Et cetera
a gallimaufry
27 May 2013
Birds of prey
26 May 2013
Limits of scientific scopophilia
In medical training you are accustomed to see things. You see an anatomical preparation, the precipitate of a chemical reaction, the shortening of a muscle as a result of the stimulation of its nerves. . . . In psycho-analysis, alas, everything is different. Nothing takes place in a psycho-analytic treatment but an interchange of words between the patient and the analyst. The patient talks, tells of his past experiences and his present impressions, complains, confesses to his wishes and his emotional impulses. The doctor listens, tries to direct the patient’s processes of thought, exhorts, forces his attention in certain directions, gives him explanations and observes the reactions of understanding or rejection which he in this way provokes in him.
25 May 2013
Sophocles
it brings no profit to the man that's wise! -- Teiresias
Sophocles, Oedipus the King
24 October 2011
independent media and the occupy movement
21 October 2011
political romanticism
In The Guardian David Graeber has extolled the Occupy movement. However, it is worth noting that public demonstrations still seem to have an effect in nations where civil society is restricted or non-existent (see the “Arab Spring”) and in France (in the form of the general strike), but this political style is pretty much exhausted in the USA, almost to the point of becoming a cliche. The declining significance of street protests is made worse when organizers (if any exist) promise more than they can deliver. Occupy Wall Street… until what happens? The closing of the DJIA? What Graeber purports to be one of the signs of the fall of the American Empire, the tribal drumbeats echoing through the canyons of lower Manhattan, is a spectacle; meanwhile, for criminal banksters and feral traders (like the USB thug Kweku Adoboli) it’s business as usual.
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The anarchist vision apparent in Graeber’s commentary (“This is why protesters are often hesitant even to issue formal demands, since that might imply recognising the legitimacy of the politicians against whom they are ranged”) is no substitute for a real political theory of how the widespread change its author envisions might be actualized. Hardt and Negri suffice for the sound bit imagination of well-meaning demonstrators; the rest of us can still hope for something more profound.
16 October 2011
the poverty of a political culture
Unless one were to change "Americans", little can be changed about US politics. Ill informed, lacking an education in political theory and history, suspicious, covetous, and displaying symptoms of the narcissism of small differences towards any group that appears to be making social and/or economic progress (first Catholics, then Irish, then Jews, then Blacks, then Women, then Gays, then Mexicans, etc.), Americans are a sorry lot. Claiming practical knowledge bred of healthy exposure to the "real world", they are as gullible as the most benighted country bumpkin: ready to believe the worst and fear the best, they sell short when they should hold out for long. In the defense of "Americanness", they act "un-American". In the defense of liberty, they act illiberally. Worse yet, the American electorate has given rise to a political class that is scandalously inept. The carnival barker, the circus impresario, the sales huckster, and the soap box demagogue are still models of political comportment and representation, which is why money and policy are interchangeable entities in American politics. Unfortunately, the difficulty of the task the 99% demonstrators have set for themselves is daunting: it is not simply to change a banking system or create a chimerical people's capitalism but rather to change an entire form of subjectivity.