Long Sunday

Impolitic

Reading back over the previous thread, Applebaum's piece - and wanting to think more about the relation between Jack Straw's remarks about the niqab being a "visible statement of separation and of difference" and the propriety/property nexus - it occurs to me that I've been meaning to post something here about Roberto Esposito's discussion of the impolitical.

It is rude to wear a full-face veil at work. - By Anne Applebaum - Slate Magazine

Anne Applebaum has an interesting column in Slate. I think she's wrong, as I explain below. Here's one paragraph, but it's worth looking at the whole thing:

Link: It is rude to wear a full-face veil at work. - By Anne Applebaum - Slate Magazine.

And yet, at a much simpler level, surely it is also true that the full-face veil—the niqab, burqa, or chador—causes such deep reactions in the West not so much because of its political or religious symbolism, but because it is extremely impolite. Just as it is considered rude to enter a Balinese temple wearing shorts, so, too, is it considered rude, in a Western country, to hide one's face. We wear masks when we want to frighten, when we are in mourning, or when we want to conceal our identities. To a Western child—or even an adult—a woman clad from head to toe in black looks like a ghost. Thieves and actors hide their faces in the West; honest people look you straight in the eye.

barely polite insults

Richard Wolin, writing a review of Paras's _Foucault 2.0_ for the Chronicle of Higher Education writes:

"One wonders how long it will take Foucault's North American acolytes to reorient themselves in light of Paras's impressive findings."

'acolyte' is meant to be dismissive, in an academic and barely polite sort of way, correct? And seeing this made me think: What other terms can be used to say that the followers or users of so-and-so's thought are idiots, without using the word 'idiot' or something similar?

The only other one I can think of right now is 'adept.' Here are the definitions:

acolyte
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French & Medieval Latin; Anglo-French, acolit, from Medieval Latin acoluthus, from Middle Greek akolouthos, from Greek, adjective, following, from a-, ha- together (akin to Greek homos same) + keleuthos path
Date: 14th century
1 : one who assists a member of the clergy in a liturgical service by performing minor duties
2 : one who attends or assists: FOLLOWER

adept
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin adeptus alchemist who has attained the knowledge of how to change base metals into gold, from Latin, past participle of adipisci to attain, from ad- + apisci to reach  -- more at APT
Date: 1709
: a highly skilled or well-trained individual: expert  <an adept at chess>

Can anyone think of other terms for 'follower' that not-so-subtly communicate a writer's distaste? Of the two above, which do you think is the more dismissive, acolyte or adept?

Iris Marion Young

Rather than obituaries, of which there are a few, such as this one and another here, I thought perhaps an excerpt of Iris Marion Young's "Feminist Reactions to the Contemporary Security Regime" (Hypatia, 18:1, 2003):

[...] One of the things I have learned since September 11, 2001, is how easily the state actions and political culture of a democracy like that of the United States can shift in authoritarian directions. Interpreting recent events through a gender lens of masculinist protection helps reveal the logic and desires that underlie shifts toward authoritarianism. In the security regime, the state and its officials assume the role of protector toward its citizens, and the citizens become positioned as subordinates, grateful for the protection afforded them.

Desiring "9/11"

The US desired September 11th.

I don't mean that the US desired the specific attacks and losses. But, the US did desire the shock, the horror, the rupture. It may be more accurate then to say that the US desires "9/11" meaning that the series of events and articulation of meanings captured by the term "9/11" are an object of intense US desire.

I say this because were it not the case that the US desires "9/11" the Bush administration would not have been able to mobilize a very specific set of meanings and emotions in accordance with the term. I say this because were it not the case that the US desires "9/11" journalists, in print and on television, would not continue to sacralize the term, speaking in hushed voices, in awe with continued shock before the horrors of the day. I say this because were it not the case that the US desires "9/11" we would not continue to have feature films ("United 93" and Oliver Stone's upcoming "World Trade Center") about it.

so as not to ruin

But Benjamin wrote for quotation, his style is geared to it, and it rose to method for him as aphorism had for Nietzsche...'What mattered to him above all was to avoid anything that might be reminiscent of empathy, as though a given subject of investigation had a message in readiness which easily communicated itself, or could be communicated, to the reader or spectator:   "No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener"'      (The Task of the Translator)

-Stochastic Bookmark, on Walter Benjamin (by way of Lindsay Waters and CI).

difference without apologies

It's a well-worn argument to suggest that the Left (whatever exactly that is) should spend more time learning from the Right (ditto), taking a few leaves out of the books of Reagan, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, the Southern Baptist Convention, Bush, the Republican Party, Harper, what or whomever have you...

No competition

You may have first heard about the work of Steve Mumford via something or other in relation to Steven Vincent's murder, on Daily Kos.  Later, n+1 online hosted a nice engagement with Mumford's work – final installment and links to the preceeding three may be found here:

Grad programs train artists in political response, yet few responded to our new war. This summer’s Greater New York show contained more painting about fake wood paneling than about the situation in Iraq. Ironic retrospection was the wrong strategy for the new historical situation, but most artists continued knitting and referencing video games anyway. In this context, Steve Mumford’s Iraqi watercolors stood out. The intimacy, both of the situations he painted and of his brush on the paper, gave us something we hadn’t seen from this war. As the publication of his Baghdad Journal approaches, some have begun to question the attention he’s received. Such questions would be more interesting if he had any competition. His work alone has dared to confront the war where it happens, as it happens. If he deserves anything, it is precisely our attention.

Today, Mumford was interviewed by NPR on the occasion of his book's publication.  Worth a look, read and listen, all

Separated at birth?

 To continue with a theme....More ill-thought out and badly timed lookalikes

A Contest

Mr J. Alva Scruggs, current proprietor of UFO Breakfast Recipients, has over the course of his long career on the internets assembled numerous specimens of crackpot argumentation and distilled them to their intoxicatingly risible essences.  His latest discovery:

It's not that you're inherently incapable of realizing you're wrong. I am, after all, a humanist. It's that you're unaware that you're being willfully inherently incapable of realizing you're not right, a condition I've explored at some length for your edification.

I invite our contributors and readers to find fully fleshed out examples of this schema.  To allow time for this search (and to let me get some sleep) comments for this post will be closed after 11:30AM EST/ 4:30PM GMT.  The person who provides the best example will win...something.  I'm tired.  Happy hunting, everyone.

Comments are now closed. Since nobody bothered to respond, nobody gets the prize, which was this handsome knife:

(You have no idea how good it felt doing that Kripke's lousy book. I may buy another copy just to destroy it again.)