree that all is lost. The only thing left is to mourn the loss and wait for the next dispensation of Being to occur eons from now.

But the other way is to look at this quote (and the Der Spiegel interview in general) within the larger context of Heidegger’s body of work. What is of particular interest is the meaning of "god" and "save." Notice that Heidegger does not refer to the one God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, nor to the many Gods of Greek polytheism. The god he is referencing is associated with the "Es Gibt," that which grants the various dispensations of Being. What gives is not a thing and is not subject to human control. It gives because it gives.

Saving has a deep resonance for Heidegger and he deploys it in many contexts. Perhaps the most relevant is the appropriation of the Holderlin line "But where danger is, grows the saving power also."

This quote is referenced in "The Question Concerning Technology" where Heidegger identifies technology as dangerous for at least two reasons: (1) It threatens to obliterate our awareness of the "truth" of Being and (2) It threatens to contaminate all other alternative modes of revealing (like art and philosophy).

He now looks to apply Holderlin’s epigram to the extreme danger of Enframing. If Gestell is the extreme danger then the redemptive power must also lie within it: "the essence of technology must harbor in itself the growth of the saving power."

The key lies in the fact that Gestell not only commands us to disclose beings in terms of standing reserve - Gestell can only disclose beings in and through us. The world and all that is in it only reveals itself in the process of human activity. Though we are not in control of this process, we are an active participant to the degree that we "belong to the coming to pass of truth." The saving power reveals itself in our ability to bare witness to unconcealment as such, recognizing the dangers of the technological form of disclosure, and realizing that Enframing is only one mode of revealing among others. This is why Heidegger says that "all saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same time kindred to it." The granting that sends technological disclosure is also the granting that has the power to send something else. It is in this insight that we are "granted" human freedom.

What I find compelling in this account is that it points to the contingency of all systems, no matter how monolithic they may appear. Though many find Heidegger’s account too fatalistic, he demonstrates that it is possible to grapple with an experience that we do not yet have words to describe. In doing so he begins the task of thinking of an alternative way of being.

There is much that I dislike about Heidegger: His Black Forest, tree hugging fetish, his Grecco-Germanic prejudice, and the fact that he was a rather despicable human being. But none of this eclipses the grandeur and audacity of his thought. He still was one of the great philosophers of the 20^th century. In revisiting his path of thinking I hope to get insight into our own way of being and living today. Consider this attempt a prolegomena to future work.

Beiser's Hegel

Sorry to take up more space (my colleagues at Long Sunday must have taken the advice and gone on holiday with the CIA) but I thought I’d share with you how good I think Frederick Beiser’s new book Hegel is. It seems like the fruit of many years teaching the subject, and sure enough he’s distilled the essentials down to a very readable, admirably clear and blissfully doxa-free account of Hegel’s philosophy. What’s more it has a nice cover, and though one isn’t supposed to judge a book by it, this sure beats Continuum’s recent gaudy efforts.

A Rare and Old-Fashioned Thing

As usual, the real debate in Parliament happens after the majority of MPs have retired to the bar. During the ID cards debate I think they left pretty sharpish, embarrassed as most Labour backbenchers must be that they are going to vote in favour of this bill tonight. Had they stayed they would have seen both Mark Oaten (Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman) and David Davis (Conservative Party Home Affairs Spokesman) demolish the planned legislation with an onslaught of that very rare and old-fashioned thing – rational argument (I feel a bit embarrassed myself to have found nothing at all with which to disagree in Davis’s critique, though this shows how far the parties have swapped places on the political spectrum). But reasoned argument won’t win the day, not in what the political scientists euphemistically call a ‘disproportional electoral system’, where even a majority of 67 is not small enough to allow an MP’s conscience to rebel against wholly irrational and ill thought-out legislation. And a footnote: for those in the UK, find out how your MP votes tonight, and let them know what you think of what they’ve done.

Holidays in the Sun

Ever wanted a job with real perks? Like free foreign holidays, luxury rooms at top hotels in glamorous Mediterranean locations, free flights and a mobile phone thrown in? Then join the CIA.

The Orwellian-speak of PSAs

west nile victim
Originally uploaded by dcnstrctr.

Today, I saw another if different well-produced government ad (or public service announcement in Orwellian-speak), enjoining us to clear away still water spots from around the property. Pisses the hell out of me to think of the public purse going towards this silly little disease that, at its worst, killed 18 people in the province of Ontario (in 2002). As I noted in a previous post, nearly 6000 people die prematurely in this same province every year from smog. I see far fewer ads enjoining us to drive less, and I wouldn't even want to see those either. Just spend the money on better public transit. Create a real choice for the suburban masses.

In a sense, I can't stand the very idea of `educating the public', or at least can't deal with it when the managers are liberal in orientation. Stop smoking they say, it's costing us billions, even while they secretly rely on our addictions to in fact fund the public purse! Ugh. It only encourages me to leave buckets of still water in as many places as I can around the city, and blow smoke.

What's particularly infuriating is that because of the sensation of this exotic disease everyone already knows what to do, since all the networks and radio talk shows talk about it constantly. So, then, these public service announcements reveal themselves for the simple and exclusive propaganda that they are. Knowing their citizens to be irrationally whipped up into stupid fervor by such call-in talk shows, governments (and we're dealing here in Ontario with a Liberal government) know they can capitalize on the situation. And that they do, with public capital.

Mythologies

The latest advert for the National Lottery shows two young women walking down a street, one looking chirpy, the other looking distinctly down in the dumps. Whilst the first greets each passer-by or passing dog with a sunny disposition, the second runs into bad luck at every juncture, from catching her heel in a crack in the pavement to having food spilled down her front, so that when her lucky friend goes into the corner shop to buy a lottery ticket she is left a distraught mess outside. The voiceover tells the unfortunate young woman that she is too negative, never takes a chance. And the viewer is left to connect her bad luck with her failure to buy a lottery ticket. Thus a new moral: you, oh recalcitrant customer, you don’t take part in the lottery because you don’t believe you can win; if only you were more positive fate would actually be kinder to you. Why are sales of lottery tickets down? Because of you. You have made your own bad luck. You didn’t take that chance, that one in 5 million chance.

"His seriousness kills me"

Old news in blogtime, I know, but for those perhaps unaware, the exceedingly generous Paul Kerschen is currently translating the diaries of Franz Kafka [1910-1923] every day at his blog (part of the extraordinary resource known as The Kafka Project).  And he seems to be inviting comments.

Transformation

In a jet lag induced delirium, likely enhanced by the McD$ cheeseburger I ingested to keep myself awake on the drive home from the airport, I started thinking nostalgically about transformation. Surely my dreamy state occluded certain important political and contextual realities, nonetheless, it seems that leftists have forsworn lofty notions like transformation. Instead of transforming people, we (and now I speak from within lefty academics, particularly feminist, queer, antiracist) emphasize listening to people, including people, accepting people, giving people space, proliferating difference etc. But, for the most part this is done without transforming or changing anybody. Perhaps it isn't a surprise, then, that it hasn't been working. That there is seething resentment against lefty condescension. That the right can mobilize and capitalize anger and anxiety. Perhaps this is due in part to abandoning the project of transformation. (I now gaze dreamily at the old photo of Rosa L. on the wall, fantasizing about mass strikes as the reality of three unaligned strikes--doctors, trash collectors, railway workers--in Holland irritates me like a Dutch mosquito.)

Now--here is the real weird part. At least parts of the right love transformation! And, guess who, our good old evangelicals! The fully believe in the transformative power of Christ, love, in the power of the Holy Spirit to change lives. Can the left find a bold way to acknowledge the importance of transforming lives, to recognize that people value and want transformation, and then to posit or imagine what such a transformation would entail?